#artstatement2

[knotsorclouds]

Art Statement #2 Feedback Session

Art Statement #2 is due today, posted to your blogs. Together in a small group, read each artist’s statements for the first part of class time.

Work together to give honest critical feedback on how theses words are operating in relationship to the artists work. Isolate the parts of each statement version that offer the most specific information about the work. Help each other to identify the parts of the statement versions that are redundant, general and unnecessary, or vague.

After each artist has their statement feedback, you are free to work independently in your studios for the remaining class session.

Images above:

These images are by artist Carmen Argote for her current artist in residence project at 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles. Check out the show, on view through March 23rd, called “If only if were that easy”.

From the press release:

“As a multidisciplinary artist working in installation, Carmen Argote explore notions of home and place, interacting with architecture to reflect on personal histories and her own immigrant experience. She works with places and materials that surround her, utilizing local resources as points to expand from. Her practice uses the act of inhabiting as a starting point, allowing the work to take form as she respond to a space, materials and ideas developing from her own experiences and relationships to a site.

She works from an intimate and personal place, using shared experiences to connect the spaces that house us to notions of home and self. Often working with family, she explores the common immigrant experience as a layered, multigenerational, transnational experience that is echoed though shared memories, traumas, and aspirations, extending outward from the intimate space of home.

During her Artist Lab residency, Carmen Argote will be developing a performance on January 20, 2018 titled If only it were that easy… for the Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA. An amateur motorcycle rally organized around an architectural mind map of the artist’s making, the work centers on a social exploration of motorcycle riding as a cognitive dream space akin to the “zone” or “flow” of artistic creation, inviting artists and culture workers who ride motorcycles themselves to collectively teach the artists about riding and about life.”

[knotsorclouds]

Art Statement #2, plus art to see in Los Angeles...

For your next statement draft, we will be writing several shorter versions of your art statement, honing in on one or two aspects of your work in each version. These statements should be about your current practice as specifically as possible, ultimately aiming your thinking and ideas towards creating a related body of artworks.

Craft each art statement version to the prompts below as concisely and specifically as you can. Each art statement version should about 1 paragraph in length. Consider each word careful and avoid redundancy.

Art Statement Version #1: Descriptive

Write about the specific forms your artwork takes. This should include what it looks like and how it is made. This could include description of your art process, material use, medium and subject matter as it relates to how you want your work to be understood.

Art Statement Version #2: Concepts and Influence

Write about the specific ideas and concepts at work in your art. If possible, talk about the specific ideas of the body of work you hope to present in your senior show. This should indicate what the work means to you and how you hope others view and relate to it. This could include discussion of your influences, personal relationships and background information helpful to understanding the works ideas, description of ideas or concepts from other disciplines that inform your practice, as well as ideas about how you have crafted your work to engage and inform the viewer.

Art Statement Version #3: Non Art Audience Statement

Write about your artwork including what the work looks like, how its made and what it means to you for an audience that is not educated in art. Imagine you are explaining what you do as an artist to your Mom, a childhood friend, or someone you just met. Think about how you can communicate the essence of what you are is as succinctly as possible in a way that can be understood and appreciated for what it is by a non art educated audience.

Art Statement Version #4: Discipline Specific Statement

Write about your work in the context of the medium, discipline or processes your work employs. Think deeply about the specific context surrounding your discipline and where your work fits into that larger conversation. How does your work add and contribute to the ideas at work in the contemporary use of your specific medium or discipline? How does your work fit into the historical uses of your medium? What ideas and concepts in your work are specifically related to the contemporary art discussions in and around your art medium or discipline?

Art Statement #2 is due Tuesday March 8th. 

Please post all 4 versions of your art statement to your blog by the start of class on this date. Use the hashtag #artstatement2 to make your statement easy to identify.

Images above:

Some art to see around Los Angeles....

The first two images are from a group show called “The Feminine Sublime” on view at the Pasadena Museum of California Art until June 3rd. The top image is a painting by Merion Estes and the second image is a mixed media work by Virginia Katz. Other artists in the show include:  Yvette Gellis, Constance Mallinson and Marie Thibeault. 

The next image is by artist Louise Bourgeois from a show of her drawings called The Red Sky at Hauser and Wirth, Los Angeles through May.

“The Theater of Disappearance” is a site specific project by artist Adrian Villar Rojas at MOCA, Geffen Contemporary through May 13th. 

This painting by Rema Ghuloum is on view at Jaus, part of a 2 person show with HK Zamani that opens this weekend and is on view until early April.

I keep seeing images of what looks like an amazing show by Yevgeniya Baras in my social media feeds. The exhibition is called “Toward Something Standing Open” and is on view at the Landing through March 10th.

[knotsorclouds]

Art Statement #2

For your next statement draft, we will be writing several shorter versions of your art statement, honing in on one or two aspects of your work in each version. These statements should be about your current practice as specifically as possible, ultimately aiming your thinking and ideas towards creating a related body of artworks.

Craft each art statement version to the prompts below as concisely and specifically as you can. Each art statement version should about 1 paragraph in length. Consider each word careful and avoid redundancy.

Art Statement Version #1: Descriptive

Write about the specific forms your artwork takes. This should include what it looks like and how it is made. This could include description of your art process, material use, medium and subject matter as it relates to how you want your work to be understood.

Art Statement Version #2: Concepts and Influence

Write about the specific ideas and concepts at work in your art. If possible, talk about the specific ideas of the body of work you hope to present in your senior show. This should indicate what the work means to you and how you hope others view and relate to it. This could include discussion of your influences, personal relationships and background information helping to understanding to the works ideas, description of ideas or concepts from other disciplines that inform your practice, as well as ideas about how you have crafted your work to engage and inform the viewer.

Art Statement Version #3: Non Art Audience Statement

Write about your artwork including what the work looks like, how its made and what it means to you for an audience that is not educated in art. Imagine you are explaining what you do as an artist to your Mom, a childhood friend, or someone you just met. Think about how you can communicate the essence of what you are is as succinctly as possible in a way that can be understood and appreciated for what it is by a non art educated audience.

Art Statement Version #4: Discipline Specific Statement

Write about your work in the context of the medium, discipline or processes your work employs. Think deeply about the specific context surrounding your discipline and where your work fits into that larger conversation. How does your work add and contribute to the ideas at work in the contemporary use of your specific medium or discipline? How does your work fit into the historical uses of your medium? What ideas and concepts in your work are specifically related to the contemporary art discussions in and around your art medium or discipline?

Art Statement #2 is due Thursday November 2nd. Turn in a printed copy of your statements at the beginning of class.

Images above:

Amanda Ross-Ho

, Untitled Timepiece (A CLEARLY ERRONEOUS HOLDING), 2017. Silkscreen, acrylic, gouache, coffee, wine, and graphite on canvas. 52 x 52 in. (132.1 x 132.1 cm.)

This artwork was included in a 2017 exhibition called MY PEN IS HUGE. This second image is an installation view the exhibition. Read more about the exhibition here. 

I put these images particular images on the blog as inspiration for you as you begin to consider how individual works work together as a body of work for an exhibition as well as how presentation strategies play into how meaning is constructed in an art viewing experience.