Tacita Dean's 'Green Ray' (https://vimeo.com/38026163) considers the recording of a natural phenomenon on film: the last green ray of the setting sun - a mere flicker in time, the total length of a single frame of film - which digital video cameras were unable to record. With technical progress hand in hand comes loss, in this case, of an optical effect produced by our star on our atmosphere - and our world becomes a little less colourful. NB, this link to the digital version of the film will not allow you to see the green ray.
We talked of progress, briefly, during my tutorial today. Of GDP measurement of growth to track progress - a sort of school race between nations - with detentions issued to those nations failing to keep up. The Economist https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21697845-gross-domestic-product-gdp-increasingly-poor-measure-prosperity-it-not-even uses a neat analogy on the falling cost and rising quality of light in the West to demonstrate that GDP is a complex calculation that doesn't always account for the quality of a product, as it also doesn't account for the rising tax income of rising costs, nor does it account for the value of free services - it ignores the considerable economic value of the stay-at-home carer - a mostly female workforce. It is a best-fit solution that doesn't suit every application. The suggestion it seems is that GDP has had its day. But GDP seems nebulous, new factors can be added and old ones discounted, however, when Bank of England refuses to pin down a number in their projections for growth, then Sir Charles Bean's quote “It is a big mistake to think that one number serves for all purposes,” seems to serve them well. Still, GDP figures are simple servings for grabbing headlines and perhaps we would be better served to persuade all at large to accept complex solutions for measuring worth, instead of appealing for simplicity.
So, somehow, economics canter into art.
But were they ever separate? The source of this discussion was my recounting, briefly, the Pentrich Rebellion http://www.pentrichrebellion.co.uk and my ancestor's role and punishment, that I've connected with this depiction of a dry overrun of land, homes and scattered stones. Also, to my use of polyethene, a material I connect with a deep sense of change in our environment and society, as we become more aware of how our lifestyles will affect our planet for generations to come.
I haven't yet created the right formal use of the material. It is so light and transparent that I struggle to create the same intensity I form with paper, which somehow reflects back at me all the energy that I put into it. Polyethene sucks that energy up and disperses it, I think via its transparency, which is why I plan to work on combining it with paper so I can utilise its veiling qualities yet hang on to the energy.
Tuesday 27 February 2018
Monday 26 February 2018
Considering polythene (not Phlebus) but Zeiss
I have been procrastinating about a return to making art with polythene sheets - polythene wrap, not plastic wrap, and I have finally done some Rorschach marks and doodles on gesso on both 50:50 bread bags and plain sheets. It took us a while to eat through enough bread for me to begin experimenting with the bread bags. My daughter likes a different bread now and I've begun to make us bread out of spelt flour, and I'm not up for buying products for the bin, so there's a nice limit with this current material.
The Rorschach marks are a visual play on 50:50, and ideas of equal division, fairness, of mirroring, the almost complete repeat and dividing line - if one has to divide, does it have to be fair? What factors come in to play? And who decides?
The doodles are whatever wonderland comes to mind. Mostly I just follow a line and objects happen on the way. Here is the work in progress:
Halfway through I started thinking about what it was like working in the Magma Art and Conference Centre in Tenerife (below) some years ago, so some of the grey shapes at the top echo that architecture - wood cast concrete, angled ceilings, that sense of mass and weight. I felt that as an object polythene needs something to visually hold it firmly, forms of chirascuro allows me to play with the pretence that mass is there although it clearly is not.
On this link https://www.pointandline.com/works/1862 I came across a work by Richard Zeiss that figures some of the same concerns I've taken on by deciding to work on polythene.
Egg tempera, mica pigment and yacht varnish on tarpaulin. Brass grommets, tension wires. Backlit.
About which he said, amongst other things, having followed after Michael Newman essay on Agnes Martin where he talks about Paul de Man's concept that the material texts are made up of, i.e. letters - which, when reading, you have to forget in order to form meaning, and what in painting could perform the same 'pure, radical, non-phenomenal materiality.' His solution was to create a 'clash of material with strong external connotations that would be unlikely to meet in any given context. Like egg tempera ("medieval religious painting") and tarpaulin ("lowly material in industrial use"). The strong external referents would, to my mind, potentially erode and even delete each other, leaving you with pure, non-relational materiality.'
