BIO - BETWEEN IMAGE and OBJECT
"We begin with objects that look dissimilar. We compare, find patterns, analogies with what we
already know. We distance ourselves and create abstractions, laws, systems, using transformations
, mappings, and metaphors. This is how mathematics grows increasingly abstract and powerful;
it is how music obtains much of its power, with grand structures growing out of small details.
This form of comprehension underlies much of western thought.
We pursue knowledge that is universal in its perspective but its powers are grounded in the
particular. We use principles that are shared but reveal details that are distant."
Concept
Spring 1998
I have for years been interested in the relationship between image and object. A direct link
exists between person and object. Perhaps the object's utilitarian and temporal character
combine with its physical quality to mimic life. Regardless of how the tangible connection is
formed it is different than the voyeur-like image of the photograph. Paintings, prints,
illustrations, and photos, no matter how large or small, all separate the viewer by illusion.
You know you are not there. You know you are looking into some other place. While the object is
real, tangible and in your presence.
Photos are unique, in that they mechanically freeze an image of a slice of time.
An image potentially so realistic as to jog our memory. Objects acquire a sense of place in
image as in memory, whereas we have a transient relationship with objects in life. We pick up a
chair and move it to suit our needs. Photographed objects are frozen in a perceived place and
thus focused in the context of the image. The object and place blend in our memory. You remember
the chair being in some specific place by the lamp across from the sofa. The line is crossed
between reality and perception, illusion and fantasy take over.
Premise
Summer 1999
To bring together a group of artists from varied disciplines and media to expand on the concept
through their dialog and work.
Tracy Hicks
Documentation is often a way of converting objects into images, of converting first-order
experiences into second-order experiences.
Erik Gecas
Reading Proust reminds me that with my images I always begin with the "material object devoid of
any intellectual value, and suggesting no abstract truth" and hope to uncover what lays beyond,
what is at once concealed and contained. But like Proust I can never accomplish that task, at
best I can suggest that there is more. That's both the good news and the bad news - good because
it can never be attained therefore it is sure to be a life-long pursuit, bad because there is no
satisfaction, just desire.
Terri Thornton
I find that any conceptual space between the art image and art object is blurred by the actual
space labeled "Do Not Touch" that usually surrounds either one. Something you can't touch--even
if you can look at it from several angles--remains only an image in the mind. But that limitation
can work to the artist's advantage. The longing to touch, even if thwarted, increases the
intensity of the viewer's encounter.
There's a sense of mystery to an object out of reach, a sense that we've all felt vanish when we
did sneak a grope while the museum guard wasn't looking.
And there's a comedown from the mental sanctity of the mind's-eye object to the concrete thing.
"Oh, it's just stuff," one realizes. I like to make paintings that exploit that teasing appeal
to the fingertips.
Wouldn't you love to touch me? they say, adding, But I'd so much rather you didn't. That's an
acceptable tease, I think. It's gratifying to both artist and viewer. The art encounter is all
in the brain, the visual field. Even sculpture for the blind, which is designed to be touched,
is a map meant to create an abstraction in the brain--that is, the "image" is still assembled
in the brain. So image and object aren't really different things for me. All visual artworks are
material objects designed to excite a mental event. It's like a CD--it's beautiful on its own,
and you can hold it in your hand, but it's not music until you take your hands off and listen.
Tom Sime
I'm thinking image can't be object if object can't be image. But more than likely they do a
similar thing.
Terri Thornton
Julie Brobrerg
ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OBJECT AND THE IMAGE IN A WORK OF ART -
When I'm in my studio working, I do not have a complete explanation for the actual procedure.
Intellectually, I am familiar with the stuff of the beginning and the end, but the "meat" of
it -- which is the middle -- is simply not known; it is this part of the process that essentially
forms the work.
The visual artist has gotten stuck with "image" making; and it makes little difference whether or
not this image is objective (looks like subject) or non-objective (doesn't look like subject).
There are principles at work here which are more demanding and complex than mere imitative
rendering and are those required to produce the work of art. It is requisite that he invent the
structure of the work and all of the parts that make it up; a difficult task, but then, as if
that weren't enough, he must make it aesthetically successful.
Equally difficult for said artist, is for him to make an attempt to verbalize the process. All
too often he is treading on foreign ground here and should leave literary production up to others
who are more qualified. (When Picasso showed Gertrude Stein some of his writings, she said,
"Stick to Painting.") Insightful writers and essayists, such as Henri Focillon, Hoseki Hisamatsu
(Zen master), Suzanne Langer, et al, have addressed the subject brilliantly. They rather
splendidly refer to and explain what is called the art of "seeing" -- which is quite another
matter that merely "looking." It is almost a given that if you look long and hard enough at an
object/subject you will start actually seeing. (This term for the artist is technical.) You will
become aware of the stuff that otherwise goes unnoticed (not seen) and thus becomes an essential
part of the process employed by the artist when transforming object image into art image: this
is usually referred to as form.
