Interesting article on the importance of negative space.
Although we are not exhibiting photography for the project, our project uses the same concept, working with the negative space around the art within the gallery, and making it our own for our version of art.
http://www.tutorial9.net/articles/design/enhancing-your-art-with-negative-space/
Installation view of Lucio Fontana’s ‘Spatial Light – Structure in Neon for the 9th Milan Triennial at the Palazzo dell’Arte,’ Milan (1951)
Fontana saw his work as a classic representation of what he called “a spatial environment” and described it as “a new element which has entered into the aesthetic of the man on the street.” As a recently renovated version of his 1951 neon goes on display in the same building in which it was first seen, Pasini explores its making, meaning and legacy. (Francesca Pasini on Lucio Fontana).
Read more at http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue14/lasso.html
Fontana’s first one-man show with abstract works took place in 1935 in the Milan Galleria del Milione.
Lucio Fontana lived in Argentina as of 1939, where he found the private academy Altamira in 1947, he and his students at the academy composed the “Manifiesto Blanco” (white manifesto), demanding the synthesis of artistic genres and the renunciation of traditional materials. Back in Milan in 1947, he found the “Movimento spaziale” and wrote the “Primo Manifesto dello Spazialismo”, demanding a new form of space-oriented art. Two years later he realized the projects “Ambiente nero” and the first “Ambiente spaziale” in the Galleria del Naviglione: objects painted with fluorescent colors in a darkened room were illuminated by an ultraviolet light. He composed the second manifesto of the Spazialismo the same year, followed by the third in 1950 and the fourth in 1951.
Fontana was to open up the way for subsequent artists to use neon. And many did. For Bruce Nauman, Dan Flavin and Keith Sonnier, it was a key element. As well as Mario Merz, Joseph Kosuth and Franz West, a younger generation have also utilised it to great effect, including Tracey Emin, Martin Creed, Gabriel Kuri and Patrick Tuttofuoco.
Patrick Tuttofuoco’s ‘Olympic’ (2005) installed in a Milanese Courtyard
In & Out Of Space – Angel’s Egg
Single-channel, visual and conceptual video art that explores human consciousness and philosophical ideas, through digital media. Screened at international video festivals and contemporary art exhibitions.
Check out his website at http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/ for his really inspiring projects.
One of his many brilliant projects was “Voice Array“. Audience participation in a very clever way.
As a participant speaks into an intercom, his or her voice is automatically translated into flashes of light and then the unique blinking pattern is stored as a loop in the first light of the array. Each new recording pushes all previous recordings one position down and gradually one can hear the cumulative sound of the 288 previous recordings. The voice that was pushed out of the array can then be heard by itself.
Another one of his projects titled “Tape Recorders“, used rows of motorised measuring tapes to record the amount of time that visitors stay in the installation. As a computerised tracking system detects the presence of a person, the closest measuring tape starts to project upwards. When the tape reaches around 3 meters high it crashes and recoils back. Each hour, the system prints the total number of minutes spent by the sum of all visitors.
Well worth checking out this artist!
Mark Daye is a Canadian Graphic Designer whose use of signs in a public space has been well publicized in the press.
Official looking street signs pertaining to messages of homelessness — installed around the city streets of Toronto: Concept & design.
I think it is particularly interesting that the dancers are improvising and that this involves both action and stillness. It is the use of pinhole cameras in combination with the dance that is most interesting to me. The relationship created between the performers’ movement/stillness, the space they occupy and the capturing of this. Rather than freezing action and documenting the performance, as photography is inherently used to do, here the photographs are taken with a long-exposure and so will capture traces of movement and moments of stillness as well as a sense of the space. It is utilised less as a medium of documentation and is more like an extension of the artistic piece and the process involved. I find both elements of this work, to an extent, to be reactionary rather than predetermined and highlight process and chance.
I think we should consider the incorporation of similar photographic techniques to our interactions within the gallery space. This would act as a further method to subvert the white cube, using it as a space for art creation alongside that of exhibition.
Art is… a question mark in the minds of those who want to know what’s happening. ~ Aaron Howard
I believe questions will certainly be raised within the gallery space with our art!
Another interesting public artist:
Mark Jenkins (born 1970 in Alexandria,Virginia ) is an American artist most widely known for the street installations he creates using box sealing tape. In addition to creating art, he also teaches his sculpture techniques through workshops in cities he visits.
