Backdrop Skeleton and More Materials

Here’s a little progress, a rough sketch of this backdrop. I still have a lot to do including structural details, so a lot of this is still very fragmented and detached at the moment. Please disregard the 2 “X” forms on either side (they’re only in the image as support for a few elements—something I’ll eliminate in the weeks to come). Some forms may flip inside out, some colors may change, more will be added and taken away.

The scale of this layout is about 11’ – 12’ wide, 8’ deep, 6’ tall, although I plan to add more vertically, depending on the height of the gallery walls. The backdrop’s specific size is really flexible, as I mentioned earlier I’d like to work with the space you have available—the repetitions I’m working with should accommodate that by adding or subtracting…



This green stuff will form a sheet of green (either scalloped or strung in parallel)--it's currently attached to a wall, but I'm aiming to string in the midst of the installation--still working that out...

Shifts in scale:These geometric elements (diamonds, pyramids...) will be covered, some shingled, some reflective...
Some chains:

And materials:

Initial Project Plans

I’m currently working on two projects in a large, empty studio.  My plan is to finish one version of each of these by the end of the month to determine what the installation will look like in the EFA Project Space (this decision may involve subtracting elements not fit for transport and editing that will hone the piece down to the appropriate size, plus weeks, months of fine-tuning/making it beautiful and ugly all at once).  The first is what I’d like to do most, but if it isn’t quite right, the second will be an option as well (as I mentioned before, I can also reach into my archives and construct an oldie on site).

 

1.  A backdrop (a physical facsimile of some other space, an adventureland façade, sort of a photo studio screen/put your face here/relocate/position)

 

OR

2.  A wall piece of bits and pieces—more formal, but equally laden with my scraps and printed junk (I’m not going to elaborate about the source for this, since it’s mostly going to be a compilation and transformation of a lot of stuff I have stockpiled).

 

Where is 1 coming from?  Well, I just finished a chapbook with Riley Hanick on Macau, China and part of the text had to do with a proposed island (constructed from the dredges of the Pearl River Delta).  The island would be called Haishi or Mirage.   On the trip I also came across the following:

Two identical images from a photo studio and the false/faux location in the background brought up:

The painting of a landscape on a plywood wall and in a nearby alley:

The photograph of a similar landscape

(Please see images in the post)

 

All of this is wrapped up with the urban landscape of Hong Kong and Macau (tons of images not included here—sheets of tarp, netting, covering bamboo scaffolding…high-rises and leafy cliffs—including an amusement park).

 

My interest is not specific to these locations (China or the people included in the studio portrait or all of the gorgeous Japanese prints of equally dramatic landscapes), but the construction of a visual excursion or a mirage—like so many postcards, advertisements, and disposable enticements.  The installation will function as both a façade and space to enter.  It will also acknowledge a flip side, a darkness, a loss, chains, scaffolding, glitches, and stagnation.  The result will ultimately be more formal, probably unidentifiable from any of the sources I mention or post on this blog, but I think the images will help to explain what I’m working with at the moment. 

 

Other Visual Sources:

Lately, I’ve been paying attention to films that incorporate drawing/painting/or print into the sequence of events (not in the cheesy, artist bio/caricature of the artist slamming around and creating work, but as a component of the visual narrative, play between the photographic representation of film and hand-drawn representations, and as a formal tool).  As film, these drawings/paintings etc. shift, into multiples, into motion—I’m curious about this flexibility, the potential to take physical things, record, flatten, expand, and move them and do it all over again, but as a printed thing, a multiple, a reconstruction.  Some include:

Yasujiro Ozu, Floating Weeds (scenes with rapid stage drawing/painting)

Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (topography, drawn, printed, to place), his Hokusai biography

Kluge—the book Cinema Stories….tales of Coney Island.  Also spaces represented in The Indomitable Leni Peickert or Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed

 

Items I’d like to include in the construction of the installation (some images included below):
Small scale bits for accumulation, construction of the piece and ease in transport

Paper multiples, that I’ve printed or found, party decorations (that I’ve make or found), stacks of stuff I found/bought in Hong Kong, strung green bits of paper, silver-ish tiny piñatas/papier mache forms, materials made with templates—some of these will be transported as flat items and assembled on site (cones, Fibonacci-sliced sheets…)

Stacks to take (wallet size photos of the piece…)

Shifting screens, scrims on wheels (this depends on the amount of space we decide on—I have several collapsible structures that I will use in the trial run, but these might not work in the long run…we’ll see)

Source Images

Some Bits and Pieces