Tehching Hsieh
On
April 16th, Tehching Hsieh visited our university and gave us a very
humbling lecture that was incredibly overwhelming and inspiring. He went
through each of his works, which were all one year or longer works that
involved a lot of endurance. His first work, the Cage Piece, was a work in
which he locked himself in a small cage for a year, only allowing his friend to
come bring him food and take his excrements each day. He explained that while
he was in the cage, he stayed in a very small corner of the room and adopted it
as his house, because when he actually got up to walk around the room, it was
like going for a walk and then coming home. He was a bit humorous in his
discussion, which gave a little bit of brevity to the overwhelming nature of
his work in general.
He also had two other yearlong works
which included one where he was tied to a woman for an entire year and they
were long allowed to touch one another. The next work of his included him
living outdoors for an entire year without going in any type of indoors,
including caves, homes, buildings, trains, etc. Each of his works were looked
over by a lawyer, and they had to have the lawyer as a witness so there was no
chance of cheating, and if there were any mishaps, they would be noted. And the
most notable of his pieces, which is installed in our gallery is his Time Clock
piece. A piece in which he punched a time clock every hour for a year. He had a
lawyer design a contract for this piece as well, and the lawyer signed each
days punch card. His documentation for his works is incredible, and plays a
massive part in his works. With the Time Clock piece, I find myself looking for
those mossing photos, or photos where he is slightly off from the others. I
think natural human fault is very well shown in his works. There is a
particular photo among the series of photos in the gallery that I continued to
go back to, because his head was down, and it was just his hair. This photo was
humorous, and showed natural human fault to a T. I very much enjoyed roaming
around this piece.
In his work, he also decides to show
the element of time by shaving his head and watching it grow back naturally
over time, which I feel like is a unique and very important aspect to his work.
Hair is a form of identity for a lot of people, and through his work, he was
exploring himself and exposing his own identity, and letting your hair grow
naturally was an amazing way of showing this.
Overall, Hsieh was an incredible
lecturer, and I[KH1] am very humbled to have been able to listen to him
speak about his work, and also be able to view his work in person.
Sarah Bryant
Sarah Bryant is a
letterpress printer who has Big Jump Press, where she prints most of her work.
She lives in Brighton, England and attends the Codex Book Fair, which is held
in California each year. When she speaks about her work, it is very focused around
the models and making mock-ups, which seems to be a very important part of the
process of making books in general. She has been with Big Jump Press for ten
years and has an interest in multiples and figure studies using data. She
mentioned that she does most of the binding and works herself. Her works take
an incredibly long time, and there is definitely a certain pacing in creating
books.
When
she began talking about her works, I became very skeptical of the way she does
her works, as well as gathers her information for them. She mentioned that in
her works, she takes the data and combines them without really interpreting
information, and especially with her newest works where she focuses on
population data, she takes the curves and puts them together based on shape,
and while that is an interesting idea, and it allows the audience to view the
data in a different way, I feel as though there is too much of a disconnect
between the data and the actual design of the book itself.
Another
thing that seemed to bother me was the fact that she mentioned money multiple
times throughout her lecture. I suppose this is just a personal thing for
myself against the idea and focus around artists and money, but it seemed to
take away from the actual ideas that she was trying to get out there. One of
the examples of this was her book where she added random household things into
a book, she also mentioned that she turned these seemingly useless things into
a large amount of money for selling the book. This only bothers me, because I
lose interest in the content when they are so focused on selling their work.
Overall,
I enjoyed the lecture, I was just overwhelmed by all of her work and the amount
of time that each of these projects took her to do. She is inspiring for book arts,
but I am still also skeptical.
Joel Swanson
Joel Swanson’s lecture
was in the Wells Fargo theatre in the first month of the semester. He is a
digital artist who is very simplistic in his art, originally from Chicago, and
currently teaches in Denver. His artwork is incredibly focused on language and
seems like the exploration of space and words. He also, as far as I can see,
does not use color, it is black and white. Which definitely allows the audience
to focus on what the art is showing.
