Alice Mendelowitz

Tentative Title How paintings perform as images on different surfaces Introduction I plan to continue with playing around with painting. With “playfully” being used as an adverb to describe my painting so that I can include collage and sculpture in to the process. I imagine my final project to be a series of paintings, on various things, in an exciting installation. The Key questions that drive my practice are as follows: 1. How the presentation of painting in the public space can re-inforce the concepts within the painting itself. 2. Surfaces are objects which are functional, whereas paintings are not functional. Discuss: 3. How painting (as a verb), performs on different surfaces. 4. How my “9-5” mentality of my art practice affects the overall outcome of the work.

Relation to previous practice. • Last year was spent making paintings on flat sheets, laminate flooring (made into a screen), and papier mache “piñatas”. What I discovered was that I am excited by the challenge posed by painting on a variety of different surfaces. Some surfaces being more reluctant to paint application than others. • In terms of the imagery used for my paintings, mostly I make paintings from my own photographs, and usually the photographs are made in my present context. So recently much of the image source is Rotterdam based. Be it photographs of Rotterdam or images scanned from the library in Rotterdam. Relation to a larger context • I have just picked up Imagery in the 21st Century – by Oliver Grau. Although I am as yet to read it, I believe, from reading the back, that it explores the exposure we have to a multitude of images today. Particularly in relation to the way we view images on the computer screen. • From my Self Evaluation feedback last year: “ There is a considerable theoretical and critical literature on painting and the position of the spectator, we think it would be useful for you to familiarize yourself with (perhaps ask Vivian or the other tutors for a couple of texts to read and discuss in a future studio visit). This would be helpful! I am planning to find some writings by Gerard Richter on painting, but this could definitely be extended. • I read quite a lot of fiction, of late; The Goldfinch – by Donna Tart, Extremely loud and Incredibly Close, and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, and All the King’s Horses by Michele Benstein. What these stories share is that they are all fictions rooted in the everyday. My paintings are the same really. I would be interested to come to terms with the personal narrative in my practice in relation to these novels. • What I have found most interesting when regarding the landscape of Rotterdam, and from numerous cycling trips, is that the border between the urban and the countryside is so transitory. So I am also planning to have a look at Henri Lefebvre’s The Urban Revolution in regards to this interest.

Practical steps • I am planning to take a physical step in changing the way I paint. I have hung a large piece of gold satin, approximately 1m by 3m, vertically on my studio wall. I am planning to paint on it with it attached to the wall as it hangs, and with me standing up to paint on it. I usually paint in a seated position, with the surface flat on a table to avoid any drips. I hope this change will enable me to break out of a painting routine that I am overly comfortable with and perhaps slightly bored of. Potentially bringing on some exciting challenges and changes. • I have recently just finished painting on a surface that is an obtuse shape, a sort of diamond, but turned 90 degree clockwise. For me personally, this shape had the reminiscence of a film still, taken from a camera that had been fixed to a car, but the car had crashed, and so now the camera is resting at a weird collateral angle. I wish to continue more with painting on surfaces that hold some sort of context within themselves as surfaces. • Potentially in my “writing component” I would like to include some e-mails or letters that are part fiction, part truth. These would relate to the images I use as source material for my paintings. My intent is to see how my reading of not-necessarily-high-brow-contemporary-fiction can fuel this. I have an antagonistic relationship with the source material I choose to paint from so hope that rooting these images in a fictitious landscape will enable me to be less hostile towards them. References Imagery in the 21st Century – by Oliver Grau, 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All the Kings Horses – Michele Bernstein, Henri Lefebvre’s The Urban Revolution