Final work

Final board piece leaning against the gallery wall
7ft x4ft

Artist statements and Summary

Final Statement  - to be used in show

The direction of my practice has evolved into a visual exploration of reflective surfaces. My work investigates different view points in how we can interpret art, and how we see ourselves in relation to the work. The intention of my work and choice of medium is to question how we, read, and understand conceptual art. My investigations into the properties of domestic media address a specific trait that is unique to a given mass-produced material. By experimenting with the more phenomenological aspects of a material, my process develops through a kind of dialogue that leads to a specific repetitive action that builds the work. The breadth and diversity of the consumer landscape has expanded to such a degree that the supply of materials that can be adapted to an artistic context seems limitless. My work explores the idea that art can be manufactured, or that it can radically complicate, the standard notions of value attached to mass-produced objects.

Reflective surface material is explored in my art as a sculptural and psychological response. The reflections can often represent a different order of space, and light, a fragmented illusion, creating morphed duplicates. I often use this psychologically charged, metaphorically rich material as a tool of thought. In response to my work, my intention is for my art to be interpreted not only as a sculpture, reflective surface, and mass produced domestic material but also as a phenomenological experience. Which is a philosophical approach concentrating on the study of consciousness and objects of direct experience?  Just how consciousness are we, of the object/sculpture, or reflective surface, compared to that of our own reflection and image.

Artist Statement 2 revisited

Kirsten Evans Level 6 Full Time

The direction of my practice has evolved into a visual exploration of reflective surfaces. My work investigates different view points in how we can interpret art, and how we see ourselves in relation to the work. The intention of my work and choice of medium is to question how we, read, and understand conceptual art. The work is presented, but also is the space in which it is situated. Reflective surface material is explored in my art as a sculptural and psychological response. The reflections can often represent a different order of space, and light, a fragmented illusion, creating morphed duplicates. I often use this psychologically charged, metaphorically rich material as a tool of thought. In response to my work, my intention is for my art to be interpreted not only as a sculpture, or surface, but also as a phenomenological experience. Which is a philosophical approach concentrating on the study of consciousness and objects of direct experience?  Just how consciousness are we of the specific object/sculpture, or reflective surface, compared to that of our own reflection and image.

Kirsten Evans Level 6 Full Time Statement 1

Throughout studies my work has also been highly influenced by site specific artists and the many formations of art work associated with site/location/place/space. In my opinion I feel that site specific art, acts as a pedestal today, communicating through many mediums as an open invitation for the public to interact, react or involve themselves (physically or mentally). My work has often challenged the very ideas and concepts associated with the frame works and intentions of art, questioning the white cube gallery space itself. The importance of ‘site’ and, intention of ‘medium’, being it’s context or location in which it is located/placed or represented, often raises the question, who is an artist, what is art? Thus challenging our view point such as, the way we navigate, view or interpret the art as well as how we view ourselves in relation to the work. I have investigated how the medium of mirror is used in art not only as a sculptural response but as a site specific response. In my opinion the location and medium of my work re-defines how we approach/read, and understand the work, and look at the context of which the work is shown. The work is presented, but also is the space in which it is situated. In my use of mirrors, the mirrors represent a different order of space, a fragmented illusion, my intention is to physically move around the work, implying you are just as much aware of the physical work, just as much as you are of the work in relation to the moving body/viewer and the site/location.

