Little People

Slinkachu; Dealer; 2006

I like the use of smaller objects to make something grand such as the works of Do Ho Suh. His installations are hundreds of figurines all similar and repeatedly placed into a larger form like a pattern to form fences, walls; bridges, etc. I also enjoy viewing small figurines with a larger meaning such as the work of Dominic Wilcox War Bowl. Two other artists Slinkachu and Isaac Cordal use little men and women to focus on life.
Both artists place their mini figures in an urban setting. The street installations are similar with the media they use, but with different meanings or interpretations of the pieces. The mini figures are tiny about four to five centimeters. Both artists take a picture of the installation focusing on the characters and then their environment. Many of their settings use the environment around such as the litter found in the streets like cigarettes, Coca Cola cans, pipes, etc

Slinkachu, Liar 2009

They can be sad or happy depending on how they are modeled. They have a theme so their attires are made for the theme such as Slinkachu narrative of Whatever Happened to the Men of Tomorrow.  He focuses on a little man dressed as Superman, but old, bald, and with a large beer belly. He is placed in settings that can make it humorous like the picture Liar of Superman walking away from a prostitute and a strip club(?) or melancholy such as the photograph Overpowered. 

The picture gives a sense of loneliness in the vast concrete environment especially for this superman who was once adored by citizens, but now indifferent like the rest of his fellow citizens.  I think it’s a glance of what people do when they are overwhelmed living in a city like London.  All one can do is try to relax and have a beer.

Slinkachu, Overpowered, 2009

Isaac Cordal Follow the Leader, 2010

                Isaac Cordal gives his mini figurines the loneliness found in Slinkachu works. None I’ve seen have humor in them. It gives a harsh reality of urban living filled with pollution and forcing to do things for survival. In his photographs, he portrays the figurines in a close shot which helps add to the despair of one’s life in London or Brussels. Like the size of the media, one can feel diminutive in this urban sprawl. The installation Follow the Leader displays nine little men in drabby business suits walking or declining into a murky puddle in an alley. They are all hunched over like defeatists as they follow the leader whose top portion of his head is only visible. The cloudy weather enhances the mood of depression with this work. Another installation is Home which is similar to Follow the Leader. It reminds me of Fritz Lang movie Metropolis because of the drones are heading for home similar to the piece in these strange tunnels in the beginning of the movie.  For Slinkachu works, they become interactive with the viewer because he leaves his pieces around the city of London for anyone to examine or crush because no one really notices them. Cordal doesn’t leave his installations out in the elements, however.  

Fritz Lang Metropolis 1927

Isaac Cordal, Home, 2010

The War Bowl

Plastic little army men are the same like the mini figures found in train sets but they have a purpose which is war. They look like a soldier, but some are in different position and weaponry. Many associate them as green army men, but they vary by war period and single color. They are very fragile because they are cheaply fabricated. It only depends on the little boy if he wants to kill one side or both sides by knocking them over or if he truly has mental problems melting them or breaking them.

I recall (from the video in class) the War Bowl from Dominic Wilcox and the horrific scene of blue army men melted and shaped into a bowl. There are two bowls one white with soldiers from both sides representing the English Civil War and the blue bowl with soldiers from the Battle of Waterloo. The blue and white soldiers appears to have been placed in a mold when they were melted because the outer side is smooth but the inside of the bowl has texture of grotesque scene of limps, bayonets, mini soldiers all warped and melted. The bowl itself in this inhuman texture appears broken from the top edges like a broken egg shell enhancing the effect. 

There are several remaining soldiers outside of the bowl in attack position ready to go forward. I like the close up picture focusing on these remaining soldiers in the foreground while the background is the ominous larger bowl. It does show the determination of an aggressive society with their strange perception of conquering no matter how many die for a “purpose”. It also is funny that it comes from plastic toy soldiers because our society allows little boys to play with these figures to make it think that war is okay and fun.

The bowl itself really reminds me of the Neue Sachilchkeit movement.  I think because the form is a bowl I think of bomb made craters that look like bowls from an aerial view. I also think of Otto Dix Der Krieg which is interesting because he was aerial observer and a gunner in WWI. His triptych scene in the middle and right panel displays the devastation of the landscape and the human bodies in various positions as if they are part of the apocalyptic terrain. A skeletal remain appears to be a tree or sign post pointing at the mound of bodies that blend with the crater filled landscape. One can see the depravity of war with both Dix triptych and Wilcox bowls by the manner in which they created their scenes. I’m glad his color wasn’t red because I think it would have made the pieces too heavy and overwhelming because red can mean chaos and blood and the viewer already can imagine that with the blue and white bowls.      

