TAKE A BREAK - LIGHT SHOW @ HAYWARD

Visitors are more than ever, at least from my experience, probably because this Light Show is very playful.  I think I can soak myself there for a few good hours, but as always, there is a dimension in time…  I particularly like Leo Villareal’s Cylinder II (2012).  I feel I am moved by it and I feel I am lost in the infinity of the universe or just nothingness.  There is a melancholia inside me feeling this wonderful objects.  The intensity and speed of the thousands of the LED mini lights changes; the light shimmer, glow, appear to rise and fall or oscillate, become dim and then quite bright.  The sequencing has no beginning, middle or end.  Anyway, I dream to have such a lighting installation in my home!  I love lights, all sorts!

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - JOHN KIPPIN

Many artists are excellent in texts.  I still remember how far reaching the impact after I saw Victor Burgin's works.  Now, following Silke's leads and recommendation, I found John Kippin's work interesting.  One of the things is that he go beyond the topographical approach, and all images in his project has a lot more as they are composed differently.  I think I need to move away from the rigorously engineered Dusseldorf approach, I need some intuition and dynamics.  I remember I used to be fascinated by Becher style, now I am fed up somehow... keep changing...

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - WILLIE DOHERTY

I like text inter play with image.  It always create a third space.  Another artist using text here...

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - JENNY HOLZER

Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler.

Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.

Then I saw one of her works in the Light Show at Hayward Gallery.

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - HAMISH FULTON

Hamish Fulton is a land artist.  What is interesting is that unlike Richard Long he used lots of texts.  The text layout are quite interesting.  

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - RONI HORN

Water is something I love too.  I remember I did a project in San Sabastian sea coast, taking shots with fixed interval to an ever moving sea area.  Horn's text seems clever too.  I can not read well, so I bought a book to read.  There are lots of similarities with my skyscape project.  Horn's work is very enlightening, I mean most of her works, the Weather portrait, the Iceland project etc...

1

My gaze alights on the water, on this spot on the river, here where the water is turning around, where the currents turn the water in tightening circles. I can't turn away. I want to feel time twist as I watch these spirals forming. I want to feel time twist and myself turning as I watch them disappear. I want to twist with the turning water. I want to watch these spirals turn themselves invisible. I want to watch them turning from the surface, turning down into the depths where I cannot see them. I want to turn invisible with them. I want to turn with them, invisible and keep turning.

Black water is opaque water, toxic or not. Black water is always violent. Even when slow moving, black water dominates, bewitches, subdues. Black water is alluring because it is disturbing and irreconcilable. Black water is violent because it is alluring and because it is water.

Water is lubricant to other places. It dilutes gravity when you're in it. It reduces friction when you're around it. Almost any form of water—rivers, lakes, oceans, even sinks—will do. My mind roams freely, breezily near it. My thoughts take me backward and forward. Time has no direction near water.

Water is lubricant to other places. It catalyzes memory and aspiration. This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is separate from any other water. In the River Thames, in an arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your eyes and in every other microcosmic part of you, and me, all waters converge.

2

Some Thames is literally the idea of a finite thing having an infinite range of appearance or expression because of its inseparable relation to other things, which is what water is — its relation to other things.  

When I look at water I'm entering into an event of relation. Rather than an object, water becomes a form — of consciousness, or time, of physicality, of the human condition, of anything I desire to project on it, of anything I want it to be.  

This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is separate from any other water.

In the River Thames, in an Arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty window pane, in your eyes, in every other microscopic part of you (and me), all waters converge.

Invisible continuity is intrinsic to water. This continuity exceeds us even while being the biggest part of us. It's this continuity that makes our effect on water an effect on us. That is to say: "I am the Thames!" or "The Thames is me!"  

3

There is one yellowish photograph of the Thames, for example. It shows a little white froth at the lower right corner, some patches of baby blue and a few wisps of brown. It looks a little like a desert. Many of the footnotes run along a brownish crevice in the water.

They go like this: ''28 Is this khaki or beige? 29 Is this beige or ochre? 30 Is this ochre or yellow? 31 Is this yellow or tan? 32 Is this tan or brown? 33 Is this brown or black? 34 Is this black. . . . 36 What does water look like? 37 See Sand (Especially sand dunes.) 38 See deserts, for example the Gobi or the Sahara. 39 There's a story (it's true) about a man traveling by Tube to Westminster Bridge handcuffed to a chair. He threw himself in the river with the chair. He was found some days later downstream attached to a stick of wood and a section of naugahyde (almond-colored).''

The color exercise is fun. At every point, you can look at the picture of the yellowish river and think, ''Is this beige or ochre?'' and ''Is this ochre or yellow?'' It is strangely absorbing. It is nice to be carried away by someone else's thoughts while looking at water, to see whether your thoughts match hers.

