t h e o p e n i n g . . .
September 6, 2009
p r o j e c t 0 1 a r t i s t b i o g r a p h y
n e w a r k 26.05.09 – 28.05.09
The first project of the Siena Summer Studio 09 involved acquainting oneself with the mileu of contemporary artists that were influenced or interested in the work of Robert Smithson. The artist that I selected to study was James Turell. The objective was to immerse oneself in the endless possibilities of art in the influence of not just the single sense of sight but also tactile feeling, smell, hearing and how every emotion and perception can be malleable through this medium. Crucial to this is the artists’ engagement of site and context through the use of physical objects or the staging of temporal events. We were to analyse a few of these “pieces” in order to comprehend, through the eyes of the artist, how one can perceive the extraordinary in the banal by the connection to space, time, the elements and human behavior.
[The pages from my sketchbook will all be inverted in appearance because of their nature: they are thoughts yet to be written or performed and can surmount to an endless number of possibilities, however vague or complex, realistic or whimsical. They are the chapter zero of a novel, the negative that precedes the photo]
R e s e a r c h
The layout was important both from a graphical standpoint and from a more conceptual perspective where the artists’ rendition of physical media (light), use of colour, arrangement, etc could be told in a story that unfolded on the studio wall. Hence the extensive use of bold and powerful graphics on a palette of minimalist shapes and backgrounds.
The entire layout is the topmost image on this page. The individual sheets follow. Please click to view enlarged images and review the artists’ biography in detail:
