The first video I watched was about Brian Jungen in which he was making two-sided prints of newspaper clippings that offensively depicted native Americans and promoted western society. I found this video interesting because of how simple but genius his idea is and how it has such a profound message behind such an everyday item. The second video I watched was about Do Ho Suh and how he covered his entire apartment in paper and rubbed colored pencils over it all. I liked his work a lot because of how unreal his bodies of work are and I like the concept behind the color and rubbing of the pencil showing love for his space. Another video I watched was about David Brooks and how his perspective on ancient art has changed the way he lives his life. I really enjoyed how he tied his skateboarding into his interest in art and how it led him to make art of his own. His piece Preserved Forest is a group of trees he planted inside and covered in concrete. The way that the trees continue to grow through the concrete was really amazing to me and I really liked the way he viewed his pieces.
Archives for March 2022
Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment, Luong Vu
As I researched several contemporary artists and their interviews, I am particularly interested in the work and ideas of Do Ho Suh and Kiki Smith. For Do Ho Suh, I feel related to how he uses home and identity as the primary source of inspiration for his sculpture work. Viewers can acquire a better understanding of the Korean culture through some of his pieces like High School Uni-form (1997), in which he shows the Korean uniform style and the uniformity imposed on high school students in Seoul, or Some/One (2005), which is a reminiscence of his time serving in the military as an obligation for every Korean man. I’m also interested in how he incorporates both Western and Korean traditional architectural styles into his sculpture work to represent his migration to the US. That is an idea that I have always wanted to explore, and I think I can learn a lot from his methods of conveying cultures and identity. For Kiki Smith, I have gained a closer insight into her process of creating human figures and features. I’m interested in learning about her different techniques of casting human bodies, from making molds to carving out of wax. I think it will be a challenge to be able to recreate detailed, human-like features like her arts. These concepts and skills are all something that I want to explore and apply to my future works.
Art21 Assignment – Reilly Babcock
I watched five interviews of five different contemporary artists: Ai WeiWei in “Change” (17 minutes), Ursula von Rydingsvard in “Ecology” (13 minutes), Mark Dion in “Ecology” (14 minutes), Pepon Osorio in “Place” (12 minutes), and Marela Zacarías’s Great Expectations (7 minutes). Each artist offered different perspectives and processes in creating art. While there can be some overlap in terms of emotional conviction through pieces, each of the artists were unique in their approach to art and their experiences. During Ai WeiWei’s imprisonment, his assistants were interviewed. They spoke of how he works in tandem with everyone on his team. They said his offers them creative freedom and makes a point to work directly with those who work for him. He also allows different types of people from different backgrounds to be involved in his process of creation. Ai WeiWei believes that art is for everyone, and he definitely conveys this in his process. It is also important to note that he conveys political activism through his art because he does not believe in staying quiet. Ursula von Rydingsvard had a very unique approach to her work. She does not believe in prep work when creating her pieces. She does not make realized sketches or models; she jumps right into her vision. Her work is very labor intensive and repetitive. This is very different than how I have been taught to create art my whole life. I felt a connection to Mark Dion because of his love for stuff and things. He often fins his inspiration for a concept through found objects or anything he has bought from a flea market. He incorporates so much history through his pieces. His work reminded me of our mold making project where we found an object and created a story or message through it. The most interesting part from Pepon Osorio’s interview was his idea of visiting artwork. In his work, he often draws form his experiences through life, especially growing up. He remembers when a religious artifact came to his town to visit, which is a common thing for religious relics to visit different places so different people can experience it. He put this concept into his pieces. He would take his piece from one house to another for it to stay with different people. Lastly, Marela Zacarías put a lot of research and prep work behind her pieces. It was a major part of the creation of her artwork. This reminded me of the processes we do in class to create concepts for our work and guide or creation process.
Jingyi Zhou – Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment
I watched several videos from Lynn Hershman Leeson. The first impression I had with Lynn is that she as a woman tried to break the stereotypes of male-artist-dominance in the art world. She talked about her work was rejected because “Women artists didn’t make a good investment.”, and UCLA in the 70s closed her exhibition because they thought media was not officially art. This experience of rejection gave her courage and motivation to create more rick bodies of work.
Then I discovered that Lynn often uses multidisciplinary mediums in her work, such as sound, sculpture, painting, etc. Some of them are interactive, creating links between the audiences and artwork, or even between museums. She explores the roles that technology, media, and artifice play in society. Like she said, she wishes to “Confronts where we are in the society”.
For me, an interesting yet somewhat confusing work is her performance art in which she dressed up as Roberta, a fictious character that even had her own bank account and credit card. Roberta existed from 1972 to 1979. She is based in a hotel, and Lynn generated a scene that reflects certain elements from the real world. Roberta even posted roommate ads on local newspaper. I’m a bit confused with this interacting with the actual world part, because I think this might create confusion and inconvenience for the people who actually wish to find a roommate and devote some resources and attention to Roberta. However, this is quite mind-opening and creative.
Danielle Porter Art21 Assignment
I watched videos for two different artists, Diana Al-Hadid and Katharina Grosse. When watching Al-Hadid’s videos, I was impressed by the way she made delicate structures, which seem almost too fragile to stay together, hang off the ground. The liquid-like forms in her work are really fascinating to me. She also mentioned that she isn’t attempting to explain something to the viewer with her work, rather that she is creating something she later finds interesting that began as an idea that didn’t interest her.
