Saturday, April 24, 2010

Criteria

What other messages does work of art carry besides its historical relevance?

How does curator make decisions? Is it a collaboration, an alternative, a true independent?

How do we value craftsmanship in works of art today?

Does it create strong impact and significance that can be appreciated by larger viewers (how does it transcend?)

Does work of art contains enough of the artists own statement?

How does work of art enable the viewers to shift from their postmodernist perspective?

Idea over aesthetic? Aesthetic over idea? or balanced?

Is the work beautiful?

art & identity

How does favoritism come to play in art?

How can one define their identity besides their origin and appearance?

How come people see Nikki lee’s work controversial when it is just a photo of everyday life that captures people (white, black, Asian, etc)?

Are abstract artists conscious about their identity since the great names are all white males who were interested in masculinity and sublime?

How successful are these artists in terms of naturalizing social constructions through their works?

art & body

Is there a difference between body art and adornment?

Can the figure still represent the idea of beauty?

What does the body represent outside of the sexual sphere?

What cultural representations does the body hold outside of sexuality?


Can the body be present without political significance?


Can the body ever be neutral? And if so, how?


In it’s absence can the body still be present? (ex. Barbara Kruger)


Can the body be separate from identity?


art&nature&technology


lee bul


chris jordan


andy goldsworthy


rauschenberg


mel chin


How does art different from science fiction?

Where do we draw a line between art&activism and art&nature?

How can a human being triumph over nature?

art&abstraction


james sienna

jackson pollock

piet mondrian


mark rothko

'
terry winters


Why does abstract art mainly refer to abstract painting and not any other genre?

Does the idea of “flatness” still imply any significance to many artists today? What is so special and outstanding about flatting the surface of canvas?

How can one possibly acknowledge the content behind the work when the work doesn’t show anything else but color and form?

Can abstract art be conceptual art?

Who made Jackson Pollock so famous and influential? Is it Pollock himself or Greenberg?

Manifesto

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRkoI29Wzyc

Monday, March 8, 2010

Can Radicality viewed as producing a falsely critical, ineffectual 'social' or even 'compassionate' art?

What is rational art?

How about not trying so hard to do anything more than the aesthetic, that it actually constitutes a political space of its own that is more effective than interventions into the realm of social relations?

So this (the precarious politics of art) is what artists today destined to do?

Will these politics of art enhance and protect the precariousness of the world??.... ?

Monday, February 22, 2010

The Radicant part 1 & 2


jason rhoades


Kim soo ja


miltos maneta


mike kelly


Laszlo moholy


richard prince


Julie Mehretu


mark dion


Gabriel Orozco


-response-

Baurriaud mentioned that it is important to embrace the globalism and reconstruct the future of art that we, as the generation of artist who has willing and power, take such a responsibility to construct the form of art that is unified and accepted globally. As much as I would like to meet the agreement of his suggestion, I am very much disinterested about many altermodern artists that he presumes. Of course, we are living in an art world where things are in the melting pot. Today’s history, both socially and politically, affected artists to encourage juxtaposing different elements together. This juxtaposing action can be viewed as though they are literally duck taping different cultures together forcefully. Internet made everything faster and quicker and we don’t feel distant with other culture as before, and there is certain occurrence where different cultures are slowly breaking their boundary and willing to be harmonized. In the result of that, we might gain the singularity that can be communicated fluently to one another but we will lose the unique sense of its variety. For example, worldcup is a global sports festival that invites millions of people in earth to an event that generates every kind of emotions. It unifies everyone across the globe and creates humanism, what is important is that they celebrate the uniqueness of their own nations. How sad it would be, if someone questioning and creating an argument about the reason for such occasion. As much as Bourriaud tries to embrace movement of the art in global contexts, he is still talking about very specific group of artists that can potentially generate next post postmodernism which he already coined the name and that is altermodernism. I see this very ironic. It doesn’t feel truthful to me.

We no longer live in a place where time is generous. The idea of globalism became the transformation of tourism into everyday phenomena. Technology enables us to have instant accessibility. There is conflation of space and time. We are haunted by the multiplicity and complexity. No matter how bad it might look, whether art is losing its originality and its aura or not, the fact is that we can’t go back. We are responsible for the future and should act on it.” Simply, this is Bourriaud’s interpretion of where art stands today. No wonder how precarious it looks! And radicant art, to me, does looks pretty precarious. Radicant art was born in anxiety.

Today, nothing considers as a “new” art. We don’t talk about certain art unless it’s THE game in town. I don’t think Bourriaud is any different than any other art critics from the past. To be against what is new is not to be modern. This is a fundamental idea that drives modernism and continues to breathe in same way today. Bourriaud, to me, is also carrying this idea with his support in the context of globalism. The only possible strategy to counter a new style which one critic detest is to jump over the previous style. I mean that is how modernism demolished realism, pop art demolished abstract expressionism, and so on. Now, where accessibility is only one click away that you have excess to any information you can pull, thus this infrastructure influence art and its environment, globalism and its radicality makes sense. Is Bourriaud trying to fix the value in radicant art with the name of althermodernism? Does Bourriaud think that radicant art rejuvenates today’s art scene?



Monday, February 15, 2010

POSTPRODUCTION

The meaning of Tiravanija’s work depends on the people who uses and deal with its display. His work is a serious attempt at reshaping social space, turning gallery to a place that has totally different goals and activities. I really appreciate his innovation using the context of art in different way. As a craft artist, although I am keenly interested in contemporary art movements, this kind of display creates certain degree of frustration if I was to relate my own discipline with a conceptual artist like Tiravanija. He is clearly not interested in the artwork that their purpose was to offer its visual quality. It is not an important aspect in his works that creates dialogue within the viewer’s mind which leads to its visual appreciation. His art world, to me, seems like a complete departure from visual art. What would be the significant turning point of the way he approach this kind of enterprise of art making? How did the “relational aesthetics” born? furthermore, if the relationship and the relationship only can be consider as art, what other elements that can be considered to qualify as an art? It seems like anything can enter the gallery door with the name of "art".

Marcel Duchamp showed the way to a new kind of art. and the importance of the imagination and the intellect one should carry in creating so call "new art" has been well embraced. All the duchampian after duchamp continues to carry this fundamental theory until today. Is it a cultural and social effect that art became highly conceptual and literary? These kinds of works exist mostly to illustrate the text. this is ironical because art before modernism should be consider literary ( all those realism paintings) didn't modernism started with the idea of rejecting litarary? I look at relational aesthetic artworks and start wandering, searching, struggling to find its contexts. For the most part, I would need texts that explain the concept behind the work. When I look at this art world with cultural perspective, I see the huge respect that is for elaborated ideas. Is art becoming more like a literature and philosophy? Where is the notion of beauty in postproduction era? Or what can be defined as “beauty” in our time?










Rirkrit Tiravanija



Pierre Huyghe



Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster



Liam Gillick



Maurizio Cattelan



Philippe Parreno