Monday, September 17, 2007

Art Affair installation for Swarm Gallery




This is the installation I did for Swam Gallery in Oakland. It rained the day I went down to install, so I had to wait until night and use a flood light to creat any sort of shadow at all. Jared and I taped all the way down behind the plastic, that is part of the blue glow you see. People kept trying to throw the cup away.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's briliiant.

Joe said...

thanks!

Aaron said...

Enlighten me, if you will. They tried to throw the shadow cup away?
Can you fill me in on the overall take behind your approach with the tape and paint? I teach art and this would be a great lesson. I am thinking you would be a great guest teacher, too!

Joe said...

Where do you teach art?

People tried to throw the real cup away. I left the coffee cup sitting up on the ledge (actually, I taped it to the ledge) and during the show people kept grabbing it to throw it away, not realizing that it was part of the installation.

Here is the last artists statement I wrote

My work explores the tension between time and space. By “painting” a shadow in tape, I turn a moment in time into a physical object. The tape shadow is left behind, stuck in place, flopping over a curb or bending up a wall, as the actual shadow continues on its path. Some shadows are captured from people or objects that are only temporarily filling that space. They move on leaving their presence recorded. I fill in the shadow in real time, racing to capture its shape before it moves and distorts into an entirely new form.

The blue shadows created by the painters tape are reminiscent of the shadows in Monet’s paintings of haystacks. Whereas Monet painted idealized scenes of agrarian life in expensive oils, my shadows are cast by urban ephemera and captured in an everyday material. The shadows and their sources are left as a form of temporary public art.

Aaron said...

Perhaps it would be better to say that I facilitate an art class. I teach at a residential treatment program, and I teach all the subjects to 16 students.

Thanks for the statement. It makes more sense upon hearing the philosophy behind the work.

brooklyn said...

we live in the bay area and love to visit the swarm if friends, or friends of friends are there. let us know next time--i'm a fan of your work.