Artist: Ken Price

Kenneth Price was an American ceramic artist and printmaker. I found a book about his sculpture in the library and find his works are inspiring. 

The body of his sculptures were made of clay, painted with acrylic paints or lacquer and then got sanded. 

I was attracted by the organic form of his work and the variety of the colour, giving a feeling of alien and bizarreness.

The following works remind me the skill we use in lacquer paintings. We accumulated layers of lacquer together, applying the next one after the previous one getting dry. Then we sand the lacquer back to flat, polishing with sand papers, oil and flour.

The following work, with dark background and light spots, gives a feeling of the universe to me, which is what I am trying to achieve with glazes. I am planning to do some tests with glazes and see if I can get this kind of effect.

Laniakea: Acrylic pieces test

To make the transparent structures, I did this test with laser cutted acrylic pieces.

I made images with AI and cut them with laser cut. After I finished the cutting, I realise the holes on the pieces have been forgotten, so I drilled the holes with Dremel. 

At the beginning, they were strung in one fish line. I found difficulty to control their direction; then I tried to string them in two lines, from the top and the diagonal. 

But then, they looked like the following image, which is still not what I want.

Then I strung the pieces in different sizes separately. Pieces in each size are controlled by two fish lines. Then I cut some engrooves on the shoe boxes and hung them in the air. 

They looked really just like the way I want in the light, slightly shiny. And I like their shadow under the spotlight. But it is hard to say how they will look like under the water, and I am worried about the mess that all the strings may cause. The concept of them is invisible time and space portal. But Maiko thought their sense of volume doesn't quite express the concept. I need to think about how to improve the design. 

Artist: Mahmoud Jouini

Mahmoud Jouini: 

He is a Libyan director, specialised in cinematography, VFX, art, filmmaking, photography, and graphic design.

I was recommended to look his 3D Abstract Painting art, because of its cosmic colour. Which might be a reference for my project.

With the colour he used, these works are like alien cities looked from high above. There are buildings, grassland, river running beside the city,  coast...

Artist: Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington is British-born Mexican surrealist painter. Among her works, I really like her

El mundo mágico de los mayas, finished in 1964. 

El mundo mágico de los mayas was a mural for the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City, influenced by the local region and culture.  From a review on Studio International about Leonora's exhibition, it said that 

El mundo mágico de los mayas is the netherworld of Mexico.  The review also mentioned about her miserable life during the war affected her later work. 

Without knowing anything about her and her work, I was naturally attracted by the painting. The world has sky red as blood, land and mountains like the desert. There are surreal creatures, something like a green dragon, a unicorn, a phoenix and other flying beasts. There are people on the ground, black crosses behind them. God-like beings are enlightening them or guiding them to somewhere. The painting is not dark to me at all. I can feel a spiritual redemption from the work. I like the softness of edges and colour. The sense of light and hope there is touching me as well. 

When I tried to find some information about the painting, I found this video that is interesting in a way. In the video, someone was asking Leonora about the inheritance of her talent, her understanding of the work. But Leonora told her that she shouldn't try to intellectualise art and she will never understand by that way. You should understand things by your own feeling. Say a painting is a visual world, but you are trying to turn it into an intellectual world, which is not. 

This conversation reminds me how the academic study here requires us to peel off things layer by layer and reach the answer deeply underneath. Sometimes I wonder is the true motivation, the true answer we are after or we are justing telling ourselves so.  David, our English tutor, sent us an article called Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag, which I should read it. 

I am a person more relying on my feeling more than my intellect. If I feel nothing about something, why would I care the story behind it. But I need to think about how my audiences feel and think about my work. I started to think that to what extent, I want my audiences understand my work. How much supporting information should I give to help them understand. With a keyword like Mexico netherworld, I can connect the visual information on the El mundo mágico de los mayas with my experience, trying to understand it. Even without the keyword, I can still figure out something which is making sense to me. Or I can just simply enjoy the painting itself.

Artist: Glenn Kaino

Glenn Kaino is a Los-Angeles-based conceptual artist. The following images show is work Tank (2014), which includes seven marine aquariums, with coral living inside. The setting inside the tanks are simple but have a strong visual impact. There are two aspects of his work catch me. 

One is the way he installed the equipment for the aquariums. There is no filter or heater can be seen in normal aquariums. The lighting system is quite invisible as well. By doing this, he reduced the visual interference that the viewer can easily focus on his work.

The other aspect is he broke the requirement that people would normally ask for the aquarium and aquascape, which is clarity of the tank. People nowadays can choose aquariums made of opti-white glasses that can give them a much more clear view of the tank. Doesn't like standard glass, opti-white glass has no green hint on it. After the aquarium has been set up, it is normal that the algae will grow, on the glass, rock, plants, and such. So people are recommended to clean the tank once a week, especially wiping the glasses. 

What is different here is that I think he let the water overflow the tank, giving the tank a poetic, ice-cube feeling. Because of the running water on the glasses, I cannot see the things inside clearly. But just because of this, there is an unusual beaty in his work.

To sum up the reason I got attracted by his work is that he exaggerated the difference between an artwork and an ordinary aquarium. I think this is worth learning.

Other refer: 

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/military-machines-become-coral-reefs-in-glenn-kainos-tank

Exhibition: Christian Marclay - White Cube Gallery Bermondsey

Christian Marclay 

1955-

artist based in London and New York

Marclay has interest in the relationship between sound and image. The following image was taken from a video he made, which is consist of numerous onomatopoeia taken from comic books. It is interesting. However, it was a lot of information for me to take in, that I could not bear to stay in that space.

In comparison, I am more fond of his works on canvas and paper. He spilled paints on the canvas or paper first,  then printed onomatopoeia.

I like the colour he used, as well as the lavish layers in the paintings.

The other series of work really interests me. There is a bullseye glass on each of them, above a found sheet music. When you look through the bullseye glass, the sheet blow looks has been twisted into a fantastical shape, which gives a miraculous feeling. I wonder if I can combing something like this with my design to give more fantastical feeling to it.