Caitlin-mcc03 - Caitlin MccARThy
More Posts from Caitlin-mcc03 and Others
Frank Halmans
In his work, Halmans often explores the domestic world and sees a home as a place where life fluctuates between a public and a private sphere. Halmans examines how we as humans live in these two different areas. One could call the artist a 'house expert': he is an accomplished carpenter, plumber and bricklayer and therefore knows everything about houses. Within his work, however, houses or parts of them assume a kind of dream shape. In this respect, his series of "architectural vacuum cleaners" reflects his vision well.
"Forgetting is alarming," he says, "everything has been in vain, meaningless, if you were content with forgetting."
Basement II, 2014.
Even more Rooms for Reading, 2014.
Some New Rooms, 2021.
Anastasia Savinova - Genius Loci
Genius Loci is a journey to a multitude of places, urban and rural, inhabited and peopleless, accessible and secluded. The project explores the character and the spirit of the place. Each work is a visual archive, where one picture concentrates the essence and the feeling of a visited site. Streets and mountain passes, encounters on the road and off-road are a rich source of visual information such as form, color and texture; at the same time, all the encountered environments contain something incorporeal. Ancient Romans believed that every place has a protective spirit - genius loci; in contemporary usage, genius loci refers to location’s specific atmosphere and the way it is experienced. Each work is composed of numerous photographs of buildings and landscape forms that are true and authentic for a studied area. These works balance between documentary and fiction, factual and imaginary spaces, and become keepers of the memory and the spirit of the Place.
Genius loci / RU / The other side of St.Petersburg, Collage, printed on paper, various sizes.
Genius loci / NL / 2009.
Genius loci / IT / 2011
Gordon Matta-Clark. Bingo. 1974
Curator, Laura Hoptman: Gordon Matta-Clark was trained as an architect. His work took on a lot of different guises at the very beginning of his career, at the beginning of the 1960s, and it wasn't till his first cutting experiment in 1971 where he really took on what he called “anarchitecture.” And that is the idea of a kind of literal deconstruction of architecture to see how it was made in conjunction with or in opposition to the human beings who would inhabit it. Narrator: Matta-Clark made Bingo in 1974 by cutting into the facade of a house in Niagara Falls, New York that was slated to be demolished. Laura Hoptman: This was a period of time when a lot of buildings had been condemned or were rotting. So by making an artwork out of these abandoned houses and abandoned industrial sites, he was drawing attention to them. Narrator: He cut through the walls in frame of the house, creating nine equal sized rectangles that resembled the grid of a Bingo game card. This sculpture is made from three of those pieces. Laura Hoptman: So that's why you see some of the interior. And when you see the stairway, you're seeing both the front side and the back side of the facade. Narrator: The artist and a team of assistants worked 12 hours a day for 10 days to cut and remove the facade. Laura Hoptman: And as soon as he and his crew left, the bulldozers came and bulldozed the house.
Gordon Matta-Clark. Bingo. 1974, Building fragments: painted wood, metal, plaster, and glass, three sections, Overall 69" x 25' 7" x 10" (175.3 x 779.8 x 25.4 cm).
Alexa Meyerman
10:25 AM, inkjet : transparency film, 15 x 20 x 15 cm, 2010
This work is based on architectural deconstructions. Like in memories or dreams, every part is reconstructed, leaving an impression of unplanned reality. In some of the work there may be traces of human presence, but they are all empty, or temporarily abandoned. Anything could happen, but nothing does, besides the soundless shifting of elements in a bare, changing and undefined volume. In this way architecture transforms into anarchy of space. You can wander -not hide- in these idle constructions which, in the end, only consist of a rhythm between light and darkness.
11:25 AM, inkjet : transparency film, 29 x 21 x 15 cm, 2011 The transparent photo-objects can be seen as deconstructions. In spite of traces of human presense, what these models have in common is that they are either empty or temporarily abandoned. Like in memories or dreams, the buildings are reconstructed, some details have been emphasised others are dissolving or dissolved. The concepts of interior and exterior become interchangeable. One can look in and around the objects, and then they will transform, depending on the incidence of light or point of view, which results in the appearance, or disappearance of exits, entrances or rooms. Unavoidably you have to approach the buildings closely, but you cannot hide in these idle constructions, which after all in the end, only consist of light and darkness.
