Now you see it.....

[cheesepaws]

I'm thinking about making a whole body of invisible monumentally scaled sculptures. Anyone else intrigued?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/a...sible-art.html

[Mack]

Funny how things work out...I've had this piece in my studio for two years...
It's not as large as I think it could be, but you be the judge:

Thanks and I appreciate any comments, especially the negative ones. Thanks for saying what you feel because even if I disregard it as being inane or just plain ignorant, I would give my life to protect your right to say it!
Here's anothjer angle:

Sorry about the background...my stupid dog.

[jOe~]

From what I can see there's nothing new here. Been done before.

[Mack]

I appreciate your frankness (joeness?)...I think it's actually quite original. Perhaps you'd be good enough to show an example of what you are implying I might have borrowed my idea for this piece from...
This is a photo taken before all the feathers were added and the hot urine bath:

[fused]

Can anyone actually "push the boundaries of visual art" with concepts that remain invisible and only engage the mind?

[cheesepaws]

Originally Posted by fused

Can anyone actually "push the boundaries of visual art" with concepts that remain invisible and only engage the mind?

You mean...like one's imagination?

[GlennT]

If you are pushing boundries with concepts of the mind, one wonders what those boundries were doing there in the first place.

[cheesepaws]

I've been seriously thinking about how many sculptures I've done that might count as "invisible." Here is one that might work - a self-portrait from 2008 (painted steel).



Anybody else got one?

[chris 71]

you should cover up that column cheese its stealing the show
maybe that door knob too lol

[Duck]

Originally Posted by cheesepaws

I've been seriously thinking about how many sculptures I've done that might count as "invisible." Here is one that might work - a self-portrait from 2008 (painted steel).



Anybody else got one?

Works for me cheeze

.....people, you know a sprue is usually used up for regrind...right

[Kilkenny]

I'm curious about the exhibition's stated criteria - to 'show that art is not about viewing objects'. Is this a major issue in contemporary art? And is there a concern out there among artists that people have been mistaking the object for the art?

[cheesepaws]

Originally Posted by Kilkenny

I'm curious about the exhibition's stated criteria - to 'show that art is not about viewing objects'. Is this a major issue in contemporary art? And is there a concern out there among artists that people have been mistaking the object for the art?

Contemporary art is increasingly experiential - not just privileging the visual.

The "object" is no more the art - or less - than the act of making. Art has always been a synthesis of action and artifact.

[Kilkenny]

Art has always been experiential, but that's like anything else (walking, for instance!). If you forget about the experience you'll miss the point. And taking in the natural world on those walks can result in anything from a David Hockney to a Graham Sutherland (quite different experiences). But the experience is still imbedded in the object, just as it is in the walk. As for not privileging the visual - we are talking about the visual arts here, aren't we?

I did like a piece (forget the name of the artist) that won the Turner prize a few years back - the main item was a gallery room in the Tate, in which the lights went on and off at spaced intervals. This was an interesting piece, for me, as the work itself had an ambivalent existence - it stopped existing as soon as the lights were set back to normal! And the experience in the room was dramatically foregrounded by the viewer actually being inside the work, so to speak. Of course, this is where the words 'work' and 'piece' become metaphor, as with 'object'.

[rika]

Originally Posted by Kilkenny

Of course, this is where the words 'work' and 'piece' become metaphor, as with 'object'.

Indeed, and I cannot consider "art" neither one (the one described in the original article or your example). It's the spark, the idea, the philosophy leading up to creating, not creation itself. It seems to me that there is a competition, a horse race out there in the so-called art world about who can come up with the most shocking idea. Nothing new there but it seems to me is less playful, less effortless as we seem to run out of safe taboos. The art world today is reduced to safe blasphemy. Tired and boring, recycled originality. That's my very subjective opinion on the subject at the moment.

[Kilkenny]

I know how you feel. But the thing about the Turner Prize piece (by Martin Creed) is that it has all the constituents of a work of art, it just doesn't exist like one and our relationship to it is such that the viewer cannot relate to it like an object, sitting there in the gallery.

I know what you mean about the striving for originality these days, but this piece has a history - it's a piece that reminds me, for instance, of the minimalism of Donald Judd and it maybe works through some of judd's interests.

[GlennT]

Eventually the conceptual/mental shennanigans will get tedious even to those invested in it. Hopefully they will find that actual growth comes from creating art instead of pretending to find the new "new".

But when?...some fads have more staying power than others.

I also don't buy into the art is not the object thesis. The object is what communicates the art to the viewer. The object is what the artist has created out of his or her relationship to time and space, and is infused with all of the focus of their artistic energies at that moment of time. Why would you want to cheapen the value of the object by shunning it as something that is not art?

[Kilkenny]

Perhaps an education that stresses appreciation of art would be a more practical way of encouraging viewers to see beyond the sheer presence of the object. I'm not sure that an exhibition of invisible art will really achieve its aims here. Also: didn't John Cage do this in musically way back in the 50s? And there's bound to be a book somewhere with no words (perhaps in a box, loose-leaved, so that you can start anywhere you like.....).

