Inspiration for New Work

Saw this image on the Toast Travels blog this morning (www.toa.st):

inspiration for an exploratory path I've been toying with for some time. The forms offered by the landscape have inspired me since way back, from well before my time studying abstract form with other like-minded artists at a local studio where it all began to come together (working in clay and then casting in bronze or resin), to my stone carving days back in Italy right through to the present day, in my everyday surroundings, the garden and forest in particular.
Moss now a particular fascination, as the images of, let's call it an 'installation' although that's too formal a word for it, in my garden illustrate. This fascination also indulged and nurtured with my trip to Tokyo two years ago:

Not that I'm planning to simulate the detail of the moss - that goes against everything I feel and I do in sculpture. It's the forms, the shapes, that the moss covering creates over its substrate, be it wood or stone, that fascinates and inspires.
I've been thinking about combining clay with some of the raw marble stones I brought back from my time in Seravezza (near Pietrasanta and in the same region as Carrara, in Italy) back in 2008. I no longer wish to carve those stones in the way I have done in the past (see the 'Stone and Bronze' page on my website: Stone&Bronze ) because my focus now is on letting the material speak (as per my 2012 website entry on 2012-2015 and explained in previous blog posts of 21 and 24 August 2012 related to Gutai). Marble and the raw stones themselves are beautiful in their own right; I want to keep my intervention to a minimum simply to draw attention to their inherent, i.e. already there, beauty.
These are some of the stones:

which became Pietra Santa (as per the webpage mentioned above)

me at the back carrying another stone, from the same river as the 'Pietra Santa' stone above. The stones have worked their way down from the marble quarry up above over the years and are the water-eroded fragments from the blastings at the quarry.  I took away several others (less large and therefore much easier to carry back to the car!).

still in the process of becoming Pietra Santa 

 the marble quarry from where some of my other stones came

Anyway, back to the moss-covered stones/rocks inspiration:

A similar effect from snow:

(All pasted from Google Images)

A Point of Access

From the Sculpture Network Newsletter:

Sculpture Network
                                    
My interest in this exhibition right now is not the artwork itself; I find it difficult - and unfair to the artists - to judge any art without going to see/experience it 'in the flesh'. What interests me here are two things (and logging it here safeguards/archives it for future reference): firstly, the highlighted sections - in particular the "... accentuates the process of making her sculptures by leaving the traces of her physical work on the material. The charm of improvisation ...", something that is really firing me at the moment - and 2) the beginning of the commentary on the video, where he explains that, rather than an art-historical biography of the artists, this exhibition tells the story of concepts, i.e. proportion, relationships of size, dimensions, distance from one element to another (I understand that to mean placement or placing in relation to each other and in relation to the exhibition space), and distance between the sculpture/work and the viewer.
We are given an explicit invitation to view this work in a specific way. I'm not so keen on the explicit, directional instruction of how to view an art work here, but I think the giving of a point of access to the viewer can be useful, particularly if the work in question is pushing the boundaries of what art is perceived to be by the general public, i.e. what they believe it should be, what they expect it to be. Without such a point of access, work like this is all too often dismissed with contempt.
I've been working on finding a way to achieve this 'offering a point of access' in relation to some of the more experimental things I've been working on. I have no desire to give an instruction on how the work should be viewed; I want to keep my influence and presence as an artist to a minimum once the work is on show or has been purchased by someone. I, the artist, am no longer important at that stage (I therefore also don't sign my work). The piece speaks for itself; the object (and its story) becomes all important.

Projections of poetic imagination and a personal experience of Greek idealized concept of sculpture 

Esther Kläs, All in, 2011 - photo Ingo Bustorf - Courtesy Collection Peter Blum, NY

Coined by James Joyce, the word “whatness” translates the philosopher Thomas Aquinas’s concept of quidditas into English. It deals with the essence of a thing, its nature, as opposed to the existence of a thing. Consequently, it inquires into what an object is.

Kunsthalle Bielefeld presents an exhibition featuring the works of Esther Kläs and Johannes Wald. As the title for this show, Whatness emphasizes the commonalities shared by the works of these two young sculptors. Their sculptures reflect their material qualities of sculpture and the processes used to make them, as well as the essence of a sculpture and its effect upon viewers. They formulate the question: what is this three-dimensional thing there? 

Esther Kläs, Untitled (not yet titled), 2014 - photo Ingo Bustorf - Courtesy Esther Kläs, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

The works shift back and forth in their own ways between figurative motifs and abstraction, the interplay between form and material, and the objects’ rejection of interpretation. It is only through active participation and an indeterminate space for imagination that they are revealed to the viewer: “Beauty . . . is beheld by the imagination,” says Joyce.

Johannes Wald and Esther Kläs create an installation that allows their sculptures to enter into a dialogue with each other in different materials, from aluminium to zinc.

