User:Nicole Hametner/Creative Industries/Attempt of a formula

Attempt of a formula

This is a primary attempt to break down my method in single components, what might allow a clearer overview of the entire process. Already the trigger for a new work is difficult to define, because everything links automatically to the prior body of work, where several interests and points of research over the years have built a background that serves as constant reference, on which a specific situation then leads to the concrete creation of work. Also the intention varies through the development and can not be clearly extracted from it, by which I want to say that all has to be considered as a complex structure, in which each part influences mutually the others. Basically the decision to work on something more intensely is based on intuition, fed by all different kinds of inputs, that end up in a deeper research of a subject. Then the combination of several aspects allows slowly perceive the body of work as an abstract idea and consequently guides to formal questions, which are then executed to create the actual outcome. Everything depends on the inspiration that initiated the project as well as the inspiration emitted during the working process. This division of steps cannot be seen strictly in a fixed order, sometimes visual aspects interfere while conceptualizing a work and then deviate the whole in a slightly different direction. But mainly the intention-research-combination-formal-execution string helps to recognize certain patterns in my methodology. Personally I feel, that what makes an artwork attractive is not to see behind every detail and that a complete transparence might diminish the works independence, what is in my opinion as important as the input from the artist.

Having a closer look at the method for my work Schwarzes Licht from 2010 allows detecting a pattern that can be applied to former works of mine. My interest lies in themes of perception, psychoanalysis and the night, which holds an important place, as a subject as well as an essential condition for the main part of my works. The next example might reveal how I approach a subject and how several abstract ideas lead to an artistic outcome. In 2010 I was invited to create a work for a gallery with the restriction to include somehow the environment around the exhibition space, situated close by to a bridge. On the one side lies a botanical garden and on the other side a center for drug addicted people. This occurrence links together with former works, contact with drug addicts and my interest to photograph plants. In addition Freud's Theme of the Three Caskets served as a main input. (I delved into Freud earlier while doing a work about the representation of fear) His analysis of man choosing subconsciously his own dead leads to a core idea of the sublime, repulsion and attraction. Furthermore the three fates come up in Freud's essay and close with the name of the third of them the circle, to Atropa a deadly nightshade. This combination finally constructs the framework, for which I tried to create a visual outcome, which can be seen as a metaphorical representation of the whole subject. After the abstract idea was formed, formal questions raised, in how to juxtapose the drug addicts with the nightshades from the botanic garden. In addition to that I wanted to use the big window front of the gallery to include the circle of day and night. I can not say on which point the wish to use the white gallery space only with white sheets of paper came up, but it melted together with the idea of applying silkscreen with fluorescent liquid that only appears under black light tubes. The interaction from the artificial light with the natural during the day then moved the process to the center and underlined the whole idea of appearance and disappearance, day and night, attraction and repulsion, beauty and disease, life and death. Different strings have leaded here together and built up a construction that refers to abstract ideas while using elements of the contemporary environment, a construction that is made on personal choices, guided by intuition and certain spatial restrictions.