Henry Rojas Critique Documentation And Small Works

I guess under the big umbrella of things I’m going to start by acknowledging the interest I have in human relationships. I say human meaning not merely between each other but their general existence and the way they alter space, literal space. In a way my interest is the path that people take in their lives and how it all narrows down to a given moment. I guess this path can be called life but my interest are more specifically related to the way people understand things. Especially things we as a species find hard to understand or grasp. So many times I’ve thought the phrase life is crazy and it is. It’s that driving madness that incites my passion. Not being able to comprehend something brings interest to me and the forms in which people comprehend these things is what I’m trying to capture. Every human views life though their own eyes and we can all associate certain things we know though our own experience. This is called context. Being able to create context in someone’s mind about one subject personal to them and allowing them to associate that to their own memories is my main goal with my work. I feel as though memories are the basis for who we are as people and what we understand is all consisting of memories. Generally my work consist of how people impact each other’s lives creating memories and understandings with each other. It is about meeting someone and becoming a part of their life in the most miniscule of ways to the most powerful and ultimately the way people’s physical and mental states are altered according to the people they come across with on their said path.

A chaotic peace that surrounds us all. Any specific moment is just a buildup of the past giving every event a reason and every reason a moment. I try to reason with things logically, usually if I see the bigger picture it is easier to understand the reason behind it. The way I understand things in my head is based on two main things what we see and what we don’t see. Everything consist of these things. What we see ranges for the physical and the alterations whatever it is we are trying to grasp. What we don’t see is the reason for it, though sometimes it can be physical it often goes unseen or unspoken. Like the saying there are two sides to every story except in my mind there are four two for each individual. Two being the people involved in the situation. Though flattening these interactions into two aspects can ease being able to see a reason for the ordeal there is still an aspect that is neither seen nor understood. It is what we don’t understand. This aspect is what I generally regard as a thing of the universe. Almost like an enigmatic notion existing somewhere beyond anyone’s mind. This aspect is of special interest to me because I’ve never been able to recognize what it is or means. In a way I create everything I make trying to understand why things happen. Why we meet people for the first and last times and the way these encounters affect the rest of our lives. Every person has their own personal universe and their own perception on what their unknown is and the formulae to discovering it varies accordingly.

Rodriguez- Crit #2

In-Depth Project- Do You Remember That One Time?
     I wanted to create a trigger for memory, and have these platonic shapes with different approaches to surface to serve the same purpose that a picture would. I chose a person that I'd want to remember spending time with and recreated three memories based on material, composition, shape and line. These represnt both emotion and the memory itself.

    

 

Small Works and Process:
     In my experimentation I played with surface in regards to texture. 

Research:

http://www.skarstedt.com/exhibitions/2016-04-21_mike-kelley/#/images/3/

·         Mike Kelley

       Modernist color and composition

       Physical road map through images from his memory

       *screen memory exploration

       Repressed memory and trauma

       Influences of his art education

       *push-pull theory (Hans Hofmann)

       Expressive techniques

       Unrestrained by conventional composition

       Wood= permanent- preserves existence throughout time (memory)

https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/screen-memory/

·         Screen memory:

-          False recollection of memories

-          Made from an agreement, repression of something unacceptable

-          Falsely recalled early childhood memory

-          Magnified in importance and masks another memory of deep significance

http://www.skarstedt.com/exhibitions/2012-09-13_mike-kelley/#/images/5/

·         Mike Kelley: Memory Wall Flats

-          sentimental keepsakes

-          Frames filled with trinkets

-          20 year’s worth of unused art materials

-          Re-examination and re-use of materials

-          New life to unused art materials

-          Similar to memory’s to bring to life

http://www.art21.org/texts/josiah-mcelheny/interview-josiah-mcelheny-objects-and-ideas

·         Josiah McElheny:

-          Glass- un-intuitive

-          Memory- an imperfect remembrance

-          Book/photo misrepresents the original thing

He takes it as real and utilizes it

Down play or play up the importance of a memory

-          ^re-remembering

-          Memory of objects

-          History of objects in what they symbolize originally and what the recreation shows

-          Re-imagining something

-          Doesn’t believe in originality

-          Fact vs fiction

-          Denies history

-          Letting ideas in his art be useful to him

-          Idea of an object being disentangled

-          Putting intent in something always fails, if an artist engages enough people in another time period or a different prior knowledge, way of thinking will understand what they were saying clearly

-          History=story

-          Re imagine your own context of your work

-          Conceptually- up to each persons imagination and prior knowledge

https://amelia17.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/preserving-time-josiah-mcelheny-3/

·         Josiah McElheny

-          Seduces viewer into piece

-          Preserving time through his art

-          Represents past time and reflects the current time by putting his ideas in there

Here is my link for my artist presentation.

Artist Research- René Magritte, Joseph Cornell, Jeff Wassman- Ryan Haney

René Magritte

Picture of the Belgian artist.

René Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist painter who lived from 1898-1967. He was the son of a textile merchant and an unstable mother.When Magritte was just 12 years old, his mother drowned herself in the River Sambre. It is said that when they retrieved her body from the water, her dress was wrapped over head, completely covering her face.This experienced would end up inspiring some of Magritte's work, such as his piece "Les Amants", which depicts a man and a woman with cloth wrapped around their heads.