He showed a few of his pieces. Ones that really stuck out
included is less-than-three hanging sculpture that slowly rotated around the
room. This piece was the most successful of his pieces in my opinion, because
it had a lot of depth to it, and did not was able to be viewed from many
different angles. The slow turning of the piece as well was fascinating,
because it is always changing, but related back to the same thing in the end.
Another one of his pieces that was interesting to me included his ampersand
piece. I’ve always had an affinity for ampersands, because they reference
temporality, because they are a broken infinity or eight, which is how I view
it. Though, with this piece, he chose to hand write hundreds upon hundreds on
ampersands on an entire wall. This piece was successful, because he also showed
the time-lapse of him actually making the piece. His work seems incredibly
simple, but definitely focused.
A couple things in his lecture bothered me; however,
because he mentioned that he started his work in a very philosophical way,
referencing philosophers, and responding to their works; however, he followed
that sentiment with the fact that he basically dumbed his work down, because
his audiences weren’t understanding his work. I was also bothered by his work
which was a device that translated Lady Gaga’s tweets into Morse code. I don’t feel like this work had much
substance, and really was just a one-liner. And since he also just spoke about
dumbing his work down, I feel as though he was focused on making things more
relatable, thus more sellable.
Nick Van Woert
Nick Van Woert had his exhibition of Pink Elephants on Parade in the gallery for about a month of this semester, and I went to the opening as well as spent a little time on my own in the gallery. I also spoke with Woert himself about his work. All of his sculptures were untitled, which I found interesting, and then after a little bit of exploration and research on the side, I discovered that ll of his work is untitled. And while speaking to him, it seemed as though titles were not very important to the work itself.
In "Pink Elephants on Parade" the use of materials, I think was the focus of all of his works. They were materials that were formed into something else entirely. They all were elegant in their own respect. The most elegant, in my opinion, was his piece of the tree's bark framed on the wall. The juxtaposition of the colors from each side of the tree in each frame was stunning. It was less of a sculpture, but brought a moment of peacefulness to the gallery as well, because many of his sculptures were involved, and took a lot of walking around and investigating.
When speaking with him, he told me that he gets his ideas from the idea of walking around outside and feeling like you are on hallucinogens even though you are not because you are surrounded by things that are fake and manufactured. He also focuses a lot on locality, and preservation.
His piece that was covered in plastic was a very interesting piece to me as well, mostly because he took a structure that was already a sculpture, and added another element of depth and color. I do wonder where he is deciding to go with his work, because while these sculptures seem very simple, and the idea is sort of scattered, I am unsure of what to think of his future work.
Nick Van Woert
Nick Van Woert had his exhibition of Pink Elephants on Parade in the gallery for about a month of this semester, and I went to the opening as well as spent a little time on my own in the gallery. I also spoke with Woert himself about his work. All of his sculptures were untitled, which I found interesting, and then after a little bit of exploration and research on the side, I discovered that ll of his work is untitled. And while speaking to him, it seemed as though titles were not very important to the work itself.
In "Pink Elephants on Parade" the use of materials, I think was the focus of all of his works. They were materials that were formed into something else entirely. They all were elegant in their own respect. The most elegant, in my opinion, was his piece of the tree's bark framed on the wall. The juxtaposition of the colors from each side of the tree in each frame was stunning. It was less of a sculpture, but brought a moment of peacefulness to the gallery as well, because many of his sculptures were involved, and took a lot of walking around and investigating.
When speaking with him, he told me that he gets his ideas from the idea of walking around outside and feeling like you are on hallucinogens even though you are not because you are surrounded by things that are fake and manufactured. He also focuses a lot on locality, and preservation.
His piece that was covered in plastic was a very interesting piece to me as well, mostly because he took a structure that was already a sculpture, and added another element of depth and color. I do wonder where he is deciding to go with his work, because while these sculptures seem very simple, and the idea is sort of scattered, I am unsure of what to think of his future work.
