Week 8: I'd Rather Be Bowling?

John Feodorov transforms "'sacred' items into recognizable consumer products." With a background in painting and drawing, his three dimensional works take on meaning all their own, interacting and analyzing the relationship between identity, power, spirituality and consumerism. In "Totem Teddy" Feodorov's putting the spirituality back into an everyday object, one that has an inherent meaning/identity as a teddy bear, and then when it's transformed into this totem/spiritual thing, adorned with unusual objects, embellished with seashells or something, it's meaning as a teddy is there, yes, but I think another layer of meaning is juxtaposed on top of it. Maybe the meaning is spiritual, maybe it's consumerist or anti-consumerist, identity based, maybe it's all of these things. I think that's the beauty of his work, that he has the ability to embed meaning and layer identity into a piece or a painting or a video that gets your internal dialogue talking, thinking, reflecting.

It's a Fence, But You Can Wear It If You Want To...

Throughout his work, it is clear that Feodorov expands on the human search for meaning and identity. His paintings are ambiguous, mysterious and whimsical, causing the viewer to create a dialogue of meaning for themselves inside their own heads, a dialogue that, in actuality, does not exist outside of the person's head. It's all about the viewer creating a dialogue in their own way, space, and time, using what they see in front of them to search for meanings beyond the two dimensional. The participation is more internal. For example, in his painting "Office Deity" he uses humor to depict this kind of moral and corporate power struggle, causing the viewer of the piece to reflect on the relationship of power in corporate america. In turn, the internal interaction with this piece may cause the viewer to question their own identity in their work environment. The installations and interactive pieces seem more participatory externally, in the sense that the work, such as "Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman", plays with the relationship between human connectivity and consumerism/capitalism. There's more of an outward and intentional interpretation and subsequent analyzation of the relationship between consumer and product, between identity and consumer, between identity of the product and the identity of the consumer, between control and commodification.  Feodorov says, "For some reason spirituality is an important part of what I make, not necessarily how I live, but of what I can create" which I think aptly describes his relationship with art. There's definitely a spiritual element present, manifesting itself in different ways throughout different pieces, and yet at the same time I don't think his pieces are meant to be spiritually innate or explicit. Feodorov says that spirituality interests him, so obviously it's expected to be seen in his work, but he says it's something that he doesn't want to "be", rather he sees spirituality as something he's unable to ignore, and thus, the spiritual element manifests itself into his work. There's a real ambiguity and vagueness to it though, in the sense that it's not black or white, all or nothing: instead, it's shades of gray, the not knowing, the examination of the space in between.

Who do you think I am? Why wouldn't I want to crush my OWN cup?!

Yes, there is a deep and clear sense of spirituality, but I think it comes about more sub consciously than anything. As for bringing the precious and delicate into the everyday life, and what it's implications have on the shaping and/or recognition of certain identities, I think Feodorov illustrates it best when he recalls: "I remember when I was a kid, when my grandfather passed away, I remember in the funeral they were laying all these really beautiful pieces of jewelry, Navajo blankets, and pieces of pottery in the coffin, and I remember being really, really touched by that. And that had a profound effect on me." As Feodorov mentions above, there's this comforting, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, almost magical feeling in the act of adornment, whether we're adorning ourselves with jewelry or body piercings, or adorning a coffin at a funeral. We could just leave everything plain vanilla, no mint chocolate chip or banana nut chunk, but we don't. So this begs the question: why? Why do we adorn ourselves? We do we embellish our lives? Because it's beautiful, that's why. And more than that, because these aesthetically pleasing adornments are an expression of ourselves, of our creativity, of our individuality, of our identity. And the expression of identity is powerful, profound, magical, in all the ways it manifests itself.

On the subject of ownership and power, I think we've got to dig deeper into what ownership represents and what having power over an object signifies in a cultural and social and consumerism driven society. Feodorov says: "Owning an object gives someone power over that object, turns the power that it once had into the only power it ends up having, maybe accentuating the pattern in the sofa." That is to say, that when we consciously choose to take ownership over some object, we are consciously choosing to exercise our control, our ability to make something our own. This hierarchical system of ownership and power is a manifestation of how we perceive ourselves, in that we believe we have the power to take ownership over something, and so we do. It's not only an expression of our inherent need to exercise the power we think we have, but also to express our consumerist identity.

Ohhh, that's where the fork goes... 

Anya Kivarkis highlighted three methods of production, those which I think relate seamlessly with Feodorov's method of making art. His paintings don't necessarily fall into the "handmade reproduction/original copies" explicitly, because I think they're all his own ideas and thoughts transferred on to canvas, with little inspiration coming from one particular piece. And I'm honestly not sure how to classify his works, such as "Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman", "Office Shaman", or the angel (from the "Angels With Crosses and Bullets" installation) because they seem to be a mix of the 'original copies' catergory (although they aren't explicitly coping one object) and the 'post-production with intervention' category because often times he's taking everyday objects and transforming them into something new, with a different meaning attached to it. Okay, okay, now that I think about it actually, when I reallllllly sit down and reflect on what category some of Feodorov's works pertain to, it's definitely 'post-production with intervention' because he's intentionally using ordinary materials and cultural objects that we're familiar with to create a new meaning, as seen in "Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman." He's taking an everyday, recognizable object (in this case, a childhood toy), and turning it's identity on its head, so that there's a kind of muddied or ambiguous meaning. The cultural object retains its original identity and at the same time takes on a new, more powerful meaning when adorned with feathers. There's the cultural meaning of the original object, coupled with the fact that it's a consumerist driven object that can be owned, and then Feodorov takes it one step further by embellishing it with another everyday object (feathers), easily recognizable and that has it's own meaning already attached, and then he fuses these two things together to create an object laced with consumerism, flooded with ambiguity, and embedded with opposing meanings and identities, making the viewer of the work define the gray area for themselves.




SOMETHING THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

     Art 21 asks:

	Why does anyone choose to become an artist?     And Feodorov says:
	You're asking hard questions. I don't know. I ask myself that all the time. Would I be a lot happier if I went bowling?  [I think we can all relate in some way or another. Or maybe it's just me. But in theory I'm sure I'd be a lot happier bowling- on paper the odds are good. But put me in those smelly shoes and give me a 10 pound orb and I'm pretty sure I'd be miserable.]