Vincent Garcia

Anne Gaines

Core Studio 2D

People assign and attach values and associations to objects and shapes that objectively have none. To make sense of the world around us we have built up layers of assigned significance to the objects around us to place them in context of each other. We do this to feel comfortable; people want and do things to make them comfortable and secure. My goal for my piece is to destabilize the reason and comfortability the audience has built up for themselves even just to understand the space and institution they have entered. I want the viewer to experience familiarity and specificity by looking at the ambiguous forms and blending edges I create on the canvas. I want the user to want and expect things of the forms and make their own associations and attachments to them. When you see a form or object you also see all the subconscious thoughts and memories of it, this is what I want the audience to experience.

My research and ideas were much too broad and conceptual to make a solid basis for my work. As I began to compose and lightly paint my piece I began to understand what I wanted from the paint as well as what I wanted to communicate. I knew I wanted to focus on expectations and associations, and how that relates to desire and mentally building around us a world that is logical for every individual, but I wasn’t sure how to translate these ideas in a 2D visual format. I believe this piece aligns with abstract expressionist and postmodern art. It is abstract in subject and rendering and it is meant to take exploit the meanings we built up because of modern life and extract them from their built up associations.

Something I am struggling with, as a first time oil painter, is that I am not using enough paint. I am afraid of the liquidity and slow-drying of oil so I have been building up thin layers of paint, instead of blending with thicker paint and medium. I need to stay conscious of this in order to continually improve. One thing I am doing that I consistently have is under painting in a mono/duochrome manner to set up the value and hue for the whole painting to be cohesive.

Vincent Garcia

Anne Gaines

Core Studio 2D

Narrative Planning

            People want things to make them comfortable, either mentally, socially, or physically, and are willing to sacrifice one type of comfort for the other depending on what is important to them. People set boundaries, put up posters, cover themselves in cloth in order to feel comfortable with themselves, to not feel so vulnerable. Our lives our built on layers upon layers of assigned and inherent values we have created to feel secure and in control. As humans we often think of ourselves different than other animals, when in actuality they probably have a similar process for understanding the world, we are just more capable. Humans often are subject to the wild/instinctual reactions they accuse other animals of. When you catch someone in a comfortable or compromising position or mindset they are prone to impulsive irrational reactions.

The goal for my work is to destabilize the comfortability and reason the viewers have built up for themselves. To make a piece subverted from their normal logic they step down from the pedestal they put themselves/their life is built on.

Reading Response:

In Catherine Soussloff’s “Michel Foucault and the Point of Paint” she uses Foucault as a lens to speak on the essence of painting. In the first half of the reading she emphasizes Foucault’s heavy investment in the history of art and cites texts from Foucault and names older Philosophers whom Foucault aligned with. Soussloff touches on the historical significance of painting as the highest field of art. Historically (from a Western perspective) painting has always been about translating a story or idea into a visual form, with the most valued being historical paintings.

The second half touches on the idea of painting as form of knowledge building and expression parallel to writing. Painting and art in general is always done with a set of ideas inspiring the chosen subject. A painting is a culmination of ideas surrounding the space and time it was painted, and rest of the world’s discourse, as well as all work that has come before. By analyzing an artist’s work over time you can see their progression in knowledge and perspective. In painting knowledge and technique are both equally essential. An artist’s masterpiece is their peak in technique, ideas, and innovation in their career span.

Narrative:

What do I want to know more about and discuss in my work? What knowledge would I like to gain?

I don’t know exactly what I want to know but I am interested in value systems/morals and attached value, entitlement/expectations and incentives. There has always been a gap in what I learned to be right as I grew up and what I was experiencing. We have built up the comfort of our lives from a long and layered foundation of attached values where there is a basis for nothing, like the stock market. As a graphic designer it is important for me in part to understand why people want things. I was never an open space to express or discover myself, I had to accommodate to others expectations and entitlements. Now that I am older I have difficulty discerning how I really feel about something. I don’t feel true want. I feel my mature emotions are dull after an intense upbringing, it all feels superficial.

People want things to make them feel comfortable. Either socially or physically. People will sacrifice one comfort for the other.

Indifference.

Commodity-sign

Self censorship Pantopticism.

When you see an object you see the physical thing as well as all the social and emotional experiences you attach to it. impossible to get away from.

visual methodologies gillian rose

mythologies rolan barthes

destabilize comfortability and reason of the viewer

Artists:

Fernando Botero: I appreciate his rounded, blob like depictions of people. His political humor is witty and dry.

Amedeo Modigiliani: His portraits are captivating. Seem very indifferent. His rejection of the art establishment of his time is interesting considering how pivotal it of a moment he lived, no matter how brief.

Christian Rex van Minnen: His organic grotesque forms are easy to get lost in. I like how he uses very historical references for his compositions like dutch still lives and portraits.