Summary

What had begun as an exploration into mirror glass and the historical connotations and heighten psychological charge that that this metaphorically rich material holds, of which the Renaissance period owns a lot to the development and revival of cultural achievements including the Venetian glass mirror. This had expanded and developed into an investigation into reflective surfaces in art. In my research and practice I had played around testing and working with a multitude of materials, wood, roll on mirror, Venetian mirror, cork, polystyrene, blue Styrofoam. I had also been analyzing the repeated production and domestic use of concave and convex reflective material in our everyday life, such as hospitals, offices, stores, sun/reading glasses, motor vehicle use, security aid, magnifying glass, and light concentration.   I had then quite accidentally started to play around with a box of drawing pins, and sometimes the best products can come from play. I began to pin the drawing pins together just on a simple piece of spare wood, I was astounded and impressed with this mini- microcosm convex structure and reflection. With the pins together, an illus ional, multiple, psychedelic effect is produced, reflecting the light, the site/location/surroundings, and the viewer from many different angles. I then began to produce larger scale pieces of work, for me it was about the material and its effect. I didn’t want my work to be seen as an object but an experience, a tool for looking. I wanted to encourage a relationship between the viewer, location, and angles of light. Although yes my work is built upon by a repetitive action and process that in fact builds the work, I did not want people to get lost in the mass production but of the experience and work itself. Also in my chosen use of mass production of drawing pins, I was questioning and challenging the idea that art can be manufactured or that it can radically complicate the standard notions of value attached to mass-produced objects is no longer a point of serious contention in contemporary debates. I think the new fertile territory, for myself at least, encompasses a range of practices that capitalize on the iconic identities of commercial and industrial materials by pressing them further into the realm of abstract seduction.    

Here summed up well by Robin Irwin

“What appeared to be a question of object/non-object has turned out to be a question of seeing and not seeing, of how it is we actually perceive or fail to perceive “things” in their real contexts. Now we are presented and challenged with the infinite, everyday richness of “phenomenal” perception (and the potential for a corresponding “phenomenal art,” with none of the customary abstract limitations as to form, place, materials and so forth) – one which seeks to discover and value the potential for experiencing beauty in everything.”
-- Robert Irwin, Being and Circumstance: Notes Toward a Confidential Art

For my work I feel that it’s all about the perceiving this material from a distance and close up and how the light interacts with it. I had decided to produce organic, cellular forms in my final productions of work, as these are parallel to how my work like organic things grow, so too, does my work in it’s physical production. Also the circular forms and layers/ or sculptural shapes to my pieces of work also mimic a similarity our solar system, the galaxy, the sun, life, and the earth. This was a decision I made to echo the historical western development of the reflective materials, and how it transformed the way human beings looked at the world. I think you even say it changed our relationship with the world forever, it juggled light, destabilizing vision, which greatly helped the arts, changing, and developed four major areas forever:

Investigation into optics 

Art - destabilize the eye.

Science - enabled humans to see into space - successful in the development of powerful telescopes.

Human conception of themselves. Conceiving of self of separate human being, different from each other and in society, individualism, self being separate one from the other. Eastern culture when seeing one's reflection did not see self, but thought to have seen through the image into a inter spirit of soul. Just as once the Renaissance artists had used reflective material to bring attention to the art of looking, this also is my intention in my art. Seeing is a dynamic process. If we stare directly at an object for a long time, we cease to see it. Only if we change our angle of vision, sweeping the eye across the object, do we continue to see it. The reflections present contradictions in the order of space, which is unstable thus redefining our perception of the gallery space, and the work. Our encounter with objects in space forces us to reflect on ourselves, which can never become, ‘other’, which can never become objects for our external examination. . It is the notion that the object recedes in its self-importance, which is my goal for my final piece. My work is an experience that includes the object, your body, the space, light and the time of your experience. It’s all locked in together.

Reading list and research

I'm particularly I've been interested in works by artist Olafur Eliasson and his diverse use of reflective materials within his art, and audience awareness.
Frost Activity 2004 - Reykjavik Art Museum Hafnarhus
http://www.olafureliasson.net/exhibitions/frost_activity_1.html
Utopia Tate Modern Oct 2003/March 2004
http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue7/eliasson.htm
Take your time - Exhibited at both The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre NY
http://flux.net/take-your-time-olafur-eliasson-new-york