[evaldart]

K is right, considering art (viewing it, hearing it, etc) has always been experiential and NOT palpable. It is no more "for" communicating than it is for eating or throwing at your enemies. I do not have a problem at all with an incident of encouraged experience (art show?) that addresses how one THINKS about aesthetica by offering up a philosophical thesis that has us "filling in the blanks" of the usual art encounter. And of course, the artifact, the things SEEN could never measure up to the experience that brought it into being. Unless it is an imposter, diluted amongst two or more consciousnesses. Then we are talking about another thing entirely...spectacle perhaps. And spectacles, burdened by their desperate want to "communicate", absolutely depend upon being "spectated". A spectacle has it backwards - with the object informing the process, rather than the more challenging manner whereby the process, the act, leaves some settled dust (significance) on the extrusion...some quite MAGIC dust perhaps, for the imagination of a viewer.

[jim collins]

SPACE - SPACE RELATIONSHIP or invisible sculpture

Even thought he did not designate it, Claes Oldenburg did a mass-mass relationship sculpture in New York's Central Park in the mid-1960's. Oldenburg had workmen dig a 6-foot by 6-foot cube out of the earth and then had it filled back immediately with the same dirt that had been removed. Disturbed earth within undisturbed earth.

At the time this activity was called an "Art Happening" Actually what took place was the first documented mass-mass relationship sculpture. Disturbed earth within a well-defined 6 foot cube --- one cannot see it (invisible) but it is there to this very day.

Now where do we go from here? How about the other end of this spectrum, a space-space relationship, also a sculpture that could not be seen but only perceived by feeling (invisible). Several years ago I constructed two main devices that blew air into forms that could be felt, not seen. One could feel the form and the defining edges of disturbed and sometimes heated air blown into a still atmosphere.

What the hell was that about? People only saw the machines and never really got the idea of a space-space relationship. We are so visual!

[evaldart]

If you think about the reason the monolith has always been such a potent in regards to allocating significance to a proximity, site, place, idea, notion; you will evnetually realize that it was not the size/weight of the thing, the rock etc, that was effective it was the resounding, emanating, radiating, vibrating, loaded, barely-harnessed, about-to-burst, aggravated stasis...all these things are NOT the result of optical perception. They are purely cognitive, and cognition is not attached to a sense-organ (no, not even the bulbous brain). So where are the sensors? Are they meaty? or are they leaping legs of magneti, or are they anti-material tentacles? Back to the ol' substance and void conundrum.

[jim collins]

I can see it. a monolith is a monolith (visual).
A conundrum is a conundrum (invisible).
The problem here is invisible - not fraying,
white hot wings of steel on a vertical monolith.

I*N*V*I*S*I*B*L*E

[evaldart]

Again, the object is of secondary importance. The "content" of a work of art arrives invisibly. You can stare at the damned "subject" all day, and not get any content. We are talking about leaps made by the viewer. The "filling-in" of blanks that are put to the sensory test (by the artist). Such is NOT art when it takes the form of a joke, game, a riddle or a puzzle executed by an obvious clown or charlatan.

The philosophers (eggheads) will place aesthetics as a mere branch of philosophy. But philosophy is actually a mere branch of aesthetics; as the entire uniqueness of a human consciousness is caused by a creative implulse. Homo-aestheticus (not homo-erectus) must first leap away from humanity to manage greater sensations. Sensations
not detectible by bloated blobs of tissue and blood.

[jim collins]

What Bloviation.
Using your very own thesis--even fools can make sculpture if it has "content"
Without content, it ain't art. On that I agree.
The viewer is not important to invisible sculpture.
But, the content is. It is still art when one simply becomes
aware of the content.

[jim collins]

OK. Let us get beyond the "see stuff and not seeing stuff". The sculpture, in whatever form, is the relic, record, or journal of the artist process. In its final form it becomes a "statement".
If no one ever sees or hears about or acknowledges it in anyway. It is still an art statement by the person that conceptualized it. As to evaluation. Not my problem at this juncture.

Art takes place in the mind of the artist. The art object is a record of that process. The communication, may or may not, take place in the mind of the viewer.

If the viewer becomes enthralled in the grain of a large carved piece of wood and does not credit or notice the form of the carving. The viewer has missed the art entirely. If the viewer is mystified by the hard work that went into a sculpture and skill of the sculptor. The viewer has missed the art entirely. If the viewer has to see the art work before they can judge the content. They too, may have missed the art entirely.

[evaldart]

The content that is put-into an artifact by its creator may be very different from the content that is taken-away by a viewer (if such and exchange even occurs. Because we all know that not everything is art to everyone...even if it is art to someone else).

My favorite thing about bloviation is that there are many currents running through the same verbosities; many opportunities and secret messages to get wrung out. Those who are perturbed by it are mere clarity grubbers; as-the-crow-flies types of thinkers who'd rather not go the extra mile or mangle a sentence to reveal, by a belaboring, its invisible content. Ideas are not spreadsheets.