OCA drawing 1.1

 Explore the potential use of alternative materials through researching a small number of artists who use differing or juxtaposed materials.

In order to understand the work, I felt I needed to find a formula to their production.

Something that could give me some traction to my thought process.  But when I began researching, instead of a formula, I found much more.  

I found people rather than artists, and stories rather than facts.

All the artists I have chosen to learn from have a large appetite for content and deconstructing the idea of what art is.  That increases their need for expressive language.

Using alternative materials extended their capacity for expression.  It created a sort of extra dimension to manifest their ideas and experiences.

I felt that these types of artists were increasingly more existential.  Their work being activated by non art resources, which they use to fortify their work.

Here are 4 stories about 4 people.  Who went on to create unusual things.

TAKESADA MATSUTANI  WHAT AM I?

When I heard Takesada say these words in an interview.  I thought, why does he ask himself that?  We all probably ask that of ourselves from time to time, but it was so pointed, so innocent.  Not loaded with ego, as it so often is, a sentence muttered in frustration when we aren’t getting our way in life.  But here a serious question from someone hanging in space, between two cultures.

You probably first get to know Takesada publicly in Paris, a romantic tale of a young Japanese artist winning a scholarship to study in one the art worlds capitals.  But he was disenchanted.  And who could blame him.  A promising artist as a child, who suddenly became ill and derailed.  While his friends went on to further their studies in the “new post war, more liberal Japan”  he was stuck at home.  But Takesada’s tale is one of challenge and opportunity taken.

He studied at home and entered his work in exhibitions.  He met the artist Arao who told him to use abstraction to get rid of all his frustrations about how things had been going for him, and after this inner revolution he started to experiment.

At first mixing all sorts into his paint.  But then more considered.  Wood glue, thanks to the new international trade relations, did very interesting things.  

He poured it on to the canvas and left it to dry.  It was windy (and upside down) and it made hanging configurations that were shaped by their environment, like icicles.

So then he tried other things, drying it with fans, putting straws inside the bulbous masses and blowing air into them till they popped.  And how game to fill them with coloured paint.  Bright red, like blood, or more politely the colour used in Japanese calligraphy against the traditional black and white palette.  So many things to do with it.  Shape it, draw on it……He was extending his use of paint away from it’s conventional form.

The paintings swelled and popped and produced mutable cell like forms.  All this seemed relevant to his history of illness and looking at things under microscopes.  This was a calling and something worth pursuing to Takesada.  Who was also at the time trying to impress the members of the Gutai (Famous Japanese Art Collective).

They turned away a lot of painting, wanting something new, something they’d never seen”.  And they hadn’t seen this.

These three dimensional forms on the canvas, all popping and swelling, no doubt made them think of things they probably felt they shouldn’t, because Japan hadn’t always been the most eccentric of cultures.

Bruises Blisters Pustules Body Parts.

Violence Sexual Forms.

Control and Letting Go

And so back to Paris, and the question it posed…”What am I” The place he occupied between his home culture and this new European society had no footholds.  He remained connected to the familiar traditions of Japanese art, but he also sort to understand and explore this new territory.  Instead of enrolling in one of the prestigious art schools, which was what he was supposed to do, he went AWOL, and travelled for a month. 

After his great foray into the unknown he was thwarted on return by a lack of resources.  But if he’d learnt one thing it was how to be resourceful.

He called on his Zen influences and asked himself if he only had one pen, and one paper what could he achieve?  He also had his scholarship to work out, which he did in a printmaking studio (quite a famous one, Atelier 17), and there he created an expansion of his wood glue paintings.  Numerous fascinations of his cells in print.  He also worked as a dishwasher.  Just to clarify the reality.

And what about that one pencil.  Well, he probably had more than one as he began a very mediative process of covering large sheets of paper with stroke after stroke after stroke, which became “Stream”. Large scale installations, and performance art.  Exploring the concepts of time and energy, which seemed very fitting after all the events of his life thus far.  A space for quiet contemplation.  A duality of man and history in a state of becoming and transformation.

