Saturday, October 30, 2010

zhang huan and performance art


Body art subverts all traditional definitions of art. When artists use their own bodies as an art material, normal distinctions between creator and created disappear. By becoming art themselves, they render disinterested aesthetic judgments of the art object absurd or irrelevant. Because the "artwork" is also a sentient, reasoning being, body art brings moral, ethical, and political issues into play.
-Eleanor Heartney from Huan's website

i came across this image recently in one of my art books. what really impacted me was the inclusion of tethered dogs in a performance that seems pretty intense to begin with. for me, it makes the piece even stranger and more provocative. the dogs are at once wild animals and yet domesticated. their indifference to both art and another's suffering intensifies the loneliness and futility of the performance. i've read that this piece was meant to reference huan's feeling of alienation in his new home of New York. in his futile attempt to warm the ice with his body, the reverse effect happened, and the ice drove his body temperature dangerously low. his ambitious intentions were thwarted by harsh reality at the risk of serious injury. the tethered dogs know nothing of this, the performance's meaning is lost on them. nor are they guardians for huan. they are there only because they are tied there. this strange coexistence is unsettling and not easy to resolve. it seems to be the personification of alienation and the feelings of impotence and futility that must surely follow.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

fear: pt II

the mock-up below is a concept sketch for the "documentary painting project" i've begun to develop recently. i wanted to conceive of painting that was decidedly documentary, but at home with its stark differences with transient, material-based performances. in other words, it would reveal how documentation, if it's done right, is really it's own thing entirely. i don't mean to sever the ties to the original performance piece, but rather that there's really no way i can create an appropriate document for it. it's led me to consider how i'd paint a video still, say. more later...

but fear.... one of the inspirations behind Painting Complex was the tower of babel, which, for all of you not up on your biblical studies, was a tower meant to be so tall that it reached god. god became offended and gave humanity chaos as punishment. the chaos was different languages, leaving people unable to communicate with each other. i don't know if the tower actually crumbled, but it seems like it should have. in any case, this seemed to me a perfect metaphor for human ambition gone too far.

countless examples throughout history could also be invoked. any once great civilization that has gone into ruin, and left behind actual ruins. inevitable collapse, death, suffering has always been very difficult for me to reconcile. i think one reason why this piece worked was my introduction of play for issues otherwise so weighty. my use of paint made my actions even more inevitably ruinous, which compelled me to be even more urgent (uh-oh...this is going to go south fast, so i better get as much splattering done as i can. come on! go! aggghh! paint in my eye! no time to stop! go go go!!!). i think this kept the piece from being an act of self-destruction.

Friday, October 22, 2010

fear


fear became a central theme for my work when i participated in the Land Arts of the American West program at UNM in 2002. i remember distinctly when. it was our first real campsite, not too far from the valley of the gods in Utah. our camp was on top of a mesa. one day when i ventured out for inspiration the thought occurred to me that anything could happen out here, including falling over the edge of the sheer cliffs. this thinking inspired my work Cliffhanger.

fear of falling is countered by a desire to climb. in such a litigative culture this is problematic when it comes to the body, but encouraged in the business of acquiring monetary wealth. ruin is the object of fear, and it is only possible through risk (which is also what you do when you play). one's body can be ruined by falling, and a wealthy culture can also fall into ruin. i find the divergent attitudes interesting.