RACHEL WHITEREAD
Whiteread’s work makes frequent reference to the trace of human existence, textures and the fragility of the materials cast for her sculptures.
She uses material like the surface of a mortuary slab, or a house due for demolition – these subjects which provoke physical experiences and subjective and collective reflections.
Her work records both the present and the past. In choosing a public space for “the House”, Whiteread investigates the fragility of the human situation within the urban environment.
In her work Ghost, there is the wood grain of the skirting boards, the smooth surface of the glass windows, the grisaille of coal from the last fire in the hearth, transferred to a contrasted with the white of the plaster.
In relation to Ghost:” Only when everything was ready did I see what I had fabricated. I have the door in front of me and an upended light switch and think: “I am the wall. That’s the result. I have become the wall”.
A formal repetition, a mirror-image of the plinth, “Monument” is a site-specific sculpture work which, through its transparency and doubling, enhances the experience of the previously empty space.
An inverted plinth is an empty form, recalling sarcophagus, giving rise once again to connotations of the body, of ephemerality and disappearance.
Monument references to the body and transitoriness, recurrent themes in Whiteread’s art.
The cast
For Whiteread, being a traditional, “purist” sculptor who uses the white plaster at its “purest” form, the casting process is a form not only of replication but also of repetition.
However, the several versions of the same piece form a never identical outcome: their shape and volume constantly change, some more contorted, others fuller and firmer.
Bibliography:"Rachel Whiteread, Edited by Ann Gallgher and Molly Donovan, Tate.2017, ISBN 9781 84976 464 3
The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is built around the concept of the duality of the human mind and body. Our body, he said, is a “psychophysical unity wherein the personal ego is being constituted”.
It is very much a continuation of the work of German philosopher Edmund Husserl. While Husserl used the term “feeling object” and “das subjective objekt” to describe the person, Merleau-Ponty views the person as “subject- object”.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE
People are sometimes the subject (when we do something); sometimes the object (when something is done to us), and often both subject and object at the same time, hence: subject-object. Merleau-Ponty placed far more significance on the interpretation of the world through our bodies than some other schools of philosophical thought, where they viewed the body as a more passive vessel.
Our mind perceives the external world and this becomes recorded through our body, as an inward recording – you cannot separate the body and mind.Our inner being is therefore formed by our comprehension of the outside world, through our body. This is presented to us as the inverse side of reality itself.
Two people can witness exactly the same events, but have very different memories of those events. Their memories, and awareness, are the product of both the external world and their inner being. And this circular procedure continues indefinitely. Whatever I am has been created by my experiences in my world. For Merleau-Ponty, the self is “the invisible”, while “the visible” is what we see: the world.
The exploration of the space in between the invisible and visible is one I have pursued in my work.
Bibliography:
Maurice Merleau-Ponty : The Visible And the Invisible, Northwestern University, studies in Phenomenology and existential philosophy
ISBN 978-0-8101-0457-0
Maurice Merleau-Ponty- PHENOMENOLOGY LANGUAGE & SOCIOLOGY, John O' Neil, ISBN 0 435 8326662
Either/Or (Danish: Enten – Eller) is the first published work of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He published the work in two volumes in 1843 under the pseudonym Victor Eremita. The varied literary style employs lyrical aphorisms, psychological analyses and philosophical observations
The first part (the Either) contains Victor Eremita’s introduction, as well as the aesthetic writings[ . It is a series of aphorisms entitled “Diapsalmata”, a Greek word which refers to a general formation.
Judge William, in the second volume (the Or), exemplifies the ethical mode of existence. He is a married man who has committed himself in conjugal love. He is contrasted with the young lover of the “Diary of a Seducer,” who d experiments with romantic love. Kierkegaard defines romantic and conjugal love as existential qualities that differentiate the aesthetical and the ethical. Romantic love is experimental and non-historical, lacking continuity. Conjugal love expresses an inner history that gives it constancy and stability.
In the two volumes of Either/Or, Kierkegaard confronts readers with a sharp choice between two forms of existence, the aesthetic, which regards enjoyment and pleasure as the highest values, and the ethical, which views the world in terms of right and wrong. Rather than describing these two forms of existence, Kierkegaard brings them to life in the writings of two fictional characters.
Kierkegaard seeks to elucidate the contrasts and interrelationships between what he called the aesthetical and the ethical modes of existence.
The self is not an object that can be abstractly defined as having a permanent nature or a substantial fixity. Unity is achieved, not given. The self, achieves or attains its unity and integrity through choice. Through decision and commitment, the self becomes integrated and “centralised”.
