Barnett Newman, "Cathedra" (1951) detail.
American Abstract Expressionist artist Barnett Newman produces large-scale, minimalist 'colour fields'. A line passes through the fields of colour in each painting, forming what Newman calls the 'zip'. It is here that the viewer is invited to enter, is drawn into the field or universal space.
Anish Kapoor, Descent into Limbo, 1992
...the void manifests itself as a force field in which materiality becomes immaterial, the solidity of objects is negated by recessive and vanishing spaces, and the finite is punctured with apertures indicating the infinite. Once inside the event horizon of each work, the viewer is invited to reflect closely on the micro-physics of viewing: this yields up a disturbingly intense self-awareness. Kapoor’s works oblige the viewer to become sensitive to the continuous processes of cognition and imagination, instinct and dream, sensation and inference, by which the mind constructs the world. Indeed in such an act of aesthetic response, the mind has a sudden and uncanny experience of looking at itself.
- Nancy Adajania, The Mind Viewing Itself
To rest your head on the thinnest table - something like eternity.
New Zealander Mike Hewson is an engineer by training, yet is about to give up his job in Australia to move back to New Zealand and pursue his artistic practices, which until now have been a sideline, full time. And it's a good thing too!
His most recent installation works are hauntingly beautiful: crisp, blue and sepia-toned photos of what was are projected onto the urban gap spaces left in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes.
At re:Start Cashel Mall, the aptly titled "View from Studio" projects what was once the outward view onto what was once the window, asking by-passers to consider a smaller moment of what was touched by the iconic Cathedral.
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Nearby, the former Christchurch Normal school, which is soon to be demolished, is re-inhabited by vivid photographs of the artists who once lived and worked there. Architecturally, I am also quite enamoured with how the plywood, onto which Hewson projects, sits within the existing structures. This kind of honest approach to time and destruction, rather than merely demolishing, would make for a beautiful city. The simple material infill marks, rather than attempts to erase the pain and destruction.
You can follow Mike's work as he progresses into full-time artist here.
Muuratsalo Experimental House
Alvar Aalto. Muuratsalo, Finland. 1953.
It had slipped my mind just how great - and, typically of things forgotten, useful for my thesis - David Hockney's early forays into the photographic world were (see above). That is, until I readthis article on his latest foray, using multiple digital cameras in generate a gridded image which becomes a 'moving collage', in Technology review. Not only is the article inspiring, situating this new practice in relation to Hockey's broader oeuvre and in relation to historical constructs of 'perspective', but the resultant images are also stunning. As Hockney points out in the interview,
"Don't we need people who can see things from different points of view?"
A still from the 18-screen video May 12th 2011 Rudston to Kilham Road 5 PM. Credit: ©David Hockney