MP - FURTHER RESEARCH - ANDY WARHOL

Warhol's repetition use - from Wicki

Warhol had a positive view of ordinary culture and felt the abstract expressionists had taken great pains to ignore the splendor of modernity.The Campbell's Soup Can series, along with his other series, provided him with a chance to express his positive view of modern culture. However, his deadpan manner endeavored to be devoid of emotional and social commentary. In fact, the work was intended to be without personality or individual expression.Warhol's view is encapsulated in the quote ". . . a group of painters have come to the common conclusion that the most banal and even vulgar trappings of modern civilization can, when transposed to canvas, become Art."

His pop art work differed from serial works by artists such as Monet, who used series to represent discriminating perception and show that a painter could recreate shifts in time, light, season, and weather with hand and eye. Warhol is now understood to represent the modern era of commercialization and indiscriminate "sameness." When Warhol eventually showed variation it was not "realistic." His later variations in color were almost a mockery of discriminating perception. His adoption of the pseudo-industrial silkscreen process spoke against the use of a series to demonstrate subtlety. Warhol sought to reject invention and nuance by creating the appearance that his work had been printed,[44] and in fact, he systematically recreated imperfections.[36] His series work helped him escape Lichtenstein's lengthening shadow.[46] Although his soup cans were not as shocking and vulgar as some of his other early pop art, they still offended the art world's sensibilities that had developed so as to partake in the intimate emotions of artistic expression.[44]

Contrasting against Caravaggio's sensual baskets of fruit, Chardin's plush peaches, or Cezanne's vibrant arrangements of apples, the mundane Campbell's Soup Cans gave the art world a chill. Furthermore, the idea of isolating eminently recognizable pop culture items was ridiculous enough to the art world that both the merits and ethics of the work were perfectly reasonable debate topics for those who had not even seen the piece.[47] Warhol's pop art can be seen as a relation to Minimal art in the sense that it attempts to portray objects in their most simple, immediately recognizable form. Pop art eliminates overtones and undertones that would otherwise be associated with representations.[48]

Warhol clearly changed the concept of art appreciation. Instead of harmonious three-dimensional arrangements of objects, he chose mechanical derivatives of commercial illustration with an emphasis on the packaging.[40] His variations of multiple soup cans, for example, made the process of repetition an appreciated technique: "If you take a Campbell's Soup can and repeat it fifty times, you are not interested in the retinal image. According to Marcel Duchamp, what interests you is the concept that wants to put fifty Campbell's Soup cans on a canvas."[49] The regimented multiple can depictions almost become an abstraction whose details are less important than the panorama.[50] In a sense, the representation was more important than that which was represented.[48] Warhol's interest in machinelike creation during his early pop art days was misunderstood by those in the art world, whose value system was threatened by mechanization.[51]

In Europe, audiences had a very different take on his work. Many perceived it as a subversive and Marxist satire on American capitalism.[40] If not subversive, it was at least considered a Marxist critique of pop culture.[52] Given Warhol's apolitical outlook in general this is not likely the true message. In fact, it is likely that his pop art was nothing more than an attempt to attract attention to his work.[40]

In an effort to complement the message of his art, Warhol developed a pop persona after the mass media took note of his pop art. He began to manifest a teenage-like image, immersing himself in pop culture such as Rock & Roll shows and fan magazines. Whereas previous artists used repetition to demonstrate their skill at depicting variation, Warhol coupled "repetition" with "monotony" as he professed his love of artwork themes.

MP - SKYSCAPE - WRAPUP

I am half ok with the current idea but not fully sure of it.  Therefore what I should do next is to make a further research on text usage in art.  Then I finalise with the idea.

Probably I will need to re-edit the images and I think I am capable to create a pool of one or two dozens of images.  Then booking making would be a route to go, despite the possibility of gallery presentation if I can rush everything in time.

So:

Research on text

Images re-edit

Finalising the project idea

Then the house keeping things: printing, book making and etc

MP - TRANSIT - WRAPUP

Silke’s comments were cogent to me.  The night image was a little technical mannered.  It is obviously played or manufactured.  It will spoil the day images, which are more subtle and more interesting.  I ended up with 5 images ditching the rest as the rest day images are too full in composition.  This project needs simplicity and space to create a subtle signifier to engage with audience in a slowing burning-in way. 

So the next step is to print and framed.  The test print went well in the pilot project.  I will continue use fibre based paper. Size 30 X 50. 

I will use the pictorial tradition to make classical border in the moutning and framing, perhaps a black normal frame will do – will decide after the frame research.

So the next steps:

Hone my introduction text and finalise the format and print size

Finish and evaluate the frame research

Printing, mounting and framing

MP - MADE IN CHINA - WRAPUP

The conclusion is to re-shoot.  I need more images to make 56 images as this number is important to this project.  China has 56 nationalities.  Then the final presentation should use the art strategy of repeating to make a huge impact to the audience from the wall, like what Andy Warhol repeats his motif all the times.  Not necessarily 56, but 9 or 12 obviously not enough.  I am glad Silke gave me some comment on this and I think she is quite right. 

Mounting is easy, but does it have to be full bleed or with a broad border? 

Framing, should it be framed or just mounted and hanged?  If framing, what frame style to use? 

3 things to go further:

Research on “repeating” in art

Research on mounting and framing options