“Investigation of time and the way we perceive and experience time.”
“Instantaneous time but mechanistic of memories.”
In making abstraction organisation over emotion or emotion over organisation?
“I try to create composites that have both an organised sense of reality but also don’t negate sensibility or sensation, not about self-expression, or expressionism, but it’s more like the way as an individual i deal with material and that can be evocative of a poetic space and time.”
“An illusion, monochrome both as a surface, colour sensation, an atmosphere, as a void, and that cycle of association that I find useful about it.”
Spirit resonance – Chinese painting.
“It’s not about illustrating a state beyond, but a sense of recognising energy. “
Contemplation.
“Abstraction is a type of art that turns oneself back into oneself it helps us explore the interior world of feeling and of thinking.”
“…acknowledges the actuality of materiality in the actuality and authenticity of our experiencing the world, not simply about image, we are in a society where everything is an image. What i like about the role of painting both constructed object as well as a felt and thought of art construct so it’s got a multiple range of layers of reading and meaning… complexity to their work
Lee Ufan is recognized for his unconventional artistic processes which underscore the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and the spaces they inhabit and for philosophical writings that challenge prevailing notions of artmaking with attention on spatial and temporal conditions.”
As one of the foremost figures in breaking conventions as a painter, sculptor and philosopher in Korea, Japan and Europe, Lee marked his status as one of the leading advocates of Japanese avant-garde antiformalist ‘Mono-ha’ and the Monochrome movement (Dansaekhwa) of Korea in the 1960s-80s by effectively banishing imagery and materialization and instead opting for reductive elements that echo the Eastern philosophical paradigm of Taoism. –––– christies.com
Lee In 2006, Lee Ufan, the leader of following movements:
Mono-ha(School of Things) has similarity of Materialism and Art Povera – attempts to bring art closer to life with the common language common people recognise. 物派关注物体和空间的关系
Dansaekhwa (Monochrome painting in Korean) refers to a loose grouping of painting practice that emerged in Korea starting in the 1960s that also explored materiality.
“Tension and sensation, presence and absence, the essential binaries of Lee’s art, are expressed in their stunning totality in the present work. The focus of Lee’s practice is inextricably bound to these dualities, as equal importance is placed on the artist’s marks and on the areas of quiet pause that emerge between them.”
“A work of art is a site where places of making and not making, painting and not painting, are linked so that they reverberate with one another.”
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“Cobalt blue powdered mineral pigment (or orange powdered mineral pigment) is dissolved in glue, or sometimes in oil, and left for a while until the color stabilizes. Before working, I calm my breathing, correct my posture, and hold my brush quietly.”
Lee Ufan (b. 1936) From Line, 76045 signed and dated ‘L. U-FAN 76’ (lower right); signed and titled ‘No. 76045, Lee u-fan’ (on the reverse) oil and pigment on canvas 31 5/8 x 39 3/8in. (80.5 x 100cm.) Painted in 1976
Untitled, 1979 Gouache on paper 28.5 × 36 cm
From Point, From Line. 1976-1982
In 1967, he published the book of The Aesthetics of Self-Contradiction
“From Point and From Line series, which concluded in 1984. Exhibiting a distilled visual language based on an amalgamation of Eastern and Western aesthetics and philosophy, these works emphasize system, structure, and process through fields of dots or lines to create tension between his gestures and the picture plane, while marking the passage of time.”
“Alexandra Levasseur, in Montreal. Known for her work, that combines colored pencils on paper and experimentation with oil on wood panels. Levasseur continues her exploration of female figures in surreal and vivid landscapes, with the need to examine the relationship of the human beings with nature. ” (Widewall)
“This time, Levasseur speaks about her exhibition Puzzle as representing a mind game, which questions the origin of life and usefulness and destiny of human intelligence.” This Puzzle idea can be expand into my upcoming presentation format for the tile system of abstracted and dynamic works. Each line-work and shapes can be pre-planned and re-assemble to create other alternatives, to reveal the order and disorderness of the art, and similarly consisting Levasseur’s idea of the mind game, re-interpreting different rearrangement and interactive act of the work.
