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alexanderwhite-artist-blog · 8 years ago

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Research Presentation Report Alexander White MFA Fine Art 11/04/2017

Introduction

The axiom for my research presentation was a series of screen prints, a triptych of sorts, produced digitally through a series of experiments using a very basic computer program. Though I consider my practice to be sculptural for the most part, it may be more accurate to suggest a ‘spatially responsive’ approach, in which works are generated by the spaces in which they are intended to be seen. Though the ‘site’ (referring to place in this context) is important to my way of thinking, I do not consider the works I make to be site, or indeed spatially specific, as site specificity often suggests a work which could not, or should not be removed from its context. My work often uses materials peculiar to the ‘site’ as a descriptor of place and architecture (or space) to generate form, these sensibilities are transportable; the work may become activated once unanchored from its original site of production, drawing from Robert Smithson’s ideas around the ‘non-site’ in terms of material and a perceived problem in the relationship between artist, object and studio. As Daniel Buren writes: A work produced in the studio must be seen, therefore, as an object subject to infinite manipulation. In order for this to occur, from the moment of its production the work must be isolated from the real world. All the same, it is in the studio and only in the studio that it is closest to its own reality, a reality from which it will continue to distance itself …The work thus falls victim to a mortal paradox from which it cannot escape, since its purpose implies a progressive removal from its own reality, from its origin. It is this paradox which is of interest to me, what Buren could not have foreseen at the time of writing The Function of the Studio, is that there now exists a third space of production and display, a digital world in which work might exist nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. It has been my position for some time now that my mode of artistic production is merely a response to a given set of conditions and it is the condition of this ‘virtual’ space and its relationship to the real world which has been the enquiry of the work.

On Language

I consider engaging with materials through making as something of a negotiation. Rather than forcing a material to my will, I prefer to take a path of less resistance allowing the material to push back and in doing so, informing some of the decision making within the work. I apply the same methodology to working digitally, instead of taking a lot of time to learn how to use a modern CAD program or similar (in which the possibilities are only really limited by one’s imagination and technical expertise) I take a much more ‘point and shoot’ approach. Utilising a very basic program has allowed for a particular digital language to develop within my practice, informed by the limits of both my technical ability and that of the program. I found through this digital tinkering, that using straight lines or ‘vectors’ is one of the most simple ways of creating images and forms, but quickly became frustrated by the ‘flatness’ of the work produced. To this end I began downloading images of empty gallery spaces in order to respond in a more spatially generative manner and have a ‘digital site’ in which to anchor the work. Although this seemed for a while to resolve the issue, I was having a hard time understanding the works status, was it in existence or absence? Was this a proposal or a resolution? In order to test this, I started to make the works physically as both sculptural entities and drawings. Once expelled from the digital realm, the most salient feature of the work seemed to be the unavoidable comparison to the visual language of sculptors and artists associated with the Minimalist and Post-Minimalist movements of the 1960’s and 70’s in particular, Sol Lewitt. The problem with making works that are so aesthetically similar to formalist minimalism is that it can be seen as something of an unwitting anachronism. Because the objects produced in this period are often so content resistant and tend to remove the traces of the maker or mode of production, the fact that the forms were arrived at from a very different direction and time become lost beneath an unfortunate and unintentional veneer of the pastiche. In an effort to counter this, I attempted to make a work which would operate in reverse, a series of pencil drawings of QR codes which when scanned with a smartphone application would take the viewer to the ‘digital sculpture’ the physical object functioning as a signifier for the digital work, as opposed to the digital work being a signifier (or precursor) to the physical object. This however seemed somewhat contrived and did not resolve the question around status, it did however generate a line of thought concerning meta-data, a prefix that in computing usually means an underlying definition or description.

