Think big, be epic

'Waste Land', 2010 by Vik Muniz

Wednesday I drank coffee and discussed Art with my friend and artist Isa Gama. She showed me some fine works of Art online and inspired me to write a new blogpost. We both like big, epic, monumental Art, but we also care a lot about detail and concept. Something can be big, but that doesn't make it epic. It has to be jaw dropping. When an Artwork is made with dedication and much labor it helps with the 'epicness'. For me most important is that an artist shows a similar quality in the execution of works both big and small. Sometimes one work is really strong but looking at other works of the same artist you'll see that it only was because it's big and in your face.

'Waste Land', 2010 by Vik Muniz

Good example of an artist that is strong in big & epic and small & detailed is Vik Muniz. Vik Muniz (1961, Brazil) is a visual artist living in New York City. Muniz began his career as a sculptor in the late 1980s. Muniz became best known for his 1997 series Pictures of Chocolate and 2006's Pictures of Junk. In this great TED talk Vik Muniz talks about making art with sugar, spaghetti and much more.



In 2010, the documentary film Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker, featured Muniz's work on one of the world's largest garbage dumps, Jardim Gramacho, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. This DVD will be for rent at Cultvideotheek Next Page in Breda soon!

'Sugar Children', 1996 by Vik Muniz In his big large installations the focus on detail is as strong as in the smaller pieces like the portraits made out of sugar. The choice for working big has nothing to do with trying to make it in to something more than it is, but necessary to get details and depth. Of course its grandeur both in the Artworks as the project itself gives it a greater range. More people will be flabbergasted and it gets more media attention this way. 'Forest of beyond', 2011 by Motoi Yamamoto Another great example is artist Motoi Yamamoto. His salt sculptures are big, beautiful, definitely epic and full of detail. I really like his Salt Project "Returned to Sea". Visitors where asked to return the salt used for the artwork to the sea. And document the moment when the salt is returned to the sea. Making of 'Forest of beyond', 2011 by Motoi Yamamoto "The form as the work disappears. However, this salt dissolves in seawater and will support the life of various creatures. Possibly the opportunity when we eat it may come. Of course it is the best joy for me if it can meet again as material of the works." - Motoi Yamamoto 'Returned to Sea', project by Motoi Yamamoto I think the images of the people collecting salt are very strong. Stronger than the pictures sent by the public. It looks like a performance almost, reminding me of making 'Dance in a ricecarpet' and helps me to 'think big' while writing my new project proposals.

Decisively diverted

"The essence of sculpture is for me the perception of space, the continuum of our existence."
- Isamu Noguchi

Starting a lot of posts with "I'm reading this book', I guess I read a lot of books, because I have to start this post again with: "I'm reading this book" about Richard Long's 'A Line Made by Walking' by Dieter Roelstraete. I was at the Van Abbemuseum to get more ideas for a project. Going into the Giftshop, promising myself not to buy anymore books, but allow myself to look, I saw this book that I had to buy because of another project I'm thinking about. Not buying books is a promise I can't keep. But luckily for me, this book really helps getting one of my project proposals into clear thoughts.

Installation, 1992 by Bob Verschueren

Before entering the Giftshop this postcard caught my eye. This beautiful installation by Bob Verschueren is made by leaves. On his site you can find more great temporary carpets on great locations under "A little horizontality" . Wish I was so lucky to work on such locations, it makes it so much more fragile and monumental. On the one hand finding more temporary carpets makes it difficult for me to not get extra critical about my ricecarpets, on the other hand it's a nice idea that my work is part of an art movement about temporality objects made on floors.

