Critique seminar Assignment 1 September 16, 2013
Critique seminar
Assignment 1
September 16, 2013
Last semester I created an installation, named 300+1 dudes. The installation consists of one fabric piece and 300 clay pieces. I used bee wax, melted and poured clear soap and candle pigment as a glaze to cover the surface of 300 clay pieces. Some of them are very colorful and some of them are simply white or red. I see the discontinuity in color as an experiment with my color preference. The result is I prefer the simple color most, plain white or yellow, because they make my heart flutter. It is more kinesthetic than aesthetic. The hanging fabric piece was woven with wool and glass strips. I found the wool strips at Pendleton outlet store and formed the glass strips into a glass nets in a glass kiln.
The name (300+1 dudes) of this work conveys the sense of absurdity. I used numbers to name this piece because I feel it is hard for me to search a certain meaning of my work, and I have tried to stop searching for a meaning or to put a label on every thing. In general, I feel that to put a label on something means there is a certainty behind it, while the sheer amount of information as well as the vast realm of the unknown make certainty impossible.
The inspiration of this work is ocean. Both the clay pieces and the fabric piece have a visceral feeling that easily makes people related them to unknown ocean creatures or moving waves. I love ocean, the immense water. The ocean is where we all originated and it has the power of temporarily empty my mind. When I’m staring at the ripples, I can’t distract myself by anything expect the endless appearance and disappearance of the waves.
I interested in emptiness in mind.
Art is always acts as a path to express perspectives and ideas.
Maybe, “to art” is “to prefer an aspect” nowadays.
What most artists do is input: Input ideas into audience’s head.
But I feel our planet is so chaotic.
I want nothing, but serenity.
Can I “art”, in an “output” way?
Can I “art” by empty your mind?
Emptiness as a human condition is kind of a controversial topic: in eastern culture it viewed as “key to the permanent cessation of suffering, and gain the liberation, While in western culture, it viewed as “a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation and apathy.”, and always related with mental diseases. I will do some research on that.
I choose Rachel Whiteread’s work as my comparison, although they are not visually similar. I interested in how her expresses her emotions and ideas through object. She expresses “loss, emptiness, negative space” by make them solid: cast the negative space underneath the chairs, cast an entire house…from her works, audience can easily understand her ideas not only visually, but also emotionally and logically. For example, when audience see the cast house, they will logically start to thinking “whom the house belongs to”, “if the house was caste, it must have been destroyed during the cast process”, “where are the people who used to live in that house”…by thinking the destruction of the house and owner’s family’s leaving, audience get a mixed feel of loss and sorrow. The object itself can compel audience get artist’s ideas by automatically and naturally happened thinking process. The power of compelling audience to automatically and naturally thinking makes Whiteread’s work rich and have a depth. Back to my work, I express my ideas more limited in visual: my work looks like ocean creature, my work looks like sea wave…maybe it is ok to expresses my idea only by its appearance, but I’m more interested in developing a depth of my work.
In her work, yellow edge, I can feel “Synesthesia”: Only by seeing the picture of her work, I have a physical feeling of touching them. I think my work could also give the audience an impulse of touching, but I want to purify the touching feeling. For me, purify means highlight. The touching feeling in my previous work is mixed: wool with glass (soft with sharp), wax with soap (sticky with smooth)….when the touching feeling is mixed, it is obscure, not sharp nor strong.
My material preferences are water, ice, wax, resin, plaster, dust, which can be easily divided into small particles and build up into large scale as well.
Assignment 1
September 16, 2013
Last semester I created an installation, named 300+1 dudes. The installation consists of one fabric piece and 300 clay pieces. I used bee wax, melted and poured clear soap and candle pigment as a glaze to cover the surface of 300 clay pieces. Some of them are very colorful and some of them are simply white or red. I see the discontinuity in color as an experiment with my color preference. The result is I prefer the simple color most, plain white or yellow, because they make my heart flutter. It is more kinesthetic than aesthetic. The hanging fabric piece was woven with wool and glass strips. I found the wool strips at Pendleton outlet store and formed the glass strips into a glass nets in a glass kiln.
The name (300+1 dudes) of this work conveys the sense of absurdity. I used numbers to name this piece because I feel it is hard for me to search a certain meaning of my work, and I have tried to stop searching for a meaning or to put a label on every thing. In general, I feel that to put a label on something means there is a certainty behind it, while the sheer amount of information as well as the vast realm of the unknown make certainty impossible.
The inspiration of this work is ocean. Both the clay pieces and the fabric piece have a visceral feeling that easily makes people related them to unknown ocean creatures or moving waves. I love ocean, the immense water. The ocean is where we all originated and it has the power of temporarily empty my mind. When I’m staring at the ripples, I can’t distract myself by anything expect the endless appearance and disappearance of the waves.
I interested in emptiness in mind.
Art is always acts as a path to express perspectives and ideas.
Maybe, “to art” is “to prefer an aspect” nowadays.
What most artists do is input: Input ideas into audience’s head.
But I feel our planet is so chaotic.
I want nothing, but serenity.
Can I “art”, in an “output” way?
Can I “art” by empty your mind?
Emptiness as a human condition is kind of a controversial topic: in eastern culture it viewed as “key to the permanent cessation of suffering, and gain the liberation, While in western culture, it viewed as “a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation and apathy.”, and always related with mental diseases. I will do some research on that.
I choose Rachel Whiteread’s work as my comparison, although they are not visually similar. I interested in how her expresses her emotions and ideas through object. She expresses “loss, emptiness, negative space” by make them solid: cast the negative space underneath the chairs, cast an entire house…from her works, audience can easily understand her ideas not only visually, but also emotionally and logically. For example, when audience see the cast house, they will logically start to thinking “whom the house belongs to”, “if the house was caste, it must have been destroyed during the cast process”, “where are the people who used to live in that house”…by thinking the destruction of the house and owner’s family’s leaving, audience get a mixed feel of loss and sorrow. The object itself can compel audience get artist’s ideas by automatically and naturally happened thinking process. The power of compelling audience to automatically and naturally thinking makes Whiteread’s work rich and have a depth. Back to my work, I express my ideas more limited in visual: my work looks like ocean creature, my work looks like sea wave…maybe it is ok to expresses my idea only by its appearance, but I’m more interested in developing a depth of my work.
In her work, yellow edge, I can feel “Synesthesia”: Only by seeing the picture of her work, I have a physical feeling of touching them. I think my work could also give the audience an impulse of touching, but I want to purify the touching feeling. For me, purify means highlight. The touching feeling in my previous work is mixed: wool with glass (soft with sharp), wax with soap (sticky with smooth)….when the touching feeling is mixed, it is obscure, not sharp nor strong.
My material preferences are water, ice, wax, resin, plaster, dust, which can be easily divided into small particles and build up into large scale as well.
