University Campus Suffolk

Richard Serra in 1967–68 produced a piece of work entitled ‘Verb List’ and as the name suggests it is indeed a list of verbs. It is a decisive list of process words associated with Serra’s process of producing work and the actions he implements. Made up of 84 verbs —to roll, to crease, to fold, to store, etc.—and 24 possible contexts—of gravity, of entropy, of nature, this list provided Serra with an important list of actions integral and apparent in his work. Looking as his large steel pieces mentioned in a previous post several of these verbs highlight his intentions and focus, such as to bend, to twist and to curl, and they show his early intention to interact with material, space and process.

Richard Serra said in comment about the list, ‘I really just worked out pieces in relation to the verb list physically in a space.’ As this is evident in his own work, I feel that it is evident in my own. Working with the rope in particular and curling the rope around continually and in repetitive motions my action is ‘to curl’, and physically acting out the verb in my studio space gives the rope a purpose, a means of becoming a visual and physical item of work, and to become a piece of process art.

Here are several photographs of my latest work. At the moment I am exploring the patterns possible with the rope, and different ways of laying it out. I’m both exploring the best visual composition and the most efficient way to use the space.
I’m finding it hard to fill in space between two circles and finding a way to join them. Having two circular shapes on the floor leaves me with the problem of the space in between and around them, and rope, although workable, is difficult to put into a space of that shape. I wanted to fill a floor area with rope but I can’t find a suitable method of doing so, and if I can’t find one I will have to consider having areas of floor space unused.

One advantage of these pieces and of using wooden objects adjacent to rope is that they become a single piece of multiple components. There are no individual pieces of work meaning that the work can be applied to almost any space. Also the layout of the work and the process of joining parts become much more flexible. However the flexibility of rope is still impeded by the circular shapes. Rope curls with ease into these circular shapes, but the negative space and corners created by touching circles is not suitably shaped to be filled with rope….

Visually I feel that the piece does not necessarily convey a powerful visual, but I definitely feel that work has a calming sense of reduction. The lack of colour and the reduction of material to two similar parts give the work a unity and a simple visual. The repetitive motion of the rope provides a calming feeling. As with repetition the viewer is aware of the whole object viewing the work in its entirety from any viewing position. Much to the similarity of Donald Judd’s concept of the whole, the repetition of the rope and material the viewer is instantly aware of the recurrence and begins to duplicate their visualisation of the repetition (Knowing and visualising the areas they cannot see), Thus creating a calming visual piece.

Mono-ha

After looking at the work of Susumu Koshimizu and Kishio Suga and their past work more I discovered that they are both part of an art group called Mono-ha. Although there is little written about Mono-ha I did find out a little about the group, the artists involved, and their work.

Mono-ha refers to a Japanese post-war art group primarily active in the sixties and early seventies, using raw materials in their artwork. Their aim was to bring together and combine these raw materials in a simple way, maintaining their natural ‘unaltered’ form and allowing the materials and their relationships together and the space around them to speak for themselves. The aim of the group was to use new materials and challenge the pre-existing perceptions of these materials, viewing them on a new level.

There are eight main artists associated with this loosely knit group – Nobuo Sekine, Lee Ufan, Katsuro Yoshida, Susumu Koshimizu, Koji Enokura, Kishio Suga, Noboru Takayama and Katsuhiko Naria.

Very little of the Mono-ha work has been seen since it was made, but in 2012 a large amount of their work was exhibited at the Blum & Poe in Los Angeles which was organised and curated by Mika Yoshitake.[1]The exhibition entitled ‘Requiem for the Sun’ displayed a large amount of their work, giving a fresh look at Mono-ha and its work.

Aside from Koshimiu and Suga, whose work at the Tate Modern led me to Mono-ha, there is chiefly one piece from the Blum & Poe exhibition that need mentioning. (It would be too lengthy to go through every artist). Lee Ufan exhibited work which was entitled ‘Relatum III’ (a place within a certain situation) (1970). Relatum III consists four large wooden blocks placed around the four sides of one of the steel support beams in the gallery. The four wooden blocks are tied to the beam with thick rope wrapped around the beam, holding them in place. Visually Ufan’s use of material is exactly alike to my own intentions, which was the initial allure to this piece, but it is Ufan’s concept of the work that sustained my interest.

