Category: art

AG2023_1045253a or distinct, sharp, and wirey

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AG2023_1045253a

“the abdication of possibilities can furnish us with equanimity just as it can furnish us with art.”

“good author of good utopias,” writes Reinhart Kosselleck, “evidently has very little desire to be a utopian.”

“That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling.” (AN)

The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling…. What is it that builds a house and plants a garden, but the definite and determinate? What is it that distinguishes honesty from knavery, but the hard and wirey line of rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions. Leave out this line and you leave out life itself; all is chaos again, and the line of the almighty must be drawn out upon it before man and beast can exist.

William Blake

AG2023_1033856a or a kamal and Polaris guide the redress

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Untitled (Field Guide–exposure to enchanted forms; a kamal and Polaris creating possibility), 2023. Graphite, gouache, cut vinyl, enamel paint, colored pencil, and collage on a Xerox Versant 80 print on Mohawk Superfine paper. 18.25 x 12 inches.

A “kamal is one of the earliest navigational tools that used measuring altitude to determine latitude. The word kamal means “guide” in Arabic. […] Essentially, a kamal is a flat piece of wood with a string attached to the middle. The kamal uses the position of Polaris (the North Star) in the sky to help a sailor determine his latitude.”

The North Star, newspaper founded and edited by Frederick Douglass.

“…that the man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand redress,—that the man STRUCK is the man to CRY OUT—and that he who has endured the cruel pangs of Slavery is the man to advocate Liberty.”

“The stars are pinned between the leaves
of the trees, and love is only a harbinger,
…
signposts pointing the way
in and out

Cynthia Zarin, Field Guide

The Point of Precision by Kathleen Stewart, 2016. This essay proposes a kind of critique aimed at approaching the improvisatory conceptuality of ordinary forms emergent in everyday life. Using a slowed ethnographic attention to the immanent aesthetics of objects, it argues that the singularities through which forms take place animate both event and perception.

AG2023_1055583a or in this realm

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“Nothing felt more natural than directing his thoughts to an unseen realm” (ZS)

“… It occurs

when the divine realm manifests?—?or the word intrudes?—?

into our quotidian realm. The natural one, an untidy

fleshliness of the ordinary. Or the sacred and profane

is another way to say this.”

On Hierophany by Karen An-hwei Lee (From Ancient Greek ????? (hieros), “sacred, holy sign” + ????? (phainô), “show, appear”.)

Natsuko Zanma

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Infinity, exhibition and book by Natsuko Zanma, at Poetic Scape, 3 June – 16 July, 2023.

For many years, Zanma has been producing photographic works, mainly with plants as her subjects. The photographs are repeatedly taken in places she has photographed many times in the past, such as her own garden or a botanical park she has visited for nearly 20 years. However, Zanma says that the locations are not always the same, as the season, time of day and her own state of mind changes.

“I don’t know why, but the place in front of me is good enough , I don’t need other places”.?from her own notes on her work, same for the rest of quotations?

Zanma was deeply moved when a friend told her about Giorgio Morandi, a painter who spent his life painting still lifes in his birthplace of Bologna. Instead of visiting different places, Zanma prefers to visit the same place over and over again, and “I want to be deeply involved (with the place), layer by layer”. This attitude has not changed since her student days.

In several of her recent works, plants, which should be the main subject of the work, are placed on the periphery rather than at the centre of the work. Zanma says that what is visible to her has neither a main subject nor a background, she feels everything is equivalent.

“The plants, which are often seen as the main characters, the background, the soil on the ground, the dead grass on top, the grains of the ground that no one pays attention to, the air, the light and my own presence as the photographer, all float in space at the same time and overlap”.

For the past few years, we have been forced to live with restricted movement. These difficult times are coming to an end and people are returning to their days of hurriedly moving from one place to another. Meanwhile, Zanma has long ago shared a long time with the familiar places. And the moment she is aware of the beauty that slowly becomes visible as her body is accepted by the places, she feels a sense of welcome in the world.

“What I want to say with photography is that you can choose what you see, and that the possibilities of what you see are endless, and it’s up to you to decide what you want to show yourself.”

Space Cadet. fb.