"Norfolk Flint Circle", 1990 by Richard Long

"(..)Seeing one particular Isamu Noguchi work not only gave Long his first ideas for the floor sculptures that continue to pop up in his work to the present day (the first sculptures in that vein were made in 1965), but also decisively diverted his attention towards the floor as such - towards the surface of the earth upon which we walk."
- from "A Line Made by Walking" by Dieter Roelstraete

"This Earth This Passage", 1962, bronze by Isamu Noguchi

Don't know if it was this sculpture by Isamu Noguchi, but I understand that seeing sculptures finally being placed into the space one their own without a pedestal is a real eye-opener.
I don't know where my floor-focus comes from. I remember playing in the house of my grandparents. Their house is like the Tropenmuseum depot with sculptures, paintings and other fascinating objects from around the world on display. The floor is covered with Persian carpets. Normally you own one carpet and place it in the center of your living room, at my grandparents the carpets are laying criss-cross, even overlapping each-other. I remember pretending to be an explorer, the different carpets were different countries I could travel to, the beige carpeting was the ocean and I was only allowed to travel using the carpets.

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground*

Still from "Paradox of the Praxis 1 (Sometimes doing something leads to nothing)" by Francis Alÿs

Writing about Temporary art suits my temporary state of mind better. It's feels more logical to write about things that change than about things that have happened and will never change. Still reading a lot about Batik, Nederlands-Indië (Dutch East Indies) and tribes. Especially about tribes at the moment due to my project with artist Emmy Dijkstra.

Belgian artist Francis Alÿs (1959) lives and works in Mexico City. I mentioned his work in my previous post "Sometimes making something leads to nothing". In his work he combines political statements with poetic performances. In his video 'Barrenderos / Sweepers' he asked street sweepers in Mexico City to work together to move the biggest heap of garbage they can with brooms. Sometimes thoughts feel like this. Pilling up, tumbling down over each other and all you want to do is clear your mind.
With the streets in Breda (NL) covered with snow and ice, it's a nice idea thinking about a big block of ice melting away in the Mexican sun, so enjoy this video and don't forget to watch the other video's by Francis Alÿs.



*from "Where is my Mind Music" by Pixies

Sometimes making something leads to nothing

An 'intervention' by Emmy Dijkstra

Today my colleague and friend Emmy Dijkstra comes to visit me in Breda. Beginning of 2011 we started a online residence (see www.edijkstra.wordpress.com, it's in Dutch with a lot of pictures!), first with VAR (Virtual Art Residence, I also had a residence their in the virtual Van Gogh caravan). It went very well, so we continued making work together with the same theme, without actually working together. It suprising how we somehow end up with works that really fit together.

This weekend we wanted to try out making our "ceremonial Papua house ceiling". Breda is covered in snow, it looks beautiful, but I don't know if we're able to put the roof up. We will see.
In April we are going to display our collaborated work in de forest in Enschede. We both big fans of Ephemeral art and looking for a place to exhibited our work, it didn't feel right to put our work in a space with white, clean walls. I was reading the novel "The Summer Book" by Tove Jansson last Summer and I suddenly knew where we should exhibit our work. Emmy also read it and concluded the same: An exhibition in the forest.

When I met Emmy Dijkstra, I already knew her from the Art Academy, but didn't really know her, see made this really fine, small graphic work, full of people wearing tribal or traditional clothing. She had a residence in France and came back with paper dresses inspired by Tapa (I wrote a blogpost in Dutch about her work and Tapa in 2009, see "Synchroniciteit deel II Tapa"). We talked about working together, but it didn't happend until she moved to Enschede. In the Summer of 2010 our work was hanging next to each other during the exhibition "Paper in Progress" and it really fit together, our collaboration started then and there.

Next to Emmy's small graphical works, she started to make more (temporary) paper installations. Her new surrounding have a very strong and positive influence on her work. Enschede is much greener and she lives really nearby a forrest now. I really like the works where she leaves a drawing somewhere, she calls them "interventions'. She made a project for schoolchildren making with them these "interventions". It really great that she gets children to make contemporary, conceptual, Ephemeral art and that they really enjoying doing so!

The title for this post is the title of a work by Francis Alÿs, I will make a post about his work soon. Emmy Dijkstra admires this artist, and so do I. He inspired her to let her work go, be free and let yourself be suprized by the outcome. I'm really fortuned to have the possibility of working together with Emmy Dijkstra. She gives me a lot of inspiration and also it is great to have found an artist that makes things with the same theme, temporality, and feeling.

