Bad Boy Art [Writing]

I'm half way obsessed with the 'bad boy' image of artists like Damien Hurst. Not for pushing limits or taboo but the brushing aside of restrictive analysis. The argument "but is he just having a laugh.." was always present to dispel whatever mire the hard theory analysis threw at the work, which left it open to infinite interpretation.

I'm trying to find the right mix of interpretations. I've always looked at art as a conversation. A piece of art presenting an idea and that idea following its memetic path through personal debate, a piece of art made in response or even vandalism to the original artwork. But if you were going to get involved in a debate, Which would you join? I cannot decide, so the work I've been making seems, having the unique perspective of and aerial view of all of my endeavors, to be sporadic and eclectic.

Installation view 'Dymkovo Pyramidion,' 2006

As an example, there is one piece I made as a direct response to space and sound, 'Dymkovo Pyramidion'. It was an exploration of mindlessness guiding activity that resulted in a residue in the space. In this instance the residue was a forest of stacked chairs, with electrical cables draped like vines between the trees. A light bulb became animated moving around the forest like an inhabitant of the space. You could interpret superficially the juxtaposition of the office chairs as trees and electrical cable as vines as a visual joke playing with the office space and nature both as opposites and similar (superficial difference in appearance and materials, while both predatory spaces). But it is that constraining appreciation, a blinder to other possible interpretations, that I am trying to dispel (I tried to dispel with the facetious title).

There is another piece I made that parallels this loss of possibilities while demonstrating the apparently random, eclecticism that I observed. The idea was that this bottle, a mythical artifact, was the measure of the space lost when the infinite possibilities of the imagination are lost when fact replaces dream. For example, before the Americas were explored, what lay ahead for the conquistadors was left to their imaginations. There could be pastures hundreds of miles across or there could be forests that spanned thousands of miles, there could be giants and cyclops, anything that they could imagine. So in total sum, what could be was infinite. However once they explore that space and have for fact what exists there, the infinite possible space is lost. The bottle was a measure for the difference between dream and fact.

Maybe it would have been fitting to put the bottle between a fiction novel and a road map or something. But you see, that meaning would be all the object was for and that seems too flimsy a destiny for an object in physical space. It's alright as an idea, when it's virtual, but when it has a physical presence there needs to be more purpose for its existence. It must be worth it's cost in matter. That is the inspiration for my eclectic approach. I feel that to be worth it's cost, an object must have depth. Like a person. You've heard the phrase "he's a waste of space...", the same can be true for an objects waste of matter. If it to be interesting an object must have depth, multiple intentions with multiple interpretations, it must be an ever changing cloud of shifting enigmas.

I'm trying to find the catalyst for structured argument and a fit-like outburst of my perceptual digestive system.