they hit me with a truck

The piece above, Robert Watt’s “Table for Suicide Event” from 1961, sums up a lot of how happenings went down in the 60s and 70s.  As art events, they were intended as temporal experiences that transformed viewers into participants.  This piece, while stationary, serves this purpose in a subtle way; the table is composed of items that perhaps have been used or are prepared for use in the future.  The viewer becomes a participant in the narrative that the table and its contents seem to signify.

H.R. Giger is a Swiss artist, sometimes termed a surrealist, who is probably best known for his Oscar win in 1980 for his design of the alien creatures in “Alien.”  Giger was one of the initial artists to grasp my attention as I was entering high school, and I still find his unusual combination of eroticism and commercialism in his works very interesting.  No one can deny that he has what is essentially an obsession with the vagina (he has painted and sculpted multiple works called “passages” that are quite obviously vaginal in reference) and penetration.  He is particularly fond of designing human/cybernetic hybrid creatures with tubes that often enter the mouth, the vagina or the anus.  And yet this predisposition does not prevent him from publishing calendars, selling prints and designing furniture.  Giger has his own museum in Switzerland, although it is not exclusively devoted to his work; he often uses it to showcase artists in which he feels an interest.  There are even “Giger bars” with environments totally designed by him.  This is yet another artist with a dark, somewhat “gothic” aesthetic, and yet he as achieved rather massive commercial success (particularly in Europe).

What I find most compelling about Tiravanija is his focus on interaction.  Surface magazine claims he is an artist who encourages tactile interaction, “to get down with the art,” and it is true, but it goes even beyond an interaction with objects.  Tiravanija is concerned with interpersonal interaction as well; he is known for serving food to viewers/participants in galllery spaces.  Like the artists of the 60’s and 70’s who were involved in Happenings (Alan Kaplow, Bruce Nauman, Robert Watts, etc), he decimates the boundary between viewer and participant.  The video posted here is a reproduction, by Tiravanija, of a piece he did in 1992 in which he transformed the gallery space into an open kitchen.

These Swiss artists/partners in crime are the very definition of the prodigiously unusual imagination.  Not only do they produce some unusual works (like their “sausuage series” of the late 70s), but they do not limit themselves to one or two modes of production.  For them, it is not necessary to create a “core” area, but to produce and display a myriad of ideas.  Photography, video, and sculpture are often combined rather than approached individually.  If one looks at their video “The Way Things Go,” it is quite easy to move from video to sculpture; their Rube Goldbergian construction is immense and very physical.  They seem to be artists with a particular penchant for the recording of ephemeral creations, or even the re-creations of previously existing objects.  In “The Way Things Go,” Fischli and Weiss record something that probably only occurred once in its entirety, just like in their sculptures made of sausage they recorded photographically a material that is organically predestined to decay.

 (fashion show from “Sausage Series”)

And it is from the mundane, everyday nature of objects that much of their imaginitive production derives.  Their meticulous re-creation of ordinary objects like plastic cups and paint bottles is a testament to the capability of the artist rather than the nature of the initial object.

“The Spore Collective Manifesto

The Spore Collective Manifesto

Founded this day, February 6, 2008, the Spore Collective hereby declares the following purpose, principles and plan of action to be followed throughout the Spring 2008 semester.  Our purpose is to promote free cultural ideals and the making of new things.  In the spirit of David Wilson, we promote the prodigiously unusual imagination and look forward to a semester of investigation, wonderment, and exploration.

Each member will participate in a scheduled critique to be held on February 13, 2008.  Upon completion of said critique each member will then be responsible for completing four more works by the end of the semester.

The principles on which this manifesto is built are to be taken seriously by each member.
1.    One must strive to push his/her imagination beyond the comfort level.
2.    One must embrace the wonderment of the creative process and disband any thoughts of assignments and grades in order to work in the spirit of the spore.
3.    One must experience the commitment to being an active participant in the collective.  One must go to the Fast, Cheap and Out of Control blog on a regular basis and must respond to posts in a thoughtful and timely manner.  More than one response per post is welcomed.
4.    One must strive to leave the course a stronger artist.
5.    All must strive to make this the best class of the year.

