Flex Credit week 10: True meaning of Multiples

During the final week of Art class, we had one last but not least presenter to help us understand contemporary media. Brian Gillis, a contemporary artist who works with multiples, began his lecture by asking us “what is a multiple?” I wondered about the question because that was around the time when I strolled into class but he answered his question by reading a article by Linda Albright-Tomb; a 3- dimensional object that is intended to exist not as a unique work of art, but as a special edition original. That was a very cool way of looking at it. Makes you wonder what kind of artist would purposely create something that is not meant to be unique. One artist that Brian showed the class that stood out to me was Marcel Duchamp his whole work revolved around ready-mades. Marcel Duchamp had a saying where he said, “one is unique, two is a pair, and three is many, to make three is to mass-produce.” Mr. Duchamp is known as the creator of the Bicycle Wheel, the Bottle Rack, and the Fountain; all of which are simple but unique, and slight controversial pieces of art. Duchamp based his work on the idea being more important than the actual base of the art, which why I found it to be way controversial to be able to sign a mere normal urinal. Brian continued with his definitions of a multiple which there were many; he even included the Webster’s definition of what is a multiple. I was a little confused by the frequent questions of “what is a multiple?’

Gabriel Orozco is an artist where curiosity always gets the best in him. He once went into a super market and rearranged a bunch of objects. A little weird and many people can misinterpret that for being a jokester but he was able to take multiples such as food items and cat food and place them in weird odd spots like on top of watermelons. This might not have been intended to exist as art, but to many; it does. One piece that he created was the ping pond table that really intrigued me. This piece of artwork really gave you the urge to want to play and interact with it. I like how Gabriel took something that was mass-produced and made it unique enough to exist as art. Last but not least was Justin Novak; he created the 21^st century bunny. A small foot tall ceramic bunny with well placed designs on it. The bunnies are created so delicately that the cracks in the design almost create tension, like you’re afraid of breaking such an interesting work of art. By mass-producing these objects he turned them into multiples, just like Brian described, multiple bunnies exist and there are more than one of them. All the artist this week have all had curiosity and how Brian was saying what brings them all together is the fact that they can take an object and make it unique enough to be able to make it art. Brian said that the presentation was mostly a repetition of “what is a Multiple?” as a strategy to better understand the meaning of a multiple. 

Flex credit: The numbers that Slapped my face

Hello my fellow friends my topic for my blog today will be about an interesting artist named Chris Jordan. I really don’t know much about Chris Jordan except that he is a Seattle based artist and specializes in depicting large-scale pieces that represent green movement ideas. I first heard of Chris Jordan when I found out there was an exhibition in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art here on the Oregon campus; which I have never been too till than. I really didn’t know what to expect I never heard off Chris Jordan at the time and I had no idea the exhibition I was going to see was going to make an impact on me for probably the rest of my life. I was simply blown away. As I started up the stairs I saw a picture which, in my mind I was thinking to myself “oh Big Whoop a imitations picture of Van Gough or some other artist ” but as I got closer and closer I saw there was much more than the eye can see. I got so close to the picture and made out thousands of cans all different brands and I was astonished but I still was in question about the meaning of the art piece. As I read the writing that explained the piece, my Jaw dropped. 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the U.S every thirty seconds. I was shocked by that number, I couldn’t believe that much waste, that much consumption was happening EVERY THIRTY SECONDS; and that was my slap to the face welcoming of the Chris Jordan Exhibition.

         After I gathered myself and was finished analyzing Cans Seurat, I started walking towards the next piece that would catch my eye. I headed towards a piece that was funny colored from 20 feet away, immediately it caught my eye and as I got closer and closer. About 8 feet away I saw that it was made out of little tiny different colored squares from the closer I got, the easier u can distinguish the squares and as soon as your about inches away from the art piece you realize that those are shipping containers some same colored ones some different colored ones. Simply amazing I loved seeing the art piece from 20 ft away to moving as close as 5 inches away. Something right out of a dream, and the powerful message it sent “38,000 shipping containers the number processed through American ports every 12 hours. The artwork itself makes you feel like a single particle in this planet, I mean the idea of so many shipping containers and all the things that get exported in and out of the country, and in only 12 hours. This piece was by far one of my favorites out of the Chris Jordan collection, not only because it reminded me of home growing up Inglewood CA next to the Los Angeles port. One that really touched me on a personal level was the Skull with Cigarette the title is self-explanatory but for me having a grandfather that died with lung cancer it really impacted me. For the piece is a Van Gogh painting from far away but once you get a close up of the picture you see it depicts 200,000 packs of different name brand cigarettes, equal to the Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months. Seeing this painting gives me goose bumps from the moment you lay your eyes on it from far away you can sense the eerie feeling of death and once you get closer you can see the representation Chris is trying to perceive that every pack of cigarettes is the equal to a human life.

