A brief history and discussion of early documentary photography, its significant contributions and organizations, and the major movements and developments in the use of photography, to bring attention to social issues, war, and the preservation of historical events through the mid-twentieth century.
SHOW-ME-WHAT-YOU-KNOW IN-CLASS ASSESSMENT #3
1) From your initial research into your assigned artist, please reflect on what you have found most compelling / challenging / surprising about their background and approach to photography. Here is also where you can tell me how you are feeling a bout the artist assigned to you, and how you are relating (or not) to them so far as an artist you will be asked to curate. This question assesses your reflection of your assigned artist for the curatorial project.
I found it interesting that, like artist Jeff Wall especially, Vierkant approaches his artwork from a very conceptualist lens, where the ideas and concepts behind the work are more important than the finished art object (and with Vierkant, you could ask if the artwork(s) are ever finished, given the mutability of the process behind the creation of the object and how it eventually lives on its own in the world). As a Post-Internet artist, he is very interested in how an artwork exists, both in and out of a world where what is on and offline impacts the meaning a photographic art object holds. Vierkant wants to blur and intertwine the lines of what is online and offline. Like Wall, he wants to engage viewers in new ways so they spend more time seeing, interacting with, and talking about an art object. In 2018 (or so), as a part of his ongoing Image Objects series, he created an augmented reality app that lets viewers record images of the photo based artworks in the gallery, and then play with and manipulate those captured images through various photoshop like choices. Once finished, a viewer can then share their new art object to the platform of their choice, such as Instagram.
2) With the artwork I have chosen for you, please complete a full inventory of the FORM and CONTENT of the work. Next, comment on the most significant aspects of the artwork’s CONTEXT that you have discovered so far. This question evaluates your understanding of FORM, CONTENT, and CONTEXT.
IMAGE > Vierkant, Artie. “Image Objects.”
Usually, Vierkant formally starts by creating various geometrical and curvilinear shapes in a software program such as Photoshop, which often act as frames - highlighted by colourful gradients that in some ways evoke a callback to colour field painting and even the Fauvist works that were interested in exploring bright, wild colours and flat forms. Vierkant then prints these shapes onto a kind of hard plastic surface that is cut to fit the shapes he created. These would then be installed in a gallery, where the installation would be photographed again, and further altered in Photoshop. Here though, it appears that Vierkant has placed various found objects (heavy, dull looking, industrial like objects) on a white plinth inside of a gallery. This installation was then digitally photographed so that it could be brought into a computer, where Vierkant then placed his colourful forms behind and on top of the assorted objects. Some of these electronic forms look to also be superimposed onto the far back wall of the gallery, mimicking the style of his earlier images in this series, with the layered objects on top of the entire image marking a new placement for Vierkant. Finally, the black imagery feels sculptural, with a weight to it, even as it appears to float in the spaces the pieces occupy. The largest piece feels almost figurative, as if it was operating like the profile of a female figure (a nun?) perhaps (another possibility the three black shapes might represent is that of a mermaid). It all serves to transmute the idea of what is real and what is digitally created, superimposed, and altered. The finished piece is an experience through step by step processes, forming an exploration of what an art object is, how it is created, and how it ultimately ends up living in the world.
3) Identify THREE ideas that we have covered in the first classes so far that you can see are somehow related to your assigned artwork. For now, this can be quite broad and may be related to the artists we have looked at to date (past and present) or the readings we have covered. I am looking here to see how you are thinking about your assigned artists in connection to course ideas. This question interprets how you have synthasized and understood your assigned artist’s connection to the course.
First and foremost, I thought about the first class where we asked who is using photography in interesting ways. Vierkant is definitely interested in how the medium of photography and art objects are mediated by people’s immersion in the world of the internet and social media. Secondly, I found it interesting how Jeff Wall talked about the collaborations he has with performers, and how the conversations he has with them serve to impact the direction of his work. Vierkant is also having conversations, although his conversations are with his viewers and they focus on questions of how a photo-based art object is distributed, and at a more basic level, who an art object is. This also ties into questions of authorship, in terms of who can ultimately be called the creator of a work, especially when that artwork is altered by viewers using software such as with Vierkant’s augmented reality app. To this end, I also thought about the question of multiples, and the consequences of how ubiquitous imagery can be shapes one’s experience of any artwork. Vierkant, like Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Richard Mosse, is holding a mirror up to society. He’s interested in what is constructed, in an approach that’s not that dissimilar to the approaches of Wall and Sherman. Vierkant is interested in the now, the present moment, about what is socially and culturally happening in our mass media driven society. Finally, I also saw paralleled with Atget, especially with his photos for artists, and how Atget was also a sculptor and a painter. Vierkant is also a sculptor, and he is interested i how there are ultimately no neat divisions between the types of art objects, photography, and mediums he uses.
4) **BONUS** Reflection Question: What ideas came out of the group discussions today that may help push the direction you take in the curatorial project?
I found that there was a nice synergy between the artists we were all assigned. The construction seen with the work by Ozlem Atlin is similar to the construction seen in Vierkant’s work; and Charmain Poh’s use of AI ties into Vierkant in terms of questions surrounding authorship.
GRADE RECEIVED: A- / A
COMMENTS: I need a more clear FORM, CONTENT, and CONTEXT breakdown.
Curatorial Project
To support my search for possible artists & artworks, I’ve created a Pinterest board.
Possible Artist: Douglas Coupland
Art Object: “Gumhead,” an interactive social sculpture on Howe street outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, May 31 - October 7, 2014.
FORM:
Douglas Coupland, Gumhead, 2014, steel, milled foam, resin, gum. An interactive sculpture commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery. Photos: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
https://strategyonline.ca/2015/01/12/ideas-that-pop/
https://mymodernmet.com/douglas-coupland-gumhead-sculpture/
7ft tall? 10ft tall?
Possible Artist: Didier Vermeiren
“You can only look at a sculpture within the space surrounding it, whatever it is like because the actual material of the sculpture is the space. The space creates the sculpture and the sculpture creates the space.”
Didier Vermeiren
Vermeiren is an artist who primarily works with sculpture but in recent years he has taken up photography as a means of documenting his works in and out of his studio. The documentation hang on the walls of the galleries his sculptures occupy, creating a conversation between the two. Specifically, the Wikipedia article for Vermeiren notes how:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Vermeiren
“His first works, in the 1970s, stood at the crossroads of conceptual art, minimal art and the tradition of modern sculpture. Afterwards, the photographical documentation of his own work became more and more significant, until it became an entire aspect of it, photographs and sculptures responding to each other and generating new works all the while.”