Gif making, Ian Monroe and an Oculus Rift

Once again this week's been full of looking at art, be it in a gallery setting or otherwise,  alongside moving my various projects along at a vaguely steady pace; creating gifs and thinking about the conceptual side to my work a little bit more.

So this week began with a lecture on Formalism, which was mainly centred around the impact that Clement Greenberg had on the art world. Before going in I only knew that Formalism was surrounded by the idea that the viewer should only look at art from a purely aesthetical perspective, rather than considering the concepts and ideas that may (or may not) be behind the work. Obviously I highly disagree with that notion, so went into the lecture annoyed, not at the person running the talk, just at the idea that someone would actually believe that. A few things from the talk that interested me was the idea of "plastic art"; art that strives to replicate life and copy reality, so much so that when the viewer looks at it there's no effort involved. I myself describe this kind of artwork as "cafe art" or "hotel art". It was intriguing for me to learn about a man (Greenberg) who disliked plastic art but didn't like the ideas behind the abstract work that he enjoyed. It slightly confused me.

For the rest of the day I was subdued by my own work, which I will talk about in a little bit.

Tuesday is always a really good day, as it usually involves a group discussion/talk in the morning as well as an artist talk in the afternoon. In our group session we were still talking about the various objects that we had brought in that were affiliated with the word 'matter'.  I talked about mine, which were three or four different objects (a lighter, a spatula, a plastic star and something else I think) that didn't really mean anything to me, along with a newspaper clipping. The article talked about how we all give objects within our lives a narrative, be it an imaginary one that spans long before you came into contact with the item or a real one that ties you to the entity in some way; like a family heirloom, etc. So the objects (which had been mostly taken from other peoples' houses) were looking at the idea of things having a narrative, whether you like it or not. This then made me think about the idea that we all want to see a narrative within art work, as well as how we ourselves are big pieces of matter with our own stories, which has shaped and changed us.

After the general discussion I went to the artist talk. This week the artist was Ian Monroe, who makes some vaguely interesting work surrounding ideas about structures and architectural space. I liked the guys influences (Kazimir Malevich, etc) more than his actual work, which was a shame. However in the last ten minutes of the talk he did speak about post-internet artwork, as well as a really interesting artist who I was already aware of called Robert Overweg, who goes to the edge of video games and photographs them. So that was cool.

During the rest of the day I was working on my art, which I will talk about later on. I did however go and talk to one of the technicians in the foundry about the possibility of creating a two part mould of a controller, which I will be doing at some point this week I hope.

In the evening I went to a private view at the Redfern Gallery which was exhibiting some work by Ffiona Lewis. I really can't stress enough how much I disliked the work that was being displayed, it was full of paintings of landscapes, as well as the occasional bronze sculpture. It always annoys me when I see work like this, as it reinforces the idea that art is simply paintings of portraits and landscapes.

I didn't go and see any art on Wednesday, which is a shame. I did however spend the entire day at the studio, creating work on my laptop. For me this week has been mainly centred around creating gifs from sculptures that I've been making on Google Sketchup. They tie into the work that I'm planning on doing with the controller, being both a part of that as well as their own thing. Lots of ideas within the gifs are focused on the passing of time, moving away from certain aspects of my life and the conflict between the virtual world and the real one. I'll go into further detail of the concepts behind these next week at some point in another blog post. I'm currently thinking about how I'd display these in a gallery setting, my main idea is to get a PSP or similar handheld gaming device with a screen and attempt to play them continuously through that, which would link well with the content. These are a few that I've created so far:

Thursday was spent at uni again, working on my gifs as well as a few other pieces of work using Sketchup. I'm not sure of what these are or will become yet. Here are a few of them:

In the evening I went to Toynbee Studios for an event called 'The Youth Board Presents...'. It featured a lot of interesting art work which was mostly performance based. I was a big fan of the majority of the work, as they all seemed to have so much thought and depth within them. One of my favourites was a performance by Kayleigh Handley made up of two parts called 'What's for Dinner, Mum?' and 'Dad, can we have takeaway tonight?'. Both parts were comical, yet, as the name suggests, saddening too. Part one featured Handley searching for food inside mounds of dirt and plant life, set to an array of (I think) 90s T.V commercials played through a speaker. The second part involved her creeping along the floor to a group of giant jelly bears, which culminated with the heads of the bears being ripped off and stuffed into Handley's mouth. It was deceivingly humorous.