         What Chris Jordan did with his exhibit is open the eyes of people and show them the actual facts in a visual way. He shows that the world has to make a change I came out this exhibit a better person. Knowing the facts of incarcerations in America the amount of cups used in airlines was an eye opener to recycle more to change our lifestyle, if society doesn’t change we don’t have a future.

The Sculpture experiences

This week for our guest speaker we had Amanda Wojick, we learned about sculptures in her lecture, about nine women sculptures, Amanda is a professor of sculptures here at the University of Oregon, she gave us a presentation on understanding contemporary media. Amanda choose specifically Women artist.   It was evident that the art industry is male dominated and it is hard for women to be respected in this industry. Amanda Wojick gave respect to nine women sculptors was very interesting.  The first featured artist was Louise Bourgeois, whose work was influenced by traumatic and vulnerable personal experiences that she went through. Louise Bourgeois believed that art still exists because artists are forever finding new ways to express themselves.  I also found her usage of materials correlated perfectly with the message that she tried to convey due to all her experiences, and what she’s been through, she only used domestic items. The second artist who was one of my personal favorites was Meret Oppenheim, a woman who used her art to support the women’s movement.  Her usage of heels tied up to look like food is a play on women being stereotyped to do domestic tasks, such as cooking. Than we moved on to Yayoi Kussama she used her hallucinations as her influence in her work.  She was known for her usage of repetition and uniformity.  In her installation of matching dress, boat, and background, was designed to eliminate the separation between the body and the material; which I found to be really unique in a way she would go that route explaining the hallucinations. Although there were various artists in Amanda’s presentation those are the ones that stood out to me the most.

For this week’s reading I read “Just looking” and the work of the two featured artist Richard Serra and Louise Bourgeois, the theme seemed to be about the experience of viewing sculptures and analyzing them. In the reading the main topic was as human beings do we mostly just look at things, but do we take the image in and try to make sense of it? This reading relates to sculptures in a very weird way that we do not just view these sculptures, but we take them in and try to develop a reasoning of why sculptures were made the way they are. The reading goes in depth with the Giant spiders installations and how it should be looked at and experienced in person to have to have the full effect of the piece; because a picture of these installations would not do the piece justice, her audience must experience these beautiful works of art in person. In relation to the presentation these artist and reading relate to each other because sculptures are made to be experiences, and the article made a point that as human beings we never just look at objects we look for meanings. I guess that what separates us from animals.

week 8 Reproduction of Crafts and Dreamcatchers FOR SALE

 

This week in Art class our guest speaker was Anya Kivarkis, a professor here at the University of Oregon. Her are of expertise was about crafts and methods of production. She first began the presentation talking about handmade reproductions of originals. The original is genuine and authentic while the reproduction is just an imitation, a copy and a fake. She went on by explaining the reproduction is a failure; it’s vulnerable because of its imperfection, and sometimes even completely dysfunctional or useless. The reason why they even make a reproduction is because in some cases the reason might be to make an expensive and popular product more available to the general consumer. Ms Kivakis also gave us an example of Wim Delvoye a craftsman who reproduced a beautiful marble floor entirely out of deli meat, which was somewhat interesting but not long lasting. Another reason artist reproduce handmade reproductions is to make a point. We also learned about Myra Mimlitsch-gray, an artist who duplicated a gorgeous ceramic teapot and also made a box to fit around it with a slit for the handle, and two holes; one to pour tea into the teapot and another to pour it out at the spout. The idea of it was looking Vs using. The teapot still worked and it was exactly as the original but a wooden box was hiding it’s beauty.

         We later talked about regular reproductions and historical changes. Anya told us that the reproduction is not only of lesser value but it sometimes even lowers the value of the original piece. We also learned about Richard Neilpovich, who mass-produces sets of silverware in which each piece was different from the other. What he’s trying to prove is that normal mass production allows no mistakes to be made which is dehumanizing; humans make mistakes so why not make mistakes.