Presented as it is within the backlit white space the tarp takes on the vibrations of a religious object.
What is considerably more interesting to me is that Zeiss has moved on his reading to Blanchot who rejects stable meaning: 'every piece of writing establishes writing anew, and in a sense creates a microcosm with internal references, like vestors shooting back and forth; or indeed like a good science fiction story, that is completely unbelievable out-of-universe, but works perfectly in-universe'. This rather neatly, too neatly to be true, creates the instance of a self-referring, or even, self-refereeing artwork, which just has to be water-tight in order to work. Another way of saying that would be that in order to work, or be understandable as an artwork, it merely must not contradict itself. It's language must be anomolous, if not the same as, the language as the network it exists within - structurally similar, if not syntacically the same. This leaves the door open for syntactical works like Zeiss's No51, and like mine, with contrasting material content.
Spirituality, being based in belief rather than empirical data is non-sensical. Maybe my feeling that Zeiss's work has a spiritual dimension occurs because the materials exist in a state of tension, suspended and 'ultimately cancel each other out like vectors pulling in opposite directions', it is, like spirituality - and science fiction - nonsensical but nonetheless vitally existant, and tells us much about ourselves.
The Rorschach marks are a visual play on 50:50, and ideas of equal division, fairness, of mirroring, the almost complete repeat and dividing line - if one has to divide, does it have to be fair? What factors come in to play? And who decides?
The doodles are whatever wonderland comes to mind. Mostly I just follow a line and objects happen on the way. Here is the work in progress:
Halfway through I started thinking about what it was like working in the Magma Art and Conference Centre in Tenerife (below) some years ago, so some of the grey shapes at the top echo that architecture - wood cast concrete, angled ceilings, that sense of mass and weight. I felt that as an object polythene needs something to visually hold it firmly, forms of chirascuro allows me to play with the pretence that mass is there although it clearly is not.
On this link https://www.pointandline.com/works/1862 I came across a work by Richard Zeiss that figures some of the same concerns I've taken on by deciding to work on polythene.
Egg tempera, mica pigment and yacht varnish on tarpaulin. Brass grommets, tension wires. Backlit.
About which he said, amongst other things, having followed after Michael Newman essay on Agnes Martin where he talks about Paul de Man's concept that the material texts are made up of, i.e. letters - which, when reading, you have to forget in order to form meaning, and what in painting could perform the same 'pure, radical, non-phenomenal materiality.' His solution was to create a 'clash of material with strong external connotations that would be unlikely to meet in any given context. Like egg tempera ("medieval religious painting") and tarpaulin ("lowly material in industrial use"). The strong external referents would, to my mind, potentially erode and even delete each other, leaving you with pure, non-relational materiality.'
Presented as it is within the backlit white space the tarp takes on the vibrations of a religious object.
What is considerably more interesting to me is that Zeiss has moved on his reading to Blanchot who rejects stable meaning: 'every piece of writing establishes writing anew, and in a sense creates a microcosm with internal references, like vestors shooting back and forth; or indeed like a good science fiction story, that is completely unbelievable out-of-universe, but works perfectly in-universe'. This rather neatly, too neatly to be true, creates the instance of a self-referring, or even, self-refereeing artwork, which just has to be water-tight in order to work. Another way of saying that would be that in order to work, or be understandable as an artwork, it merely must not contradict itself. It's language must be anomolous, if not the same as, the language as the network it exists within - structurally similar, if not syntacically the same. This leaves the door open for syntactical works like Zeiss's No51, and like mine, with contrasting material content.
Spirituality, being based in belief rather than empirical data is non-sensical. Maybe my feeling that Zeiss's work has a spiritual dimension occurs because the materials exist in a state of tension, suspended and 'ultimately cancel each other out like vectors pulling in opposite directions', it is, like spirituality - and science fiction - nonsensical but nonetheless vitally existant, and tells us much about ourselves.
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