Paper dress by Emmy Dijkstra

"Here I fell asleep" by Emmy Dijkstra

Emmy's work at an exhibition

"I found a corn plant and made leaves for it" by Emmy Dijkstra

More about Emmy Dijkstra on www.emmydijkstra.nl

Temporality lasts longest

"When there was something left to save" by Anya Gallaccio, 2008

In my previous post I wrote about Ephemeral art. I also wanted to tell about Anya Gallaccio's work, but I didn't dare to add photos of Anya Gallaccio's work in the same post with my academy work.

First a little about Anya: Anya Gallaccio (born 1963) is a Scottish artist, who often incorporates organic material in her work such as fruit, vegetables, plants, ice, and recently sand. Often these materials change during the course of the exhibition. Once they have left the artist's atelier nature takes over control. Flowers wither, grass grows, ice melts, fruit rots. In other works the natural course of transformation is stopped. Sprouting potatoes and broad bean pods, branches and whole trees trunks are reproduced in bronze, their lives prolonged indefinitely. In 2003 she was nominated for the Turner Prize of the Tate Britain, London.

In her work she found a perfect balance, partly temporary, partly permanent. "Because Nothing has Changed" (2000) is a bronze sculpture of a tree adorned with porcelain apples. "Because I Could Not Stop" (2002) is a similar bronze tree but with real apples which are left to rot. The bronze looks as fragile as the fruits. She inspired me to continue with my temporary works, in both my ricecarpets as wallpaper installations. She proofs that temporary art can have just as much impact on the art scene, museums and the art market as long-lasting paintings or sculptures.

"...The conceptual framework of her art is often developed from the specific site and its historic resonance. Yet the physical presence of the work is always a primary concern. The viewer’s senses are stimulated at every turn. This might be the pleasurable scent of flowers or chocolate - which at a later date might become the disturbing stench of decay. Or it might be the bold use of unexpected forms to create a stunning view, for example through the introduction of seven felled oak trees to the grand Duveen galleries at Tate Britain, or the simple presentation of a wall of gerbera daisies pinned behind a single sheet of glass, as seen in a new work, preserve ‘beauty’ 1991-2003, for the Turner Prize exhibition."
from "The Weekly Artist"

Enjoy and take time to read the titles!

"Glaschu"by Anya Gallaccio, live plants arranged in a giant carpet pattern, inspired by Templeton's Carpet Factory designs, 1999

"Preserve ‘beauty’" by Anya Gallacio, made of 2,000 red gerberas 1991-2003

"Blessed (Drawing for a sculpture)" by Anya Gallaccio, 2000

"It must give you pleasure" by Anya Gallaccio, 2001

"Because I could not stop" by Anya Gallaccio, 2002

Why?

Children trying to taste the lollipop for the photo, 2003

Why make temporary art? Why make something that isn't meant to last? Questions often asked, not only by colleagues, the audience and friends, but also by myself.
It all started in my first year of the Art Academy. I made a lollypop of 150 cm. I made it of real sugar, the top part strawberry flavored and the bottom banana. It smelled great, I had to put I sign with it "Don't eat the Art" when it laid out to dry.
I exhibited the lollipop in the garden of the academy, later my mom planted it in her kitchen garden to make some photos.

Making of lollipop, 2003

Lollipop, 2003

After the lollipop I experimented with food (eating round food on a round picnic blanket only passing the food around in a circle), with soap, dried acrylic (molds of pill strips) and hair gel (inspired by the works of Nobert Stück). It was after my graduation that I made my first ricecarpet. I didn't think about "how to sell" or if it was practical, I just felt like making it. After that, many ricecarpets followed and I'm still very happy with the organic materials (rice, lentils, beans, corn, sunflowerseeds).

