I am interested in how the art world functions. I see the art world functioning as a complex system parallel to the actual art object. The various components that comprise this system are statements, resumes, reviews, shows, and, names; names of works, names of galleries, names of museums, and most importantly the name of the artist. These components of the system are given equal, if not greater importance than the art itself and can be traced throughout the modern era to the present. It struck me that although change in art depends on deviation from the norm, the components of this system out of which art operates, has remained consistent since their advent. A deviation from this system related to the commodification of the art object that was the starting point for my thesis.

I decided that I would address my viewpoints on this complex system within the art world by creating three distinct artist personas. The creation of these personas would include portfolios, statements, and unified bodies of work, everything that denotes an emerging or mid-career artist. One of the challenges was keeping the artists separate, not only in backgrounds but also in their style. In doing so, I found myself exploring outside the approaches to art that I had grown accustom. This idea gave me the freedom to experiment with traditional and nontraditional applications and mediums. This was exciting for me; it made everything fresh and out of that freshness came new ideas and new ways of considering things.

It was the freedom of experimentation and the freshness of ideas that sparked what I saw as a discrepancy between how the art world is viewed in comparison to the artist in that world. The art world today is made up of a plethora of artists that work within a wide spectrum of styles. These are all valid ways of working within the art world. Artists make up this pluralistic art world, but it is my feeling that the artists in that world tend to work within what I call stylistic confinement. Stylistic confinement is a homogeneous presentation that artists adopt for substantial periods, if not for an entire career. This stylistic confinement can be attributed to the monetary success of an artist’s work driven by the galleries, a reluctance to step out of their comfort zones and take risks, or an inability to explore outside recognized environments. In creating these distinct personas I emulated the art world while freeing myself from being stylistically confined. I drew attention to stylistic confinement by incorporating a consistent presentation for each personas’ body of work. This was hard for me. At times I would find myself wanting to stray, to pursue different ideas that came up while developing one of the personas. But maintaining a unified body of work was crucial to convey my point.

During my explorations and while distinguishing styles for the personas, food became increasingly interesting. I was drawn to food not only as a pigment but also as a medium. I enjoyed the reality of rendering objects from the substance it is actually made of. Out of this interest in food the first artist was created. Ann Koff is a conceptual artist who is 32 years old and lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her Master’s of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) from California State University, Los Angeles. Ann’s work deals with the notion of self-reward and the McDonaldization of culture with a reconstituted-retro-pop twist. She uses food to address the societal obsession with “super-sizing” and sees it as an effort to satiate our spiritual hungers by overindulging our material appetites. A good example of Ann’s concept is shown in the work titled, Triple Decker PB&J. This work is an impressive 67” x 67” three layered peanut butter and jelly sandwich that is ridiculously made up of 30 loaves of bread, 24oz. peanut butter, 32oz. raspberry jelly, 36oz. maple syrup, and 2 dozen egg whites. The absurdity of material, scale and imagery of this work reinforces the notion of our societal obsession with super-sizing self-rewards.

While my explorations with food were taking place, my interests in interactive sculpture developed. The words “interactive” and “sculpture” seem distant from one another and so did people’s willingness, or unwillingness, to physically engage with the work. I found this aspect so compelling that I decided to incorporate this into my next persona, Rick Shaw. I developed within this persona a competitiveness to create sculptures that were engaging for some, repellent for others and had the ability to excite and frustrate. Rick Shaw is a 26 year-old artist in the process of completing his M.F.A. at the University of Connecticut. Rick sculpts interactive art that deals with human competition stemming from early childhood games. Rick uses the concept of competition that is such an integral part of our culture and art world as a way to engage the viewer, drawing attention to the inherent competitiveness in us all. One of his recent works, Takes Quarters, is a playful cross between a gumball machine and a slot machine that aesthetically screams for interaction. It allows two participants to compete against one another. The object is to guide a quarter into one of four openings. If successful, the participant is rewarded with the ringing of a bell and the participant that rings the bell four times wins. The participants are either excited to try again or frustrated by the loss of their quarters and not receiving anything from the misleading chute that suggests reward. Although Takes Quarters is a vehicle for participants to engage in competition it is the work that has the last laugh when the participants realize they have been taken.

