Natalie Lam
13 December 2019
Site and Context: Considering the Environment
This final body of work is driven by ideas surrounding the natural (instinct) and synthetic (the conditioned ego), focussing primarily on the inherent relationship between Earth and Man. There is the notion of something that is at one time is never as it was or is again. In other words, I am developing an investigation of human as ‘being’ and ‘existing’ here and now through re-establishing the integral presence of our natural earth. Several of the pieces presented require research of site and the practical function of travel.
Generally, I encounter a specific site with a prior set of themes in mind; an array of ideas that are sometimes related, but often not: recognizing human as artist and Nature as Artist, my approach ventures an exploration of ego and instinct, human dependence on material goods, and the notion of existence, time, and ephemerality. Due to the nature of my pursuits, it is common practice to research the history of the site before stepping foot out the door. Typically, public spaces of interest are parks around the city, and for this particular body of work sites include Mount Loretto Unique Area, Inwood Hill Park, Freshkills Park, and five separate locations of visibility and exposure to the Manhattan Schist. In addition to researching the history of said locations, other areas of investigation include scholarly texts pertaining to conceptual development, namely “The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C.G. Jung”; and moreover, research oftentimes arise from personal day to day observations of interaction between self, others, and the environment through written or photo documentation. The ever changing landscape of the contemporary society is difficult to capture, let alone understand, but it is in my best efforts, and a practice that reaches beyond the artistic, that I record moments at the point of its happening or being in conscious awareness for what they are.
Given this, my approach to work considers the dialogue that is generated from familiar objects in unusual spaces, situating the synthetic in natural settings or conversely, bringing natural elements indoors. As such, it is crucial to examine the ways in which the work is read, interpreted, and relates to the human body.
The core conceptual intentions of this body of work parallels the endeavours of many contemporary artists including Gabriel Kuri and Kishio Suga, both whose work is concerned with the environment, and not to mention produce work that is sustained by site specificity.
Born in Mexico in 1970, Gabriel Kuri is a Mexican artist most recognized for sculptural and installation work that critique the world of commerce through integrating site-specific content with the banality of mass-produced consumer objects and financial documents. Kuri challenges the circulation of commodities and information within the global marketplace in establishing a formal and conceptual investigation.
According to the artist, representation of the individual is generated in the possession of receipts and transactions, as affirmation of consumer habits, and to a greater extent, thus creating a record of existence. Kuri’s creatively repurposed receipts are exhibited in several untitled collage works. “Column” (2010) is a tall stack of receipts, impaled on a floor-to-ceiling metal spindle, the slips pose as a superimposed weathered advertisement. This, among several of his works, are an innocent documentation of self, with scant condemnation of consumerism nor does it assume an active political position.
This sense of indifference, however, is not consistent for all works. “Model For A Victory Parade” comprises a conveyor belt resembling the moving checkout counters found in supermarkets. On the belt, an empty aluminum energy-drink can is pressed against the surface and collides with the plastic end of the belt, accompanied with a persistent metal clanking sound. Transplanting this ordinary commercial device into a gallery space is not an immediately profound gesture, perhaps provoking irritation if any feeling at all. Instead, this very appeal to exasperation lends the piece its success in its forthright depiction of monotonous and wasteful consumption. As declared in the title, the empty piece of detritus is detained in a futile inescapable loop; a “victory parade.” Through poetic juxtapositions that reimagine the mundane, Kuri invites a dialogue between contemporary verbal and visual tenets that remain unnoticed in daily life.
Although Kuri’s sculpture and installations have their roots in the conceptual, readymade work of Marcel Duchamp and the environmental aesthetics of Joseph Beuys, the most distinct element of his work are beset in its candid confrontation of life, function, and physical properties of material as well as their social, political, and economic resonances. Evident in many of Kuri’s pieces is the artist’s concern with the symbolic notion of balance, thus provoking an emergence of stylistic work that is simultaneously beautiful and awkward.
Likewise, Kishio Suga’s practice employs similar methods of unlikely associations. Suga is the leading figure of the Mono-ha movement, which refers to a group of artists who arrange natural and industrial materials in mostly unaltered states; it is Japanese for “school of things”. Most recognized for mixed media sculptures, installations, and spatial interventions, the artist describes his approach as an ongoing investigation of mono (things/materials), and the jokyo
(situation) that binds them. As much as he articulates the interdependence of various elements
and the material themselves, Suga is equally interested in their surrounding space–referring to an object’s contextual attributes.
Upon viewing images of Suga’s work, it is evident that he is deeply involved with phrasing familiar commonly used objects, favouring materials like timber, rock, concrete, sand, and empty space which appear to influence much of his sculptural pieces. Reflecting the tensions of postwar society, Suga is intent on the conceptual development of restaging or reworking earlier pieces to establish an ongoing awareness of things. Through relatively simple terms, Suga examines issues of contemporary society; “Sliced Stones” (2018) describes the relationship between structural and natural worlds through exploring moments of coexistence reliant on how they are constructed, arranged, and seen. Insofar as he maintains a practice that refrains from the use of sophisticated manufacturing processes, Suga concentrates on transforming the nature of the artwork itself, referring to it not in terms of site or location. “Suga’s interest was in material “reliance” and a field of objects dependent on time and duration and not just ‘site.’”
“Sliced Stones” is an installation piece commissioned by the Mendes Wood DM São Paulo gallery in Brazil and assembled in the central courtyard. The artwork consists of eight rocks situated in a circle, their rough exterior surfaces disrupted by revealing a severed slab of rock, its interior smoothness exposed. Each individual unit is adorned by an identical horizontal incision, thus suggesting the union of disparate pieces into a single holistic work. With this piece among others, Suga is interested in creating borders and boundaries for the sake of disrupting them. The ongoing approach of dismantling presumed boundaries progresses as a mechanism to “activate existence”–of the audience and the objects.
Like both Kuri and Suga, my approach to art broadly lies in the pursuit of environmental investigation and the relationship between interactions of object, viewer, and space. In considering the work of both artists, and myself included, the work that inspires the most insistent curiosity are pieces that seem to articulate exchange between object and subject, and site and context with the subtlest of gestures. Perhaps in dwelling in those moments of irritation caused by the sound of metal clanking, or in scrutinizing the meticulously deliberate lacerations on rocks, we permeate the material surface of the object and in turn, seek to question the world within and beyond the artwork itself.
