Eva Kotátková...

One of the ideas I had was the possibility of having a sketchbook as a form of diary to record my life  with the intention of reflecting back onto, perhaps using it for inspiration in further ideas. An artist that reminded me of this at the  Freize Fair was Eva Kotátková. Her use of cut outs, multi media's and a mix of her own sketches and other images caught my eye at the fair because of i's relevance and presentation. Due to this I have decided to research Kotátková further and find out what her work is about.

On the Hunt Kastner website (the gallery that represented Kotátková at the Frieze Fair) there is a statement written by Kotátková Herself. I found it interesting that her work and starting point is similar to what I'm looking at now so I can take inspiration from what Kotátková has explored as well as her visual technique. This most helpful sentence would be; 'I work with everyday stories and situations, re-evaluating them, transforming them, locating them within new coordinates, given by my personal experience and biography.' as it involves everything I have mentioned, being autobiographical and involving the 'every-day' in a straight forward way. I like her idea of looking at 'mechanisms' and routines/rituals as it what makes up part of everyday life.

'However, an obsessive recording of things and situations by means of drawing remains for me the most intimate and direct way of expression.' This statement has encouraged me to continue with the idea of a sketch book diary. I might start with casual observations everyday and then for the last week before my birthday I could get more 'obsessive' like Kotátková as a form of expression and record of my existence before I turn twenty.

Existentialism in art...

As part of my investigation into human existence and my life I have researched existentialism, one website had the history and the formation of existentialism but this is the summary:

"Existentialism is not a philosophy so much as a protest against certain features of contemporary life. God has disappeared. Nature is governed by abstract laws. Man himself has dwindled to a statistic in the state bureaucracy; even his inmost thoughts and feelings are matters of psychology, physiology, ultimately of chemistry. Man's dethronement has been going on for three hundred years ago, ever since the advent of science in the seventeenth century, but it has taken this century's wars, depressions, concentration camps and wholesale state engineering to bring matters to a head. Existentialism champions what has been overlooked in man's one-sided desire to intellectually comprehend and to control the uniqueness of human life: its variety, its need for personal validation. Hence the irrationalism of the movement, its partisan nature, its willingness to dispense with reason or close argumentation, even to denigrate custom and logic as fiction.

We lose ourselves in universal objective systems, said Kierkegaard, and are less than men if we submit to the fear of being different, claimed Nietzsche. To confront the absurdities of existence is to know anxiety, dread and ambiguity, but dread is also "the dizziness of freedom which gazes down into its own possibilities, grasping at finiteness to sustain itself."

Because it stresses the individual, and has an ecstatic quality, recognizing the temporal and the historical context, existentialism has been attractive to the arts. Many of its philosophers were indeed excellent writers, Nietzsche and Sartre in particular. But the artist who reads existentialist philosophy to understand more clearly what his work is attempting to achieve will generally be disappointed. Contrary to popular claims, the existentialist view is not liberating. Nor does it champion the aesthetic outlook: it uses that outlook to examine various contemporary issues that defy reasoning. So much the better say its advocates. Not philosophy at all, say its critics, but an investigation better served by other disciplines — sociology, politics, literary theory, aesthetics in general. "

The second paragraph of this statement sums up how I feel about this project, I like to think I work hard and complete a lot of work for my projects but that usually happens later on. I always struggle to come up with an initial theme for a project as the freedom of choices to pick from seems daunting and, like this website describes, it's almost dizzying. To get a focus in that wide choice takes time for me but once I get excited or interesting in the theme things start to roll. It's probably just an excuse, but at least this project is already making me be honest about it!


What was most interesting about this definition was the third paragraph, or more precisely the sentence 'But the artist who reads existentialist philosophy to understand more clearly what his work is attempting to achieve will generally be disappointed.' I chose existentialism to research as inspiration for the investigation into my own life and work, however I still think it'd be useful to investigate further how some artists have used existentialism in their art to see what I can gain from it rather than using it as a tool to get a greater understanding of my own work.


Sometimes my best work comes from going off on a slight tangent, so I shouldn't worry too much about changing direction. I just need to keep in mind that this project started with looking at human existence and my (almost) 20 years of being alive.

Frieze Art Fair...

On 13th October I went to The Frieze Art Fair in Regents Park in London. It features of 170 contemporary Galleries from all over the world and 1000's of artists. So obviously there was a lot to see! Whilst going around the venue I recorded the works I liked most on my camera, I looked for works that related to my theme or that I liked the style/creation of which I could look at further in my own practice.

From my mind map I separated what I found into the following categories; Links to my previous work (cut outs, fashion or the idea of making a 2D idea into a 3D sculpture), Works related to time, life and thoughts, Habitats (Developments in Cities etc/Cityscapes/Landscapes/construction), Different process and materials that I could use within my work/practice.


