This year in painting

Here's a quick recap of the works I've done for my painting class this year.

Wow. I enjoyed looking for those images because I found a lot of great work in progress shots. I like how the last image is like a close-up and I think that I'd like to play that up even more; even closer close-up :)

Depth of Field

For my last project for this term, I wanted to make a site-specific work. I was planning to intervene in my studio space in the VA Building with a cellophane installation using the "+" pattern I had used in an earlier piece. I feel this was a good choice because it was less directional than the other patterns I have used. I wanted to limit the colour of the cellophane grounds to magenta and green because I love the way those two hues cancel each other out when they overlap; they produce a purplish grey tone.
However, as the work developed, an art intervention in a space where I make things and is usually filled with art already, didn't make much sense; there wasn't much of a contextual contrast. I was also struggling with the question "why is it on the wall?" I didn't really have a good enough answer. I think because I'm a painter, the wall makes me feel comfortable. All the more reason to bring it right off the wall and see what happens; going beyond my comfort zones.
What happened was that space became a volume. Instead of delineating space with a cellophane membrane, the membrane became the space. It was a weightless kind of space filled with a mist or a field of snow or something. This was one way of having my viewers interact on a more intimate level with the marks. You are enticed to interact with the installation and are forced to deal with the marks which seem to hover in mid-air at some points and overlap illogically in others. You are encouraged to explore the work as you make your way through it because you are lead by areas where the patterns flow from one sheet of cellophane to the next and try to pick up where the pattern left off. I deny that continuity in some areas and also break that continuity with blank and cut out areas (which almost act as viewing holes). I think this allows for an engaging and rich phenomenological experience.
It also allowed me to speak to the fact that the act of looking is not limited to our eyes but also involves our bodies. How we move through space changes what we are seeing. It's not something that we really consider so I thought it was important to bring that out in the work.
Some of the critiques were that now that it's off the wall the distortion of depth perception isn't as strong. Also that the painted aspect still isn't that important in reading the work. Those are things that are inevitably sacrificed when a picture place is brought out into real space and point to aspects that I either reinforce or let go in the work.
So we'll see where this work takes me. I have some other ideas that I'd like to try over the summer break (maybe not as ambitious haha) and we'll be ready to go next September :D

Morphing still . . .

You may remember that I am also working on a series of more conventional oil paintings on canvas that uses striped forms as subject matter. As this series evolved (and taking cues from my other body of work ie. marks on cellophane) the paintings are becoming more and more reduced. I'm excited about this development, and especially this latest painting above because it allows me the possibility to use texture, facture, and surface quality as a compositional strategy. Below is a short animation of the development of my last painting.

Sneek peeks!

Just a little taste of what I'll be showing in the BFA Grad Show April 20 :)

Time Becomes a Loop

My latest installed piece titled "Time Becomes a Loop." I was thinking about the repetitive aspect of the mark-making I've been doing and how I could extend that to the plane itself. I was listening to my favourite Orbital album on which a sample of Lt. Woft (Michael Dorn) says "There is the theory of the Mobius: a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop." Daily cycles, orbits, repetition are intrinsic to our daily lives and this is perhaps the metaphor that has come out of this new work.
I was also thinking about the Mobius strip in terms of what happens on the reverse side of the picture plane. Or what happens to the plane when it bends, twists, pinches, pulls, folds? All great devices which I could explore using the coloured cellophane I'm so fond of :)
I stuck with the same pattern throughout because I thought it would create harmony within the piece. The garish nature of some of the colour contrasts in the panels needed some sort of link to each other, so I think it was a good call to keep the pattern the same, even though I varied the size of the strokes slightly.
I opted to install it in the Concourse area of the VA building again, except in a spot with better lighting. I wanted to highlight the colour contrasts. This spot also provided an opportunity to extend the piece up to the second floor via the balcony/atrium kind of set up.
I'm pleased with the results and received lots of positive feedback. It's playful and fun (and frustrating) to look at. One thing that is lost, however, is the attention to the mark-making because the piece takes on an architectural or spatial relationship, leading to a whole new set of concerns and points of fixation. That doesn't sit well with me because I've kind of undermined my own intentions, so I think for my next piece, I need to maybe tone down the folds to reinforce the repetition of marks. Or maybe this is something I'm holding onto that I should discard for the sake of the work? Not sure yet. Anyways, below are some detail shots and a view from the second floor.

Striped forms

Here's a couple of the striped forms paintings I've been working on. I haven't titled them yet because I'm not 100% sure that they are finished.

They are larger in size and I feel like they are metamorphosing into something else . . . not sure what yet haha.

The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg

I went to see the Takashi Murakami exhibit at the VAG this weekend. I'm not a huge fan of Murakami's work, but I can relate to the hybridity of sources and the hyper-everything about the subjects. My criticism is that I feel with work that aligns itself so close to pop culture, there isn't much to dig out. I feel like there's even less to dig out of it when the work is in Japan or similar context. I'm sure that we read his work very differently here on the West Coast of Canada.
But, I put my own pre-conceived notions aside and I really enjoyed the show. The scale and scope of his work are very impressive, but this works needs to be large and loud and hyper. I don't think the message would come across on a more intimate scale.
You get a sense of the apocalyptic undertones which is ingrained in post-war Japanese culture, which can't help but get into the work, and it adds a real strength to it. I can imagine that the fear of nuclear annihilation would do some strange things to my work and bring out weird but sympathetic characters such as in Murakami's work.
I appreciated the video clips of him and his assistants at work in the studio. You get a real sense of the craft, labour, and highly considered choices inherent in the work. For me, I like to see how things are made, so this helped me enjoy the work on another level; as a maker.
I was less taken with his sculptural works because I feel the super-flatness of his graphics are what fills his works with a manic energy that leaps off the images in an embodied way. I was also disappointed in the glossing over of Murakami's commercial work. I feel like that issue is where a viewer might take issue or agree with his practice. I'm sure we would all take issue with the $45 octopus plushie in the gift store, but the question is; does the commercial success of the artist de-value the work? Is it okay to embrace a commercial culture and still have a gravitas to your work?

Here are a few images I took.

The show runs until the middle of May so if you have a chance to get down there, I highly recommend it. Here's a link to the show.

Testing out some ideas

Here's a couple of images of the install ideas I've had. They aren't quite there yet, but you never can tell until you've got it set up in a space.

I'm liking how these pieces are starting to extend out spatially, but I think I can push it more . . . and not be constrained to the planes of the room ie. sags, folds etc.