Blog# 9 Gabriel Orozco, Justin Novak, & Brian Gillis

Hello World!

Almost every moment of everyday we are seeing everyday objects. How we interpret these objects is all dependable on each person's exposure and experience in life. Although, we do see things and have usually one instant point of view. Gabriel Orozco and Justin Novak are two artists that challenge you to see those everyday objects in a new light. Orozco uses these everyday objects "...to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer." (Biography) He sees the value of using these objects as a way to more easily connect with his audience, since the everyday objects are familiar to him and to the majority of others. "My influence is more in connection with everyday cultural objects that I am encountering and that are part of my life." (Games: Ping Pong, Billiards, and Chess interview) I really enjoy his choice of materials, because it produces an awareness to where you are, what you are surrounded by, and making a more authentic effort to acknowledge. "I concentrate on reality in terms of what is happening to me and I try to revolutionize that and try to rethink it and transform it. I try to transform reality with it's own rules, with the things I found there." (Games: Ping Pong, Billiards, and Chess interview) Justin Novak, also tends to take what has been and redirect the meaning. He takes what has been, either as an idea or of physical form and spins it. His 'Disfigurines' are a good example. "The ceramic figurine has historically embodied mainstream, bougeois ideology, and for this reason, I have employed it in the presentation of an alternative version, an ironic anti-figurine, or disfigurine... physical wounds such as bruises and lacerations serve as metaphors for psychological harm. Whereas the figurine has historically represented the dominant culture's norms and ideals, the disfigurines speak of the damage inflicted by those very same expectations." (Disfigurines) The physical appearance is usually a reflection of the state of mind one is in. To have your flesh torn or bruised could   happen out of lack of attention. Distracted by an unstable psychological place, one will easily harm the physical body. I thought Novak presented this beautifully. History is a big element in how we function presently.The pains and joys through out shape our universal and individual psyche .Orozco is aware of the powers of history and tradition in his own work as well. "A pot is a very complex instrument and we see plenty in human history... it can be related with everybody in the world because pottery is just part of history in general." (Thinking with Clay interview) The 'Confessional Sinks' ceramic project that Novak was involved in plays into history as well, but yet again puts a spin on the meaning of the object. "Confessional sinks enclosed existing Kohler sinks within latticed ceramic panels that quatrefoil pattern of a Catholic confessional screen. Sinks were thus transformed into sites of atonement, of both spiritual and physical cleansing. The effect of the work is to draw a very pointed connection between religious and secular ritual, and to reflect on societal propensities to seek redemption through consumer products." (Confessional Sinks) And yes, sadly through out history, the dominate religions and large corporations have been almost one of the same. What a better way to confess and construct your sins then being a consumer.

Brian Gillis, our guest speaker this week, gave a lecture on the subject of multiples. 'What is a multiple?" he asked, could it be "... a three-dimensional object that is intended to exist not as a unique work of art, but as an edition original." (Linda Albright) or could it be a stack of the same printed poster. Both and much more. For Marchel Duchamp, he claimed that, "...one was unique, two was a pair and tree was 'many'. To make three was to mass-produce." Duchamp brought the idea of multiples as 'Readymades', 'Assisted Readymades', and 'Rectified Readymades'. They were all multiples in the sense that by taking an object out of its original or traditional environment (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) and placing it in a gallery with a new meaning behind it, it would stand as a multiple. Also to add to
or reshape the object would be a multiple. Orozco in this sense has made multiples himself; His 'Ping Pong Table' has been taken from its original environment, changed and placed in a gallery. This would be an example of an assisted readymade. Novak's work is a good example of multiples as well. His 'Disfigurines' and '21c Bunny' series are all multiples in the case of repetitive forms, colors and designs. 

Multiples can be seen in lots of ways. Here are some images of what multiples we generally see most often or not...