Links to previous work:
Walid Raad Cotton under my feet 2007
Ink jet prints on velvet fine art paper
96 parts 25.1 x 31.4 cm each

This piece of work came with the thoughts of the artist next to it which worked as a description for the audiene:

Suzy Gomez From it's place

Resulting from the action of merging an original dress, casted aluminium and wax

150 x 60 x 70 cm

Jacob Kolding Die Nacht auf dem rucken 2011

Lambda print

140 x 100 cm

Joe Scanlan Alma Pater 2011

Wood, enamel painted metal, string, fabric, galvanised steel

200 x 350 x 75 cm 

Works related to time, life and thoughts:

Michael Wutz Untitled 2010

Etching

207.5 x 163 cm 

Bjorn Dahlem Der Goldene Baum (ewigkeit) 2011

Wood, steel, glass jars, tray, mirror, red wine, varnish

Bjorn Dahlem M-Zeit 2011

Wood, Steel, Clocks, Ink

Carl Hammound The Restoration 2011

Oil on canvas

50 x 60 (diptych)

Vasco Araujo Who Where 2011

Digital prints framed individually (Triptych)

140 x 140 cm | 65 x 65 cm | 20 x 130 cm

Grayson Perry Maps of truth and belief 2011

wool and cotton tapestry

200 x 470 cm

Hunt Kastner Gallery

Eva Kotatkova

Melissa Gordon Double Perspective (Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali) 2010

Simon Denny Chronic Fatigue Syndrome... 2011

Handrail, Digital print on canvas, Oil on canvas

766 x 106 x 300 cm

Fabiano Gonper Painting Serie 2011

Drawing on voile

260 x 215 cm

Adam Helms Desert Mythology 2011 

Backlit photography, shown between two charcoal on rice pieces

Adam Helms The new world 2011 

Backlit photography, shown between two charcoal on rice pieces

Igor Moukhin Resistance 1991-2011

Gelatine silver prints

Friedrich Kunath Happy Birthday Yesterday (sleepy Cannes) 2011

Indian Ink, Pencil, Watercolour on canvas

141 x 118.1 cm

Habitats:

Cinthia Marcelle O Cosmopolita/Cosmopolitan 2011

Inkjet on cotton paper, hahnemuhle photo rag satin

103 x 103 cm

Jonathas de Andrade Hoyayer/ Todayesterday 2011

Collage on photo impression Polyptych with 24)

700 x 114 cm

Wolfgang Tillmans In Flight Astro II 2010

C-print, Framed

213 x 145 cm

Wolfgang Tillmans Sunset Reflected 2007

C-print, Framed

213 x 145 cm

Raqs Media Collective The Perpetual Recall of The Penultimate Afternoon 2010

Black and white Lambada prints

76.2 x 76.2 cm

Raqs Media Collective Rules to be invented 2010

A three dimensional aleatoric chess game

61 cm cubed, with variations

Robert Rauschenberg Monitor (Runts) 2007

Pigment transfer on polylaminate

155 x 187.7 cm

Wolfgang Tillmans City (Sao Paulo) II 2010

Framed C-print

243.8 x 182.9 cm 

Process and materials:

Jonathon Bragdon Pre-Pyrenees Spain 2009

Graphite on paper

31 x 41 cm

Wolfgang Betke Personlichkeitsentwicklung (Self-Development) 2011

Oil and abrasion on aluminium 

132 x 100 cm 

Douglas Gordon Self-Portrait of you + Me (David Bowie04) 2010

Burned photograph, smoke and mirror

141.3 x 101 x 5 cm

Bertrand Lavier IFAFA V (stella) 2008

Neon tubes

191.8 x 348 x 16.5 cm

Nick Van Woert Not yet titled 7 2011

Mixed media and plexi glass

12.7 x 12.7 x 121.9 cm (18 plexiglass boxes)

Amikam Toren Armchair Painting - Untitled(inner beauty) 2008

Oil on canvas

71.5 x 61.5 cm

Navid Nuur Untitled 2011

Danilo Correale Erdbeben #1 2010

Pigment print, marker, glass ball 

105 x 132 cm

Do Ho Suh Specimen Series: New York Corridor -1 2011

Polyester fabric

Dimentions variable 

Tara Donovan Untitled (Mylar) 2011

103.5 x 111.8 x 96.5 cm

Massimo Bartolino Untitled (Airplane) 2011

Ink on paper

29.7 x 21 cm

Massimo Bartolino Untitled (Airplane) 2011

Ink on paper

100 x 70 cm

Thomas Schutte The Lonely Ghost 2011

Glass 

48 x 21 x 18 cm

Ivan Seal Duplanizadomet declaintbing siblinasserts (Coffee made with snow) 2011

Oil on canvas

80 x 60 cm

Ivan Seal Ansized Excrem 2011

Oil on canvas

80 x 60 cm

Nigel Cooke No Holidays 2011

Oil on Linen, backed with sailcloth

230 x 320 x 5.1 cm