Jenkins’ practice of street art is to use the “street as a stage” where passersby become actors. Many of his installations have resulted in intervention by the authorities whom he also regards as actors. Most of his early outdoor works were non-commissioned.
Jenkins said the following about the illegal aspects of street art during an interview with art critic Brian Sherwin, “There is opposition, and risk, but I think that just shows that street art is the sort of frontier where the leading edge really does have to chew through the ice. And it’s good for people to remember public space is a battleground, with the government, advertisers and artists all mixing and mashing, and even now the strange cross-pollination taking place as street artists sometimes become brands, and brands camouflaging as street art creating complex hybrids or impersonators. I think it’s understanding the strangeness of the playing field where you’ll realize that painting street artists, writers, as the bad guys is a shallow view. As for the old bronzes, I really don’t see them as part of what’s going on in the dialogue unless addressed by a new intervention.
http://xmarkjenkinsx.com/outside.html
http://xmarkjenkinsx.com/tapesculpture.html
“His raw material is Space: the space of deserted buildings. Taking his inspiration from a site’s architectonic quality and the light he finds there, he quickly chooses a “fragment” and creates a mise-en-scène, keeping in mind his ultimate goal, creating a photographic image. In these empty spaces, Georges Rousse constructs a kind of utopia that projects his vision of the world–his imaginary “universe.” His creation both expresses his artistic intentions and resonates with his impressions of the site, its history and its culture. Finally, this results in a photograph, a flat plane, so the shapes he paints and draws, and the volumes and architectural constructions he creates in those massive spaces seem fractured or split on different levels. His photo masterfully brings together painting, architecture, and drawing. It carves out a new space in which the artist’s fictive world becomes visible.
At the heart of this questioning the definition of art, his work deals with our relationship to Space and Time.”
Taken from:
http://www.georgesrousse.com/english/informations/biography.php
I was looking up some public artists and came across Georges Rousse. He has participated in numerous biennials (Paris, Venice, Sydney) and received many prestigious awards
Rousse has created artwork similar to that of Felice Varini, who I posted about previously.
However Rousse’s portfolio includes far more than the use of illusionary geometric shapes within a space, especially his work between 1981 and 2007. I’m very inspired by this artist and I’m sure you will be too.
http://www.georgesrousse.com/english/reception.html
A commanding presence’: Maria Callas in Medea. Photograph: Allstar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGPd411gOYA
To win the kingdom his uncle took from his father, Jason must steal the golden fleece from the land of barbarians, where Medea is royalty and a powerful sorceress, where human sacrifice helps crops to grow. Medea sees Jason and swoons, then enlists her brother’s aid to take the fleece. She then murders her brother and becomes Jason’s lover. Back in Greece, the king keeps the throne, the fleece has no power, and Medea lives an exile’s life, respected but feared, abandoned by Jason. When she learns he’s to marry the king’s daughter, Medea tames her emotions and sends gifts via her sons; then, loss overwhelms her and she unleashes a fire storm on the king, the bride, and Jason.
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. ~ Amy Lowell
This could be true for any piece of art in any media but it could also apply to our intended artistic performance of leaving each personality’s mark, in the space, on the day!
…and what if we were weightless, free to walk along walls and not have to share and negotiate the ground that we’re gravitationally bound to?
My field of action is architectural space and everything that constitutes such space These spaces are and remain the original media for my painting. I work “on site” each time in a different space and my work develops itself in relation to the spaces I encounter.
I generally roam through the space noting its architecture, materials, history and function. From these spatial data and in reference to the last piece I produced, I designate a specific vantage point for viewing from which my intervention takes shape.
The vantage point is carefully chosen: it is generally situated at my eye level and located preferably along an inevitable route, for instance an aperture between one room and another, a landing… I do not, however, make a rule out of this, for all spaces do not systematically possess an evident line.
It is often an arbitrary choice. The vantage point will function as a reading point, that is to say, as a potential starting point to approaching painting and space.
The painted form achieves its coherence when the viewer stands at the vantage point.When he moves out of it, the work meets with space generating infinite vantage points on the form. It is not therefore through this original vantage point that I see the work achieved; it takes place in the set of vantage points the viewer can have on it.
If I establish a particular relation to architectural features that influence the installation shape, my work still preserves its independence whatever architectural spaces I encounter. I start from an actual situation to construct my painting. Reality is never altered, erased or modified, it interests and seduces me in all its complexity. I work “here and now”.
