Week 7 - Downtown Gallery Visits

The rain held off and this week we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery.

We looked at Patrick Faigenbaum's photographs, and considered his use of portraiture, still life, and landscape in relationship to similar genres found within painting.  Our conversations touched on the relationship between two different mediums, pointing to aspects of art history and the cinematic frame.

Afterward, we took a look at Art Spiegelman's work upstairs, to consider his working process and the development of Maus. 

Discussions circulated around the process of editing, and the significance in his choice of animals for different groups of people (mice, cats, frogs etc).

We ended our fieldtrip at the Contemporary Art Gallery, and helped ourselves to Ciprian Muresan's large "bouncing ball" / candy dispenser, part of his "Recycled Playground" solo exhibition.

For those of you who missed this trip, I recommend going down to take a look.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Theaters

Here is a link to the work I mentioned last week- Photographs of theaters where the exposure is the entire duration of the movie, leaving a blank, bright screen. http://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/theater.html

Our art class is almost as cool as this art class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf6DpIKgtJ0

Week 6 - Reconsidering the Sketchbook

Looking at the sketchbooks of other artists gives great insight into their thinking process and the influences that guide their decisions.

Sketchbooks of New York artist, Jimbo Blachly.

The sketchbook does not have to take the form of an actual book - we can also think of the "sketchbook" as a way of collecting ideas, a tool or a means to link concepts together. This could be any form of archive, a collection of photographs, writings, as well as physical sketches on paper.

Jimbo Blachly, About 82 Springs (detail), 2002.

 Sketches or smaller drawings can also become the finished work.  The presentation of several small images have great impact when viewed in mass.

Barry McGee at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Artists have also looked at the book as a means of art-making in and of itself.  The act of cutting up books or inserting works into them can be seen as an act of transgression.  However, it can also be a creative endeavor, asking significant questions like what are the boundaries of authorship, property, and packaged knowledge?

Paul de Guzman

Ciprian Mureşan

Working through, in, and around the book as one of many ways to communicate our ideas:

Gabriel Moreno (artist research)

Gabriel Moreno

Cover of Illustration Now (2012)

New Ibiza (2010)

El Pays Semanal (2012)

Gabriel Moreno was born in Baena, Spain in 1973. He lives and works in Madrid. Most of his work is drawn initially with only pen and ink; he sometimes adds colours using markers or watercolour, and often completes his work in photoshop. Gabriel Moreno seems drawn to the female figure, sensuality, and likes to make his images dramatic in some way. A trademark of his is to have colourful 'tattoos' of other people or animals on the bodies of his main figure. I really like his work because it's so detailed and interesting, and because there are so many layers to his pieces.

Week 5 - Curiosity with Babak Golkar

Curiosity - it is a simple word that also conveys a large aspect of creativity integral to art making.
In our workshop with artist Babak Golkar, we explored the meaning of this word through discussion and considered several artists, including Francis Alÿs.

Here, in "Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing"
Alÿs takes curiosity to the streets by pushing a block of ice through Mexico city; the length of the performance is determined by the time it takes the ice to melt (approximately 9 hours in this instance).  Through this simple everyday gesture,  he expands our understanding of those objects and the spaces they occupy. 

Curiosity also allows us to dissolve the categories we artificially set-up around definitions of art. We spoke about drawing as an act of mark making, not limited to pencil on paper.  As Babak spoke, we were encouraged to doodle and free associate.

From these drawings we focused on two ideas of our choice (two things we were curious about) which we then translated into clay.  The body, imprinted in the clay, could also be seen as a form of "drawing," as a record of an action.

Thank you to Babak and everyone for a stimulating conversation.