Richard Serra

After the kitsch blog, I would like to change to a minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. He was known for both his early and later works. In his early works he did installations, melt crayon like substance to form blocks, performance or video art with molten lead and document subjects about steel.
 He would throw huge amounts of molten lead against the wall or floor as installation pieces. To viewers, his works were similar to Jackson Pollock. Both had an abstract quality and both artist wanted to be closer or understand their medium. Pollock action painting (I believed) helped influence Serra to do a similar technique with throwing and splashing the lead onto the surface except Pollock still used a canvas on the floor. Also I don't know if Serra used Pollock drip method using the brush to splash and drip into the canvas or adding glass and other medium to the canvas. In his performance work, Serra filmed himself attempting to catch the molten lead. The lead appears raw and his one hand trying to grab the lead has a tense repetitive movement. He describes it as engaging the material in an aggressive manner. In current times, I'm amazed he was working with lead a heavy metal very similar to mercury and is also a neurotoxin. I'm don't think he knew what he was aqainting himself with as a medium for his artworks or maybe he did adding to the anxiety of the viewer, but I'm glad he moved on to steel.

Matter of Time, Guggenheim Museum  Bilbao, Spain 2005

His use of steel is amazing with its curvelinear rigid structures. Serra with the help of other metal workers create self supporting  steel walls or planes and make it look organic or geometric. The installation Torqued Ellipse VI and The Matter of Time has the organic qualities because of it curvature but it's amazing because they are tall installations pieces about 13 feet in height and spans a large room in the Guggenhein Museum. It defies the viewers expectations because its a rigid metal and its weight is obvious. He wants the viewer to search through his installations and it various forms. His works are site specific which add to the quality of the work like the larger room in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao for his Matter of Time collection. It enhances the beauty of the room.  Another work adds loneliness to the piece like the Bramme in Essen, Germany. Its a long piece of steel placed vertically surrounded by a dark rocky ground. It has a natural rustic color that enhances it form especially in a blue sky.

Bramme monument for the Ruhr Area on top of the Halde Schurenbach in Essen, Germany 2007

His pieces does receive controversy because of the site location. Tilted Arc is a famous example of citizens not wanting a large piece of steel obstructive their passage to a building. His installation are very large and are assembled in a way that might be dangerous for the viewer because its thin steel it can provoke anxiety because of balancing a heavy structure. It depends on the beholder. I like his pieces big and assembled into different awckward positions.

Kitsch

After learning about kitsch last Wednesday, I decided to look into it to understand why the art world has a love and hate relationship with this type of cheap art. It is meant for the masses, kitsch items vary. Its not just art paintings and tacky figurines, it's in literature, magazine covers, anything relating to Disney, Manga, and Hollywood, etc. 
Black velvet paintings, porcelain and plastic figurines is considered kitsch. I realized that the things I like and present for other to view will most likely be kitsch in their viewpoint. For instance, I like Hello Kitty and Tinkerbell. I would probably buy a plastic or porcelain figurine of these two characters and put it on top of my obsolete analog TV, because they are cute. 

In the art world, kitsch is equivalent of being evil to the high art society. Its a false example of art because the medium is beautified for the masses to buy with no truth behind as its explained by Hermann Broch. Clement Greenburg gives a further analysis in his essay Avant Garde and Kitsch simply stating, "'Where there is an avant-garde, generally we also find a rear-guard". I would have to agree with Broch that intellectuals defined what was and still is considered high and low art. Kitsch is art, but low art because some of these mediums have artistic formulas like balance, plasticity, figurative representaion, buts its not genuinely original. It's been copied in a cheap manner by others before. It's repeated in the thousands such as Thomas Kinkade works. They are paintings, ornaments, little statues of nature, lighted perfect houses or cottages with perfect sun rays making it appear appealing to the Christian society. 
Their are artists that embrace kitsch are Jeff Koons, John Currin, fantasy painters like Borris Vallego. 

1988  Michael Jackson with his pet monkey Bubbles by Jeff Koons

Most are meant for the popular masses, but again it depends on the individual. For instance, Michael Jackson with Bubbles. For me, Koons presented this piece in his Banality Series as a porcelain life like figure. For the person who paid more than a million, it would probably be considered pop art not kitschy. Why would it be kitschy when its Michael Jackson and his pet? For myself, porcelain figurines from Europe do have a gaudy appearance especially with a gold color and animated facial features.