Niklas Roy
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/02/niklas-roy-little-piece-privacy/
Berlin-based artist Niklas Roy isn’t just concerned about his privacy and protection online. To stop passersby from peeping into his workshop, he strung up a white, lace curtain stretching only partially across his window. Titled “My Little Piece of Privacy,” the ironic project from 2010 was established to offer seclusion to the artist, while recording those who walked past his space. Each outside movement triggers a motor to position the thin fabric in front of the person attempting to look inside.
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread House 1993
House was only ever intended to be a temporary monument, and its ultimate disappearance will be an act of completion. That this stack of sealed rooms, perched one upon another should itself be turned into a memory seems fitting. It is an idea which, for a protracted moment, enters the world of things, and then is gone. ‘House’, she said, ‘is to do with memory and ultimately it will become just that.’ 'House makes a point about the smallness and fragility of the spaces we actually live in, worry about, decorate....all those things that are part of life.’ An essentially hidden, private space has, by an act of inversion, become a physical, public expression. What, finally, has been exposed is an empty setting, a place where people once led a life of intimacies, grew up, grew old and died. And, one might add, fucked, rowed, worried, slept, ate, shat, fought, laughed and lied. No one looks out of the windows any more, no one puts out the milk bottles on the stoop; no one shouts ‘Kevin comein you tea’s ready’ or returns home late from the pub and fumbles with the keys to the lock: no one, not even Rachel, lives here any more. House is a dead space.
Rachel Whiteread, Study for House, 1992
Ghost Estates
Shannon Valley, Co. Roscommon, Ireland.
There are 38 houses in the estate; 23 are unoccupied and in various states of disrepair and dereliction.
A single street light standing in a neighbouring, fenced field is all that remains of the final phase of 20 houses that were demolished in 2014 with a “special resolution fund” of €250,000 from the Government.
There were things built that should not have been built
Lorcan Sirr, lecturer in housing studies at Dublin Institute of Technology suggests a novel use for some estates as a lesson to “evidence-free policy” pursued by government during the boom times: “Maybe it is no harm to leave one or two standing as a reminder of what not to do.
Boherbue, Co Cork.
Lios na Gréine in Lismire, Co Cork.
Song Dong
Song Dong, Same Bed Different Dreams No. 3, 2018.
Song Dong’s art confronts notions of memory, impermanence, waste, consumerism and the urban environment. Simultaneously poetic and political, personal and global, his work explores the intricate connection between life and art.
Same Bed Different Dreams No. 3 (2018) has been created using everyday household objects, such as crockery, pendant lights and decorative knick-knacks. These mundane objects are presented on a double bed carrying the memory of the rise of his generation, behind a polished case composed of salvaged window panels, the useless byproduct of modernization. Though each window has been carefully enhanced by Song Dong with vibrantly coloured mirror or glass, their recycled nature is nevertheless evident from the still flaking paint and rusting latches. These collaged remnants of people’s homes carry with them the history of a city and the lives of its people. As viewers are invited to peek inside, they are transformed into voyeurs: imagining their homes, their stories and perhaps identifying shared experiences, and primed to think of the future.
Song Dong has continued his investigations of the varied cultural meanings of windows. As barriers between living spaces and the wider world, windows offer key perspective through which people view the outside environment. In the process of being opened or closed, windows can alter the relationships between individuals and the external world. Through changes in color and form, they can transform the world’s appearance in the eyes of the viewer. Song Dong’s work builds on the rhetorical and aesthetic significance that has been associated with windows since ancient times.
Song Dong, Usefulness of Uselessness - Compressed Window No. 03, 2020-2021.
Research on memory continues to unfold, but what we do know is that memory is fallible, and shockingly so. Most of our most cherished memories are confabulations, an intricate blend of fragments from our past, images from dreams, movies, books, and even other people’s memories assimilated as our own. This is the fantastic, frustrating, perplexing nature of memory: It is endlessly redefining and refining what we remember. Ask three siblings about a shared experience and you are likely to get three different versions of the event.
Our flawed memory unnerves us. We count on memory to validate reality. As our brains develop, we begin to create an autobiographical first-person narrative that defines who we are. Our identity formation depends on memories strung together into a recognizable story (autobiographical memory). In childhood, remembering positive choices and outcomes enhances a positive sense of self.
