Viewing single post of blog Absurdity without art

This week I’ve been tasked by my tutor to create a pared down, simplify sculpture, whilst still capturing the essence of my work. So I have considered an artist who has made incredible, minimalist works dealing with an enormously complicated and traumatic event.

I first saw Miroslaw Balka’s ‘Kategorie’ (2005) at the White Cube (Mason’s Yard) in the exhibition ‘New Order’ (April 2011), and it left a deep and lasting memory. The installation consists of a tunnel, or corridor, constructed of plain, gray-matt concrete, slightly taller than it is wide. Down the centre of the ceiling runs a row of five lights and five motors. From each motor hangs a single (barely visible) piece of thread which slowly rotates, each strand is dyed a different colour.

The simple design causes the viewer to wonder what it is they’re looking at, first I noticed the artist’s name, which sounds eastern block, European maybe? I thought that it was possibly something to do with the Balkan conflict, a direct leap from the name I suppose, but no he was from Poland, it said so alongside his name.

I read on and learned that : –

“The colours of the strands – red, violet, green, pink and black – are the colours assigned to uniforms identifying different categories of prisoner in the concentration camps (red for political prisoners; violet for Jehovah’s Witnesses; green for criminals; pink for homosexual and bisexual men; and black for Romany people, alcoholics and individuals with learning disabilities, among others).”

Susan May (2011) ’New Order’, White Cube, London

It’s clear to me from this and the rest of the catalogue text that the artist processes his cultural trauma from the wartime atrocities through his post-memory (being part of the “generation after”) generating this response. The work is strangely beautiful, and alluring, yet it is not until you read about the artist and his references that the true nature of the work is revealed. Therefore with all it’s aesthetic simplicity it is actually an extraordinarily complex piece which requires a codex to decipher, that is the galleries catalogue…

So what is my work about, and how can I simplify it’s appearance?

My art contains self-referential metaphors which are about my illness, prognosis, and my awareness of my own mortality (something typical of nearly all people at one point in their life or another, but my experience is earlier than that of most, at the age of 32 I was given 8 years to live). I’m now 42, therefore living on borrowed time and hoping for a breakthrough cure before I have to have a risky bone marrow transplant. Like Balka, I consider threads in my work, well at least the mythological threads woven by the fates. Time is also critical. As is existing in a state of limbo. The materials lead and gold leaf tend to feature in my work, which is a hint towards transcendence.

So maybe I’ll make a sculpture with a bobbin, or a reel, wound with lead thread or tape. It would be jammed so that it doesn’t turn, or possibly snapped from being jammed, and the end would be gilded…

I created this maquette this afternoon, I call it ‘Allotted 14/9/14’ indicating the day my prognosis ran out, normally I hate to miss a deadline but…

The wire needs some more work, I left it looking a bit like a walnut whip…

This is a better look… what do you think? I guess I’ll find out my tutor’s opinion tomorrow.


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