Gerhard Richter. Monday Post. 9.21.

Gerhard Richter uses an incredibly wide range of color and media. Richter's paintings entitled 4900 colors was his mock-up, in a sense, for the stained glass windows of the Cologne Cathedral. It's amazing to see contemporary abstraction in a place such as a Cathedral where structure and ritual more typical.

Gerhard says this:
"I don't create blurs. Blurring is not the most important thing: nor is it an identity tag for my pictures. When I dissolve demarcations and create transitions, this is not in order to destroy the representation, or to make it more artistic or less precise. The flowing transitions, the smooth, equalizing surface, clarify the content and make the representation credible (an alla prima impasto would be too reminiscent of painting, and would destroy the illusion)."

I love this. At times, it is so hard for me to explain myself, and why I enjoy the aesthetic that I do, that when I stumble across someone so accomplished who is able to enunciate a fragment of what I'm feeling, it's a relief. Richter's blurred paintings are what his above quote is referring to. The paintings have the quality of blurred photographs. This makes me think of what Paul said again, about how a painter can recreate the work, but as a photographer it's occasionally more random. It's been really good for me to look at the work of abstract painters.

Richter's "overpainted photographs" series is inspiring. He makes such stunning objects that are often so simple. The way he influences color is so incredible. I love the many directions Richter's work has gone in; he is a painter, a photographer, and he seamlessly combines the two.

I get so frustrated that blogger has an image limit!! I want to post more images per post.

Ori Gersht. Monday Post. 9.14.

Ori Gersht's name was given to me by Paul in my individual meeting and I'm already a little bit blown away by how much more I want to know about this artist. In a few short minutes of research I have been drawn into a world of film, philosophy and thought. In a press release on Ori Gersht, talking about his new film, 'Evaders'(which is actually showing in NY RIGHT NOW!!!) there is a quote from philosopher Walter Benjamin, which reads like this,

”an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while piles of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

I'm speechless. Just so that I won't sit here and reword the entire Press Release I'm going to post a link to the article because this film sounds like it's definitely worth seeking out. http://www.crggallery.com/exhibitions/2009/ori-gersht/

http://www.crggallery.com/artists/ori-gersht/work/?photo=10 I can't upload this piece, but this is great. I've been thinking about all sorts of different materials to shoot through for a while, and frosted glass and lace were two of them. Whaddaya know? Gersht did it first. Great minds think alike? I'd like to think so.

Gersht's other work:
"...often turns out to be a more dimensional and resonant vehicle for portraying a mechanism of meaning through the imprint of time, light, and phenomena that perhaps expose the capacity and limitations of human memory as well."

This quote is in reference to Gersht's series where he freezes bouquets of flowers in liquid nitrogen and then photographs them as they shatter. This freezing of time, a moment that cannot be recaptured is phenomenal. See image above.

Just a Thought!

Paul and I had talked about movement and how that will effect my piece.
This is a good segue into next weeks word.
PLANES
TRAINS
AUTOMOBILES
RUNNING WATER-UNDERWATER
RIVERS.
BOATS.
RAFTS/CANOES/KAYAKS/FLOATING LOGS.

Some other words that I would like to include in my artwork in the future:
Hermit crabs.
dreams.
facets. as in the facets of crystals. multi-faceted.

I love brainstorming.

Thursday Post. 9.17.

Paint.
I'm going to pretend that this really is last Thursday and that I did the assignment on time, so if that was the case I wouldn't have had my meeting with Paul yet and I would still be thinking about paintings. So my word is PAINTING!

I'm so excited about making these 2D paintings! I think that the paintings are going to combine the color and theory of my Concepts project with the portability of a panel. I've been building my panels and gesso-ing and I think I'm in a really good place to get started. My doodles and drawings that I have been making are little illustrations of what I want to be painting in the long run. I'm a little bit nervous about how the paintings will transfer into photographs, because I don't want to lose the dimension that my other piece had, but I guess there is only one way to find out. I'm not sure if I want to begin by painting color stripes or if I want to dive in head first and create a free for all of geometry and color. I guess you'll have to wait and see!

Thursday post. 9.10.

Thursdays word of the week is 'literal.' I touched on this word slightly when I was posting on the critique blog and now I want to touch on it more. LITERALLY. Puns aside, I have wanted my work to be more literal for over a year now. I started by cutting up my photos in Photoshop and moved on to sculpting those early images with wood, paint and nails. I placed that creation into an environment and photographed the effects of color on the surrounding areas. With Paul's help, I realized the disconnect between the object I made and the area around it. We decided that it would be a good step if my materials connected more with the locations. In this way I would be taking the things that I found, that were either discarded by humans, animals, or left naturally and appropriating them and them re-entering them into their environment in the form of sculpture and photograph. I want to make things that relate to the environment on a literal level. I want to take things out of the frame and add objects in and weave them in and out of the picture. I want to continue shooting long exposures because I love the movement and what it does to shape and color. I don't want to completely turn away from neon colors, so I want to add pieces of my own creation to the things that I find. Like holograms and shiny fabric maybe. I love holograms and I was super into the hologram effect that my last piece took on. Scale was another thing that I want to influence and change. INTERESTING! I'm thinking really small. Get ready for next week because I think that word will be MOVEMENT!

Andreas Gursky. Monday Post 9.7.

Andreas Gursky is the artist I've been looking at this week. His work speaks to the use of color and the geometry that I strive for and am so attracted to. His straightforward way of shooting is so appealing to me. Gursky lends the viewer a new way of looking at the world, his way. Looking at his images, I am always left wondering, "how did he do that?" Even knowing that Gursky started using digital media to manipulate his images after 1990, the effect still leaves me awed. I think that I choose to embrace the suspension of disbelief, because I like the idea that Gursky just stumbles across these moments and captures them to share with the rest of us. Gursky's intrigue with the man-made is a characteristic we share, in different ways. I am fascinated with the excess of corporate America, and big businesses worldwide. His display of these companies and factories as larger than life entities, but as art and also as beautiful and terrifying is a combination that gets me thinking.

9/14 Blog Evaluation

Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry. Your blog is currently incomplete.

Missing 4 entries