sculpture

Hatters Wood /  by Justin Harrison

It took me a while to settle in the space - I needed to walk and talk.

Began collecting wood soon found I wanted bigger sticks. Size and scale is important. The scale matters - a lot. The central pole must be long 10 foot. it affects the presence of the work. The materials need to speak as much as I do.

I noticed a simple split in the wood as I worked it, striping it of it’s bark. Beautiful in its stark simplicity. It’s presence unashamed.

There was a suggestion to place the work against grass but no, it really feels wrong - it becomes a formal sculpture where as in the wood it’s some thing else - an intervention? No something more sympathetic and synchronistic.

This work is a collaboration with an artist and musician and friend. I am leading the sculptural part of the work in response to music written and performed by Jon.

I am making drawings and sculptures influenced by Jon’s music - somewhere in the work I trust will be a coalescence.

Working together was new and a little unsettling.

However it soon became something more comfortable. The ensuing dialogue is becoming more and more interesting although I still resist a little.

This work was test - how would the basic elements work in the space. But was by no means a finished piece more a physical sketch.

Seeing the poles felt good- creating the space. Intervening in the space -although it also felt very incomplete even if the other elements I’ve thought of and drawn were to be included; fire, copper, bone wre there - it would still be too simplistic.

Moving the leaves helped too, clearing the ground. But I do want something of me not just something modified but made. The core of the work, the substance of the piece. A point of focus.

Theres a lot for me to say having made this test piece:

More is needed - it feels interesting but very incomplete.
What’s missing?
What is needed?
The Copper - did it work?
Scale?
The core idea of the work.
Liminal themes
What am I saying…///

Jon’s Comments>>>

I like it. Something about it is transcendent.

Wow factor 

Element needs added- that’s only me.

Something from the earth

Something of reverence

Needs something to push it.

 

Chen Zhen /  by Justin Harrison

There is something deeply satisfying about the physicality of Chen Zhen’s sculpture and choice of materials. It seems he often chooses to leave the material unaltered but manipulated out of it’s normal context. A particular and specific use of visual language. The black rubber inner tube becomes an almost natural element, like grass or reeds, yet they are unapologetically honest in their use with no attempt to cover up or hide the history of the objects or material.

In fact the presence of the history of the object is imperative, intrinsic to the reading of the work. The language of history and past experiences is. curious one because that too is read and created especially by the viewer and their lived experience. The associations and emotions attached to an old chair or a drum can be multifarious.Yet there is still a specific tone of voice to the work. Awkward and suggestive, nostalgic and melancholic.

I like the work but I wouldn’t want to make it.

“One should learn to break out of one’s own cocoon and be courageous enough to break away from one’s self and to abandon one’s own cultural context. The Chinese proverb ‘the soul has left its shelter’ in fact symbolizes the critical state in which one’s creative capacity has reached the most active zenith.” Chen Zhen
(Quoted in Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea 2003, p.83.)

Connected to this notion of moving beyond one’s immediate cultural environment is Chen’s term ‘Transexperience’, which he coined in 1998 while living between New York, Paris and Shanghai in order to describe what curator Hou Hanru has defined as ‘the dynamic and dialectical process that occurs when an individual is displaced between cultures, societies and languages’ (Hanru, ‘“Transexperience” in the art of Chen Zhen’, in Serpentine Gallery 2001, p.15.) According to Hanru, ‘Transexperience suggested to [Chen] both the fusion with these other influences and, simultaneously, the ability to transcend their impact’ (Hanru 2001, p.15). As a result of his combining creative techniques and influences from the divergent countries and cultures in which he resided in works such as Cocon du Vide, Chen has been described by art historians as a ‘transcultural artist’, as was explored in the exhibition Chen Zhen’s Transcultural Art in Paris Retrospective at Galerie Perrotin, Paris, in 2014. Tate website:
 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chen-cocon-du-vide-t12941

///Temporary Homes For The Liminal\\\