We have touched upon concepts such as aggregation, accumulation, collages and density in previous posts, but it's always good to re-explore these themes from a different angle. Let's consider these topics from the "landscapes of objects and fragments" theme and find works and installations that may inspire us.
The first artwork is "The Dance of Time", a preparatory study for a larger painting by Duncan Shanks, currently on view at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow. The work is on display as part of "The Poetry of Place" event celebrating Shanks's gift to the University of Glasgow of his entire output of sketchbooks from the past 55 years.
Landscape, colourful flowers and natural scenes prevail in Shanks' works: quite often the artist takes inspiration from his favourite locations such as the surroundings of his home at Crossford, a small village by the river Clyde, or the isolated glens and reservoirs of the Upper Clyde and the West coast and islands. This work gathers broken fragments discarded by man and nature around which the artists has created a narrative with the added symbols of bird, cage, statues and references to admired paintings such as J.D. Fergusson's "Les Eus". For Shanks such scattering of objects or "landscape of tiny objects", as he calls it, symbolises the journey in time across his table top.
The second inspiration is "Virus" by Mexican installation artist and architect Antonio O'Connell. This structure, on display outside Summerhall - the former Royal School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, and now a creative hub for the arts with studio and workshop spaces - is an assemblage of various elements, objects and recycled materials and items from the building's past.
The construction - inspired by buildings created in the outskirts of cities in Mexico - oozes chaos, disorder and spontaneity, and shatters the boundaries between what goes on inside on the creative level and the world outside the building. The "virus" could indeed be coming from the outside or may be spreading from the inside and may be trying to "infect" in a joyous way the space outside it.
The third and last example is embodied by Kwang Young Chun's sculptures. The internationally renowned Korean artist, who will have his fist solo exhibition in Scotland at Edinburgh's Dovecot Tapestry Studios in July, combines in his monumental pieces Eastern philosophy and American Abstract Expressionism.
His works consist in complex assemblages made employing triangular forms in various sizes, cut from Polystyrene or foam, wrapped in Korean mulberry paper and tied with hand-twisted paper string. The artist conceives these "basic units of information" or "basic cells of life" as elements creating harmony and conflict in unique three-dimensional formations. These sculptures are inspired by a childhood memory of small mulberry paper medicine packages with name cards hanging from the ceiling of a Chinese medicine doctor's pharmacy to protect them from insects.
Chun Kwang Young's textured topographical maps of alien-like rocky landscapes (at times presented in delicately beautiful colour gradations) take viewers on a journey through space and symbolically refer to the conflicts that regulate our modern lives.
Apart from being visually striking, the examples of accumulations and aggregations analysed in this post could all be considered as exploratory studies or investigations into more complex and intangible subjects such as the tensions, anxiety and uncertainties at the core of human existence.
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