Nicholas 1st draft
Current work
1 What are you working on now?
intro
Lately I have been working on several objects. I call them objects not sculptures. I want
them to be seen within the realm of utility.
These objects will at one point get together and create a larger collection.
Racks, a work made up of two objects that are alterd clothing racks. They are changed
in size, thickness ,color and material.
I am altering them in such a way that they deprived of their original utility.
And therefor they enter another nature. What? Between object and thingy-ness?
Defamiliarization?
Are they transformed into more clear connection to their function in the world?
This object has a function: being used for other objects. I wish to push this object away
from its original utility, towards another nature. What?
I push the object toward a reading as an object by embedding ...... ...... ...... into the part
of the rack where your clothes would go.
The racks are thick and organic because of the way material is added onto them.
They feel as though they are fabricated to have an inherent history of usage. How do
they belong to some other environment than where we would usually find racks?
of many generations of let say birds.
You aren’t sure whether they stir sensations of cleanliness or disgust—whether they
make you think of utility or have stirred your decorative juices.
each of these connotations should have a different tactile resonance and purpose.
Notes:
Objects in relation to what medium we encounter them in. Online, cinema or in a real life
situation.
Archiving
not to focus on the hierarchy and a relation between multiple elements.
Series of objects shown together generate a hermetic situation, one that alienates the
viewer and not the object. It is the alien and ambiguous qualities of one element I
wanted to discuss. Its relationship to body, environment, and its formal qualities such
as texture, scale, size and color.
On going (general)
There is already a lot going on with the objects and materials that I choose to work with
before I ever get involved with the actual making or arranging.
?
These ongoing works are playing on utility, as the objects that I choose to buy are all
dealing either with body or material. (Object for washing body, or drying racks for
material)
The small containers used for some of my sculptures are the same shape as the big
ones that you see in industrial location, factories, and gardens—often they are used for
storage of certain materials, such as pharmaceutical pills, grains and liquids.
Theme?
Audience who?
Method
This year i have worked sculpturally in two ways:
Either by adding or carving into material, mostly polystyrene.
This way of working creates a different attitude in relation to creating an object that
proposes usage.
By having to propose an object from scratch I naturally end up with a more ambivalent
outcome.
Or I work with objects bought online. Which I then degrad, meaning taking away part of
their function. Cutting of legs or by adding material.
These bought products are mainly mass produced and factory made. Most made in
plastic.
(When searching for such items I often wonder what a infant or pet cares about the way
their utilities and toys look like?
The material I use to degrade or enhance, are epoxies and other poly based materials.
So basicly I am adding by hand, plastic on plastic.
‘when the original object gets lost and forgotten under all the added material. That's
when they become a thing. A thing that is hunted by its original meaning.’
Things aren’t neutral. The objects that I bring into the studio, in one way or the other
keep their original meaning in the world. This is something I try to use?
Medium
Cinema allows us to disconnect from the function of objects and participate in the
it-ness of objects which I would call the phenomenon of defamiliarization.
When we participate with an object in normal life we are primarily concerned with the
function the object provides and not its it-ness.
Material
There is already a lot going on with the objects and materials that I choose to work with
before I ever get involved with the actual making or arranging. WHICH IS?
These ongoing works are playing with utility, And all the products I choose to buy are all
dealing either with body or material. (Object for washing body, or drying racks for
material)
Previous work this year
Many of my works are scaled down.
Butter cup:
The container are small and so are the ‘furniture works’. Small things are naturally cute
to us. ‘Children are small and so are pets.’
Butter cup a smaller-scale container..
I think presents a disconcerting proposition.
Pet shops and baby stores always seem to have similarities to each other which i
always found strange.. Are they intended for these audiences?
The textures seem like they might stimulate sensory cognition and they obviously
imitate some organic or chemical material, which further heightens its quality of
ambiguous potential and/or usage.
FUCKING THINGY-NESS AND OBJECTHOOD???
There is another important criteria I wish for these objects to have. And that is
thingy-ness. Meaning I want them to be read as complete or absolute. What do you
mean by this?
When searching for such items I often wonder what a dog cares about the way their
toys and food dishes look?
I wonder why is it that so many pet toys look so similar to sex toys? It seems that a lot
of these decisions reflect at least as much on the buyer as they do on the pet or child.
Missing links
Questions:
Why two?
Why these materials?
2 What are you thinking of making?
More work
3 How do you plan to make it?
4 Why do you want to make it?
5 Relation to previous practice?
5 Relation to a larger context?