On Architecture

My interest in architecture as a generative platform informed a trip to La Biennale Architettura 2016 in Venice, an experience I would recommend to any artist with a sensibility toward material. The Biennale is like a giant pick-and-mix of unusual materials and material used in unusual ways; interesting spatial interventions and model making so exquisite, one wonders that if ever realised, whether the final outcome might be something of a disappointment. As this is architecture, an artist might wander round the pavilions without the requirement for any particular critical engagement, taking ideas ‘off the shelf’ with impunity. Architects love to demonstrate not only their ability, but also how something was done, in other words, the work is often supplied with its own ‘how to’ guide. The title of 2016’s Biennale was REPORTING FROM THE FRONT and the stand out exhibit for me was by the Goldsmiths based research collective ‘Forensic Architecture’ In this exhibition, Forensic Architecture presents elements from four recent investigations. Undertaken at different scales, these cases extend from the micro-analysis of a single ruin from a drone strike in Miranshah, Pakistan, to an urban analysis of the city of Rafah in Gaza under Israeli attack…While architecture adds an essential method of investigation, forensics demands of architects the closest attention to the materiality of the built environment and its media representations. It also challenges architectural analysis to be performed publicly and politically in the most antagonistic of forums. This set me to wondering if abstract formalism would still be ‘content resistant’ were a bomb to be dropped through the frozen sky of the white cube’s ceiling?3 Might it be possible to force an uncomfortable meta-data beneath an aesthetic which would resist it?

On the Internet as War Zone

We seem to be existing in what might worryingly be looked back on as the ‘post-truth era’ a state in which ‘debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored’ This has likely existed within politics for as long as there have been politicians, however the advent of the internet has highlighted and destabilised political rhetoric, particularly regarding foreign policy, financial and environmental issues. Increasingly wars are fought as much through the media as they are on the ground. It is alleged that the British Government are implicated in a sort of ‘proxy-war’ in Yemen by selling arms to the Saudis, even the most cursory internet search will generate thousands of images of the results of the conflict. I think one of the most poignant signifiers of any such war is the destruction of homes and cities, the architecture itself bearing witness to the destruction and suffering of its people. It is against this backdrop I began to make more digitally generated images, using the same formalist language, but instead of using the architecture of the white cube to form a response, the shattered buildings of Yemen became my source material. One of the problems related with using the internet to find such images is that it is often unclear as to the context of any given image. It is not always possible to know who its author is, what his or her political persuasion might be, or what, if any, agenda is associated with its production. The image has already passed through the framing of the photographer, the lens of the camera, the uploading to the internet, the framing of the webpage on which it is displayed and conceivably any number of framing and re-framing exercises as images are copied, reused and repurposed. It is possible to suggest that by the time an image has arrived on my own computer, it has passed through at least four frames; my own computer screen making it five. This work then, is certainly not a phenomenological response to architecture in the way Bachelard may have it, nor is it a response to a lived experience of a place and its buildings in the way Walid Raad the Atlas Group might, both these positions require the maker to be on the inside looking out, the multiple lenses of the internet isolates the viewer as outside, peering in.

On Isolations

Responding to fragmented architecture in a purely formal manner presents certain complications, voids once contained within war-torn buildings, spill out into their surroundings and I found myself compelled to fill in the gaps with form, hovering somewhere between reimagining what was once there and creating new forms generated by the debris. The result of imposing this aesthetic sensibility on such an emotive subject matter is deeply problematic, the work begins to take on the sense of a sort of ‘psychotic sculpture park’ like a warzone with a giftshop. The removal of the source image, leaving only black lines and formalist aesthetic seemed to resolve the work, isolating the content still further from its own reality and origin into abstraction. The landscape of war, western foreign policy and capitalism become submerged as a sort of meta-data, the horror lurking beneath the surface. The collision of such content and the content resistant is difficult to reconcile, this somehow put me in mind of Brett Easton Ellis’s novel ‘American Psycho’ dramatized in the 2000 film of the same name. The infamous ‘axe scene’ (in which Bateman seemingly dispatches a business rival for securing a reservation at an impressive restaurant Bateman cannot. The victim is sitting above copies of the New York Times ‘style section’ neatly taped to the floor with small black crosses) was the final subject for the ‘Isolation’ series, reminiscent of the guidance visualisations of drone warfare technology and referencing the total madness associated with greed, capitalism and our own complicity within it.