What Takesada is, is experience and history and culture.  The physical contact he has with his work as he manipulates the paint and glue, or moves along the large drawing adds further intrigue.  His work endures the comings and goings of life, and articulates so much of what we feel as we go through our own.

SERGEJ JENSEN TOO MUCH OF MYSELF

Sergej Jensen seems very uncomfortable.  He stammers over his words and makes self depreciating hand gestures.  Almost like he is trying to bat away the attention he receives from his work.  At first it makes you doubt him.  You get kind of used to artists, a longtime in the public eye, confidently announcing their work and their meanings.  But then it all makes sense and you, or at least I, feel his antidotal approach to painting is refreshing.

He began by making paintings in the usual traditional way.  But he didn’t like the results and neither did any of the art schools.  So he started removing everything from his paintings, until they were basically down to the raw stains of the canvas.  And that felt better.  There was less of himself in there and that felt good too.  

When you create you are exposing yourself.  No matter how confident you feel about that, you are opening up and showing your audience parts of yourself.  Your skill level, your thoughts, opinions, experiences.  For some artists that’s the goal, but for others it’s debilitating.

He was clever, he didn’t use this as anti painting or running away from his negative feedback, it was a way of developing.  Going right back to what lays beneath and then using other materials to build it all back up.

He dissects the canvases, and often leaves them for a long time.  Then he returns and adds pieces to pieces, to create something new.  There is an avoidance of accountability when you split the existence.  He notes it happens when he feels like the work is getting too discernible.

There is a sense that the materials create the work and there is hardly a trace of the artist expressing himself.  That the properties of each element on the piece are the effect of natural causes and he has simply united them.  

Although he seems shy of publicly connecting too deeply with his work,  I can’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia and care for what he does.  He uses as much of the everyday objects as he can.  Things we are linked to in day to day life.  In your own world Im sure there are disused pieces of wood in the garden, chemicals in the cupboard under the sink, and a relative that knits.  

I imagine him in his woolly jumper, experimenting and rearranging.  Finding fascination in these rudiments.  The accidental flecks in the hand knitted lengths which he commissions his Mum to make, stains on a discarded canvas left out in the elements. All stimulating a jumping off point for new work.

He tries to escape the well trodden paths some more.  Going deeper and deeper into his safe place to find his creative confidence.  Removing the context and physical presence of frames.  Because a frame is a symbol of isolation.  That the work is designated.

His humble approach to the art world, is what loads his canvases with intent.  There’s a sense of great importance, even if only to him about what makes it to the final destination.  

And there is an interesting relationship between the work and the infrastructure of the art world.  The maturation of the work continues once it reaches the public audience.  It goes from being a collection of commodities, to having an effect.

HELEN MARTEN  PLANETS AND BISCUITS

Why use one idea when a thousand will do.  And that seems her cross to bear.  She has help, a “Technical Director” who unscrambles her thoughts and gives them places in reality.  “Fabricators” skilled workers who make things.

And these aren’t the equivalent of art world nannies.  These people create a society, which is intrinsic to the work.

I not sure why but I felt very driven to look at her family background.  And sure enough, her eccentric artists heart was raised in a house of accountants, pharmacists, and science.  Logic and knowledge, bouncing off every wall, conditioning her spaghetti brain waves to justify their meanings.  Perhaps.

She gives us insight into her working process, a right to be bizarre, but then clarify everything and get it in order.

If I was inside her world I think I would like to inhabit the chaotic waiting room, that’s exists prior to it all becoming nice and tidy.

I would imagine it’s very hard work getting all these parts and ideas this methodised.  What if Helen did the opposite, and showed the chaos of it’s origins?  Then it would look like a skip.  And in my mind I find a link.  She seems to want to express the “distrust” in life. That when something is presented in a certain way………

1 – there can be many alternatives to presenting or expressing something, and how we read it, is how we digest it.  