"Les Amants" (The Lovers); related to the death of Magritte's mother.

When starting out as a young artist, Magritte created work that he considered Impressionistic. After not achieving much success with this work, and after being convinced by the Surrealistic work of his friend Andre Breton, he began working with paintings that depicted distorted reality and uncommon images.He also would sometimes display common items in unusual environment, while simultaneously raising questions on the object's context and origin.

An example of Magritte's Impressionistic work.

One of Magritte's pieces, titled "The Treachery of Images", shows a pipe, on a plain background, with what is seemingly contradictory text below it.

"This is not a pipe."

The text translates to: "This is not a pipe."

While Magritte purposely makes this statement seem untrue, he argues that it is not. According to him, it's a painting of a pipe, not a real one. The goal of this type of work is to get the viewer to ask questions on the proposed issue and to question their past perceptions.

Joseph Cornell

Photograph of Cornell.

Joseph Cornell was an assemblage artist who lived from 1903-1972. Like Magritte, he also lost one of his parents at a young age: his father, who was a textile merchant like Magritte's father, passed away when Cornell was just 17. He was left to take care of his both of his mother and his brother Robert, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Cornell dedicated his life to him, and made sure that his brother had what he needed until Robert's death in the mid- 1960's.

Joseph Cornell himself never married or had children, and rarely did he ever leave the state of New York, where he was born; he attended Phillips Academy in Massachusetts for three years util he eventually went back to his home without graduating.

His art was mostly inspired by Surrealist work made by artists of his generation, such as René Magritte. His work relied on the Surrealist use of juxtaposition, along with the collection of materials he would find in local book and thrift stores. These pieces were predominantly made into shadow boxes, where he would assemble pieces into a unique composition.

Much of Cornell's work was meant to be interacted with or sometimes held.

Joseph Cornell didn't see an extensive sum of success until he was commissioned for a solo show at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1949.His last major show was arranged for children, as his work was placed at their eye- level and were meant for them to handle with their hands. Cornell passed away from heart failure in 1972.

Jeff Wassmann

Photograph of Wassmann

Jeff Wassmann is an assemblage artist who was born in Mars, Pennsylvania in 1958. He discovered Joseph Cornell's work while visiting an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Wassmann saw this work just a few years after Cornell's death, and at first he was not impressed, stating that it was "the only thing I didn't get back then". He would eventually lighten up to the work, however, and would end up creating extremely similar work to Cornell.

Wassmann would add depth to his work and distance himself from Cornell in time, though. He created a fictional artist named Johann Dieter Wassmann, who has fooled many art historians and critics since his creation. According to Jeff, Johann was born in Germany in the 19th century, and was the pioneer of assemblage pieces ( these pieces actually being Jeff Wassmann's currently work). This was of course far from the truth, as Cornell, Wassmann's inspiraton, was the real pioneer of this type of work.

Fictional artist Johann Dieter Wassman

Wassman currently works out of New Zealand.

Cat Camargo artist research- Henry Taylor

Cat camargo

Henry Taylor

  -Born in 1958 in Ventura, California. 

- The youngest of 8 brothers and sisters. 

- attended Oxnard College (Had james Jarvaise as a mentor here) and then spent 10 years working as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo Sate mental hospital. He then retired and went to Calarts

-His father was an issued government painter so he grew up with art around him

-he is known to paint obsessively, on various materials, including empty cigarette packs, detergent boxes, cereal boxes, suitcases, crates, bottles, furniture, and stretched canvas.

-Taylor is most well known for his acrylic paintings, mixed media sculptures, and installations.

-His most recent pieces have been paintings but my favorite installation of his was done in 2012 called " March Forth" done after his trip to Ethiopia, shown in a space in New York

inspirations= 

1) 

-Romuald Hazoumè is an artist from the Republic of Bénin, best known for his work La Bouche du Roi (African). 

-

2) -He was also inspired by jacob lawrence who was  an African-American painter known for his portrayal of African-American life.

-Lawrence is among the best-known 20th-century African-American painters

- was famous for his migration series, The series depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.

- Taylor could have been inspired by jacobs use of color and painting on different materials, jacob would paint on cardboard.

Cat Camargo Crits!

Cat Camargo cit #1 small working leading towards one product (you will further see the use of boxes in crit #2). 3x4 ft
title: portion of chapter one












Crit number #2  formal, conceptual, communicative, technical.
6x8 ft
title: Our People
Further worked on a 2014 piece (pink carpet) by combining with new piece to complete final piece. Burlap on painting to be cohesive with burlap table sculpture. Synthetic hair, vase with flowers, and art boxes give a sense of decorations to this installation. Studied color and materials (such as fabrics, canvas, and burlap) to bring the installation together. resolved piece.


Crit #3
title: Chapter 1
length of movie: 1 minute
Further studied the use of hair and the ways I could use its forms. Created a jump rope out of the synthetic hair and did a performance of myself jumping with it to represent how I have been raised to believe that you become a woman once you learn how to handle your own hair. Used poetry and family members in the video to further bring up discussions of family and culture that deals with, hair, food, and colors.