Lectures sounds like a not so fun word doesn’t it? The one thing I really love about art school is the opportunity to see work from prominent artists work (there is a gallery space in the main building of my school, changed about every month or two to show off widely known artists), and get the opportunity to sit in an audience as they talk about their work, their experience and answer questions.
I admit, I don’t go to as many lectures as I should, I usually have to be pushed into going by having to write a response for a class or two. But in the end, I always love the experience of listening.
Earlier this year, the artist Luis Gonzalez Palma had a gallery show at AIB and at the end of the show he had an artist lecture. I have to say his work is very intriguing however, hard to understand until you hear his words and thoughts on the images. The lecture was very informative, however he spoke Spanish and I think a few things got lost in translation, sadly. (His website is also in Spanish)
With almost every series/project he spoke of experiences. Experiences of life, pain, time, of the invisible, experiences that are physically not visible, the experience of ones own self and of ones thoughts. I think it is amazing how deeply Palma must know himself and be able to recognize these experiences as well as the relationships he has with others to put those emotions and life events so deeply and heavily into his work. I think he is something that is inspiring to me, the depth of his work, the dedication and the ideas behind all of his images. A lot of his images differ in appearance and general idea but I think the specific theme is that of experiences, and I think it’s inspiring to me to see a body of work that is that full of life and thought by the artist.
I think we need Palma’s words to fully understand and experience his work as he wants us to. When I looked at his work at the gallery, I thought it was beautiful imagery but I didn’t fully comprehend the complexity of it all, of the in depth experiences and relationships and the connection to religion that Palma showed us was there during his lecture. Going to this lecture made me realize the importance of an artist talking about their own work and explaining it. Many of my teachers say that the image should speak for itself, it shouldn’t need the artist there to tell you want it means. Sometimes that’s true, but with this work and with others I’ve seen, it is beautiful and becomes more amazing the more we learn.
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Last night, I attended a lecture by Jean Shin. I also have to write a response for a class and don’t have things thought out as well about her work as about Palma’s work above but I want to talk briefly and show some of her work.
Jean Shin works with installations mainly. The first project she talked about was Penumbra.
For this project, she took all the broken umbrellas she could find in New York and sewed them all together and then strung them from trees in the park. With this project she talked about how, as an installation artist working often in site specific locations or working on the project in her studio before taking it to it’s location, there is always the unknown. The unexpected results that happen that you couldn’t even think of.
She showed us the above image as an example. The light going through the umbrellas and casting shadows and light specks on the ground wasn’t something she had anticipated or expected but it was just as beautiful and meaningful as the actual piece.
Here is part of the artist statement featured on her website:
“My work speaks of the optimism inherent in giving new form to life’s leftovers. In my sculptures and large-scale installations, I seek to recall an object’s past, as well as suggest its greater connection to our collective memories, desires and failures.
My inventory of everyday materials includes broken umbrellas, donated clothing, losing lottery tickets, emptied wine bottles and old computer keycaps. These humble remnants, often forgotten and no longer “useful”, retain the traces of their former lives. After accumulating and deconstructing hundreds—sometimes even thousands—of these cast-offs, I generate a seemingly homogenous construction that in turn emphasizes the individuality and variety among apparently indistinct objects. As the uniformity of the collection falls away, the accumulation of ephemera reveals new meanings and associations.
The focus shifts constantly in my installations between individual and group identity, the single unit and the larger whole, the intimate and the excessive. My elaborate work-process mirrors these dualities, as objects of mass production and consumerism are transformed through intense handmade labor.”
I think my favorite project she showed was one titled “Unraveling”
From her website:
“A site-specific installation, Unraveling visualizes the web of interrelationships among members of the Asian American arts community. The artist unravels sweaters that have been donated by individuals in each exhibition city and then reassembles the brightly colored yarns into a dynamic installation that maps this dense social network. The name of each participant is silkscreened onto a label that is sewn onto the edge of the owner’s deconstructed sweater. “
She told us that this project moved to several different museums, and with each new location, new sweaters and new connections were added to the piece. During most of her lecture she talked about the unexpected, the evolution a project takes from initial idea, to working in the studio to putting it together on location and I thought this piece really embodied that whole idea. It evolved on its own because of the nature of the piece, it was meant to evolve as people evolve and as time passes.
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The next artist lecture I plan to go to is for Alessandra Sanguinetti, she currently has a gallery show up at AIB and her talk is on April 20th. (Let me know if you’ll be in Boston and want to go, it’s free and open to the public, I can give you the details)
(PS- just curious, did you enjoy this post? Is it something I should do more of…featuring famous artists/their work and what I think about their work?)
