For structural reasons Art has always been typified by painting. This is a pre-photographic and pre-modern gesture where a specific moment is captured in time. At the beginning of painting religious iconography originally caught the image of a moment in time, of a person who offered a way out of the existential problem of why we are here. Most often a man – the sky father – encapsulated a philosophy alternative to the narrative of ‘might is right’. The brutality of life was solved by the intentional weakness of a male figure who offered an alternative to male brutality – and this effectively was adopting the clothes of the earth mother – who’s prior offer was also strong and nurturing at the same time as Kali, the most beautiful and the most terrifying portrayal of the meaning of life. Either way, the portrait spoke to the issue of pain in human life.
Through the centuries a set of themes were offered that slowly became more and more sophisticated until landscape offered the simple truth of a person alone gazing at the world in peace and harmony. Much much later, the move to abstraction next encompassed Duchamp’s position concerning the problem of the primacy of concept over artwork – in a metaphysical way – and then the landscapes of abstraction offered a way out of the existential tendency of anthropomorphising – that our viewpoint, the human viewpoint is only one of many gazes that happen on our world – even the silent animal can gaze – but what might we or they see if we unchained ourselves to witness without projecting our own viewpoint onto everything we see?
We are only one view point.
Inspiration that the artists and curators can utilise:
In his story ‘The Mirror Maker’, Primo Levi has his protagonist fall in love and try to speak about his love through making a mirror – originally outlined in 6th century BCE by Aesop, “the Metamir” (a metaphysical mirror) which will reveal his feelings for his loved one through every moment expressed directly on a mirror of his own soul feelings which he carries with him at all times – his ‘self’ is depicted on a mirror which he carries around for not only his lover for whom he made the gift, but also for all to see. UMA artists will reveal their questions and their answers through 12 Metamirs – 12 metaphysical mirrors – 12 durational paintings – 12 abstract works – 12 intensely slow works to interrogate the nature of painting and of art itself.
The Exhibition – Large and small scale versions
So UMA now adopt these fundamental issues as a challenge with Pictures at an Exhibition (coined with a circular reference to Mussorgsky’s subject for himself for a set of musical compositions – and here we make a nod to every moving image artists debt to music in recognising the idea of composition that reveals itself through time) – and we choose the medium of durational art which mimics the fundamentals of painting to question exactly what art is and what it might become in an age where questioning everything that we humans are and have done and will do – one of which is our angst at our own nature – that we might destroy the very thing we are observing, our biome and habitat – the cypher is the landscape of the self.
What this means is we give freedom to each UMA artist to address this in their own way with 12 pictures at an exhibition, 12 durational positions on the nature of art through a slow durational answer to the problem of being.
The Canvas, the Eye and the Hand – What matters in Art in an era of Digital Art by Terry Flaxton
You Can Rest While You Are Flying by LIA
Shadow-Bloom by Nataša Prosenc Stearns
THE FIX by Jutta Pryor
’STEEP’ by Sadia Sadia
The exhibition experience – Large scale (including the small scale)
On Entry to the gallery the audience passes through a smaller space (which is also the exit space) and this has 12 x 7 inch frames with a set of durational works on them authored by UMA artists to tease out a set of ideas. These frames are at average eye height so that the audience can see at a far smaller scale what they’re about to see at a much large scale.
The audience then proceeds into a much darker environment where there is a route through 12 x 6 meter by 2.5 meter high screens upon which all of the same works are now exhibited at 4k with surround sound of each piece – thus producing contemporary gallery treatment of digital imagery. In the brochure, the audience should be encouraged to park their narrative attention to acknowledge Bill violas aphorism:
“Duration is to Consciousness, as light is to the eye”.
What this means is: as light energises the eye, so images with duration can energise the deeper mid brain mind through contemplation. Then contemplative mind focusses our energetic attention on a much deeper level than interpretive mind (formed for other more quotidian tasks) – so the images you are now viewing is via an energetic exchange, where attention is energy.
This is in comparison with the dressing of the images you engage in the entry section to the exhibition.
After taking as much time as they like (with seating provided with each screen) the audience exits through exactly the same exhibition of small frames they entered via. They now hopefully with a slightly different attitude stand next to those who they were some time back.
The gesture of seeing the work as both small, then large, then small again, creates an opportunity for the audience to start to think harder about their ‘consumption’ of art and the meaning of what art can become in the 21st Century.
The exhibition experience – Small scale
You enter a plain white gallery with 12 small 7 inch displays as having 12 singular points of meditation. This gallery can be as small as 5 meters x 4 meters (or similar) or the works can be more widely spread out at 10 meters x 8 meters (or similar).
For the catalogue:
When the gallery is full, wait your turn to move on to the next image – be aware of those following you so try to gauge the time you spend with a work so that there is a very slow but purposeful flow in the gallery from entry to exit. If you’re on your own take on the responsibility to be the gallery’s steward, the sole representative, the sole upholder of the project of conscious attention whose energy heals the human condition.
Take your time with each work. Only move on after you feel like you’re ‘in synch’ with the work. Each work is meant as a singular point of meditation. Think of the gallery as being like a battery where aesthetic, political and community behaviour is first charged then realised as combined power – you then carry the message.