Felice Varini
I’m keen to see how our interaction on the day of the exhibition, in between the other artists and the viewers, will have an impact on the environment in the gallery as a whole! Our art may not only invade public space but will invade the personal space of others, communicating a discourse in ownership for that actual time alone and will also entertain questions related to social behaviour, especially if we all do dress the same in say, black! What mark we leave will be the trace of our interaction with both the public and their space and this form of art cannot be sold, bought or owned, itself free of any ownership!
Read the following for more info re. Proxemics:
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~sheppard/proxemics.htm
“The term “proxemics” was coined by researcher Edward Hall during the 1950’s and 1960’s and has to do with the study of our use of space and how various differences in that use can make us feel more relaxed or anxious.
An aspect of proxemics is the use of Personal territory. Four areas of personal territory; public, social, personal, and intimate.
Cultural differences and the use of color in our physical environment can have a great impact upon our interactions with others. But these are only two of more than twenty major aspects of proxemics such as eye-contact, facial expression, smells, body warmth, gender, number of people involved, subject matter, and goals of the communication, for which we continuously and automatically adjust our use of space.”
I was reflecting on the lecture that David Price gave on Monday afternoon, and about the artist Rirkrit Tiavanija whom he had mentioned. He made Untitled 1992 (Free) a sculpture – performance – guerrilla style art. He emptied an office and created a temporary restaurant, cooking Thai curries, anyone was welcome and it was free.
It made me think of how we interact with our space whether it is at work or at home how our presence changes the mood of a space. We leave a ghost print of our movement and if we could capture these movements like a print or pencil mark and trace where we have been. To physically see your own trail would be quite interesting.
The following is an excerpt from the essay title I posted yesterday. I think this paragraph sounds very much like the explaination for our art on the day!
“Unsanctioned street art also challenges the fundamental notions of commodity and ownership.
There is no product to be entered into the capitalistic framework of society – it cannot be sold,
bought or owned. It offers and alternative to the subjugation of the individual to the pseudo-needs
and desires that the spectacle generates. It is this freedom that is one of the most seductive
aspects of street art. It is beyond the ‘aura’ of Benjamin – each piece, be it reproduced elsewhere
or not, has its individuality provided not only by the work itself but also by the environment
surrounding it.”
This essay may be a long read but is very interesting!
Few of us like our space to be invaded, and how often have any of us made a deliberate move to cross the road or look the other way, so as to escape any form of interaction. There are always a number of reasons why we behaviour in this way, whether it is due to shyness, lack of time, a moment of peace and quiet that we do not want to have interrupted or just pure annoyance at the thought of interacting. We claim space and feel that even within a public arena it is ours, and those that stand to close may receive an unwanted groan or glance. The first few weeks at collage we all jostled for space within the studio, claiming and making demands on the requirements of our studio space. But sometimes we need to challenged how space is used and divided.
Yesterday I was searching for artist who works embrace urban spaces. This is of course very different from a gallery space but somehow is connected with the idea of interaction and also what people are looking at when within a space they decide their movement and interaction.
I am mainly interested in sociological activity, and how we create our own identity within a space, both public and private. I came across with an artist called William H. Whyte who began to use direct observation to describe behavior in urban settings. With research assistants wielding still cameras, movie cameras, and notebooks, Whyte described the substance of urban public life in an objective and measurable way.
These observations developed into the “Street Life Project”, an ongoing study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, and eventually to Whyte’s book called City: Rediscovering the Center (1988). “City” presents Whyte’s conclusions about jaywalking, ‘schmoozing patterns,’ the actual use of urban plazas, appropriate sidewalk width, and other issues. This work remains valuable because it’s based on careful observation, and because it contradicts other conventional wisdom, for instance, the idea that pedestrian traffic and auto traffic should be separated.
On a train going home from uni and the chap next to me is drunk, asleep and leaning on me.
Talk about invading my personal space!
Check out this post, it has loads more amazing pics:
http://kristinfarrell.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/artists-dealing-with-space/
Many more ideas were generated by Christianna until Francesco suggested the idea of questioning the use of public space for personal use. After some deliberation between the four of us, we decided to work with this notion and started bouncing off each others’ thoughts of what we could do with this rather broad concept of Space Within!
Space Within 