“My practice revolves around wandering; collecting fragments and using my camera to sample compositions within the everyday environment. I frequently employ mediated processes such as printing and casting, and I welcome the inescapable interference of chance variation within these systems of creation. The resulting works exist ambiguously as faux relics which refer to both the formal language of abstraction and to the legacy of the readymade through their found painterly compositions.”
Howard’s works imitate the everyday surfaces.
Using printing, and image transferring technique to mirror on another surface, at the same time, allowing these imperfection; traces of the hand-made; torn and adapting textures of time, fading of some parts; glimmering light spots…
“Elizabeth Gower creates stunning abstract compositions from humble materials, with an emphasis upon translucency, fragility and impermanence. Her practice draws much of its content and form from the world of the everyday – commercial images and objects as well as familiar and domestic materials such as newspaper and tissue paper. Exploiting the associations evoked by such banal material, her work has often been connected with a feminist sensibility; however this framing should be countered with recognition of the strong aesthetic concerns at play.” (from: Sutton Gallery)
I think her idealism relates a lot to the critical framework that I just discover: Realism / Nouveau Realisme, identified a tendency or a desire for artists to “Attempt to bring art closer to life through material means.”. Similarly to Hannah Hoch, Richard Hamilton, Robert Rauschenberg and Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford, using collage, assemblage, photographic imagery like photomontage and silk-screen juxtapositions to reproduce found images, expressing social commentaries. In Gower’s works I see rigid and orderly pattern that are not representational, yet putting emphasis to the commercial information, such as the price tags; the advertising typography, glossy surface in rotation of the information carefully selected to create repetition, revealing the concerns of consumerism and capitalism.
Elizabeth Gower Savings 11 , 2010 Paper cuttings on board 45 x 45 cm
Elizabeth Gower, Urban Artefacts #3(detail), 2004 Paper collage on drafting film 200 x 100 cm
Elizabeth Gower Installation, 1976 Acrylic and resin on newsprint, wax paper, tissue paper and nylon 300 x 400 x 300cm Monash University Museum of Art
I particularly draw to this installation work, as it shows the fragility of the materiality, yet creatively free as a vessel for other possibilities. The see-through translucency of the thin paper; the patterns and multi-colours created beneath the surfaces; the scale and the vertical hanging format, contributing to the experience of walking; looking up; surrounding these curtain-like draping.
This idea of presentation triggers a lot into my direction of pushing the digital collages works — the ‘Printmagram’, I began this experimentation to look into motion and abstraction in 2020, when I program digital images into the print machine, and paint on the surface with gestural motion, calling the result “printmagrams”.
emm x zhang Printmagram | Pigmented ink on sketchbook, 2020
Ridiculous, useless, powerless, derisory and absurd
Bernard Frize, French artist has invented the cheering, pastel yet orderly colour of non-representative work, lifting me to see the pure work of his processes, experimentations, and the urge to make art without expressing or sending messages of any kind.
At this stage, I see myself finding interests in the less form of expressive figuration, and moving into the realm of viewing and making, and finding the joys in the process of making.
“First of all, by being less ambitious, not thinking that I would change the world, which I did not understand, and that my action would be more limited. Before being political, a work of art has to be a work of art. It’s more that this piece of art has to be in conformity with your thoughts, so I found a way that was much humbler and that I could be satisfied with.”
“Nobody is interested in my ego, so I don’t think a painting has to do with that. I’m not at all an expressionist; I always thought that expressionism was staged, so I don’t feel I have to provide this.”
“The subject of my work is not to create processes and rules – they are just ways of doing my work or fueling my desire to work… Painting is a way of exploring ideas and embodying them, so that they can be seen and shared.”