As an artist employing this process I have had the thought that someday I might simply designate
a found object as a "Work of Art," thus putting an end to the process which makes art, and to
that naοve approach that insists upon some sort of sublime process that transcends reality and
endows the work with the idea that GOD himself might have had something to do with the making.
This of course never has happened and never will. The artist must make the work; his task is to
make an Art Image out of an ordinary object.
But the artist should realize from the failure of his allegories
how little the public demands this sort of thing. Who gives himself
the trouble to read in allegorical paintings
what the artist has
intended to make known? All these enigmatic figures make a
burden of what ought to amuse or instruct me
Since the sole
purpose of a painting is to show me what cannot be said in
words, it is ridiculous that an effort should have to be made in
order to understand it.
And ordinarily, when I have succeeded
in divining what these mysterious figures mean, I find that the
substance has hardly been worth so much elaborate concealmen
David McManaway
Lisa Ehrich
Tao is a thing, elusive and evasive.
Evasive and elusive,
Yet there is a Symbol (Hsiang) in it.
Elusive and evasive,
Yet there is a Substance (Wu) in it. (ch.21)
The basic idea in the passages quoted above is that first the Tao produces the Hsiang, and then
out of the Hsiang the Wu comes into being. In other words, symbols serve as patterns from which
physical objects are evolved. The His Tz'u says: "In the heavens there are the symbols (hsiang)
there completed; on the earth there are shapes and features (hsing) there formed. In this way
changes and transformations are exhibited." This means that symbols come into existence in
precedence of substances.
James Legge
I'm also interested in the possibility that an object can be an image. In poetry an image is a
step above metaphor -- a bundle of metaphors.
Julie Broberg
There is no difference between image and object.
i am working on a table, a chair and a shelf, images of objects in our world.
these are objects on which we rest ourselves and other items.
i am resting certain ideas on the table, chair and shelf.
i am laying plaster on these objects.
the plaster becomes part of the objects and carries some of the idea.
Chris Powell
- Human development requires that we first deal with the world through body knowledge,
the understanding of things around us through our senses known and unknown along with human
instincts.
- These are the things we first experience.
- Language is then attached to the experience.
- Memory is now necessary.
- With these ingredients higher order of thinking is possible with the ability
to generalize, categorize, and develop concepts.
- Without body knowledge the object ceases to exist
- Without higher order thought image ceases to exist
- A meaningful art experience involves the entire process repeatedly.
- I am an object maker.
Cam Schoepp
Standing in the shower trying to wash the 100-degree film of North Texas heat off my body a
recurring thought took some form. Image is shaped by the illusion of layering like clothing on a
body, while object has the often-uncomfortable directness of presence. Both "image and object"
like "clothed and naked" only allude to the accumulated experience. The depth takes place
beneath the surface in realms we will never fully comprehend.
Tracy Hicks
Rodin: I once saw an exhibition of Rodin's sculptures and was struck by the way that he used a
pedestal format. the construct of the pedestal was often used as a barrier which separated the
space of the sculpture from the space of the viewer; making the sculpture more of an image than
an object. The experience of standing in front of the sculptures and looking directly at them
was disturbingly distant. Oddly, what was a more intimate viewing experience and provided more
insight into the relationship between Rodin's sculptures and their relationship to the viewer's
body, was to view the sculptures voyeuristically. It began to seem that the sculptures were
composed on the premise that one wasn't supposed to look directly at them, but rather one was
supposed to look at someone else looking directly at them. Looking at someone else who was
studying the sculptures really made the sculptures come alive.
Erik Gecas
Daniel Stern wrote: "The art of Terrell James is the Art of the Gaze. Unlike passive seeing and
aggressive looking, gazing is more purely voyeuristic, akin to fantasy, softly seeking--a gaze
is a request to be allowed in." Stern goes on about the mystery in the process of seeing as
experience, that "one's gaze may be returned."
Terrell James
voyeurism made me think of something, an observation by Giacometti:
The sculpture of the New Hebrides [currently Vanuatu] is true to life, and more than true,
because it has a gaze. It is not a representation of an eye. It is well and truly a gaze.
The artwork of these people really does have a gaze -- in some cases an absolute STARE. Many of
the objects are places for the ghosts of ancestors to inhabit while they watch over descendants.
... a sort of reverse-voyeurism.
