Framing Site Specific Art.

Upon reading Genealogy of Site Specificity, what first came to mind was the Statue of Liberty. As beautiful and massive as the sculpture is, a portion of its beauty can be contributed to it's placement. Historically, this sculpture is one of the first sights of millions of immigrants arriving to the shore's of the United States pursuing the liberation and freedom that the sculpture defines. To place it elsewhere would devalue it's purpose, or even change it's concept. I do believe the setting in which art is becomes the frame work of the piece. We interpret art based from its own history, our knowledge of it's style and it's cultural context. In a sense I do agree to the statement in this article "If you have to change a sculpture for a site there is something wrong with the sculpture." Although I also believe there are chameleon type art such as those that tend towards abstract that embodies different meanings as their placement changes. There are those traveling exhibits that take sculptures and paintings from their place of birth into galleries unalike. In these cases I don't think the work itself is so much altered but the environment is tampered with to meet the needs of the art. Lighting arrangements , specific placement of the work, or setting in an open or enclosed space are a few gallery adjustments to suit a piece. The viewer as well offers a certain aspect to the completion of the work relying on their opinions or relationship to the piece.

The article mentioned, "institutional framing of art, in other words, not only distinguishes qualitative value: it also reproduces specific forms of knowledge that are historically located and culturally determined." I'm reminded of visiting the Eiffle Tower and how it was the centerpiece of a city designed symmetrically. It's iconology alone almost demands it's presence in Paris and no place other. It's both devaluing and humoring to know there's a Paris, Texas with a cheap rip-off of an architectural phenomenon. ( I think I might have to visit there as well.) There is a physical upkeep of site specific art that does contribute to the value of a piece. This article gave an example of a performance involving keeping the stalk white setting of a gallery stalk white. Artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles does maintenance on her hands and knees cleaning a museum that takes on a hierarchical role in her concept of labor relations versus the pristine settings of art. So to take the quote from Robert Barry "to remove work is to destroy the work" in many instances is very much true. Although because an environment is not ageless there is a continuous upkeep of a piece surroundings, so that the piece maintains it's same effect.

Eiffle Tower in Paris, France. Centerpiece of the city and historically iconic, worldwide.

Eiffle in Paris, Texas. Conceptual to name of the small town but has a devalued purpose.

Minimalist with a lot on their mind: Pierre Huyghe and Jenny Holzer

There seems to be a connection between Jenny Holzer and Pierre Hughe's work. I would describe both of their work as minimal, but full of a questionable concept. In one of Pierre Hughe work a truism is projected on a wall and revolving doors circle in front of it while opening and closing. For the viewer, the concept would seem abstract and one could assume multiple meanings. He described that the revolving opening and closing doors created an environment where there was no inside or outside in a sense of no bounderies. This concept makes the work powerful by simulating a thought that to many is unreal, we all have our bounderies. His work relies heavily on the emotional landscape and less on the narrative. In this way the viewer becomes the artist as well by creating their own reality. He said his exhibition is never the end, its more of a starting point to go somewhere else. Thats how I perceive his work. Since there is little narrative my mind makes something of what I see and maybe a lot of it is led on by confusion.

Jenny Holzer, from my standpoint, is minimal in landscape but has a strong emotional impact on few words. Her truism's although entertaining at times seem to lack a visual prescence although they are usually done in large scale. She's the artist that I have chosen to do my own work based off of because I feel as though adding a visual along with strong words could be even more powerful. I did love one of the works she did in scrolling text on the ceiling in a glass building and how the text reflected off the windows. I think the art of her technology is interesting but I believe it should be taking to the next level of being visually pleasing. She uses the same font and same white color on most of her work. I wonder what the effect would be if these two components were to change. Maybe even the use of a different medium or combination of words an images done in the same projection matter. All in all her minimal style and thought provoking truisms have inspired to put my own twist to her work.

Many would look at Janine Antoni's art and may consider it strange and possibly controversial in ways. The idea of sort of nursing a cow as she sat in a bath trough while cows continued drink around her is a match ready to spark criticism to those with a conservative eye for art. As for myself, I appreciated the concept involved in her unusual style as an artist. From the video it appeared as though a lot of her art attracted towards humans becoming the product of what we consume. In two instances she used cattle as a metaphorical subject that seemed to either de-humanize humans or make human of the cattle. I took it as like myself, she must be a vegetarian, so I found a bit of connection with her work when she used raw hide drapped over her body to create a hollow silouhette of herself. The concept seemed to portray that our outer qualities are so much valued that the inner qualities seem only to be hollow, much like how we see cattle.

Matthew Barney's work reminds me sort of cirque du soleil in a sense that his films are in a matter of a dreamlike/nightmarish state with an erotic undertone. What I admire about his work is the details in the costuming. The dead horse race scene, as disturbing as it was, had an intricate quality about the way the horses costumes where sheared and painted in a way to make their bodies seem to be decayed. His films also seem to rely heavily on the visual aspect and less of the audio. I'm curious about watching a full length film of his and seeing how this effects me being able to follow the concept.