         Our reading for this week was about John Feodorov. An artist that is part Native American and well aware of the stereotypes of his own heritage. He does not agree with ideas of selling spirituality because owning an object gives someone power over that object. He believes spirituality should be something that is not easily acquired in a materialistic way. He in a way makes fun of western culture by over exaggerating how crazy it is. He stresses the fact that people are buying things that should not be bought, he says a person can buy a million totem poles and dream catchers but you can never buy spirituality and happiness, kind of cliché but I totally agree with it. John says in the reading these are things that you don’t have to think about doing it just comes naturally.

  

Week 7 Environmental Art & Death Reading

 

This week we learned about the connection between environmental art and humans. There has always been a gap between humans and nature that’s around them. Most people when they think of environmental art they think of landscapes and forests but through this lecture this week I have learned that it is much more than that. Our presenter for this week was Carla Bengston, she came into our class and told us that she was a painter at first but as she went on with her lecture she never mentioned anything about her paintings. Instead she talked to us about how we feel, and reacted with nature based art. We also discussed the relation humans have with starring at pieces of nature-based art, and she also ended up asking us how we felt towards the pieces. We looked at artist like DeMaria and Daniel Buren; and what I liked about them is how they physically used themselves with nature to create art. There’s a difference between painting a picture of landscape but to use the environment to paint the picture is incredible. When I say use the environment I mean the artist shaping the movements by simply molding them little by little and using the ground as a canvas was really fascinating. The Earth room I must admit is personally one of my favorites from the presentation, the idea of putting “earth” inside a modern building was quite amusing and out of the ordinary, I liked it because it broke the rules and was edgy.

            We also read about Kiki Smith, we got a first look at her ideas about art. One thing that really stuck to me was a quote she said, “Art is just a way to think”. Which if you think about it, it really makes a lot of sense art is the way the artist thinks and visualizes life. I really enjoyed how she was explaining how art was to her in her point of view. Her response in the video towards re doing a sculpture was priceless, how she refused to not start over but keep going at the wax sculpture. She seems a little un-normal with her dead animal gallery but isn’t that what art is, being out of the ordinary. 

            The Death reading that Ty assigned to us was really self-explanatory, I mean the title says it all and during class Ty even warned us that it was going to be one of the hardest readings you will do. So this week we read from Roland Barthes “Death of the Author”.  The reading was horrible and I’ll admit it I skimmed through it and I’ll also admit I didn’t finish it. But I did take a couple things from it I tried to make sure that this assigned reading benefited me in some way. What really helped was the next day after the reading in class Ty showed the class a picture of a man and his dog and asked the class what does it make you feel? After listening to peoples responses I finally got it; it became obvious and Ty explained it to us to that the picture had a life of its own and we can respond to it in any fashion we wanted. In the reading there was a constant artist to viewer debate on what the work represented. In the reading they had this saying of letting go of your art and it will build a life of its own. When you connect all the readings, the presentation, the movies and, the lectures it all makes sense(almost like Inception).

Digital Arts and Zombies

This week in Contemporary Art class we learned about the digital Arts today. In today’s world technology has become an important part of our lifestyles. A new world of art has been growing and art has been emerging from new technological places.  Our guest speaker, John Park gave a presentation to our class about the new world of digital arts. John went into great length of detail discussing how digital technology has come a long way. John told us about our technology and how advanced it has come since the first computer. Now all technology plays a major role in everyday life and artist have been able to take advantage of this technology and come up and experiment with thoughts and new ideas, and most importantly interact with the audience especially with the new tools that are available to an artist these days. John also went into detail about the problems there are with frequent use of technology, since the styles and trends of new software or upgrades are constantly changing and people get persuaded to always buy the newest and latest gadget out. John also explained how people are dependent with electronics therefore their desires become dependent as well for example such as craigslist.com and eharmony.com websites where you can shop and find love without leaving your seat. By relying on technology to do everything for us people are becoming dehumanized and basically turning into “mindless zombies”. John explained the importance and benefit of finding the art in technology. John showed us the problem with most people is that society compares the old technology with new, he really stressed the fact that digital effects are a tool and should be treated like any other paintbrush or pencil. John also went on to show us some digital media such as Chunky Move Dance Company a mix of interpretive dance with abstract animation. With providing and combining the two art forms to making something new is simply revolutionary. Visual allows the viewers in the audience to experience and visualize the art form in a specific way the way the artist intended it to be.

 But that doesn’t compare to my favorite video, the Graffiti Research lab. The video is a documentary about special technology in these glasses .It is a pair of glasses that allows you to draw with your eyes by shining a very small amount of infra red light into your eye. A man who was a street artist became diagnosed with Logarakis Disease and lost all movement in his body, but his brain is still active. So what the camera allows you to do is  to control all the drawing with your eye it is very neat and when John showed us I was simply amazed. It really is incredible that were in a age of technology were even a paralyzed artist can still fulfill there visions.