2 – when something looks like it has a solid structure (physically, or mentally) we trust that.  But really everything is hanging in the balance.  Nothing is secured away from a greater influence destroying it.  And she is challenging that, and working with that challenge constantly.  

All occupied environments have time, and speed and memory built into them.  It’s the requirement of building human environments.  When you step back and look at parts of the environments touched by us, from a country road, to a intersection in a city,  these things are inherent.  The pace we move at, how many times we use it, it’s gravity, it’s place in space.  They are there when the plans are conceived, and they are further absorbed the more we use them in a repetitive way.

We are familiar with organised living.  Compartmental, artful, safe.  But you only have to go to your local skip to see the chaos that ensues underneath our daily efforts.  

My favourite part about her art, is that it shows me that.  That’s what I get from it.  It’s a visual delight and hurts my brain little bit, but it’s all so pretty you allow that.  In the same way we beguile ourselves everyday with all our objects.

I might go so far as to make a link to Sergej Jensen, who strips back, and keeps it raw, to expose the truth.  And then Helen who starts raw, and then creates a impeccable theatre of the absurd. 

Both truth seekers.

You would imagine it must be quite exhausting being Helen Marten, artist.  But she delights in the momentum of thinking, and planning, and plotting, and mapping.

It’s like she has to create otherwise all this acquired knowledge on sheep shearing and shoe treads, and chicken legs, and walnuts would slowly start cannibalising her.

Process.  I found her descriptions of process super informative. Like a prescription.  She’s very generous with her explanations.  Some artists when they’re clever like Helen, barrage you with their dexterity and you are no wiser as to what you’re looking at.  

She has a large image bank, a whole universe from which she takes a tiny moment and builds a momentum of thinking.  Joining all the pieces, with absolute resolute that she’s going to find it’s end point.  

And the constant throughout is to not be lured into what she describes as “calcifying” the conception.  She looks for how many ways something can exist, and how interesting it can be to muddle and confuse all these separate entities.  Experimenting with how things react next to each other, how can she connect them so there’s no hierarchy, or visible separations. 

If modern culture is encouraging us to edit out half our lives, and numb our thoughts, Helen is like a deerstalker following behind, picking up the objects, recording our brainwaves, fusing it all together, and exhibiting it back at us, in the same nonsensical way that we processed it.  But finding cohesion and patterns, and not being afraid to celebrate our complexities and abstractions.

CAROLINE ACHAINTRE COMFORT AND REPEL

She has a very serious fringe, and bright red lipstick.  She is industrious and capable.

At first there were watercolours.  Actually at first there was blacksmithing, so no wonder watercolours weren’t going to cut it for her.

She wanted to take her small paintings influenced by the Rorschach tests, (haven’t we all gone down avenue at least once), and then make them HUGE.  But watercolour couldn’t produce the impact she desired.  And then she got hold of a tufting gun.  And it would do.  When she started producing her manifestations of large shaggy canvas’s an interesting reaction occurred.  The deep  wool pile was familiar and engaging, but it was also weird and a little unnerving.  This seemed to set her sails a light.

Caroline there and then had her own post industrial craft revolution, The use of wool, and then paper clay provided a perfect vessel for all her influences.  A heady mix of German Expressionism, Primitivism, Masks, Animalism, and Carnivals.  Mixed together to provoke a duality of comfort and repulsion.  

The mask like presentation to her creations, gave these domesticated materials a more bracing visual.  And the carnival experience, everything is Yeah!  and bright, and we’re all dancing, but also at the same time everyone is wearing masks and costumes, and you’re pretty sure there’s an axe murderer lurking in the throng.  