The third persona wasn’t conceived as quickly as the other two. It wasn’t until my funds were running low from the creation of the other personas that an inexpensive alternative medium would prove to be the solution to persona number three. I have always been concerned and wary of one’s superfluities. Being surrounded by artists led me to consider scraps as an abundant resource. I was also confronted with the aspect of physical stamina in the creation of these personas. To sustain my longevity, I found myself switching from my right hand to my left when performing physical tasks. These became the foundations for Iruin’s work. Primarily a formalist, Iruin received his M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Iruin is a 37 year-old artist living in Canada who works with items that have been eliminated from the art making process. He then reintroduces the eliminated items into the process from which they were rejected. Being right handed, Iruin favors his left hand as his primary hand for the production and assembly of his work. By relearning fine motor skills with his left hand he hopes to disassociate with his primary hand just as the artist has disassociated him/herself from the scraps by eliminating them from their process of making art. He sees both the left hand and the byproduct of creating art as overlooked and feels a connection between the process used to create his art and the medium he works with.

I originally tried to obtain eliminated items from established artists but my attempts received no reply. It was my hope to draw importance to these eliminated items by their association with the artist from whom they came, or by the artist not allowing me to obtain those items. Not relinquishing their scraps gives the items more importance because the artist is acknowledging their worth. On the other hand, it was quite easy to collect eliminated items from my own environment. One of the resources came from a fellow graduate student. Working with plywood, he cut out shapes for uses in two-dimensional presentations. I collected these discarded scraps of plywood for assemblage of three-dimensional forms. It was my hope that in viewing these aesthetically pleasing forms, cyclical in nature, from the process and media I use, that others would reflect on their own utilization of scrap. An example of this is a piece titled, The Space Between. This is made up of hundreds of scrap fragments of plywood assembled into a cross section of an oblong sphere. Depending on where the viewer stands, The Space Between can appear to have substantial girth, or vast space interrupted by a slight oval.

This work and these personas stemmed from my interest and analysis of the system from which the art world functions. There are names of galleries, museums, works, but it is the emphasis on the artist’s name that has led me to think of the cult of personality. In terms of art and art history, the cult of personality is the transformation of the artist’s personality into a cultural commodity, such as a Pollock, a Warhol, or a Koons. By creating personas I detached my name from the artwork while simultaneously drawing attention to the emphasis on the artist’s personality as cultural commodity. Statements, resumes, reviews, shows and portfolios were also created to fit the artist’s personality. These address the importance that is placed on those elements that accompany the art object [please see attached appendices]. These portfolios were used to apply to shows and exhibitions. I have no way of knowing whether the personas’ credentials helped in their acceptance, but they must play a part if they are requested.

Furthermore, constructing three distinct personas addressed a distance between how the art world is viewed as pluralistic and the stylistic confinement artists adopt within that world. With the creation of these personas came a willingness to allow myself to explore more freely than I was able to before. This sparked new ideas and brought about changes in my thought processes. My thesis emulates the art world while exploring a concept that takes us beyond most unified bodies of work. It is my interpretation of the complexities of this exploration into how the art world functions which has led me to view that world in a whole new way. I see my art world manipulating the object and everything that accompanies that object for presentation as art.

As a result of my thesis my passion for art has grown even stronger. I am no longer intimidated when exploring things I know little about. I have a stronger ability to investigate little nuances that pop up within my work. My reluctance to approach things has all but faded away. I do not know, nor do I want to know, what direction my work will take in the future. I have always been baffled by people’s repeated attempts to define art. For me, the things I enjoy most about art is art’s constant change and knowing that it can never be defined. With this in mind, the options for my future as an artist are endless. I’d like to leave you with an excerpt from Nicholas Zubbrugg’s Critical Vices The Myths of Postmodern Theory.

A modernist avant-garde filmmaker Germaine Dulac observed, “Occasionally an idea with no precedent springs from a prophetic brain, with no preparation and we are surprised. We do not understand it and we have difficulty accepting it. Should we not then contemplate this idea religiously from the moment it appears to us in the light of its dawn, contemplate it with a fresh intelligence, stripped of all tradition, avoiding reducing it to our own level of understanding in order on the contrary? To raise ourselves up to it and expand our understanding with what it brings us?”

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