Cat-milk bottles with drops of hair gel, 2003

When I was little, I was fascinated by vanitas paintings. I loved the dark oil paintings, they where spooky. They carry out this feeling, this warning; "You are just a tiny dot in the universe, what comes on your path, what you'll become, no one knows, but be quick, because nothing last, nothing remains".

"In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with Northern European still life painting in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, though also common in other places and periods. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:2 from the Bible is often quoted in conjunction with this term. The Vulgate (Latin translation of the Bible) renders the verse as Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. The verse is translated as Vanity of vanities, all is vanity by the King James Version of the Bible, and Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless by the New International Version of the Bible."
-from Wikipedia

This subject never left my work. My translation of it is much lighter. My work is not about "nietigheid" (nothingness) or ending, I'm trying to capture a moment in time, share an experience. A memory can last for ever, it's not something you can hold in your hands, but you can feel it and share it.

"Metroman's Dance" by Nobert Strück, 1989. Page from SO-OP 1982 - 1990

"Suicide soap" by Nobert Strück, 1988. Page from SO-OP 1982 - 1990

"The transience of life has been a continued subject for artists of the fifteenth century to contemporary times. Prominent within fifteenth century northern European still life paintings the burning candle or partially peeled lemon symbolised the transience of time, and consequently of life. Manifest in the symbols of vanitas the ephemeral remained within the realms of picturesque depiction, the continued diversification of materials throughout the twentieth century however transformed subject into material form.
Ephemeral works of art embody a perpetual state of physical transformation, time very literally defines the truly ephemeral work of art. Ice, flowers, sand, chocolate, in this post-modern destruction of the revered art object traditionally non-art materials embody rather than represent transience."
-from Wikipedia

Finding my place in art and life, I found the term "Ephemeral art". It is a much better word than "temporary art", see the explanation above. Ephemeral things (from Greek ephemeros, literally "lasting only one day") are transitory, existing only briefly. Typically the term is used to describe objects found in nature, although it can describe a wide range of things.

Hope I will be part of that art movement some day!

Starting with a splash!

"Dandelion explosion" by Walter Mason in 2005

First of best of wishes for 2012! Let it be a year full of things you want to do! And get time to do it!
Tried to make a list of things to do today, what has to come first on my blog and when. I got a call that my studio was maybe flooded so I dropped my plans, left my mind and headed there. Lucky for me, it's my next-door-neighbor's studio that is probably flooded...When I got back I started cleaning out my closet (because I get shelfs this weekend, living in this house a year this weekend..), adding nice pictures of birds in my agenda and getting distracted by Facebook.

"red berries, black hole, green duckweed" by Walter Mason in 2007

Monday my design for a Pagi-Sore batik finally went in a package on its way to Jakarta, indonesia. I will add photos of the painting and the making of soon. Read more about it in the blogpost "Making paper look like fabric".
I like to start this year with not a post about history, then again everything that is documented is already history, but with something new and temporary. In this new year next to Batik and Dutch (colonial) history and folkart, I will be making posts about Temporary Art. This fine example is made by Germany based artist Walter Mason. Found a post about it on the site Recycl Art. Inspiration to feed your recycling mind! Just what I need on a day like today. It's always difficult to re-start after you finished something you worked on that long. It's also the feeling of being satisfied for a moment, but all artists know this never last long...
Back to Walter Mason. He makes land art, with almost graphical feel to it. After he makes it, he then let nature do the erasing. In these photos with a little help by a brick.

Land Art is becoming the new graffiti. Sunday someone told me that in a TV program they interviewed a man making stone-carpets in the forest. He just collected stones and when he had enough he made a little piece of art. People in the village where telling each other that they should walk there and there when walking the dog, to see more of these artworks!

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Land Art was a quite popular art form from the US. Still a lot of great epic Land Art is made, but it had a bit of a taking-themselves-very-serious feel to it. I always have ideas for making temporary art statements, but I never quite make them. Maybe 2012 will be a good year for recycling ideas, or finally execute them and getting back to nature.

"Buttercups" by Walter Mason in 2007

More Land Art by Walter Mason on his photostream Meandermind