Bibliography: EITHER/OR , Volume I & II, Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, ISBN . 0-691--1977-0, SBN . 0-691--1977-4
Writing notes in her Filofax, she raised this issue in terms of ‘surface exchange’:
Defy the surface - exchange between actual + surface of simulation
In flight from here + now of encounter – displacement from the real
Hard edge geometric abstraction making a cut into space + reviving utopia of
sensation + desire
Here Chadwick refers to an inward move towards construction. Her hope was to open a gap for a wider range of encounters than those simply determined legible geometry. She inspired that surface exchange would block the return route to geometrical certainty and open instead towards sensation + desire. She explores how the experience of surface might bring about an interplay between practice and theory where geometry does not fit fully on either sides.
HELEN CHADWICK
“Of Mutability”
Anatomic presentation, in which female bodies are opened for inspection have inspired H.C.’s own inquiry into her inner being.
She turn her eyes to entrails, so that innards express interiors, with the return of dominant and problematic metaphor of the body. “The drapery is like a kind of membrane, a feeling of the outside of the body. I’ve looked at the mouth as being something through which the interior can be revealed, and at the way the objects can be pierced or cut in some way so that they’re not closed”.
In her notebooks, HC. quotes Frida Kahlo’s ‘ the vegetable miracle of my body’s landscape’, and like that artist, she uses her own body as a site of identity and its puzzles. “Progress has to be made through self-understanding, self-awareness, but one of the taboos has been an exploration of one’s own body. To understand the capacity for transcendence through flesh, one has to move in the face of theory into areas that cannot be comprehended by theory. I want the body to be as much of victory as the brain.”
Bibliography:
HELEN CHADWICK, Constructing Identities Between Art and Architecture, Stephen Walker, I.B.TAURIS
ISBN 978-1-78076-007-0
STILLED LIVES, HELEN CHADWICK, Portfolio Gallery Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik,
ISBN 0 9520608 3 3
GASTON BACHELARD
In "The Poetics of Space" Bachelard introduces his concept of topoanlysis, which he defines as the systematic psychological studying of the sites of our intimate lives. The house, the most intimate of all spaces, "protects the daydreamer" and therefore understanding the house is for Bachelard a way to understand the soul.
Bachelrad sees the house as a sort of initial universe, asserting that "all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home" (The Poetics of Space, p.5). Bachelard proceeds to examine the home as the manifestation of the soul through the poetic image and literary images which are found in poetry.
It does not require knowledge and is the direct product of the heart and soul. This direct relation of poetry to reality, for Bachelard, intensifies the reality of perceived objects ("imagination augments the values of reality", The Poetics of Space, p.3
Home objects for Bachelard are charged with mental experience.
Driven from the former equations, I look at Fonts as a metaphorical home of our soul.
The very intimate space where our physical body may be placed in that fragile age, creates a relation and connection with our interior space- the soul.
Thomas Demand
“The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.”
Filmmaker Alexander Kluge, artist Thomas Demand, stage and costume designer Anna Viebrock and curator Udo Kittelmann.
Thomas Demand is constructing his installations out of paper.
Entrance doors, rooms, libraries, ladders, are all made up. It is a fragile, artificial reality which imitates the known and familiar with such mastery that is hardly revealed to the unsuspected eye.
This swing between truth and falseness, challenges, even more, our concept of everyday reality. Our inability to decipher the conceived and place it undoubtedly in only one category has multiple application in the world we have created today.
This duality of perception and diversity of points of views is a matter that informs my practice and this exhibition opened up new ways of expression and comprehension
He creates the space from scratch and documents it through photography or film, either through his massive room installations,photography and theatrical scenery sets
In “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.” each visitor can create its own narration in complete freedom, physically and conceptually moving through the visual imagery of the three artists. Through this, three commonly accepted ideas are questioned: the traditional separation between spectators and theatre set designs, the reduction of filmic products to mere exhibited objects and the visual isolation where artworks are usually presented within a show.
Xavier Veilhan transformed the interior space of the French Pavillion for Venice Art Biennale 2017, into a musical space in which professional musicians from all over the world will work throughout the three months' duration of the exhibition.
Rare musical instruments or hand-made ones by the artist were spread around the three corner stages he had created for each time musicians, to improvise the musical compositions, whilst being recorded in the soundproof studio- he had also constructed, with the aid of exceptional technicians and sound engineers.
Attending a musical live and ongoing performance on the grounds of this contemporary art scene, generated new ideas about where the centre of art currently is.
Incorporating music and live stage in a, theoretically, art exhibition, not only uplifted the audience's spirit with the exceptional acoustic experience they provided but shook the water to where the focus of current art practices may be. Bringing in mind expressions of art like Fluxus of the 70s ' or Situationism of Guy Debord, the participation of Xavier Veilhan appealed to me as possibly the most compelling one of the whole exhibition.
In the discussion, I had with the artist, Xavier, appeared to be a very simple and pleasant personality, who gladly showed us around the private to the public recording studio, where the recordings of every improvisation was taking place, explained how particular instruments were used in order to make sound and shared his experiences behind the scene, during the two month construction of the Pavillion into a live music studio.