Smoke and Mirrors - another example of work being a copy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/may/22/art
Although their are many artists and writing on the multiply use of mirrors within art Smithson and Morris are the two that are the most relevant to my investigation and have informed my work greatly.
Robert Smithson
Here are a few examples of work using mirror by artist Robert Smithson, whom i've been researching, his gallery and site specific work.
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The square mirrors in Smithson’s work to me resembles the frame of a painting or the diameters of a photograph, both which capture a passage of time. I believe this way also the intention of Smithson, he used the mirrors in his site specific work to capture a three dimensional picture of a site, location to later be presented as an non-site piece of art, mapping a location indicated to the viewer. In Smithson’s work I believe he evokes the viewer sub consciousness, as when faced with the seemingly interminable void, the human instinct is to define it. One way to define a space is to define ones location within it, relative to it. A mirror, providing a reflection of oneself, allows the viewer to envision him/herself as part of that infinite distance and to break down the terrifying vastness of space. Often in Smithson’s mirror work in contrast to Morris’s highly polished pieces, Smithson not only presents his work with a rawness and original notion. Smithson’s mirror as a square is often disrupted by natural material of the out door site works. This I think possible could represent Smithson destroying the constitution of the frame works, be that a square photograph, or a painting or picture frame, Smithson uses location and land material to disrupt this linear line around the edge of the mirror. Also the interior, gallery space pieces such as Chalk and Mirror Displacement (1969) 6 mirrors / chalk from Quarry in Oxted, England each 10"x 5" (overall 10') Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. The work consists of 8 long, rectangular mirrors that are set on their longer sides. They all touch at the center, and are fanned out to form a circle. They are all placed at about an equal distance from each other. The shape resembles a star, a flower, or the sections of an orange. The mirrors are held up by a pile of chalk rocks and gravel. The rocks are all different sizes and are not placed in a particular order, just in a heap that is roughly leveled off at the top. The rocks are all different sizes, and the mirrors are inserted into the pile. The mirrors are almost covered by the rocks at the center of the circle, but at least one-fourth to one-third of each mirror sticks out beyond the pile of rocks. Chalk-Mirror Displacement was made to appear in two "Attitude Becomes Form" held at the Institute of Contemporary 27, 1969. The non-site becomes an abstraction, real/actual site from which materials are taken. Smithson and non-site. The non-site exists as a kind of deep three-specific site on the surface of the earth...designated by non-site is a reflection of the uncontrolled, uncontained gathered. The non-site engaging with the space, symbolically and physically reflecting place, more literal that a photograph. In the instance of Chalk-Mirror Displacement, simultaneously they become a double reflection without notions of displacement, place and time.
Robert Morris
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Robert Morris |
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Robert Morris
Untitled 1965/71
Mirror plate glass and wood object: 914 x 914 x 914 mm
sculpture purchased by The Tate 1972
Morris has arranged these slick geometric boxes with substanial space inbetween in which to walk around and experince them copaporeally. Thus experincing the piece not only by sight but also by scale and size, and so the viewer at that pressent time may compaire the works physical presence by measurement in relation to ones own body. I believe Morris’s mirrored cubes invites an interactive relationship between the work, the sites interior and exterior and the body simultauously. In my opionion Morris’s intention in this piece is typical of the Minimalism artist, questioned the role of the artists, the viewer and the experience of interacting and understanding an artwork. Morris has made not a mere object, but produced a situation, in which the viewers are physically and metothorically interating with the piece. It’s possible the cubes also represent the structure not only of the room but echo the associated with the white cubed gallery space itself. The cubes reflect the emptiness of the room which emphapisizes the islolation of space. The square conpoments and, structure of space in the work inticate a similarity to the square frame of a painting or photograph, are presented. The gallery also after all is a cube like space located within a building, on a site, which is usually within an institution of some variety. I also feel that in the choice of using the medium mirrors, Morris’s cubes reflect a reallistic view of the work and space, as well as an illustional, non real, cyber world. A place in which reflects the real, and solid also disorienatates the viewers perpective. With fragmented, illusion of a virtual space in which homes the work, the gallery space, and the audience moulded by the reflections of the mirrored glass into one situation.
This pieces gives the audience an awareness of the space they are in, and an awareness of one’s self not only in size, and scale but also in the framented and repected abstract reflections. The focus is not upon an object presented as four cubed mirrors, but upon the real and abstract simulatanously, the gallery, the space, the body. There is a concrete literal space which is occupied accompanied with an extended vitual, cyber space at the same time. Although the composition is simplistic in structure, the material of mirror disorinentates the order of space and context, layering complexitity to the work.
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