Category: Art

With a degree in Fine Art the world’s my oyster!!

Kettle’s Yard/Tate Britain Conference

Kettle’s Yard is closed today, so I’ll have to wait until the weekend to visit the Sybille Berger exhibition.

On Saturday there is a webcast of a conference at the Tate Britain called “Spheres of Action: Art and Politics” which I want to be in for. That’s from 10am–5.30pm.

Speakers:

Peter Sloterdijk, Professor of Philosophy and Rector of the School of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, and author of Critique of Cynical Reason (Edition Suhrkamp, 1983), Rules for the People Park (Suhrkamp Verlag KG, 1999) and Spheres (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998)

Peter Weibel, Director of the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, and author of Fast Forward: Media Art (Ingvild Goetz, 2004) and The Open Work, 1964–1979 (Hatje Cantz, 2005)

Boris Groys, Professor at the School of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe and author of Stalin’s Total Work of Art (Hanser, 1988) and Ilya Kabakov (Phaidon Press, 1998).

Chairs:

Eric Alliez, Senior Research Fellow at University of Paris IV

Peter Osborne, Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University.

I’m certain that I won’t last for the whole thing. I’ll try and see if I can record it. That means I’ll be visiting Kettle’s Yard sometime on Saturday 10 or Sunday 11.

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Kettle’s Yard: Sybille Berger: Paintings: Pre-visit 2

A link to Kettle’s Yard’s information about the show.

The blurb from the site:

The impact of Sybille Berger’s paintings is immediate with their horizontal bands – sometimes three, sometimes four – of strong colour. But the dramatic differences between each painting begin to reveal their individual and infinitely subtle qualities. All of a slightly taller-than-square format, the variations come in the artist’s choice of colour and her divisions of the canvas.

Colours advance and recede, radiating and absorbing light, and rise and weigh against each other in a highly charged and fluctuating equilibrium. They are susceptible to each other and we become increasingly susceptible to them as they engage with our eyes and minds, perhaps evoking elusive memories and associations while provoking entirely new experiences. Given time, their apparent simplicity opens up layers of complexity.

So they’re not square, as I’d thought.

As lovely to look at as these pictures may be, I’ve got to ask “what’s the big deal”?. The only possibility of development hinted at in the text above, is “perhaps evoking elusive memories and associations while provoking entirely new experiences.” It’s just too vague, these pictures are leaving us with only the lightest of suggestions.

I need to see them and to find out more.

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Kettle’s Yard: Sybille Berger: Paintings: Pre-visit

untitled 2002

I’ve only seen one picture by Sybille Berger so far, the one used to illustrate the invitation card. This is a square piece, with four horizontal stripes of colour, (from top to bottom) a purple, yellow, a slightly darker purple and a lilac strip. The colours are flat, the divisions between them hard.

My initial thoughts are of hard-edged abstraction; the stark arrangements of colours remind me of the Homage to the Square paintings by Josef Albers (this is probably why I am particularly drawn to this piece out of the three exhibition cards that Kettle’s Yard have sent). The colours themselves don’t seem to have any meaningful references that I know of.

It’s a striking image, used on the card (but not in itself obviously striving for this effect, that’s just the way its been used in this situation), but beyond that, I’m unable to comment. I assume there must be more to it than just arrangements of colours.

I plan on visiting the exhibition on Monday 4 December.

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Next Stage

I think I have to get to grips with my Next Stage.

I’ve recently re-discovered reading Art Theory. I really enjoy (I think that’s the right word) reading these books about the reasons for Art. On the one hand they represent a challenge for me, they are in many cases opaque in their language and take some effort to understand, on the other they’re relating directly to the works of Art that I am excited.

Looking back on my time at College I can see that I was always quite interested in the reasoning behind work. Case in point: I’d do little talks as part of my art practice about what I was thinking about with regards to Art (I really must dig out the notes that I made for those sessions–potentially embarrassing). At the time I didn’t place much importance on them–they were just what I did to keep my hand in when I was unable to make objects. But in retrospect perhaps they were more important in forming my practice than I was aware.

The reason I think it’s important is because I’ve never really understood what Art is, and my programme has become the investigation of it and my reactions to it. I have always felt uncomfortable making Art objects–as much as I love them, and I get a real thrill from them–I cannot justify to myself creating them. But thinking about it and trying to explain what I think about them is actually part of the thrill, I see something I like, in my excitement I need to verbalize what it is and why I like it. Maybe I should be a teacher.

So, the Next Stage. I want to develop this, after this 10 year hiatus. I want to write more about my opinions about Art (and other things), I want to thereby develop the writing into a strong medium for my work (I see the writing as my work of Art in the absence of any other medium I can use).

So, I’m reading and I’ll be writing. And hopefully, something will come of this.

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