Mirror door (spectator), 2008; Mirror door (user), 2008; Mirror door (visitor), 2008 Selected exhibitions: Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008 http://www.olafureliasson.net/works/mirror_doors.html http://www.olafureliasson.net/works/take_your_time.html Quasi brick wall 2002 NMAC Foundation, Cadiz This is a piece of work which had really inspired my direction of work, into using audience,  site and reflection into a three way relationship. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajcheng730/2546302036/ This work makes the audience or viewer just aware of the work itself as well as their own presence and being in that particular space and location due to the reflections and light impact. M.C.Escher has been renowned for using the reflective imagery in his artworks http://www.artchive.com/artchive/E/escher.html Many other prominent artist throughout history have explored reflective surfaces within their art: Constable, Dali, Escher, Hockney, Klimt, Magritte, Manet, Monet, Picasso, Signac, Sisley, Turner, Van Eyck, Velasquez, and Whistler. With my previous module in the exploration of mirrors and now currently investigating reflective surface and the multiple devices historically developed I had begun to be fascinated with the illusion and distortion in convex and concave reflective imagery.

Examples of Devices: taken from http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/stork7.html

Purpose or description

anamorphic mirrors and lenses

deliberately creating and undoing drastic distortions in art

astrolabe

primitive "computer" for predicting positions of planets but which was also used for surveying and estimating sizes of buildings

bacolo of Euclid

bars for estimating the height and width of a distant object, such as a building

bussola

device for measuring horizontal and vertical bearing angles

camera lucida

"light room," a prism for simultaneously viewing a scene and a drawing surface

camera obscura

"dark room," a dark room with a lens or hole to cast a dim image on the opposite wall

kaleidoscope

tube of plane mirrors for creating abstract image patterns

magic lantern

early slide projector

megalographs

paper with small holes which cast large shadows onto walls

microscope

seeing small objects

multiplying spectacles

eyeglasses with faceted lenses for producing multiple images

myriorama

image that can be cut and reassembled numerous ways

optigraph

mirror linked to a pen for copying images or drawing from nature

pantograph

mechancial device for enlarging or reducing images

Brunelleschi's peephole-mirror device

showing a three-dimensional scene in two dimensions

periscope

two mirrors in a tube for extending the user's visual reach

perspective box

box whose inside walls hold distorted images which when viewed through a peephole appear in proper perspective

perspective glass

tube with faceted lens making multiple drawings appear as one

perspectograph or automatic perspective machine

mechanical system for transferring an image froma flat surface to another possibly curved surface, such as a curved wall or ceiling

phenakistoscope or phantasmoscope or "stroboscope" or zoescope

slotted disk with sequence of images, which when rotated reveals a primitive "movie"

physionotrace

device used for tracing portraits

radio astronomico

sliding crossed sticks for measuring the height and width of a building

shadow lantern

candle and rotating silhouettes that cast shadows on the translucent walls of a small box

spectacles

primitive eyeglasses

telescope

seeing distant objects

thaumatrope

card with a partial image on each side which, when rotated, shows the full image

zoetrope or wheel of life

slotted cylinder with sequence of images, which when rotated reveals a primitive "movie"

zograscope or optical diagonal machine

convex lens and mirror giving a magnified view of a flat image




Concave and Convex Acrylic Mirror Glass
By Monika Goetz 

 


In my investigation into reflective surface I had looked upon the domestic use of concave
and convex mirrors in our everyday life.

Curved, or spherical, mirrors are also known as concave and convex mirrors. Calculations about the images formed by these lenses are based on the assumption that the curved section of the mirror was sliced off of a sphere. Concave mirrors are mirrors that curve inward in the middle, forming a cave-like hollow in the center of the mirror. Convex mirrors are mirrors that curve outward in the middle, forming a bubble-like curvature at the center of the mirror. There are many uses for concave and convex mirrors, mostly in the areas of science and safety.

1. Convex Mirror Uses Inside Buildings

   • Large hospitals, stores and office buildings often use convex mirrors to allow people to see what is around a corner to help keep people from running into one another.

