Copying is a common phenomenon in art world nowadays, for example, Sherrie Levine made the work called After Walker Evans which is almost same with Walker Evans's photography. So I really wanted to figure out the context of the copy as I received the different value of originality before - we should not copy directly.
I looked at a book, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin, it notes that how technology such as camera and film influence our ways of reproducing things, and I think that is also the reason how we change the idea of the copying. The book also brings me some new concepts such as the relationship between reproduction and cult value. In this book, he also analyses the art in a religious context. In other words, how art does survive in the age of massive reproduction, and a famous slogan also emerged: art for art sake. According to the author, this denies all social function in art, so art exist in a 'fine' condition and there is also no limits in it, which also bring something I want to explore - the cult value and the artwork as dysfunctional in our society.
At the beginning of the last term, one of my problems was not making enough actual artworks as I always negate my ideas due to many reasons such as questioning the meaning of doing something. So that I decided to start making work once I find an interesting topic even I had not got enough research or reasons to do that.
I was thinking that the furniture would be a good sign to talk about the ideas of use and cult values. Furniture often seen as functional objects in our society, so it can bring the stereotyping: usable objects. Basically, at the beginning of this project, I just wanted to make some pieces of furniture which look beautiful and useful, so I made a table, a bench, and a cabinet.
My project involves with a lot of wood works, and they also aim to engages with craftsmanship. In terms of making them to look neat, I used Tenon Joint in my furnitures.
Tenon Joint
Reference for design inspiration and techniques:
According to Boris Groys, 'The avant-garde denied originality, since it did not want to invent but to discover the transcendental, repetitive, weak image.'
This reminds me of the story from Laozi, he said teeth are strong and tongue is weak, but when people get older, teeth fall off firstly but you can still use your tongue.
Influenced of this essay, I started to destroy, reconstruct and build my sculptures in order to make them to be unusable (weak sign), for instance, there is a bench which is cut into separate pieces, a wooden horse with a detached leg and a sculpture cloud as the symbols of the internet storage.
The drawings of the fork and the knife tries to provide a information: it is an eating table, and to eat the octopus, but you cannot use them as they are not actual objects. Also, the octopus is made of bronze, so that it cannot be eaten as well. So, this work represents tries to deny its use value, instead, it emphasises the idea of the exhibition value - being existing.
There are many internet storages such as iCloud and Google Drive. I decided to made a cloud storage to embody the internet storage space, and it is also a contrast with my another furniture, an usable cabinet. This sculpture is engaging with the exhibition value, because it is just a symbol of the internet storage.
Taking this project further, in the context of the reproduction, the internet is a good example today, it makes coping very easy and effective. For example, we can share videos on the social media, also copy and paster is another classic way for reproduction.
This one corresponds to another painting in this installation. This animation aims to explore the idea of basic forms such as circle and square, this leads the whole installation into the basic unit world (geometry). The two spheres in the animation represent a loop of a circle, as they are being reconstructed during the whole video, and become spheres again. I would like to put a digital video as a different element. Also, I think video can bring much information in a limited space (the monitor), and this can provide a bigger imaginary space for audiences.
Reference for the video techniques and inspirations:
2001: A Space Odyssey
1968 ‧ Fantasy/Science fiction film
Pen on paper,
21 x 15 cm
I used to mainly work on drawing and painting, but I found there are limits of each media, for some topics, it is hard to discuss by just using drawings. So I decided to explore other media such as sculpture and video and materials such as wood and metal.
I spend time to find interesting details and use lines and circles to play with idea of scattered and close.
My paintings explore the ideas of virtual and solid, clear and turbid (a dirty mix of colors and shapes), scattered and close, warm and cold tones.
Black Square 1913
Kazimir Malevich
In the middle of the course, there are some problems in my practice: my interests are always changed largely, and the subjects of my works are quite different from each other. so I wonder whether I did deep enough research and work for each project; My finished works are often different from my initial ideas (the information which I would like to say), so it is a problem when I need to explain my works to the public. I found two solutions: I should read more books and practice my theory; another is to leave it for a while and go back to rework again.
I accumalated quite a lot of expeience for making a video from this work. The actual filming was quite different from my plan on paper. I got the sense that I need to make my shooting plan more effective, for example, more precise. It is better that if I can do some test footages before actual filming.
Those two works are inspired by the subject of the internet. The internet reflects and transforms our ways of producing and exhibiting artworks. As we know the internet plays a very important role in contemporary art. For instance, many art institutions and individual artists have their own websites. It is popular that you find an artwork’s digital image or a related report to get to know it instead of/in addition to going to its offline exhibition. On the other hand, an offline artwork goes through changing chemically every moment, and it will very probably disappear one day. In contrast, the digital information such as pictures can always be there and never changing if people provide electric and any other resource to keep the internet running. Additionally, the internet will possibly become the main place for producing and exhibiting artworks if we collect enough elements from offline to online life.
At the beginning of the course, I was asking myself that what is contemporary art? If I do not know what it is, how can I make something about something that I do not know.
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The meaning of the contemporary art can be undefined. In the context of art, art is a large number of things, and there are many ideas of what contemporary art is. In fact, it is very difficult to say something which cannot be art nowadays.
Robert McKee notes why some nice writers cannot create good stories: they are restricted from must-proof point of views and must-express emotions.
On the other hand, according to Boris Groys, ‘the artwork is an exhibited object’ ‘It is art that must currently be exhibited in order to be considered art at all’. His ideas inspire me that in contemporary art, the most important thing is for an object to be called art.
On the books 'Story' and 'Art Power' both show the importance of the viewer. For example, the former reads that a good writer should have a desire which is touching readers, and the latter shows that one of the most important things of contemporary art is to look for audiences. Therefore, my practice focusses on the relationship between artworks and viewers.​