After getting a bit of insight of these two artist I've come to the belief that controversy is an art in its own.

The Natural Approach To Art: Andy Goldsworthy

I found a connection to Andy Goldsworthy because he finds the natural art in nature and emphasizes it. One of the scenes was something I noticed only a couple of weeks ago as I watched the foam of soap make swirl patterns in the water and I noticed how it was constantly changing. In this movie, Andy did the same thing by taking the color of a red rock and placing it in a rippled creek to create those same patterns. He mad the quote that "Losing time can make for interesting work", and in this sense all his work takes on a life much like our own existence. The colors in that rippled creek eventually delude and become the water. He says the "The thing that brings work to life is the same thing that brings it's death." For this he has no connection to his piece as far as losing it. To him the destruction is inevitable when nature is involved and in ways becomes part of the work its self. A lot of his work seems to rely on the effects of water in which influences him. It's almost as though in his construction he is racing the tides. If he should finish before nature itself destroys it for that moment his finished work captures the essence of the surroundings. As it slowly falls a part one who should walk past just might take it as something beautiful being destroyed. In this film the destruction slowly happening and set to soft violins actually made it beautiful and gave it the meaning Andy Goldsworthy intended. "Work is given to the sea as a gift and the sea took it and did more to it than I could've". His work with the tides remind me of a contemporary artist at the Beamis who made a film soley based on violinist trying to keep a tune consistent on a boat going down a rapid stream. The consistency, never stayed.

Tara Donovan: Making beauty of simple things

When a plastic cup comes to mind I think of something thats disposable. Multiples tossed away at big gatherings without a second thought. To Tara Donovan, its the things that we toss away in sums that become beauty when arranged in a way that almost disguises what they actually are. Quantity, in fact, becomes only a vague part of her work. It's what she does with the quantity of everyday items. I remember visiting the Beamis Gallery once and seeing a wall covered with paper hanging loosely. On the opposite wall the windows were opened allowing a gust of wind into the room that gave life to the installation of paper, both in movement and sound. Donovan's work reminds me of this. Her work "Bluffs" from a distance appears similar to coral an ocean floor as it is cascaded in blue and white light. As one gets closer it's merely buttons stacked upon each other that create an almost biological shape.

There is a minimalist quality to her work that takes an object that is assumed to be basic only to be turned into something with infinite possibilities. One of her work is done with thousands of pins stuck in a large white canvas. The mood is both geographical and technical. When the pins are removed the holes create a whole different feel, somewhat organic. Her work has captured the attention of artist Chuck Close who does similar work by creating faces out of colorful hollow circles drawn in graphs. She met him while waitressing at the Soho in New York where she eventually was discovered and offered a gallery exhibit. Becoming a new face in the art industry she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award of $500,000.

What I find to be compelling about her work is that in this era of time where recycling is a strong motive, I think of how many of the everyday things are tossed away assuming that they have little purpose. Here's someone that has a vision for the small things, makes them into things they are intricate and beautiful. Spending hours at a time experimenting with the material until she figures out something artistic about it. In a quote she stated "So much about art-making process is about paying attention, it's about looking and noticing things." By this I think of quote thats cliche' "One person's trash is another person's treasure"

William Kendridge.

At first thought of stop animation charcoal drawings, it would've seen messy and unrefined. Although as I watched the technique of William Kendridge it became clear how the charcoal effect enhanced the meaning of his work. Such as charcoal doesn't really erase entirely and the history of what was attempted to be erased becomes a movement of progression in the piece. He described it in a way that made almost beautiful in a way. He referred to a sheet of paper floating in the air. Without the history we don't know know why its there or where it came from or its purpose. But by the diminshed drawings of charcoal the story is read in both past and present. The charcoal effect is also is less time consuming instead of drawing the same picture over again with only a slight change, erasing one portion allows for quick alterations without changing the whole of the piece. He never looks at a single piece as precious, because he constantly changes it. There's a spontaneous quality about Kendridge in the way that he doesn't use storyboards or scripts in creating his pieces. He merely makes it up as he goes along. In this way it appears less concise which I enjoy about his work and that spontenaity comes through in this aspect as well. It's his indecisiveness that I admire because its what allows him to do multiple things and have a variety of idea's. It's inspiring to see how he takes his love for film, art and theatre and finds a way to incorporate them all into a piece of art, and he finds it as a way in which they nurture each other.