   Convex Mirror Uses: Sunglasses

   • Convex mirrors are used to make sun glass lenses. These mirrors help reflect some of the sunlight away from the wearer's eyes.

   Convex Mirror Uses: Vehicles

   • Convex mirrors are often found on the passenger sides of motor vehicles. These mirrors make objects appear smaller than they really are. Due to this compression, these mirrors to reflect a wider image area, or field of vision.

   Convex Mirror Uses: Security

   • Convex mirrors are often placed near ATMs to allow bank customers to see if someone is behind them. This is a security measure that helps keep ATM users safe from robbery of any cash withdrawals and helps keep ATM users' identity more secure.

   Convex Mirror Uses: Magnifying Glass

   Concave Mirror Uses: Vehicle

   • Concave mirrors are used in vehicle headlights to focus the light from the headlight. The light is not as diffused and the driver can see better at night.

   Concave Mirror Uses: Light Concentration

   • Concave mirrors are used to focus light for heating purposes

In my research of the use of concave and convex reflective surfaces, often mirror glass, I had found a debate

upon the Renaissance period and although mirror glass had transformed the way in which we view ourselves and the world, it is not completely know how the mirrored lens was, if used, or just a best kept secret,

here is Hockneys argument http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/stork7.html

Although this is contradicted in this production example here:

 http://www.optics.arizona.edu/SSD/art-optics/concave.html

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Reflection on mirrors - end of neg 1

In my first assumptions I was unaware of the great impact and significance mirrors had not only in changing science but changing the way we viewed the world and ourselves. In my everyday domestic reflective use of mirrors I had taken for granted the historical connotations and heighten psychological charge that that this metaphorically rich material holds. The Renaissance period owns a lot to the development and revival of cultural achievements including the Venetian glass mirror. The mirror aided in investigation and development of four major areas: 1. into optics. 2. Science, mirrors are the only material powerful enough to use in telescopes enabling us to see into space, changing how we view the world. 3.  Art, as the mirror destabilizes the eye, artists from the Renaissance period such as Leonardo De Vinci painted from mirrors enabling them to understand the mathematics behind painting. 4. Changed Human conception of ourselves. Conceiving of ones self separate human being, different from each other, thus the effect on western society and culture came individualism, self being separate from one another. Eastern cultures when seeing ones reflection in a mirror did not see self, but had thought to see through the image into an inner spirit or soul. I believe that mirrors changed our perception and relationship with the world and ourselves forever. They juggled light and destabilizing vision which helped the arts develop, which is evident in the great portraits of the Renaissance. Mirrors made us look at reality in a new way, in the West this changed mans vision of himself, which gave us individualism. Mirrors are also seen as the third eye, they are able to shift and change focus and vision, mirrors can be used as a great tool of thought.

The Renaissance period claims the mirror brought the, ‘discovery of self’ which where the central feature of the Renaissance bringing a new concept of the individual, unique to the West and to the period from about the fourteenth century. Leonardo De Vinci known for his mirrored writing mentions mirrors several times in his Notebooks in which he had claimed was “The Master of Painters”, “You should take a mirror for your guide….. that is to say a flat mirror …because on its surface the objects appear in many respects as in a painting,”

It may be that mirrors increase the intensity of human sight in other ways as well. Seeing is a dynamic process. If we stare directly at an object for a long time, we cease to see it. Only if we change our angle of vision, sweeping the eye across the object, do we continue to see it. Mirrors help us to see clearly for, whether held in the hand or altered by the movement of the person who gazes into them, they increase the amount of movement which is projected onto the eye. I feel that the mirror played at major part in the discovery of laws of perception. Without a mirror, the great autobiographical portraits, culminating in the series by Rembrandt, could not have been painted.