Borris Vallejo

John Currin, Borris Vallejo and other fantansy painters that display women in a erotic manner I believe is kitsch. John Currin follow the examples of other long before him exaggerating the form of the bust and buttocks, the curvelinear outline and clothing of the erotic woman is also emphasized in oil painting. They often have a narrative theme. It's kitsch because it's not orginal, our society has accepted nakedness and erotic behavior, but people like this so it well be around until our society is diminished.   

The Veil, oil on canvas by John Currin

  

Sayaka Ganz

Deep Sea 2007 32” x 42” x 28”  mostly blue and green plastic objects

I finally found online the artist that I feel represents well this second project. She uses everyday objects and forms them into animals. I like her use of animals in movement because I feel it displays their strength or raw energy. The artist is Sayaka Ganz. She is from Japan but lives in the U.S. She is best known for her use of anything relatable to plastic such as utensils, combs, baskets, etc and forming these animals mostly in implied motion. She collects many of her works from trash, second hand stores, friends and family and sorts them by color. Many of her works have the same hues, but there are other works that have similar colors, but different shades.

One example of her works Deep Sea applies to this variation of shades. Ganz applies blue and green utensils to form a big mouth fish. I like the texture of the basket she adds to the lower mouth and fin. 

She then makes a wire frame as the base and ties the plastic into the wire structure carefully joining the plastic to create a skeletal form. Some of her larger sculptures contain 500 pieces of plastic. I like how she places the utensils or other plastic to represent an ear such as a shovel or plastic ladles for legs. 

She also gives it a stop motion of the animal running or crouching the way she position the plastic to emphasize movement such as the running red orange cat Fogo. She adds horizontal lines of wire or plastic to create the air or wind passing. It appears to give the viewer the full speed of the cat.

Fogo, 2008  32” x 110” x 26”  Reclaimed materials (mostly red and orange plastic 

The same is for another installation of horses running. They are somewhat large Night and Wind being five to six feet in height. I liked how she placed the two horses bursting from the wall at their full speed hence the name of the installation Emergence. The black horse also called Night is almost similar of a high relief, it emerges halfway from the wall only showing the frontal portion of the horse. The white horse Wind entirely emerges from the wall. She depicts a stop motion of the two horses racing and like the cat installion surrounds wire to the installations to convey an air stream. The plastic gives it a curvilinear form. Her assemblages of these plastic forms make beautiful installations  

Emergence, 2008 Two pieces installation: Night  mostly black and clear plasticobjects, 72” x 50” x 17”Wind mostly white and clear plastic objects, 63” x 78” x 26”       

Megan Sterling

I finally visited the exhibit for Megan Sterling The Space Between. I liked the large scale limbs of the arm, hands, legs and feet. I like the medium as charcoal strokes on museum board. The white negative space emphasizes the black strokes that form the limbs. It gives focus to the viewer of her meaning of tension and the space around the tension. Also, her thick strokes and shading give her artworks volume almost like a 3-D form because the black charcoal stands out of the wall. The entire composition gives a sense of movement with an implied motion or stop motion in some of the compositions. I liked how she used the space of the gallery walls to display her large work. For example, the artwork also titled The Space Between (?) was one that really stood out for me because of how she drew the tension and relaxation of the limbs. The arm coming down from the ceiling was very detailed. It displayed the exteme tension especially with the hands, fingers and the tendons or bones running up the arm. I liked her use of shading every detail to show the tension and awkward tight position of fingers. The arm below had a relaxed position with its palm bent also in a relaxed position reaching out for the tensed arm and fingers above or an invisible image inbetween the hands. She expressed the tension and motion very well in a 2-D sketch. She gave the piece balance displaying the top arm and hand with a strict closed form and adds the other arm and hand an opposite effect of relaxation in an open form. The push and pull artwork is another example of an implied motion and continuous narrative.  It displays the muscles and limbs in action trying to push the space or imaginary object. Her limbs seem to be trying to open more space. Then there is the next large drawing with the arms pulling on an imaginary rope. The legs appear to be bracing an invisible body for control of an imaginary rope like its closing the space around it. I’ve always liked the detail of fingers and feet. Sterling goes into great detail with the charcoal lines to create the organic form of the hands and fingers and the feet and toes. The hands are from a mature woman who uses her hands a lot. I can see working hands with the detail she presents to the viewers. It gives me a feeling of fragileness of a mother’s hand such as in her piece Friction. Again, the viewer sees the tension from the contorted display of the finger in one hand and the control of that contortion from the other hand. I enjoyed all the sketches except one of two people squatting(?); I thought it was out of place. 

