Straw

Straw – 2009

Studiomo

I’ve been working in my studio with three scales: small, about 15” 35cm; mid, 70~80cm; and a larger scale.
With the small scale, after about a year of working with the ‘L’ [I have over a 100] I found particular systematized numbers and proportions would allow the focus to be on anomaly more than, say, looking for variation. Still hard because as you know anomaly is the thing that the eye and brain is most likely to clean up to standardize back to regular experience. That is where the hunt is.

I would find what I thought were good numbers but then they’d fail: Again, and again, until the same number/space came up.

Not particularly conscious of it, but at the time there was this concern for line. For me the line is the most object part, but also as color needs to work as space and articulator simultaneously… so there are these problems… sorted out in small scale. [See above the little drawing made after the large-scale template – 35 cm with a colored back, front using a sharpie marker to articulate edge and inner delineation.]

Then in June I began making small scale and mid-scale at the same time paying attention to this color/line/angle, the relation to the surface/object with the line just pushed outside the limits of what one would normally describe as line, into a measured, contained, field of color… then to the larger scale… where upon again the problem arose… finally the thickness needed to be visually reworked, numerically systematized, along with reassessing object-hood… adding transparent layers of core plastic running in pairs this time so the ribs are seen the same way, so as an object, when you look at the side you can actually see right through to the other side. When this transparency and tunnel is set next to a color insert with the ribs running the other way, the clear layers pick up the color and play with it. This and all the other ‘presents’ register, for the moment, a problem of scale solved…

MINUS SPACE Viewlist: Bulletin Board

VIEWLIST Bulletin Board: Inspiration Information, Conceived by Karen Schifano posted July 21st, 2009 Viewlist is MINUS SPACE’s new online project space where we invite artists and others to curate a visual essay of images. Viewlist exhibitions are generally thematic and can include art works spanning various time periods, movements, and geographic locations. Exhibitions may also include ideas and images from disciplines outside of the visual arts. Our third viewlist exhibition is conceived by New York painter Karen Schifano.

Black Wall

Red – Flat

Splash

Space, Thing, and Perception

Image: local Parisians pop in after work

Me [Brent] giving instructions over the phone:

OK I fiddled around with space in Photoshop. In the image it looks better with just one piece on that wall, either the black, or red as edited in jpg.
The other piece could go on either other small wall.
This means if you take out the red it could go on that small wall to the right, so that when you see it you are likely to notice the middle plastic bit, which can work helping to play with scale. Then you can move around to get a different view.
If you take the black one out then you can put that on the small wall to the left, so you see the middle layer of plastic first and an extreme angle.

How it was last night looks OK but also very regular,contained within the narrow frame and not dialogging with the real space.
With a single image on that framed wall as you can see in the images, the space seems to come alive much more and the scale feels shifting, opening the space and expanding it.
If you wouldn’t mind giving that a go:) and send an image thru.

Richard van der Aa [Parisconcret]

As you say it opens up the relations in a much more dynamic way – working with third dimension like that. There is a very nice shift as the viewer moves in the room as well.

Richard Schur [Paris, after the opening]

Your pieces worked very well in the space, the feeling in reality was even much better than on the attached images… I found the installation perfect, nothing to criticize about the positioning and a thrilling tension between the two pieces. I like the interaction between the red and black and the “sandwich” thing

Hallard – Roth – van ‘t Hoog

BRENT HALLARD / RICHARD ROTH

RICHARD ROTH

HENRIETTE VAN ‘T HOOG

The Line in Paint -Tag

A black ’L’ and a red ’L’ appear on the wall and seem to have a relation with an extra shape that each ‘L’ sits on.
The ‘L’s hover and float: The shape’s front, a white unpainted plastic, almost dematerializes. Mostly only a slight shadow or a reflected color peeling off from a middle layer of plastic tells us that the shape is something that sits a cm or so off the wall.
The line on the front is a painted area, built up from the use of tape. In this case the color is simple; a Mars Black for black; a Cadmium Red Middle taken slightly off for a bright but dark red: ‘Black’ and ‘Red’, Tag’ 2009.

Both ‘Tags’ come from Templates: Black Tag has an extended title #090401, Red Tag #090331. These templates hold pencil lines and painted masking tape. The Black Tag Template has yellow painted tape, for example.

The hang of the template on the wall depends on feeling. I work with sheets of graph paper first and fold corners and open again changing the hang, the corner fold length, until it all feels right, the wall becoming the canvas. The hanging heights are different, and the weights work off each other.
Typically, once happy with an arrangement, shape and hang, the numbers are cleaned up. The initial folding is rough and done by eye. Going back with simple numbers or ratios I look for common things; within the single template; a relation to previous work; the common or different numbers as ‘pair work’, until it all comes up nice and clean. Once this has been agreed upon the graph paper gets a heavy marker line drawn around the final shape. And again it goes back up on to the wall. Satisfied, the next stage is to cut ply board to the shape and double-side tape the shapes to the wall in their position.

Here is where the body further comes in. The wall is the canvas, which takes on a three-dimensional state, simply by adding the room – and the variable – the body in the room, on the move.
I tend to live with that for a few days, looking, passing, catching whatever seems to be there.
Eventually these things on the wall, markers of shape and space, start to feel problematic. The shapes or spaces that they create slip too easy. The tie to the body is perhaps too fleeting. The rest of the architecture feels too random in relationship and is out of sync.
Recently I have been working with the ‘L shape’. So unless something drastic happens I stay with the ‘L’ throughout the work.
Also the internal distance based on scale is generally a given. It can change when this ‘given’ doesn’t work.
With all these decisions out of the way I’m left, in the case of each Tag, with four positions. There are but four corners. This obviously would come across as extremely limited, even pragmatic. Though with working those four positions the possibly is infinite. How come? First of all there is that unstuck body, it moves around. Every time it moves it sees something different. And these differences need to work together in the long run. Only four possibilities! And we come back to this word ‘State’. How we receive something, understand its continuity, the shifting. We become ‘differently’ aware.
I choose one position and live with that until there is a sense of a problem. And the problem is quite real if we can call the visual and sensual real.
A side may appear to start bending. A parallel narrows or doesn’t give. The weight feels too heavy, too light, the movement and spin is working but not fluid. Everything gets incredibly complex. The architecture has really moved into these spaces. The moving body wants to negotiate in as many ways, and spaces, as it can, working not half the time, not three quarters, but right up to the brim of liminal tolerance. Four choices, changing them, again and again, become infinite with open possibility. Each choice has the potential to be fresh.

Tag’ is an installation piece part of Personal Space at ParisCONCRET, a three person exhibition including Richard Roth, Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog , and myself. The opening is this Saturday, June 27th, and runs through July.

Three Somethings – Misa