Putting myself in a situation to rethink about myself, I found out that there is a strong need to enlarge my possibilities by making further discoveries and changes. Anish Kapoor is an amazing artist that I have started to grow fond of after reading his interview. Though his artworks are very far (in concepts, styles, etc) from my way of working, his approach and thoughts on art are simply delightful. Here is an artist who is formulating the right words to what I am feeling right now.
“I think I am a painter who is a
sculptor. My view is that sculpture has been about presence in the world, a
kind of emanating out of the world- physical, here. What I have always been
engaged in- which is what I think painters do- is to deal with an illusory
presence in the world; one that isn’t necessary here. That’s the nature of
painting. It’s a mindscape or a soulscape, whereas on that level sculpture
would be a bodyscape. For me the two things somehow seem to have come together,
so that I am making physical things that are all about somewhere else, about
this illusory space. Even with the early work, that was very much there. The
powder pieces were like islands sitting on the floor, icebergs, partially
revealed, partially above the ground. That seemed to be implying that the rest
of the object was under the ground or the other side of the wall.”
To copy his statement, I would like to formulate my own: “I
think I am a sculptor who is a painter”. His word has the rightness that I
was seeking for; words that I was struggling to put on paper: Are paintings
meant to have a logical thinking, even when one is working intuitively/on a
personal plane?. I felt close to his ideas, especially what he says about the
painting being much more, the “soulscape”. When discussing about his own
making, he says:
“Making art isn’t an intellectual or
theoretical activity, it is deeply rooted in the psychological- in the self.”…
“As if I was dealing with some kind of personal truth, with something I
instinctively knew about… I didn’t think of it in terms of lasting or not.
It was just that I was doing then and that was what mattered. I could only see
it growing. I began to leave some old influences behind… That time was a
time of feeling that I was closer to myself than I had ever been before...
“I think the art work isn’t as
important as the artist. It’s a question of ‘seeing’ the process of art-making
as being a process of self-discovery. Let’s say the work is a kind of
reflection of some inner processes out of which the work grows. It also has
to do with the feeling that the last work I made is not as important as the
work as the work that I am going to make. I think this is crucial. Every
time I do a show there is this feeling- can I do this again? In the end it
doesn’t matter whether it can be done again. What matters is saying ‘yes’. How
do I keep myself agitated enough in order to keep growing and not stop with
what I’ve done already.”
Deep thought-provoking concepts here to reflect on. To the question: “What has success meant to you as an
artist? , He replies:
“One of the most important things
that showing does is that it affords opportunity to make the kind of work that
you may not have made otherwise, and to work on the kind of scale that I might
not have worked before.”
Extracts from: TALKING ART, Interviews with artists since
1976.Patricia Bickers, Andrew Wilson
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