Chris Jordan

I picked a photographer by the name Chris Jordan. He uses items to invoke a message or awareness to his viewers. He works are manipulated or digitally altered photographs. He makes thousands and thousands of items such as plastic bottles, light bulbs, words, pills, etc to create something big that is a problem in society that we should address. He wants people to be aware of what they consume globally and how it affects the environment. I believe his focus lately is the pollution in the ocean, but he also photographs other items that are problematic within society such as prescription drugs or the war in Iraq. He also bring an artist style to his photographs using composition from other artist such as Hiroshige or using his own mosaic style.  In his books “Running with Numbers I and II”, Jordan uses statistic in a visual manner to produce an artistic image. The small images are a mosaic that will depict something about society’s values or careless exploitation. Many of his composition are large and some appear to go into space with his layers of thousands of small items such as his work of light bulbs. Set in a black background lightbulbs (that are lit) spread out through the darkness into this large white light in the middle of the composition. The foreground has large lightbulbs that recede into smaller ones until they reach the middle of the perspective. “Barbie Dolls” displays the number women getting breast implants. The nude Barbies are arranged in a circle pattern like a snowflake to form a woman’s upper torso particularly the breast. From afar, it looks like Seurat’s pointillism, but the Barbie’s are arranged by each other from head to toe in this photomontage. It represents 32000 women who obtained breast augmentation for the year 2006. 

Another picture Jordan altered that impacted me as a viewer (because of mandatory community service in an animal shelter) was “Dog and Cat Collars” for 2009. It depicts two famous cartoon comic characters Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy embracing. Like the photograph Barbie Dolls, a close up of the image shows ten thousand white and black collars from both cats and dogs. Ten thousand collars was the average number of unwanted pets euthanized for 2009. The white collars are arranged for the background while the black collars form the outline of Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Snoopy cloud of loving thoughts for his master.

 Jordan also adapted the Japanese woodprint of Hiroshige “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”. In Jordan version of the famous Great Wave off Kanagawa, he uses plastic found from the Pacific Ocean instead of traditional paint. Jordan adds large colored plastic below the tip of the great wave to emphasize the medium as plastic garbage. It gives the photograph a meaning of horror to the viewer of how much waste especially plastic consumers put into the ocean from storm runoff.     

Forgot one

Pictures of Paper
Fuji from the Sea of Satta, Gulf of Suruga, Number 23, after Hiroshige
2009
Digital C-print
109 x 71 inches, edition of 6

Vik Muniz

It's difficult to explain the installations or mediums of Vik Muniz. He doesn't fellow one genre. His works are a variety of mediums such as sculpting, earthworks cloudworks or sky writing, and everyday material. He is best known for arranging objects into beautiful portraits of works or photographs from past artists. His works are usually large taking up a whole room like this installation piece below or to several feet in height. He is best known for his use of non material items in his artworks.Muniz draws the outline of the image and then arranges trash or whatever forms to create a portrait. 

One that is entirely different subject and media than this work from Wasteland is the landscape print from Hiroshige Fuji from the Sea of Satte, Gulf of Suruga, Number 23. He uses thick paper to and creates this piece in layers and the waves in the foreground. Muniz gives dimension almost a low relief found in stone. Texture and the vibrant colors give the landscape scene a fresh perspective.

Pictures of Paper

Fuji from the Sea of Satta, Gulf of Suruga, Number 23, after Hiroshige

2009

Digital C-print

109 x 71 inches, edition of 6

Utagawa Hiroshige   36 Views of Mount Fuji- 23. The Sea off Satta circa 1858 Woodblock print

                

The next medium he uses was for a promo for De Beers. What would one do with 10 million diamonds? For Muniz, he went for a glamorous depiction with his works Diamond Divas. This one is Sophia Loren (one of the biggest divas from the 1960s). Although this was for a promo, the portrait is Cibrachrome print which is mounted on aluminum. The black background emphasizes the diamonds and Sophia’s strong facial expression. It gives the viewer glam and status of famous women.

              Vik Muniz, Sophia Loren (Dia­mond Divas), 2004

  His meaningful pieces are his use of trash to make portraits. Pictures of Junk and the documentary Wasteland allow viewers to expand their concept of art. He uses junk in a grand scale to depict past artitst mediums. One of the world’s largest landfills is in his country Brazil. He wants viewers to know that junk can be used or altered so it can be used again such as for his high class installations. Muniz sketches famous painting and adds junk to recreate it three dimensionally. He adds space to the piece using the white floor and surrounds the negative space with the junk. He then photographs the entire picture. One can view the garbage is used to for the outline, shadow and facial expression. In the picture above, tires are added to hair and wire is used for the outline.    

 Pictures of Junk

Cephalus and Aurora, after Pierre-Narcisse Baron Guerin2008
Digital c-print, edition of 6, 4 APs
55 x 40 inches