Blog#8 Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, & Amanda Wojick

Hello World,

When we look at objects we are not necessarily thinking of about the object. We might might be thinking about how hungry we are, how we forgot to put out the garbage that morning, or what we are planning to do later day. Most likely though, whatever object we are observing, that object is an influence on what our consciousness becomes aware of. "If I'm just looking around while thinking of something else, every object that comes into focus will remind me of my life." (Just Looking p. 22) Seeing is not the only way specific memories are brought up either. "All we have to open the past are the five senses... And memory," Louise Bourgeois says (Black Hands interview) Bourgeois is a French artist who, for several decades, has based her art on her past. "Deeply symbolic, her work uses her relationship with her parents and the role sexuality played in her early family life as a vocabulary in which to understand and remake that history." (Biography) For as long as I can remember, I have always made gifts for my family as opposed to buying them. My gifts are highly symbolic, incorporating remnants of our lives together; pictures of us, ideas and jokes we've shared and objects used for many years. These gifts have always had another meaning behind the obvious, and it was up to my family to find what that was to them individually. The search for a deeper context. Bourgeois, while speaking of the Jane Adams memorial statues (Black Hands), mentions what she sees the hands really representing, "It is really our (hers and her helper's) hands, because it means how much I care about the whole thing. It shows how much emotion that is expressed is true. It's an emotion that has been lived and is real, its not something that's made up." (Black Hands video) Bourgeois wants people to look into the sculpture as if it was themselves. To feel what she's felt, to follow the rabbit hole further. "When I say, 'just looking,' I mean I am searching, I have my 'eye out' for something. Looking is hoping, desiring, never just taking in light, never merely collecting patterns and data." (Just Looking p.22) Sometimes when we look we are searching for those emotional memories to possibly learn more... about ourselves...about the human condition. Most times though, this is happening very discreetly under our own radar. "By pretending, or perhaps I should say deeply believing that vision is passive. In a word, we sometimes think that artworks provoke 'disinterested interest': we are engaged, but we don't want anything but ocular pleasure." (Just Looking p.24) This is probably because, seeing anything but something pleasurable brings up things that we might not be emotionally ready for. We, personally, have to come to our own emotional fruition to see beyond the object. "A work of art doesn't need to be explained... If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed." (Black Hands video) Sometimes we don't see beyond the object, or reach its full meaning because the object stimulates long forgotten experiences that hold painful truths we purposely hid. "There is no such thing as an observer looking at an object, if seeing means a self looking out at a world." (Just Looking p. 19)

Richard Serra is another artist we looked at this week. However his work is reaching on polar opposites of Bourgeois. He is a sculpture who mainly works with steel and as steel is hard and cold, so is the amount of emotion that one might reflect from those pieces. This is not to say that his work is not amazing and wonderful, just not necessarily influenced by past emotional experiences, painful or joyful.   His artistic process he claims is dealt with, "a verb list: to roll, to fold, to cut to dangle, to twist..."(Charlie Brown interview) unlike Bourgeois' work that deals with personal trauma. Serra's work is massive in size and so in order to observe it, one must physically move around and with it. His work seems to want you to be shocked visually as opposed to emotionally.

Amanda Wojick, our guest speaker, gave a lecture that so happen to include Louise Bourgeois as well as many other influential women sculptures through out the century. She mentioned how she had never before knew that art could be about an idea or about feelings. She was taken by Bourgeois's work, how vulnerable and how personal it was. She had always struggled to invent the art's meaning, where as Bourgeois used what was already inside her. "What modern art means is that you have to keep finding ways to express yourself. To express the pain...art is a way of always recognizing yourself and that is why it will always be modern." (Louise Bourgeois in lecture) Wojick also mentioned Magdalena Abakanovicz, a sculpture who's art represented in a sense the decayed and rotting, the aspects of life experience we tend to not want to acknowledge. One way she accomplished this, was by filling a room with giant potato or body part-looking pillows that just sat there sadly, all piled on one another in a compost heap Just like Bourgeois, reminding us of the painful experiences, but by doing so there is a kind of freedom of the past experience as well. Its like nurturing a baby, you wouldn't just throw the baby out just because its crying, you would console it and try to understand. "Art needs somebody to listen to its message, somebody to desire it, somebody to drink it, to use it like wine-- otherwise it makes no sense." (Magdalena Abakamovicz in lecture) In other words, "The observer looks at the object in order to do something or get something." (Just Looking p. 34)

Hands are a very powerful symbol since everyone can relate to them. They can represent many, many ideas, but most of all they represent life experience. The creases, the calluses, the smoothness, the years. Bourgeois uses hands as a symbol in many of her pieces. I chose to share this image of a hands by another sculptor (unknown). It is representing, from what I can gather, hunger, desperation, sadness, and pain. Memories may be painful, but keeping them under lock and key will destroy you.