The paper clay sculptures worked the same way.  Paper clay is more robust than normal clay, so once again up to the job.  Caroline isn’t messing about with her subjects or materials.  They have to be hardy to contain the spirit of such mighty influences.  She imprints textures resembling animal skin, and figuration in their forms, but then folds them and makes it all a bit kooky.  And then goes a step further by putting tiny eye holes in which stops you thinking oh that’s nice, like something you would see at your local open pottery barn, and more like it’s nice, but I don’t want it in my house, staring at me.  

Duality plays such a big role in her work and theories it’s ironic, it’s so succinct.  Double meanings and coexistence fusing the work together.  It brings the pieces to life.  Changes what they are, changes how we feel.

It deepens the connection to the art.  We are now so familiar with visuals, it can lessen the experience.  But when something throws you off you look a little harder.  Her work reminds me to learn.  To go seek out some extra meaning, which is imperative if we are to continue to be creative and not fall into ruts and acceptance.

CONCLUSION

Extending ideas and using alternative materials generates more dialogue.  It challenges the audience more by distorting the conventional experience one might have observing art.  You naturally ask more questions about what you’re experiencing.  Or seek out more knowledge.

By doing this you learn a lot more.  The art isn’t purely a visceral experience. The audiences experience is extended.

Also the process is extended.  The preparation seems more laborious, sourcing and collecting.  And the post completion, where the work is to be displayed is integral to the success of their narrative, and how the audience can be prompted into having the desired reaction.  Wether that is manufactured manually in the space, or produced by the atmosphere of the space.

List of Images

Cover Image Flockhart, K. (2024) Untitled Experiment. [Plastic jigsaw pieces] In possession of: The author: Volleges.

Fig.1 Matsutani, T. (2021) Sharing 21-2-7. [Vinyl adhesive, acrylic, canvas, plywood board] 1372.0 × 1470.0 × 102.0 mm At:https://www.galleriesnow.net/artwork/sharing-21-2-7/ (Accessed 05/01/2024).

Fig.2 Jensen, S. (2014) Socialliberal Abstraktion. [Sewn Canvas] 320 x 290 cm At:https://ny-carlsbergfondet.dk/en/sergej-jensen-social-liberal-abstraktion (Accessed 05/01/2024).

Fig.3 Marten, H. (2016) Drunk Brown House. [Installation] At:https://www.galleriesnow.net/shows/helen-marten-drunk-brown-house/ (Accessed 05/01/2024).

Fig.4 Achaintre, C. (2014) Roofos. [Wool] At:https://whitewall.art/art/caroline-achaintres-vue-liquide-at-the-fondation-thalie/ (Accessed 05/01/24).

Bibliography

TAKESADA MATSUTANI

Takesada Matsutani: In the Studio (2018) [Online Video] At:v (Accessed 05/01/2024).

Wikipedia. (2023) Takesada Matsutani. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takesada_Matsutani (Accessed 05/01/2024).

SERGEJ JENSEN

Sergej Jensen Interview (2021) [Online Video) At:https://vimeo.com/539078915 (Accessed 05/01/2024).

WHITECUBE. ‘Sergej Jensen Exhibition’. At: https://www.whitecube.com/artists/sergej-jensen (Accessed 05/01/2024).

HELEN MARTEN

A brush with Helen Marten (2022) [Online Video] At:https://youtube.com/watch?v=qisFwKyEYfw(Accessed05/01/2024).

Helen Marten | Turner Prize Winner 2016 | TateShots (2016) [Online Video] At:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn98I78-vII (Accessed 05/01/204).

CAROLINE ACHAINTRE

Caroline Achaintre, Her Hare, VISUAL (2023) [Online Video] At:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1tjgWFgyh8 (Accessed 05/01/2024).

Gallerie Art Concept.Caroline Achaintre. At: https://www.galerieartconcept.com/en/caroline-achaintre-2/ (Accessed 07/01/2024).

Pearson, K. (2017) Artist Talk: Caroline Achaintre. At: https://katielorenpearson.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/caroline-achaintre/(Accessed 07/012/2024).