We also read about David Byrne and his work Playing the Building; First look at his work was a huge space with piano in the center and wires all going in many directions. When I first started reading about a guy actually playing the piano I was in awe, Hitting a key in the piano so a noise comes out in a part of the building if that’s not creative then I don’t know what is. I felt that David Byrne was a genius artist for creating the Piano-Building but when it all comes out to it the person playing the Piano-Building at the moment and creating synchronized sounds is the artist then.

This week was very insightful and I enjoyed our guest speaker John Park and the reading that we did with David Byrne hopefully next week we have a speaker just as if not better.

week 5 Photography and Up close with Flowers

This weeks guest lecturer was Craig Hickman, a photographer, multimedia designer and computer scientist who works here at Oregon. His presentation had many other photographers work and focused on the details that their work consisted of. Mr. Hickman started in high school doing photography work, which I found pretty interesting. To be able to find something you like and last you a lifetime at an early age is simply amazing. What I find interesting about photography, unlike other types of art form, its exactly what the artist sees. I have a friend that graduated from Brook’s institute of Photography and she puts so much time and thought in every picture she ever snaps and has to know why that angle, and why exactly that picture it can get pretty intense. It is like seeing the world through the photographer’s eyes in that moment. Mr. Hickman also stressed the fact that art includes colors, subjects, lighting, and the way it is developed. The pictures that really caught my attention was the work of Tony Mendoza. He did close up shots of distinct flowers; the pictures were taken from a flower perspective up close and from the ground. The color in the pictures were magnified and intensified to make the picture of the flowers really come to life. Mr. Hickman explained to us about Mendoza’s work how he focuses on the scene and presents it with more light to bring more balance to the photo. After a long semi dry lecture Mr. Hickman makes an argument of when art can be photographed and when it cannot. He tells us about how we know when its ours and how do know how to document it. Mr. Hickman says that the purpose is to find the relationship between the world and photography. Toward the end of the lecture he logged into his Facebook and showed us some of his work, one that caught my eye as I started packing to leave the class was one picture he photo-shopped to make an elephant with a sign on the its back. I found his work to be quite amusing and clever the way he photo-shopped the sign on the elephant.

As for the reading this week It was on Errol Morris. The reading was mostly based on how photography can be used as a so-called “weapon”. How deceiving pictures can actually be. It would really hard to tell if a photo has been messed with, unless you’re a professional at detecting fraud pictures. I really cant see how you can use pictures as weapons maybe as propaganda but it really depends on who is trying to convince people and for what purpose. I really did not care much for that article. The other reading was on Alfredo Jaar he was an installation worker and also made videos. One that was good was the “The Ashes of Gramsci” I found it to be a cool piece because of its pictures of space. To tell you the truth I would’ve not known if the pictures were real if I didn’t see what he made the image with. It was another good week in art class hopefully we have another good speaker like Mr. Hickman but not too monotone.

Week 4 Fibers and Flying Wolves

Hey world Cis is back here again to talk about what we learned this week in Contemp Art class. This week our guest Professor Rabinowitz and the topic for this week was "Fibers". Now I'm not gonna lie I was one of the late ones in class that day so when I showed up I was a little behind catching up to the lecture, but when I finally caught on I finally realized that the Professor was talking about the wonderful world of Fibers. To tell you the truth I had no idea what Fibers were, but as the professor kept talking to the class she explained that Fiber art is relatively new to the art world, traditionally fiber is taken plants or animals like cotton, wool, or silk. Since I sat in the back I  couldn't hear the professor as good as I should have. But there is no doubt that i did pay attention to the slide show and the images of the work done by artist using Fibers. One in particular that we focused on was an image that looked like hair coming down from the ceiling I didn't get the name nor the artist's name but it was a long strand of hair like material coming down from the roof and it reminded me of a woman's body the way it was shaped all curved- like. I felt it was a piece that symbolized to relax and in life you just have to let you hair down. But when Professor Rabinowitz finally explained to us that the piece was all full sexual it All MADE SENSE. She told us that the art piece resembled a woman's genitalia, as soon as I heard that it all clicked in my head.
As our guest speaker went on with her presentation I struggled to keep my attention set on her until I came to another image that caught my attention it was a piece by Cai Guo- Qiang and it was a "rainbow of running wolves". I know its hard to picture, I feel like its something right out of a dream. Almost makes you wonder if Mr. Qiang was on something when he visualized it. Picture wolves all running together in a pack dozens of them and running in the air and crashing all together, crazy right? Turns out that Mr. Qiang made every single one of those wolves with Fiber material, if that’s not amazing I don’t know what is. I later decided to look into more of Mr. Qiang and he has pieces in museums of full scale cars exploding. I see that the artist is into making action scenes into still projects which I find one of the more difficult things to recreate. But nevertheless still another good week of Contemp Art now i will leave you with work of Mr. Qiang.

