Week 10: Inter-Action

Gabriel Orozco's work is playful. As Art 21 notes, he uses "the urban landscape and the everyday objects found within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer." He's a contemporary artist that's not confined to the seriously intellectual and rigid stuff that many other contemporary artists deal with. Instead, he creates contemporary art that is playful and that also provokes us. In many of his works, he takes an object that we know formally as one thing, and then he transforms it into something else, something more playful and yet at the same time something that's inquisitive, the way other contemporary art pieces often are. For example, in his Ping-Pond Table, we find ourselves wanting to play with it. We find ourselves perplexed and intrigued by the concept and  the actual form of it. We want to interact with it and see how it works for ourselves. The space between the pong tables, the pond, represents the interactive space that stills interrupts the game as a traditional net would. The pond and the net function the same in that they're kind of "booby traps" yet at the same time the function completely different on an interactive level. Using the pond as a net is creative and curiously interesting.

Orozco's car is also interactively provocative. The car, traditionally, is a cultural icon of industrialization, mass production, and multiples.  It's a machine that is inherently cultural and functional. He's all about the process as being inherently embedded in the end product. He says: "I don't separate the making and the final result. I don't separate the two." Orozco cuts the car in half and puts it back together, signifying the analyzation of the icon. And with this process of analysis of the object itself, the final product comes about on its own. Through the processing, the icon becomes active again, but the perspective is different, and definitely distorted.

Justin Novak's work is curious and introspective. He's asking questions. His work with ceramics is intriguing because it's the creation of one, of making only one thing. He's playing with this concept of the certainty of one object, with the possibility of making multiples.  Making more than one is possible, but when should we make them? Does making multiples detract from the original? Or does making multiples of an original make it more powerful? I think these are some of the questions that Novak plays with. His little figurines explore the language of traditional ceramics. Novak begs the question: what qualifies as traditional ceramics? And who gets to define it? What qualifies as beauty? These tragic figurines ask questions. He wants to know: Can you bring beauty into tragedy? I think Novak does so extraordinarily well. These figurines are disturbing and sad and they kind of break my heart, but they're also very beautiful. And just because they're disturbing doesn't means it retracts from their beauty. At first glance, a normal reaction is to be disturbed. Upon closer inspection, however, we find the beauty in this little statues. So, then that begs the question: what qualifies as beauty? For me, Novak definitely turns traditional beauty on its head. Our traditional notion of beauty, of these frilly ponies and butterflies, smiles and cupcakes and lollipops, is nowhere to be found. Instead, we find these tiny little things, inflicting pain on themselves and on each other. They're so tiny in size and yet they contain so much power. They're powerful because they're beautiful and disturbing at the same time.
The 21st Century Bunny evokes the traditional language of ceramics. We can see the influence of Michael Salter and Chris Coleman in these traditional, yet playful bunnies. These little ceramic bunnies turn traditional language of the bunny and of ceramics and of beauty on its head, n the same way that the disturbing little figurines do. They create tension between the weirdness of them and the beauty that's inherently embedded into them. Yet again, the qualifications for traditional beauty, what constitutes beauty and who gets to decide that, are challenged. The 3rd generation bunny, in the gallery setting, is interesting because even thought it's in a gallery, a place where, traditionally, we are expected to "look, but don't touch",  we can't help but try to repress this uncontrollable urge to pick up the bunnies and play with them. We want to interact with the piece, inside or outside of the gallery space, and I think this speaks tremendous amounts about the success of these ceramic bunnies as pieces that make us want to interact with them.

Brian Gillis talked all about this idea of multiples.  Central to his work is the use of objects as well. He highlighted the investigation of multiples, the process of creating multiples, and the singularity of one object, and how all of this functions together in art making. His main question: What is a multiple? And before his presentation, heck, I couldn't give you an academically sound, remotely profound answer. A multiple? The only multiple I know is the multiple choice test I have to take on Friday. And then I started listening to this concept of the multiplicity of objects, and I learned a little, and I think I maybe even understood some, too. A multiple is something, some kind of object that is "not intended to exist as an original." Instead, an object is created with the intention of reproducing that object again in a series of "multiple" objects. The multiples are limited in quantity, not mass-produced without limit. And, so although they are not a unique, singular object, I think that fact that they are re-produced as a multiple with limitations on the number being produced makes them special in their own right. It makes them just as unique as an original object without multiples because of this process of repetitive reproduction.

Now let's make some connections. On the literal front, we have this idea of multiples, present in both Novak and Orozco's work. Brian Gillis also mentioned "The American Supermarket" of pop artist Andy Warhol in Bianchini Gallery, NY and Orozco pays with the idea of the supermarket as well. The ceramic pieces are something you want to pick up and play with, and if you'd see them in a gallery you'd feel no different: you'd still want to grab the cute little things and pick them up. On the metaphorical front, we've got ceramics as a field of interaction between the process, the product, and the viewer. Novak uses his pieces as a means of processing traditionality, of questioning the world around him. The final products are the results of his processing the world. Orozco does the same thing. His way of viewing the world is through process, through deconstructing and reconstructing the traditional language of things. Orozco's car is representative of this industrial and repetitive process, that he turns into a process of one-ness, making a unique singular object. The final result is a singular car that has the process of multiples behind it, so it's embedded with two simultaneously opposing representations of one another. However, these two distinct  processes of multiples also work together to create a new meaning of an traditional, familiar icon. Gillis also touches on the process of multiples, and the duplicity of objects, focusing more on the process of the reproduction, as opposed to the original object. I think the process is ultimately the common thread. Novak makes things you want to pick up and play with. We want to interact with his little bunnies and figurines. It's the process of observation, discovery, and analyzation we want to partake in. We want to touch, explore, question meanings, even though we may be slightly disturbed or think it's ugly. Orozco makes things that you want to play with and interact with, in the same way as Novak does with ceramics. All these processes and products are a way of seeing the world. And it's these processes of questioning and viewing the world that make up the contemporary art of Orozco and Novak. It's thought provoking, fresh, and playful. And it makes us think. And better yet, it makes us ask questions. There's no way we can't interact with, and play with, this process of art making and the final products. We want to. We need to. We have to. Because our interaction is imperative to the understanding of our worlds.

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CerealArt: Multiples
Image 1,  Image 2, Image 3