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.