Week 3

I really enjoyed our guest speaker this week. Michael Salter is an art instructor here at the University of Oregon. One thing that really stood out to me was that he had a very unique way of talking to a class, he had a way of not saying much but at the same time saying a lot, (if that makes sense). I loved how he started off by showing us images that have caught his attention all around the world even here in Eugene, he also mixed in some of his work and designs in the slide show and asked us what we thought. When he told us that he designed for a number of brand name companies it caught me by surprise, I would have never thought that our guest speaker was a designer for such companies like Billabong and other name brands. When going through his slide show he would only say what he needed to say and just let the class ponder and stare at the images so we can take in what we felt about the images. Mike went into more detail about his work and explained to us how he felt about the industry, that one minute your work is the hot cool trend and the next minute your seeing your work being on clearance or getting shipped out to another country. I thought that was fascinating how someone that actually worked for the industry decided that he wasn't happy going through the corporate world and just stopped. My favorite piece from Mike was definitely the stryobots, just because i can relate and I too grew up playing with legos as a kid, and when he told the class that after every art show he would have them tossed out or destroyed it made me a little annoyed, but what can you do it's art.
As for the reading this week I thought it was interesting how the whole reading was in comic book form but I really didn't care much for it. As I'm used to reading some Dark Horse version of Star Wars usually packed with violence and excitement, as for this comic strip it was just another 36 pages of art and art and more art images. Sorry Ty but I'm still trying to get over the last 46 page reading from last week. There was one thing that caught my attention for a minute and that was the section when our little cartoon host explained how a painting of a pipe is not a pipe, than introduced us to the wonderful world of icons. Which by than the comic strip reading lost my attention. By far still a good week in my contemporary art class, know excited for next week’s guest speaker.

Week 1

This week’s guest presentation was by Laura Vandenburgh who talked about drawings specifically. She talked about many different ideas and one of the first things she said that caught my attention was that there is nothing that compares to drawing because of how straight up and immediate it is. Then she started showing examples of maps, diagrams, doodles, and a variety of other quick drawings that present information in a quick visual way. When I think about an artist who uses drawing as a media, I think of images of detailed portraits. Laura was stressing the point that drawing is a tool that everyone uses in their everyday lives, one of the most effective ways of describing something to others without using words. Laura later went on to say that “things can be visually worked out at the speed of thinking” which I couldn’t agree more. For example the other day at work my boss ended up making a quick sketch of directions to get to his house and he made sure to add small details a recognizable landmarks and it reminded me of what Laura was talking about a drawing being direct. Laura also had a good point about how drawing is the beginning to everything. I strongly believe that every time someone is going to create something that by drawing a quick sketch or outline is the best way no matter what type of media.

            The reading that was assigned for this in class was 46 pages long and had a lot of content that was thrown at you without getting that in depth with any topic it was a little hard to get into. In my opinion they should’ve called it Art Theory for dummies. One piece that really caught my attention was the American Art Export article on page 19, I really learned a lot about the post war period, for example during the Cold War the CIA arranged exhibitions across Europe of New American paintings, as propaganda to spread American values and ideals. It really makes me wonder if some artists have bad intentions to influence people with their art.

            During the week we saw a video of a unique artist named Margaret Kilgallen who does all of her art handmade. One of my favorite parts is she talked about street art she went into very good detail and explained how the idea of the art is made, she explains how the barrage of images we see everyday, especially in advertising how billboards are everywhere and no one takes the time to jus actually sit there and observe them. To wrap up everything I said I concluded that Laura’s presentation and ideas have impacted me more this week than the readings. I hope next week we have a just as good guest speaker if not better.

Cis's First entry

Hello World ..........before I begin to write my opinions  about contemporary art and media I wanna share with the world these beautiful rare Air Jordan Retro 3 White / Cement that I'm about add to my collection of Shoes designed by The Great Tinker Hatfield (former University of Oregon Track athlete and Alum).