Esther Kläs (Germany, 1981) is often described as a “born sculptor.” Even though most of her sculptures are abstract, they evoke anthropomorphic physicalities or ancient ritualistic sites. They radiate dignity and personality, while developing a beguiling sense of naturalness in the space. They oscillate between a mysterious presence and projections of poetic imagination. The close connection between the works and the artist is always present. Kläs accentuates the process of making her sculptures by leaving the traces of her physical work on the material. The charm of improvisation is as much an effect of her works, as a tendency toward the absurd is. 

Johannes Wald, Studying the greeks’ grace, 2010 - photo Ingo Bustorf

Johannes Wald formulates questions for sculpture. For Wald, primarily sculptural qualities such as texture, material, and three-dimensionality are of secondary importance. He is mainly interested in revealing conditions, methods of making sculpture, and the process of transforming an idea into material.

He takes various approaches to his search for the perfect sculpture and a sense of naturalness as a sculptor. In studying the Greeks’ grace, he examines the essay “Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst” (Thoughts on imitating the works of the Greeks in painting and sculpture) by the archeologist and art critic Johann Joachim Winckelmann, written in 1755. It considers Greek sculpture to be the most perfect, and the author recommends that his contemporaries imitate it. Wald takes this advice more than 250 years later and applies it to his own works of art.

Johannes Wald, Kunsthalle Bielefeld exhibition view, 2015 - photo Ingo Bustorf

The result, however, is not a modelled sculpture. Rather, through the medium of photography, it refers to the subjectivity of the personal experience of grace, and the imaginary space for an extremely beautiful figure.

In a similar way, his Ekphrasis uses words to create a linguistic presentation of an idealized sculpture, while Pedestal for a Muse has an empty space that provokes an attitude of expectation toward the appearance of a muse. 

Whatness. Esther Kläs | Johannes Wald. Ausstellung in der Kunsthalle Bielefeld from Kunsthalle Bielefeld on Vimeo.

Whatness
Esther Kläs and Johannes Wald
Until 21.06. 2015

Exhibition curator: Friedrich Meschede
Assistant curator: Meta Marina Beeck

Kunsthalle Bielefeld
Bielefeld, Germany

www.kunsthalle-bielefeld.de

About Process ... And Alchemy

Hughie O'Donoghue at the RA

Royal Academy video

talking about process 
and "... you're hoping for a bit of alchemy to kick into the process and something magical to happen. And sometimes that happens!!."

Oh how I love his paintings! And his way of working. Alchemy indeed!

Inspiration from Philip Glass

"If you don't know what to do, there's actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you're doing nothing much of interest is going to happen."
Philip Glass in Words Without Music, which was the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 last week (and remains available for another 3 weeks or so). 

 Book of the Week: Words Without Music

His music has been a source of inspiration, discovery, relaxation, excitement, enthralment ... for some time now, and now I've been much taken by the words and thoughts in his memoir.

Another extract from that same episode (3):
"An authentic personal style cannot be achieved without a solid technique at its base."

And from Episode 5 , min. 11:00 onwards:
"Music is a place ..."

And in the same way, Art is a Place

Another Kind of Beauty - Another Angle of Interest

From what at first appears to be mere destruction, wonder, beauty and another angle of interest emerge. This is now all about the contrast in texture: the smooth and irregular, the curves and the angular; and about the beauty of fragments and the exploration of how they are placed.

Three thoughts that resonate with me and my overall approach to my work:

rethinked.org/?m=201410

David Shrigley on Trusting the Process, Experiencing Flow, & Showing Up To Do the Work No Matter What…*

Read a great interview with artist David Shrigley on Dazed yesterday and thought I’d share my favorite bits on the blog as they relate to several key ideas we’ve been exploring in our work and writing these past two years.

enjoy & rethink …*

– FLOW – 

I think when there’s somebody who is going to come and take the drawings away on Monday and you still have 20 drawings to do that does tend to hinder the enjoyment of it – and that’s the situation I’m in right now! But, in essence, the moment when I’m working is still the moment when I feel most free in the eye of the storm that is around me. I feel very at peace when I’m working, it’s a very meditative and cathartic thing for me.

…* 

– TRUST THE PROCESS – 

I tend to write lists of things that I’d quite like to make but I’ve no idea how they’ll resolve themselves. They’re usually a list of very banal things: for example, two things on my list today are the words “pissing” and “human heart”. I will interpret those two instructions as I see fit. Something will happen eventually but a lot of it gets discarded so I try not to put any pressure on one particular image. If you’re making something and you know that there’s a high probability that it’ll get thrown away, it gives you the ability to make something that isn’t contrived. Well, that’s the strategy.

…* 

– SHOW UP & DO THE WORK –

I have more successful days and less successful days but I don’t allow myself to have creative blocks because I don’t stop creating. Sometimes I make things that aren’t very good but my rules dictate that I make it anyway and just having that attitude seems to work. I still make the work even if I don’t want to. Somehow eventually something happens.