On Friday I spent the day wandering around the Hoxton/Shoreditch area. This was part of a uni assigned task where we had been split into different groups, with each group being given a list of galleries/shops to visit, dubbed 'The Londonography'. The day began at the Whitechapel Gallery with an exhibition by Emily Jacir called 'Europa'. My favourite piece from the exhibition was an intervention installation of sorts called Stazione. The images of the work consisted of each of the vaporetti stops along line #1 in Venice, with their names translated into Arabic and placed beside the Italian ones. Although this is intriguing work in itself, concerning the relationship between Venice and the Arab world, it should be noted that this piece never actually occurred as it was shut down by the Venice City Authorities, and nobody knows why. This aspect of the work interests me, as it didn't actually happen, but it's talked about in the pamphlet as if it did. It's made me think a little about how you could make a piece of work out of not making a piece of work, or make a piece of work around the 'pictures or it didn't happen' philosophy that everyone seems to have in this day and age.

The next gallery was Raven Row. This was showing a variety of pieces by artists' Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys. The majority of the work was made up of watercolour paintings, mocking the idea of the 'Sunday painter'. The whole show was extremely funny and well put together. The sheer amount of work added to the idea of the 'typical' painter who just continuously paints the same thing day after day, finishing their life with an extortionate amount of bland and dull paintings with no meaning to them.

The next stop on our list was a bagel shop called 'Beigel Bake'. From there we went to the Kate MacGarry gallery where a film by Marcus Coates was being shown. I'd recommend going to see it, or finding it online (A Question Of Movement) as it was a very amusing film, and to explain it would ruin the surprise.

Then we went to SCP (a furniture shop) which was dull and a hat shop (CA4LA) which was okay, but just full of hats, which is kind of stating the obvious.

After that we went to the Cabinet Gallery which was showing a film by Mark Leckey, for me it was all about the passing of time during a forty year time span, which was compelling.

The Peer Gallery was next, which had some boring paintings of crowds, so that was no fun. We then travelled to Lychee One, which wasn't open, even though it should have been. This was incredibly annoying. After that we slightly gave up and only went to one more gallery that wasn't on the list, Vilma Gold. It had two exhibitions on, one that was interesting and one that wasn't. The one that I liked was called Puppies Puppies (or maybe that's the name of the artist, it doesn't say unfortunately), that was mainly about the film, Frozen. The thing that had drawn me to the gallery was the garishly huge Olaf costume, but when I actually read what the work was about I was saddened by the exhibition, but also a lot more interested in it too. I'd either recommend going to see it or looking at pictures online and reading about the meaning behind it if you want to know more.

After this I then went to uni for an hour or two, and then attempted to go to the Saatchi Gallery to see the Mademoiselle Privé show, but there was a huge cue, so I just gave up and went home.

Yesterday (Saturday) I decided to go to a few good galleries, 16 in total, which I now realise is an incredible amount to see in one day. I first went to Pi Artworks, which was exhibiting some work by Gülay Semercioğlu. The majority of the work utilised the colour gold (a colour associated with Turkish weddings) to create some really meaningful work surrounding ideas focused on authority and control within Turkey. I found it to be really intriguing.

I then walked to the Pilar Corrias gallery. It contained a film by Ian Cheng that looked like a video game, continually glitching with blocky visuals. It was definitely engaging for a little while, but I didn't read too far into it.

From there I wandered over to the Bartha Contemporary, which is fast becoming my favourite small gallery. Some really minimal abstract wall-based works were being displayed by Henrik Eiben, full of sharp lines and powerful materials. For me the work evokes so many ideas surrounding material use and manipulation that I'm really interested in.

I travelled to the Photographers Gallery next. The top floor had some work by Noémie Goudal, which was relatively interesting, but not really in comparison to the work I had seen in the previous space. On the lower levels they had an exhibition looking at how photography is used to document things occurring, from war crimes to small acts of violence. The first few images were fascinating, showing you how bodies were photographed in the 19th century, but as I progressed through the exhibition I gradually realised that it was more of an archive of information, rather than an exhibition of art. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I moved swiftly on as it's not really my thing.

I then arrived at the Cortesi Gallery which was showing some work by Grazia Varisco, which was mostly concerned with ideas around motion and change, as well as interactions with an audience. There was definitely some enticing work that was displayed.

After that I went to the new Gagosian Gallery in Grosvenor Hill, which had some work by Cy Twombly being shown. I'm a big fan of his and have seen a lot of his work in the past, so it wasn't that much of a thrill to see it again. Some of the paintings were huge though, and the gallery was very fancy, so it was fun to have been and seen.

I went to the Massimo De Carlo gallery after that. Downstairs there was some really precise paintings by Gianfranco Baruchello, which were okay. Upstairs though there were a number of different sized glass vases, filled with different coloured pigment. These pigments are the same pigments that are used to coat pills in the latest generation of HIV medicines. The different vases stand in groups, corresponding to the prescribed daily pill dosage and the combination of each medicine. I really liked these sculptures (Elmgreen & Dragset) and thought that it was really clever but simple at the same time. I would highly recommend going to see it, just for those incredibly pure and evocative colours.