The plan of action:
1.    Following the February 13, critique, each member may take one of two routes to complete the class:
One may arrange regularly scheduled critique dates.  Working critiques
will be held only when work is at a point to discuss both conceptually and
formally.
One may choose to experience the class in a more structured manner with
assignments to guide the creative process.

2.    There will be pages posted to the FCOC blog indicating writing assignments and       speaking assignments, lists of artists and other pertinent information.  All members are responsible for keeping on schedule.
3.    This success and course of direction is built upon trust for each member of The Spore Collective.”

As a member of the Spore Collective, I believe it is important  to make this a great class, but the most important thing we can possibly leave with is strength as artists.  With this newly established structure (or newly deconstructed one), I feel less constrained by the pressures of class in general.  As someone who is not the most self-motivated, I know I will run into difficulties, but I feel these will better prepare me for the future, in which I will not have the coddling structure of the classroom to guide my thought processes.  The sheer relief of tension granted by loose dates and progressive rather than fragmented assignments is incredibly encouraging.  I particlularly hope to rediscover my own prodigiously unusual imagination and put it to good use. 

 

Graeme Patterson is a Canadian artist, like David Altmejd, and has a similar darkness inherent in his work.  (They both had works in the 2005 Montreal Bienale).  However, while Altmejd’s work is large and bursting with textures and juxtapositions, Patterson’s work is done in a miniature scale with incredible attention to detail.  His multimedia installation “Woodrow,” from which all the images presented here derive, is a study in intricacy.  The work consists of multiple buildings, usually no larger than four cubic feet, with highly detailed interiors that often include screens displaying stop-animation shorts.  The installation is based on the real town of Woodrow in northern Canada, and was built to both honor the artists dead grandfather and explore his own personal connections to the town.  Many reviews were particularly concerned with Patterson’s creation of what is essentially a “ghost town,” full of beautiful but decaying structures.  Particularly haunting in the sculpure “Deer,” with their eerily lit eyes and orientation within the viewers space despite their small size ( the piece measures about 4 1/2 feet tall when mounted on its stand).

  The buildings of Woodrow are completely articulated inside and out; each individual floorboard and window crack is visible, though incredibly small.

 David Altmejd uses a multitude of objects and textures that seem to transport nature into interior space.  This is not the nature of everyday experience however; organic forms become poetic fantasies that transport the viewer into other realms of reality.  There are literal elements of fairy tale and fantasy incorporated into many of his works, as evidenced by titles such as “loup garou” (loosely “werewolf”).  Particularly intriguing is his incorporation of animal forms into landscape-like orientations, as well as juxtaposing animal and human in sculptures like his men in suits with the heads of birds.  Often his pieces incorporate teeth, bones and hair, giving an impression of organic decay and possibly even transformation from the living into the artificial.  The word “gothic” is frequently invoked in description of his work.

In researching cats and the people that collect them in large numbers, I ran across several (read: hundreds) of articles concerning the idea of animal hoarding- a psychological compulsion to collect animals. The particular article that I have linked here poses a good question: Are there “cat gentleman” too? Or is this a “female malady…”

 http://www.slate.com/id/2123006/

 

This artist truly amazes me.  She builds these magnificent animals that have great personality while still leaving the medium of clay obvious to the viewer.  Each of her pieces has a distinctive human quality combined with the nature of the animal.  Stichter has explained in her artist statements that she deliberately combines animal and human in an effort to translate human psychology into a visual medium.  Most of her pieces focus on tensions and anxieties.  In a series of her works entitled “object lessons,” she explores things like apathy (”Object Lesson: Apathy” is the piece with the goat in a tank of water), arrogance and self doubt.  It is not only her powerful emotional translations of human characteristics in animal form, but her ability to maintain the movement and weight of real creatures in the medium of clay while not hiding her material.