Lee Patrick [Johnson]

Since the installed of my piece in the Sol Koffler Gallery I was forced to cease the evolution of the piece as a physical entity.  In order to continue to let the piece evolve I began to study the data that I collected from the piece (the film, the photographs, the evolution to the state it is currently in) as well as researched the philosophy, physicality and theory that arose from the piece’s existence.  I am interested in the quantification of the artistic practice from a materialist (scientific) approach.  My patterns of thought began by studying the Context, Science, Art, and Reaction of the my artwork.   Much of the context and reaction of my work was formed by the “relational aesthetics” (Bourriaud) quality of my work as a means of instigating dialogue, interaction and thought into the realm of ‘Social art’ (’Public art’).  Social art took me into studying Marxist theory and the Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu.   Simultaneously I was approaching means by which I could scientifically quantify the effects of art upon society or the viewer (Psychological studies, sociological studies, reactionary measurements of physiologic state — such as vital signs, and an array of other realms).  I began to perceive arts tendency to drift into the Idealistic realm of philosophy where it’s evolution becomes inhibited by the idea that there is something “otherworldly” about it.   Art should not be so easily persuaded into such a simplistic rational for it’s existence.  So here I am, attempting to bring together the critical social, scientific, and philosophical aspects of art into a philosophy of working and thinking.

Art like philosophy doesn’t have an answer.  Answers can be deducted through introspection but never proven.

So this is the proposal Ben and I submitted that won the ‘Sitings 2010: Museum as Action’ competition at the RISD Museum of Art.  Our piece will be displayed at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art from February 26 until June 8th 2010.  Not gonna lie, I’m immensely excited.  I plan to keep this post growing as we fabricate the column, get the digital projection working and finally install the piece.  There are going to be a lot of difficulties but I am confident we can pull it off flawlessly.

Project Narrative One

Our site-specific collaboration, entitled “The Column”, will exist on the back of the freestanding video wall of the Media Gallery.  Our points of reference are the two existing columns that frame our primary installation space (diagrams 1).  The piece will consist of one sculpted column that bends away from the wall and looms over the viewer, at approximately a thirty-degree angle from the wall.  The remaining space between the pre-existing columns will consist of three repeated video projections of a reference column.

Materials for this piece will address two needs, one being the fabrication of the column the other being the electronic hardware needed for projected media.  The sculpted column will be attached to the wall using a wood and metal armature that will be hidden within the column. The column form will be made of high-density foam covered in a coating of plaster then latex paint (diagram 3).  The image will come from a video projector mounted on the adjacent stairwell (diagram 2).   The materials needed for projection are a DVD projector, a DVD of digital images, hardware and cables.

On the day of installation, we will prepare the projection wall as a blank white canvas then initiate the projection.  This will dictate the placement of the pre-fabricated sculpted column, which will be placed to have two columns projected to the left and one column to the right.  To return the installation space to its original conditions we will remove the projector, all hardware and the sculpted column.  After removal of all elements will we spackle, sand, and paint any altered areas to meet specifications dictated by the museum.

Project Narrative Two

For this proposal, we researched the spaces available and chose one that inspired us and spoke to the mission statement of the Sightings 2010 Prospectus.  Site B, the backside of the Media Gallery, included two column forms and a wall.  The location is ideal for utilizing the columns to address classical concepts of art and the ephemeral nature of new media contextualized within the adjacent museum space.  Additionally the architecture of this space allows for the viewer to interact directly with the piece.  The decision to mimic the pre-existing columns both in sculptural form and digital media urges the viewer to question the material nature of contemporary art.

The projection will be high definition photographs taken of the reference column.  This element will be interactive in that the viewer will cast a shadow and alter the projected light by moving through the path of the video while viewing the piece.  The sculpted column will be altered so that the upper portion leans away from the wall and over the viewer (diagram 3).  The choice to manipulate the classical column form establishes the artifice of the piece and creates tension to visually impact the viewer.

The overall conceptual framework for this piece is based on the idea that the museum is put in a position to both provide creative outlet and also to contextualize art.  Inherently this delicate balance creates tension and dialogue in the need for granting creative freedom to the artist while curating for the museum audience.  As academics, we perceive the RISD Museum as not solely a vitrine for housing and cataloging art but also a place for the collaborative discourse between the public, the artist, and the institution.  To execute this viewpoint we made choices of media and form that allow the viewer to enter the piece as a participant and while encouraging conversation regarding the fluctuating nature of art in the museum space.

Budget:

Images:

All information regarding the competition can be found at http://www.risdmuseum.org/

Sol Koffler Exhibition (Cracked)

10/4/09

Hm, the last post wasn’t exactly correct.  There will be no “final transformation”.  That was too conceptually finite and insipid.  Recently I have been approaching art as one in the same with philosophy.  There is never an answer.  I began creating this sequence and have continued to transform it it from one form to another seeking an answer.  As I followed the track of the object back from it’s pre-meditated “next state” the question I came to is simply ‘what drives us to create?’.  So what drives me?  Since my time studying psychology and working in Brooklyn I’ve been fascinated in studying man (specifically psychologically) through art.  The exact scope of all of this is still uncertain.  I just see this piece as a beginning.  The beginning of another question.