Mirrors are indeed extraordinary and it is not too fanciful to believe that the development of the mirror in only one civilization not only altered its art, which can be shown, but also gradually altered the whole perception of what human beings are. One certainly has an elective affinity, individualism and high quality mirrors has grown together. Mirrors on their own, would not have effected the huge transformation which we call Renaissance individualism. Yet they may have been one of the necessary enabling causes, without which the abstraction of the individual from the group would not have taken the course it did. Armed now with this knowledge this gives me a deeper understanding of the historical, psychological and, metaphorical connotations associated with mirrors. Just as once the Renaissance artists had used mirrors to bring attention to the art of looking, this also is my intention in my art. I have decided to create a large piece of work in which I shall be using side wing car mirrors, to create my desired effect.
The mirrors present contradictions in the order of space, which is unstable thus redefining our perception of the gallery space, and the work.Our encounter with objects in space forces us to reflect on ourselves, which can never become, ‘other’, which can never become objects for our external examination. . It is the notion that the object recedes in its self-importance, which is my goal for my final piece. My simplitic work is a complex experience that includes the object, your body, the space, and the time of your experience. It’s all locked in together.

Mirrors fragmented

I had also learnt basic arc welding as well  as cutting the mirrors and trying metal glues which were unsuccessful. I then resorted to ressin based material to hold the mirrors together.

test piece

Different pieces of glass to give a disorientated fragmented angles to viewer.

Using the same domestic framing from previously and welded metal with mirror placements.

A more focused investigation

 I will be exploring the difference in approach and intentions in which mirrors are used in art such as to: copy, echo, emulate, reflect, show, or to even create a cyber world within this material. I will be focusing my area of investigating on the relationship between the work, the mirror image, the body, and site. I intend to investigate how the medium of mirror is used in art not only as a sculptural response but as a site specific response. In my opinion site specific work re-defines how we approach/read, and understand the work, and look at the context of which the work is shown. The work is presented, but also is the space in which it is situated. In the use of mirrors in site specific work, the mirror can represent a different order of space, I plan to explore the different ways in which mirrors are used to create spatial analysis, in relation to the body.

Here I've experimented with two domestic mirrors that I have broken in selected place to fragment the effect of the mirror. The two pictures here demonstrate how different view points and perspective and perception, reflected back to the viewer. This depends on the angle of viewing the mirror and the location and placement of the mirrors which also interact with it's surrounding site, light and movement.

Again I was attempting to create an optical illusion to the eye, I have used the original frame from the mirrors Ihave been using and repectedly colour photocopied the frames and inserted inside one another. I wanted to created a piece of work that questioned the frame work and content in which art is perceived.

I later added an magnified sheet to exaggerate the effect on the naked eye.

I explored placing the mirrors in a variety of postions.

Then tried the effect similar to the photocopies I layered the mirrors.

 

Effect of Mirrors on art and psychology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1VKfCsMSA8

Informative piece of video, i've been learning about the western development of the mirror, and how it transformed the way human beings looked at the world. I think you even say it changed our relationship with the world forever, it juggled light, destabilizing vision, which greatly helped the arts. Mirrors made us look at reality in a new way. This is evident in the great portraits of the Renaissance and development of telescopes of which both mirrors gave great significance to. In the west this changed mans vision of himself, which gave us individualism. Mirror are seen as the third eye, which is able to shift and change it's focus and vision, mirrors are used as a great tool of thought.  Mirrors changed and developed four major areas:

1. Investigation into optics 
2. Art - as mirrors destabilize the eye, artists such as the Renaissance painted from mirrors which enabled them to understand the mathematics.
3. Science - mirrors enabled humans to see into space - as only mirror was successful in the development of powerful telescopes.
4. Human conception of themselves. Conceiving of self of separate human being, different from each other, possible could be the effect of the mirror on the western society, individualism, self being separate one from the other. Eastern culture when seeing one's reflection in a mirror did not see self, but thought to have seen through the image into a inter spirit of soul.