update #31

you vainly wanted to see the simple picture

(you can download the update in its original format)

 
 

detail of work by barbana bojadzi

from exposition catalogue by galeria continua, 2024

 
 
 

“What interested me at first about video was the layering. There was the projected video and the live performance taking place in front of it, which was being filmed and would also, in turn, be projected, so the audience saw several things simultaneously. I wanted to pile meaning into all those layers”

Joan Jonas

interviewed by Lynne Tillman

24-4-2024, Frieze, Issue 243

 
 
 

joan jonas, they come to us without a word II, 2015

 
 
 
 

colouring myself, 2024

concept and photo: émile kirsch

colouring: hein duijnstee

 
 
 

frans hals,

de regentessen van het oude mannenhuis (detail), 1664

 
 
 

hein duijnstee, and now, 2023

 
 
 

clair fontaine, replica (a piece of cake), 2022-24

 
 
 
 

‘CLAIRE FONTAINE is a collective feminist conceptual artist founded by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill in Paris in 2004. Since 2017 she lives and works in Palermo. Her name is inspired by Duchamp’s iconic ready-made, the urinal entitled Fontaine, and a famous brand of French notebooks (Clairefontaine); it defines a space where the biographies of the artist is not directly connected to their artworks allowing their research to become a space of freedom and desubjectivisation. The use of appropriation and hijacking in her work stems from the same intention: not highlighting the excellence of the artist’s unique singularity but activating the forms and the forces within visual culture and underlining their political content.’

from the mennour gallery website

mennour represents claire fontaine

 
 
 

gerhard richter, 7 Scheiben (kartenhaus), 2013

 
 
 
 

Organisations are layered.

Not just in terms of hierarchy, but also in the social fabrics a organisation consists of, the various relationships and connections between people with their various overlapping dimensions of personality, knowledge, gender, age, roles, background and acting.

 

The layers of an organisation go beyond the people. An organisation also exhibits its existence in layers of branding, products, people, figure heads, reputation, shareholders, clients. All overlapping, creating an image in the minds of its audiences.

 

Does this intrinsic attribute of layers in an organisation constitute it as a work of art?

Years ago I had a very interesting conversation with late Erik Bos, the director of Nouvelles Images, about the works he showed in his wonderful gallery in The Hague (NL). When I mentioned that the works in my view had a thing in common, namely an interesting sense of layeredness, he answered "of course, that is what art is about”.

It is something that stayed with me. The wondrous layers of a work of art, the layers that make it intriguing, deep, non-obvious, miles away from one dimensional platitudes. The layers which open different viewpoints and multi-variable approaches to a work. Without becoming blurred.

The layers have a meaning in their being distinguishable, in their relationship to each other and in their totality.

The layers may consist of many forms of materiality, colours and transparency. A work can contain overlapping and juxtapositional figures and shapes, set, framed or floating against more or less ambiguous background. These layers radiate and evoke their meaning within the context of the materiality of the work.

Some layers of a work of art are even constructed outside the boundaries of its materiality or its forms of representation.

The layer of concepts as expressed by the artist in a specific vocabulary.

The layer of curation and exhibiting.

The layer of using and commenting on existing bodies of art.

The layer of art theory and historical interpretations.

The layer of time.

The layer in the mind of the person perceiving the artwork.

All layers, even when they are less explicit and need to be discovered over time or through deep emotional involvement, add to the meaning of a work of art.

That does not happens coincidentally, neither is there a formula. In an amalgam of making, thinking, interpreting, sculpting, commenting, crafting, weighing, playing…..the layers of meaning of the work are created. It is in that one work in its one occurrence that the marvel becomes attainable.