On Ethics and Aesthetics

There has been much controversy in the media of late (yes them again) concerning a painting by Dana Shutz exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of its biennial exhibition. ‘Open Casket’ is a work of semi-abstraction, the subject matter being the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy who was tortured and lynched by two white men in 1955 after being accused of flirtations with white women. Both men were subsequently acquitted. It was the wish of Emmett’s mother Mamie Till Bradley, that the funeral be a public service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing. This galvanised Till as an icon of the civil rights movement. The main bones of contention surrounding the painting is the fact that Schutz is white and middle class and her use of abstraction has been described as ‘an ill-conceived attempt by Ms. Schutz to aestheticize an atrocity’ British-born black artist Hannah Black wrote in an open letter biennial’s curators suggesting that ‘that history simply doesn’t belong to Schutz’ Black went on to argue that the painting should not only be removed from the exhibition, but destroyed as ‘The painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about black people, because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time’ Schutz has acknowledged that it is problematic painting and that she knew this when getting into it. The ethical dilemma and comparisons between ‘Open Casket’ and my own work are clear, is it correct that a white, male, middle class artist has any right to use the subject matter of war and suffering which is not his? regardless of any awareness or disapproval of his own complicity within the systems of power which fall favourably upon him? This I cannot know and is a source of liberal guilt. This said, modern western culture in which there seems to be a tendency towards the idea that ‘everybody has the right to not be offended’ contains within it an element (regardless of race, religion or economic status) that seem to enjoy thinking up new and interesting ways of taking offence. The media seizes upon this, giving validity to the claim, because ‘nothing sells a newspaper like a good conflict’ This position however flies in the face of one the last bastions of freedom of thought and speech, the visual arts. I for one wish to live in a society in which to be offended is a right, a necessity even, as a way of highlighting problems and generating discussion. In the end, I think a successful artwork should be problematic, not through uncaring clumsiness or ignorance, but by design otherwise becomes mere decoration.

[1]Daniel Buren and Thomas Repensek, The Function of the Studio: The MIT Press: Vol. 10 (1979) p53 [2]www.forensic-architecture.org/exhibition/reporting-front (correct as of 10/04/2017) [3] O’Doherty, Brian, Inside the white cube p87 [4]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics (correct as of 10/04/2017) [5]www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/arts/design/painting-of-emmett-till-at-whitney-biennial-draws-protests (correct as of 11/04/2017) [6]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/03/23/dana-schutz-responds-tooutcry-over-her-controversial-emmett-till-painting (correct as of 11/04/2017) [7] ibid

Bibliography

Thing Theory Bill Brown Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28, No. 1, Things. (Autumn, 2001) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. by Erving Goffman Review by: Murray S. Davis Contemporary Sociology Vol. 4, No. 6 (Nov., 1975) FRAMING THE BULLFIGHT: AESTHETICS VERSUS ETHICS Nathalie Heinich, British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. _y, 'No. 1, January 1993 Literature and Moral Understanding: A Philosophical Essay on Ethics, Aesthetics, Education, and Culture by Frank Palmer Review by: Victor Yelverton Haines Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Spring, 1994) O’Doherty, Brian, Inside the white cube (expanded edition) University of California Press. Daniel Buren and Thomas Repensek, The Function of the Studio: The MIT Press: Vol. 10 (1979) www.washingtonpost.com www.nytimes.com en.wikipedia.org www.forensic-architecture.org

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alexanderwhite-artist-blog · 8 years ago

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Zean Cabangis

Consume/Wave/Tunnel/Ocean View, 2014/2015

acrylic and emulsion transfer on canvas

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alexanderwhite-artist-blog · 8 years ago

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alexanderwhite-artist-blog · 8 years ago

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Irena Škrinjar

Geometric forms and persons

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Christian Herdeg

Studies, 1972-1976

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alexanderwhite-artist-blog · 8 years ago

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Laurent Millet

Je croyais voir un piège (“I thought I saw a trap”), 2012

“…Je croyais voir un piège (“I thought I saw a trap”) is a 2012 set of photographs and sculptures by French artist Laurent Millet, exhibited at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris).

The works come from a residency of the artist in the park of Belval (Ardennes, France), the former hunting ground of the museum’s founders.

In the middle of the forest, the artist recreates and old hunting device in the form of a funnel. The animals get engulfed in a net and get stuck. Millet’s sculptures resembles these devices, except they are augmented in size and formed only by a string. The strings trace a strange architecture in space which is not a trap anymore, or rather it is only a visual trap that leaves the animal free to escape…”

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alexanderwhite-artist-blog · 9 years ago

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