I strived onwards to the Sprüth Magers gallery, which had some quite boring close up photographs of architectural models. This was a shame, as the artists' (Thomas Demand) previous work looked quite compelling. The Stephen Friedman gallery was next, which had some engaging sculptural forms by Jiro Takamatsu which reminded me both of Richard Serra and Anthony Caro, but on a very minimal level.

I then continued to the White Cube (Mason's Yard) which had a show on featuring textile based works. Some of Mona Hatoum's work with hair was being displayed which I always like to see, along with a variety of Alighiero e Boetti's canvas embroidery, which was compelling and reminded me of Brent Wadden's work that's at the Pace Gallery at the moment.

Then I went to the Brewer Street Car Park, which always displays amazing work. At the moment it has some soundscapes by Bill Viola. It's in conjunction with the exhibition that I went to last week at the Blain Southern gallery. The underground car park really enhanced the sound, allowing them to reverberate around the room which fully immersed you within the work. I just lay down on the bench and lay still for a minute or two, allowing myself to digest what was occurring around me.

From there I went to both of the Frifth Street galleries. I originally only wanted to go to the Fiona Banner exhibition, but Google maps led me to the other one first, which had some really tiny drawings of houses by James Castle / John Riddy, which didn't interest me at all. The Banner on the other hand was great. The font with the words font inscribed on it was hilarious, as well as the video of the two windsocks fighting.

I then briskly walked to the Herald Street gallery (in Golden Square this time, not Bethnal Green), which had exactly the same work on as their other gallery, which was kind of boring.

After that I went over to the Lazarides gallery who was showing work by the artist JR. I wasn't exactly riveted by the work, and the fact that the artists' identity is unconfirmed annoys me, and it was the last but one gallery on my list so I was very close to being full of art at this point. It reminded me a lot of the program called Rasterbator that you can use on your computer, which slightly dulls down the work for me once again.

My final gallery was the Zabludowicz Collection, for the third time. The first two times that I went to this gallery I never got a chance to fully see the work, which is why I then went again yesterday, unfortunately I should have realised that it would be packed on a Saturday, which it was, so I'm going to have to go again for the fourth time at some point soon. Fortunately though I did get to see a lot of the work, just not all of it, as the lines were so long for some of the installations. I did get the chance to go into the artificial hedge-maze however and (after about an hour of waiting in a cue) I was able to enter the virtual space that Rafman had built inside an oculus rift. It was a truly incredible experience that I would employ everyone to go and do, I was left pretty much gobsmacked by the encounter.

The final exhibition that I went to this week was a one night affair called Polyphonie X. It was held in two flats, where people actually live, which was a really cool idea; converting your house into an art gallery for the evening. I unfortunately didn't write down any of the artists' names, but I did really like some work in one of the bedrooms that involved a T.V placed on the bed, as well as a well made sculptural block that had been slightly shaved down and distorted.

Today I've just been looking over my notes and writing this, thinking a little more about my unnamed Snapchat project and the concepts associated with it. During the week I also thought about how I would display the work. I first imagined that I could have them all playing at once on a huge screen, continuously playing on a loop, each short film changing it's position in a seemingly random manner once it's 9 seconds were up. This idea was slightly influenced by a piece of work that I saw in Venice called 'The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci' by Kutluğ Ataman. The work consisted of a huge array of screens which contained many pictures of people's faces, continually changing. This is still a possibility, but I don't know whether it actually relates to the work or not, so I discovered a new idea, where I would display all the videos on one continuous loop on the phone that I took them on. Doing this would mean that (in a gallery setting) everyone would have to crowd around the phone, missing the majority of the videos, which would be continuously moving through this sort of story of my life.

I think this second idea works well with the ideas behind the project, which is a lot to do with the subverting of the use of the app, by saving the videos that should vanish after a 24 hour period, but then putting them back onto the phone and only being able to see the same video again after however many minutes. I also want to tie in the 10,000 hours principle into this work somehow, by making the amount of time a variation of 10,000, be it seconds or minutes, etc. This is a short clip of some of the videos mashed together:

After having the lecture on Formalism I've also been thinking about the kitsch nature of the videos, how they're very identifiable in terms of place and the objects used. This kind of brings me back to the idea that we're all the same, etc. I've also been thinking about adding the 'classic' transitions between each video, as this will contribute even further to this kitsch theme that I'm wanting to slightly mock. However this may break up the videos too much, I just need to experiment a little with everything first.

So this week I hope to create a mould for the controller and make a few sculptures from that in different materials. I also want to continue making and refining the gifs, as well as putting my Snapchat videos together.

Daily Snapchat:

bob.bk