I have decided that this piece will never be shown in another venue without another transformation.  That could be done by myself, the curators of the exhibition, another artist, the public, or the environment.  For the next exhibition at Sol Koffler I am going to let gravity and color affect the object.  As street art-colored paint drops from blank metal cans the cold concrete/mixed media surface will slowly be masked.  This coating and color manipulation will hopefully allow the sculpture to continue to live in front of the viewer.  All the while the paint is falling through the pulse of the object: the ever-changing projected media frenzy.  Hopefully this idea will keep my work from the static death I feel so much of my past work has suffered.  I am all right with my work not being a commodity but sharing more attributes of a living organism.

Also, something I chose to incorporate is a video camera within in the space of a block I removed.  This allow for viewer interaction (whether chosen or not) as well as the accumulation of new material spawned from the object itself.  Not sure what that will be used for, but it should be interesting media.

10/29/09

This is my work at midterms.  The alteration and transformation of my work continues.  I sense this piece slowly being fuly changed from object to virtual/digital medias.  The final transformation will occur (all things considered) the night of ‘Cracked’, the RISD ceramics graduate exhibition on November 12th.

You tube isn’t letting the video work yet… coming momentarily… Fucking Youtube

I have a fixation with process and transference/ transformation of material from one state to another.  I projected my last video of myself installing/ deinstalling a sculpture onto a canvas and painted the moving projection.  I am simply amassing new material so that I can continuously re-utilize it.

I decided to let go of all emotional and physical attachment to the object-based nature of my work and approach it from the angle of performance, movement, form and existence.  I have been trying to approach the formal transformation of my dimensional work more the way I approach my paintings and drawings: based on gesture, form, color and composition.  I am working on neglecting the object completely so that the piece becomes about imagery, form, and atmosphere (a portrait of sorts -- See Robert Wilson).  I’m interested in myself becoming part of the piece but for my pieces I neglected any sort of emotion so that the focus was more on the composition and form.  This turned out to be much more difficult than I thought seeing that I ‘transitioned’ more or less every object I’ve created in the past three months into new forms: digital video, photographs, and new construction elements.  I was a compelling experiment upon myself as an artist to see how I reacted to the neglect, seeming destruction and alteration of my ideas.  I want to begin to utilize more color/video filtration, projection, viewer digital media interaction and post-production alteration to explore the realms in which my previous work has been neglected.

I see this very much as a starting point for a new phase in my work.  I am interest in using the printed photographs of the installation as the raw elements for further two-dimensional and three dimensional work.  As far as cinematography and filming are concerned I am interested in creating a much more elaborate and focused set based on my drawings, ideas and concepts.  In the context of the objects I am not as interested in physically deconstructing my work in further pieces as much as transitioning it.  I am not sure exactly how I am going to approach this but I am interested in personification/portraiture of an object and that could be a direction to take.  Regardless of the aesthetic choices I want to push my work into collaborations, events (”happenings”), social/public art or just random encounters.  I will be approaching my ideas and work with no inhibitions what-so-ever just to see what happens (that isn’t really too far of a stretch for me).  Experimentation is critical right now.  Back to work.

Form and object (Video I uploaded to Youtube)

Peers:

Eli Simon: http://pyroplasticdeformation.blogspot.com/

Ben Peterson: http://www.benpeterson.com/

Art Johnson: http://www.artjohnson.net/

School:

RISD Ceramics: http://risdceramics.blogspot.com/

This is what I am doing right now.  I am sick of over-analyzing my artwork.  I want to fabricate and dictate the function, concept, motivation, composition, color schemes, and forms through progression, process, intuition and compulsion.  I am bored with the way my sculpture has been photographed, installed, shipped, lit, utilized, experienced, viewed, grounded, static, pragmatic, forced, and over-analyzed.  I am attempting to divorce myself from my medical background and approach everything in new ways.  Through performance, aesthetics, concepts, colors, audience, site specificity, collaboration, context and interaction I hope to find something new that excites me.  I’ve currently been casting my face in multiple materials, making molds, making functional pottery, sculpting figures, making toys, playing with light, experimenting with plastics, studying public art, studying color theory, studying psychology and the arts, constructing building blocks/ non-predestined construction elements, glazing kiln furniture together, extruding forms/shapes, constructing wood mountings, breaking things and re-assembling them and all the while housing the projects together in a way that allows me to see my thought progression not as a multitude of objects but as a evolving thought.  I just know I must continue to fabricate  every angle I can, as fast as I can, and as hard as I can in order to deconstruct the plethora of metaphorical barriers ahead of me.  So yeah… I guess I’ll see where the combination of everything takes me.

“Like so many Americans, She was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.  [I mentally replaced 'gift shops' with Art galleries].

“The less memory is experienced from the inside the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs” -Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History.  [I find this interesting as it refers to public art, specifically monuments in Germany]

“But the most important reason for the study of aesthetics is that it affirms psychology’s commitment to the study of experience.  Dewey (1934) maintained that out experience of art was a good place to begin to the study of human experience.  Langfeld (1920) considered the experience of beaury to be one of the most ‘Useful’ and ‘fundamental’ of man’s experiences.  James (1890) discussed aesthetics alongside the religious experience.  The critic Edman (1928) proposed that exposure to the arts clarified, enriched, intensified and interpreted human experience.  Many conjectured that the creative experience of the artist may be comparable to the aesthetic experience of the observer of art (which may be extended to include the discovery of the scientist being paralleled by the insights of the problem-solver).  Thus the study of aesthetic exerience- in the way the study of art has facilitated the study of perception (Hochberg 1978)-  may assist in an understanding of experience in general.” -Excerpt regarding Aesthetic Experience from Psychology and The Arts, David O’Hare (1981).