Art Notes: 11-2-08

Abstractions- Intuitive and non-narrative, they maintain a slight degree of motion not like animation. The vocabulary of elements that have been used are thought of as parts like those found in erector sets, legos or machines. These parts are tinkered with into the various apparatus constructions you see. I have a tremendous interest in engineers and their ability to take parts, tools and knowledge to develop and create functional things of value. The film projector is an item I find to be as interesting as the film or the art form. This sadly is true in many instances though the projector has fallen to the wayside as an antiquated piece of technology. For sake of point, the projector if it were to cease it's harmonious operation you would not have the film. I think of machines, engines, stock material, distribution, warehousing, manufacturing, production, not always in this order. The ideas they generate help in translating my experiences into a painting language.
I am interested in living a kind of pre-industrial revolution life style of the singular artist in the studio. Then again I like Andy's factory. How does does human experience of time and space change through the machine and info-tech ages into 21st century culture? There are indeed numerous connections that can be traced back into history many strong comparisons but what for the mutations of both individual and cultural value systems? Our sense of time, space and data is drastically altered from those of old, and this is what shapes our reality today. We are different people with the same internal hardware but with different external pressures. If we were cars, we'd be scrapped for better models by now. So much for intelligent designers tinkering the universe into harmony. Someone somewhere along the way through a fatty wrench into the machine if there ever was one to throw.

Art Notes: Rectangles 8.08

The floating rectangles. They seem to be very much like projections on a screen. Projectors and images of that sort are large, light and sometimes heavy, they have interested me as objects and ideas since childhood. People project themselves in every act of looking, it is a way to prepare putting your body out into the world. As in James Elkin's The Object Stares Back, what is seen is not what it seems. Vision as it turns out to be is not a passive sense completely within our control. This is comforting. It means we can question, reason and question again. Even question the question. If we have an idea we project that idea out before it can be realized. These projections can take many forms both material and cerebral. My interest is in the aperture. The framed image of the view finder. A prerequisite to the moving image, we experience the world this way. Framed in a generous field of vision yet we have a narrow focal field. If I look at one building closely in Manhattan off the bridges I cant count the windows in another especially the closer I get. This I suppose is a built in editing mechanism that is engaging. It is revealing, in image making it can act as an obvious demarkation like the yellow National Geographic box. It can be made as a subtle hint of blocked out paint rolled over graffiti pieces on brink walls that is a shade too light or dark, but always slightly off. 

Art Notes: 6.08

Centralizing the figure on the ground plane in medieval art and works prior i.e. neolithic imagery including later Celtic design, we see a pattern of vision repeat itself. One of isolation and centrality in image production we may use a phrase such as central point of focus. These organizations support a view of the world which holds up the hierarchical concepts of their authors. Vision and thought are at a separation and reunion of ideas & objects. The mechanical nature of vision gives us only an object and it must be in our focal point before we fully can interpret the information. In art this seems to feed the origin of the icon. It's centrality and separateness from otherness. As bilaterally symmetrical beings we are drawn to symmetry as we are drawn to balance. Most of the worlds languages are written parallel to our horizontal vision or in the very least follow a grid system that utilizes horizon and verticality in tandem. The ground plane and horizon being that which is aligned with our eyes. One could suppose we are laterally inclined, parallel to the earth visually while we stand simultaneously perpendicular to it. We build vertical doors so that we may enter through the middle. We build round man holes in our streets so we can exit the earth through their centers. We make theaters so that we can watch the stage. The conductor orchestrates from the compass point of the arc of his musicians. We enter the world through the center of our mothers wombs. Our eyes lie at the center of our universe.