Monday, October 6, 2008

Addressing Documentation...

... in my work. the more i relate each piece from my present work in progress, i boomerang back to documentation. abstractly.

actually all art is documentation, abstractly.

yet right now I reflect on my first real aquaintance with imagery. Viewing photos from every gallery I could bus to. After growing comfortable with photography I began to venture towards sculpture and paintings... most of whom we would consider contemporary artists. Exploring the arts from a documentarian eye, maybe? I dunno.

How I explored art back then is mirrored to my art practice now, as I bounce back and forth between the photograph and physical representation. Somehow I am still pulled to the photo as my favorite artists are those like keba konte and renee cox

I reach to my photographic background for the documentarian spirit in my present works. I use the photo as a "stand in" for a person, action or idea. Its the same deal with my sculptural works. "But the body makes all the difference," I say. Seems there is no difference (in that sense) between the two. Well I be darned. .. Ill have to knock down that division line.

The question that I ask myself is, "how can I incorporate the two with balance...?"

1 comment:

ChaoticBlackSheep said...

I find myself intrigued by the idea of documentation myself, coming more from a background in performance art than photography. Much of my work is more about conveying an idea than about process, but a lot of process-oriented work can be documentary in and of itself. I can understand and appreciate this from working with fibers, as I am sure you can as well after working on your Aviva hair artwork.

To me, all artworks can also serve to document a period in history, where an artist was at any given time and what the/she was thinking, the culture in which the artist lived, how things were made and what processes were used... Art really is reflective of humankind - what is acceptable, what is not, how we relate to one another, what we find beautiful (or ugly)...