Julie Broberg
I have always been interested in that idea that power may be gained, insight, love, whatever, by
gazing into the face of a saint in an icon, and that there is the old notion that one's gaze is
returned. Or the presence of that saint is felt or activated
Terrell James
"I would stand there in front of them, motionless, GAZING, breathing, endeavoring to penetrate
with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt." I know Proust is speaking of things other than art
but it seems that artists begin with a profound personal experience, or several, found in nature
or art or elsewhere, and attempt to reproduce the "experience." Within that effort to reproduce,
if all is right, the experience is transformed and takes on a new life that hopefully becomes
someone else's profound personal experience. And so on.
Terri Thornton
The idea that an image is looking at you can be eerie.
Reminds me of my grandparent's house, which stared at the occupants through the eyes of
appallingly bloody crucifixion paintings and wall-hung rosaries.
Anyway, my father, a not-so-devout illustrator, and I used to paint together. He would paint
backgrounds (he was into total abstraction) and I would plop An image on top: a hamburger,
cardinal on a twig, something like that. We took the bird painting to my grandparents house,
and they hung it. This made my father quite happy, which wasn't his usual state. But, he
explained, my grandparents didn't believe in secular art. So this was a huge event.
(My grandmother removed the painting before our next visit. I think one of the rosaries
complained.)
Julie Broberg
From Sally Yard's catalog essay on Francis Bacon: "In unconscious proddings of 'appearance'
toward 'image'..." Appearance toward image. Hmm.
Terri Thornton
A last thing: the most memorable comment on the gaze I've read (from the eternally-overwrought
J.P.Sartre):
"No one can be ashamed by themselves."
Julie Broberg
both image and object overlap in their ability to evoke imagination and often a sense of
mystery. There is also an inherent fantasy in scenic image. While imagination equates accumulated
experiences to create a mental scenario you still know you are standing in the gallery looking
into some other place. Fantasy is certainly one of the great pleasures of life.
fantasy allows the opportunity to escape.
Tracy Hicks
when a piece possesses the power to move me, it is often due in part to its ability to
transcend its own boundaries. 2-D work that sits heavy on my chest, makes my fingertips explode
from the give of cool and wet or the resistance of rough and hard ... has achieved visceral -
while - 3-D work that gives me mental pictures/snap shots from memory, constructs of the
imagination, references to stories, connections between ideas ... has achieved fantasy or
cerebral experience.
I think both visceral and cerebral directly communicate. They both are what we're made of - our
nature: mental and physical. It seems best when they coexist.
Terri Thornton
This way that these objects seem to be able to select which aspects of their physical context
are to be amplified and which are to be erased is awfully neat.
Erik Gecas
Complete immersion in a simulated reality seems to be the goal of present videogame technology.
Yet, if you believe that reality is a realm of perceptions and appearances, then reality is more
like a videogame than reality... a highly complex videogame at that, rich with infinitely
varying interactions of images and sensations, all occurring as neurological events. Objects are
only known as images and sensations. We cannot know what objects are, as in their true essence.
Images exist in the mind; everything is a perception of inflections of surface, shape, and
scale within height, depth, width, and time.
Brian Fridge
Art is experience. I take photographs (images) of places I enjoy and share that experience.
David Gibson
There is a mystery to photography that is inherent in image making.
Paul Greenberg
The character of learning and objects play a direct role in our earliest experience. Before we
are able to verbalize beyond crying and gurgling we learn directly through our senses. The
concept of soft evolves directly from touch. We begin assessing the degrees of pain and pleasure,
hard and soft before our eyes begin to focus. We learn that the nipple is soft while the keys
are hard and un-fullfilling. When our eyes did begin to focus it was coupled with our sense of
desire. We wanted mother's breast, fathers shoulder, and our blanket, toys and other objects.
More complex modes of deciphering our environment evolve as our language skills develop, but the
complexity is still based on our earliest tactile experiences. Shrouded in ever-increasing
layers of reasoned knowledge we retain the sentiment and illusive visceral connection to object.
Paraphrased from a dialog between
Terri Thornton, Cam Scheopp, and Tracy Hicks
Another incredible aspect of art
... the idea of containing while concealing. Not in a way that
necessarily requires breaking codes, more like breaking through a skin. A means of requiring
participation/investment by those who want to partake.Terri Thornton
It will be interesting to observe the dialogue between the objects and images in this exhibition.
..the ways in which the 2-D works speak to the 3-D works and vice versa....how they might inform
each other...the ways in which each has to ability to do very different things yet arrive at
similar conclusions. Perhaps an epilogue will be needed.
Lisa Ehrich
The roots of their [the arts] inspiration date back in deep history to the genetic origins of the human
brain,
E. O. Wilson, "Consilience"