A second piece by Ufan from the same series, entitled ‘Relatum’ consists of a large stone resting on the top of a large piece of glass that has cracked and broken under the pressure of the stone. Ufan comments on this pies stating as follows,

‘If a heavy stone happens to hit glass, the glass breaks. But if an artist’s ability to act as a mediator is weak, there will be more to see than a trivial physical accident…. Something has to come out of the relationship of tension represented by the artist, the glass, and the stone. It is only when a fissure results from the cross-permeation of the three elements in this triangular relationship that, for the first time, the glass becomes an object of art.’[2]

My interpretation of this is that Lee Ufan is stating that the artist’s interaction and deliberate exploration of these materials, and their properties and physicality, proposes a reaction between the contrasting materials. It is within the artists action of deliberately making these reactions that it becomes a reaction of art, and not just a natural consequence of materials. With my own work, the pairing of materials creates juxtaposition between the materials and the space they are displayed in. I feel that it is this deliberate intention to create material combinations and joining that warrants the final object to be art. By having involvement in the material in this way, whether as the artist of the viewer, the work becomes something more than simply materials and becomes a deliberate examination of their properties.

[1] Blum & Poe
REQUIEM FOR THE SUN: THE ART OF MONO-HA
http://www.blumandpoe.com/exhibitions/requiem-sun-…

[2] Munroe, A, (1994) p.265, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, exh. Cat. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Continuing with my visit to the Tate Modern, there were two works in particular that I wanted to talk about. The first piece is by the artist Seung-Taek Lee and the work is entitled ‘godret stone’. The work consists of multiple stones suspended on cord at differing heights from a long plank of wood. Both visually and ideologically this piece is similar to my own work and firstly in the visual sense, the use of materials and his method of combining them resemble my early work form last year. The use of rustic, imperfect materials and combining them in a non-clinical manner, to create an almost organic piece.

Also Lee was interested in the way the physical materiality of the stones changed by suspending them from the cord. He explored the nature of the materials he used, taking a stone that is heavy and suspending it from the cord in order to give the stone the illusion of floating, taking away its natural physical properties.

Kishio Suga is the second artist whose work I particularly took notice of, having a large stone based piece placed in the centre of the room. Entitled Ren-Shiki-Tai the piece consists of stone planks constructed into a square, balancing the stones on top of each other and tied together with wire so that it is unclear what is supporting and what is supported. Suga’s main concern is in the exploration of space, with the square layout having a small opening on one side, showing a joining of the ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ and the boundary and interaction between them .
His use of space and exploration of it through material is something that I also have considered, using the rope in my work to use a space or surface. By filling an area I draw attention to it, and if the viewer is to walk around, inside or over that area to engage with the space, they will also engage with the materials too. Using a space within a piece of work gives the space a different physicality, interacting with the work and changing its atmosphere.

I recently went to London and the Tate Modern to see the collection of minimalist work that they have including the work of Donald Judd, the focus of my dissertation. Although I have seen the work of several of the artists there a number of times, it is still great work to see in person. A lot of the work there was incredibly interesting in relation to my own work, seeing the veracity and similarity of materials and the use of materials in different sculptural ways.

One of the first artists that I took significant note of is that of Richard Serra and his large steel piece entitled Trip Hammer (1988). Two large steel plates, one standing upright and the other balanced precariously on the top, both looming over the viewer and threatening to fall. Although I am not using steel, the positioning and arrangement of the work and its evocation of threat to the viewer interested me when looking at the work. Using a simple and raw material in a very simple way and still being able to achieve an emotional and physical response in the viewer.

A lot of Richard Serra’s work involves the use of space, material and presence and he often uses only a couple or singular materials to create an effective use of space, and also creates a great atmosphere between the sculpture and the viewer, much like is grand sculpture pieces shown in the ‘Forty Years’ show at MoMa in 2007 [1]. Large and curled steel sheets that again, overwhelm the viewer and evoke significant emotional and atmospheric presence to the viewer.

A second artist in one of the main rooms was Susumu Koshimizu who had a large collection entitled ‘From Surface to Surface’ consisting of tall wooden planks with geometrically carved out patterns. Cutting away the wood to reveal the surface of the wood and explore its form. Much like my minimalistic shapes this is partly my interest, in the manipulation of the material and exploring forms that are considered, by me as the artist or the viewer, to be interesting to engage with.

Alongside Koshimizu was an artist with visually similar work is Kim Lim with the piece ‘Intervals II’ (1973) which consists of two symmetrical wooden objects that stood parallel to each other, but also can be assembled together, overlapped and interlocked to create a new visual. Like Koshimizu the piece visually explores the pine material, but also are an exploration of space, exploring the space between the wall and the floor – ‘the tension set up by the vertical, horizontal and the angle’.
The pine structures explore a small area of space against the wall they rest on, and emphasizing the space around it. This is something my work will do if I chose to occupy a region of floor space, and indeed it already does explore the surface of the floor with the coils of rope winding round it. Also involving the viewer will also allow them to explore the space the work sits on too.

[1] MoMA, Richard Serra, Sculpture: Forty Years http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/…