The Red Man & Degree Show Prep
March 31, 2017
The Red Man
When it comes to static interaction, I think that this painting is quite effective. The presiding aspects of this type of interaction are narrative, and emotional effect.
I believe that this image shows narrative, as the viewer wonders why the man is stumbling, and where this is happening, and who he is.
Is he drunk, as the glasses of red and yellow liquid might suggest, or has he been struck by some opposing force? Either way, the viewer probably relates to the man in the red suit in some sort of emotional way.
Degree Project Prep
So, before I had started work on any of my paintings, I had an idea.
This idea was closely linked to the theme of my dissertation ‘The Sublime’.
The Creeping Terror Idea (Not Used)
There is a thing that a viewer might notice when looking at some common places, such as hallways, alleyways and and deserted places that are usually packed with people, and that is a strong sense of terror that is almost indiscernible in its origin, I call that ‘Creeping Terror’, because it materializes slowly, and builds the longer you view it.
My idea was to take the concept of ‘Creeping Terror’, and put it in a painting. By taking images that I found gave the same feeling, and painting them, I hoped that I could transfer my feelings about them to the viewer.
However, this idea didn’t take off for a few reasons.
The first reason, and more important one, was that I had another idea which was similar, but was more relatable to a larger audience.
The second reason was time, if I spent a long time on the seven or so paintings I had planned, and I found that they had lost the ‘Creeping Terror’ in my rendition of them, then I would be left with very dull paintings of things like hallways and public toilets, without the benefit of time to make them better.
The Storyboard Idea (Degree Show Idea)
This idea stemmed from a childhood addiction to comic books.
When I was younger I used to love Spider-man strips, the aesthetics of each image captivated my imagination just as much as the story absorbed me into another world.
Recently I have found myself watching a lot of thriller/crime movies, and found that some of them have these thing called ‘storyboards’ that remind me a lot of the comic books of my youth.
True Detective Season 1 – Opening Cut scene Storyboard
I really liked these movie strips, and wanted to do something with them.
So I started painting a few of them as mock ups, and then suddenly realized with the help of my tutors, that I could use these mock ups as the final images. By putting them up a lot like Cathy Lomax’s exhibitions, I could definitely create something with a strong impact and mass appeal. Many people have seen comics in their past, and therefore it has an emotional nostalgic value, and it tells a narrative as well, which are the two main aspects you need for Static Interaction.
‘The first question we should ask ourselves when looking at a work of art is: – Does it give me the chance to exist in front of it, or, on the contrary, does it deny me as a subject, refusing the consider the Other in its structure?’
-pg. 42, Nicolas Bourriaud, 1998. Relational Aesthetics.
With paintings it is extremely hard to include the viewer in the art apart from in the typical spectator format, and it’s important that that those that view my work think of it as more than just a set of paintings, and see it more as a puzzle to solve.
‘Relational art (an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independant and private symbolic space)’
-pg. 14, Nicolas Bourriaud, 1998. Relational Aesthetics.
So I have come up with a few ideas to make my work ‘Relational Art’, so that people interact with the work instead of just viewing it.
I was thinking of making a tally sheet where people can mark down who they think is the villain in the narrative, or something similar to that.
I was also thinking of adding a moving light that moves from painting to painting, or a set of headphones playing soundbites from each of the movies that I have used for the images.
I haven’t completely decided which of the interactive ideas I will use yet, but I am almost certain that I am going to paint the wall behind them black, so that they look even more like storyboards for the movies.
I’m planning on painting around 2-3 more paintings for the grid before I try out a few of my presentation ideas for the show. Hopefully I’ll finish them soon so that I can get on with it.
Joe