Barnstormer Brainstorm

I've always had this idea of how beautiful a town would be if every building had a mural painting on its sides. In Cameron, North Carolina a couple of artists had a visual idea similar to mine. The difference...they actually executed it. The Barnstormers by name alone to me was a complete turn-off. Maybe a little too rural for my taste like a rampage of farmers causing mayhem in barns. But, the Barnstormers are on the far side of the picket fence and from my perception the grass is a lot greener. These artists from both New York and Tokyo pilgrimaged from their urban settings to small town Cameron and bought the inner city to barn shacks, trackers, and almost anything rural but the cow with their massive collaborative paintings. Formed in 1999, these 25-30 artist turned old visually unattractive farms into a fusion of urban and rural mecca. It's not just the ending project alone. Much like the previous artist I touched on, Nick Knight, their work is about the process of it happening. Their process is recorded in stop motion animation videos where their collaborative works become individualized projects of change. The way these artist go about it is somewhat unplanned in the sense that they seem to have a go with the flow type attitude and build off of each other's work.

Art with Attitude: Kiki Smith and Jane Hammond

There's a tone I found underlining these two artist. Both seem to have a scattered mindset in the way that they create their work, often taking bits and piecesof media and cultural and developing it into something conceptual. To describe their work, i think of honesty in the way that what they create is up-front, opinionated often dealing with social issues such as women's perspective. Though, what I found to be the major difference between Kiki Smith and Jane Hammond is Smith's literal style of work and Hammond's metaphorical qualities.

Kiki Smith is just as much characterized as her work. Sort of foul-mouthed and uncensored there is no question to why her work can cause a wave of criticism, especially to one with an eye for conservatism. In her recent works displaying body art in a way that refers to the spirtual aspects humans Smith makes her forms with a sense of indestrucatibility of life. Life in which propells us can also stop in a second. In this matter she chooses to work with paper because it works tough and strong in a way it can bend and crumble but yet carries the essence of being fragil, much like life. In comparison to Hammond who constructs meaning with her work, Smith seperates form from meaning by taking out the aspects that give a form personality or acquaintance to the viewer. Instead she she's the form in spirtuality, without weight, translucent, and easily broken. It's the idea of not having a meaning and leaving the reason up to the viewer who might not understand the work but might connect their own personal experience to it.

Bridging the two artist is the pshycological aspect of their work in which their work is based off of seeing and relating . Hammond often relates her work to literature, or a mixture of past and present. Her work is viewed as metaphorical and much like Smith, is created with an opinionated stand point. With an intential basic color pallet of black, white, red, yellow, and blue, Hammond makes a connection between social issues and objects one wouldn't think would relate. The hype of "cure-all" marrow tea is presented as a collapsable box in one of her exhibits. There's an emotional reaction to the ideas of her work and she combines them with personal reference. She keeps a notebook of names ranging from pets to English Castles that she uses to represent parts of her work. There's a collage style to her work in which visuals and verbals are placed at random in a way that they communicate to each other. Unlike the work of Smith who devoids meaning from certain objects. Both artist I found to be innovative, and unique in thoughts of how life is viewed.

Nick Knight: Images Brought To Life

I became interested in fashion Photographer Nick Knight after visiting his exhibit “Fashion Revolution” at the Somerset house in London, September 2009. What drifted me towards Knight was the intensity of his work after visiting his interactive website showstudio.com. He believes the process of creation is just as much a work of art as the finished product. One of his pieces that I found to be compelling was his photograph of model Naomi Campbell who appears to be enraged as she shoots a gun towards the viewer. From the viewing standpoint the picture alone was powerful Enough that it drew me into reading in-between the lines of wondering what the picture meant, and simply how cool it was. Fortunately, part of the gallery exhibit of Fashion Revolution was the sequential steps of each work recorded. As a video, viewers could experience how the process alone was visual, and the photograph took on even more depth. Through-out the exhibit were more examples of how his work was created. On certain days Nick Knight himself would perform his steps in making these visuals live for the viewing public at the exhibit. Unfortunately I was unable to attend on those specific days.

What I admire about Knight is his passion to be innovative. He grew up in a household that was less creative but more scientific and it was expected of him to follow in the footsteps of his parents in the field of science. Instead he found a love for photography although science wasn’t completely void of his career choice. The internet to Knight became the best of both worlds. When we think of art as time, change, and motion the internet provided all of these in ways which Knight could present his work. Images could take on variations, including three dimensional aspects, and interaction with the viewer. These are the perks of showstudio.com, with the idea of bring the process of creation closer to the viewer. I found Knights work to be inspiring to all types of artist, from designs, graphic artist, photographers, and animators.

Below I posted a video of Nick Knight giving a tour of showstudios Fashion Revolution and some of the things I feel extremely lucky that I was able to experience while there.


Nick Knights Fashion Revolution Tour

And here's a couple of pictures I took touring the exhibit.

My brother posing in this room full of mirrors and lights.

Me watching a video with all kinds of cool effects.

Interactive sculptures of Naomi Campbell viewers could design on.