Grosse’s work is very abstract sculptural forms with bright colors. In the videos I watched, she indicates that she doesn’t specifically identify as a sculptor or a painter, because she feels the fusion of the two elements is the only way her work can actually exist in the world. I think this is a great, open-minded approach to art, in that it keeps you from restricting yourself in one way or another by giving yourself a specific title.
Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment
Many of the videos that I watched were related to the Artist’s childhood and also involved more than just sculpting. Many of the artists used film making or engineering to produce their works and to make it so that people could physically interact with their works. I found it interesting that a lot of the videos I watched displayed art that I found weird or made me uncomfortable. This wasn’t because anything about the art itself was weird but more because of how the art was being made ad the approach the artists would take to produce the final piece. It seemed like a lot of the work that I saw was designed to make the viewer slightly uncomfortable either by physically being different than the norm or by making fun of the it.
Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment
For this assignment I watch videos on Marela Zacarias, Kara Walker, and Sarah Sze. Off the bat, I really like all of these artists’ works because they are very personal to them and are in some way a reflection of how they view themselves, their history, and the world around them. What I really liked about Marela Zacarias’s work was that it included both the organic form in the shape of the sculpture itself and geometric shapes painted on. I would find such tedious painting in tight crevices very frustrating but she makes it look beautiful and effortless. Kara Walker’s work was very powerful because a lot of it has to do with taking back her identity as a black woman and black history in the United States. What I found super interesting was that she made sugar sculptures in an old sugar factory that would melt over time and be demolished with the building at the end of the show. Out of the three, Sarah Sze’s work was my least favorite because it seemed more like putting objects together in an organized chaos rather than creating something original but it was still super fascinating to hear about how she views the world.
Haley Griffin Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment
First, I watched Wolfgang Laib’s interview, where the artist used materials I would have never thought to use (pollen, beeswax, rice, and milk-stone). Themes within the works included life, process, and beauty. Laib’s work, as a whole related to the artist’s experiences. After this, I looked at Iñigo Manglano’s interview, where the main focus of the work was based on architecture. Pieces shown ranged from full-scale sculpture to more immersive pieces. Out of these works, I enjoyed the show that was accompanied by a massively large scale jack with a missile end as well as an umbrella. These complex pieces and processes shown to scale up these objects were also really intriguing. I then looked at Ursula Von Rydingsvard’s interviews regarding Ona, the massive bronze scale piece. I enjoyed this piece because the process of melting and painting the bronze was discussed. Lastly, I looked at Pepon Osorio’s interview. Works highlighted looked at themes such as contradiction, displacement, renewal, and stories. I enjoyed these works because items were intentionally placed yet appeared to be chaotic. These pieces offered an interesting perspective on how to construct works. Overall, all artists’ works were very captivating and expanded my knowledge of Contemporary sculpture.
Michael Duncan Art21 Assignment
After watching various videos on contemporary artists, I was able to build a better understanding of contemporary art and a larger appreciation regarding its value. In the past, I have felt contemporary art often was similar to “beating a dead horse”. In other words, I have felt many pieces really are just elaborate unnecessary theatrics that use third-level topics as an excuse for their existence. Some of these videos did not change my mind on this, I felt like they were honestly products of poor craftsmanship, and suffered from allowing various components of them to be accepted as “good enough.” However, two videos, in particular, helped change my point of view on the point of contemporary art. The one video opened my eyes to how contemporary art can be used as a way to formulate a group of people in a manner that made it very easy for them to break social barriers and connect and interact as immediately. This usage really impressed me, since creating scenarios like this in the absence of alcohol or drugs is very difficult and it amazed me how well art contended in doing so. The second concept that really increased my appreciation for the value of contemporary art was how the creation of this art can reconstitute an experience that would have otherwise been lost to history. This idea is very powerful to me because I believe it is very important to learn from our past and without a record of our past we have nothing to improve off of.
Angela Meckley, Art21 Contemporary Artist Assignment
For this assignment, I watched several contemporary artist interviews but the ones that stood out to me the most were Mika Rottenberg, and Cai Guo-Qiang. Mika Rottenberg is a video artist/sculptor who uses films to portray issues/ideas. I watched an interesting interview of Rottenberg talking about one of her films titled Cosmic Generator. This work presents the idea behind the food market especially on the U.S-Mexico border. The interview begins with a clip of her film, but then leads into Rottenberg explaining/talking about the work. The films are intriguing as they focus mainly on the Chinese food market. By focusing on an object as simple as food, Rottenberg explores how some objects (food) can circle the world, but other objects (people, animals, etc.) cannot. I think the ideas she presents connect with distance and time for travel, and how that can vary drastically between items across the world. In this work she emphasizes the use of tunnels that are built sculpturally. The tunnels make reference to the border of Mexico. She designs these tunnels so that people can fit through them during the films, and it makes me wonder what her process was when sculpting them. In the interview Rottenberg talks about how this work is not supposed to be political, but I find that I can see it from a political standpoint as well.
Cai Guo-Qiang is a unique artist who makes art out of explosives as well as other media. He reflects a lot of his Chinese heritage into his artwork, while also making it relevant to where he lives now, New York. I thought it was amazing that Guo-Qiang designed a firework display for the Beijing Olympics. I had never thought of firework as an artform/sculptural art form before viewing his work. One idea behind his work that I think is interesting is the way in which he reflects on humanity. Humans have caused a lot of violence, such as explosion events, which Guo-Qiang accurately portrays. Since he currently lives in New York, he sees himself right in the center of a lot of political/violent human acts, which informs his work. I enjoy the fact that although some of his works showcase negative human impacts, he does it with grace and dignity. The works are informative but also beautiful and can allow healing for those who view them.
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