Gérard Garouste
Retrospective exhibition at the Centre Pompidou
I was very impressed by Gérard Garouste's exhibition. He has a ability for constructing puzzle-like images that are so intricate and complex that one can get lost in them. Garouste has a strange association and enthusiasm for dismantling and twisting the meanings and texts of great texts (the Bible, Faust, the Divine Comedy, the Talmud...) and then adding the artist's rich subjective ideas to create a chaotic and colourful picture. Garouste's approach to painting is largely influenced by EI Greco and Hieronymus Bosch, as reflected in the elongated, contorted bodies and the strange narrative scenes interspersed in the corners of his works.
Fig. 1 This work has great significance for Garouste, who says: "It is no coincidence that this painting opened the door for me to express my dreams, my choices, the chaos of my thoughts, my sign language, the idea that I hold on to, that we represent one thing telling another. Whoever looks at it doesn't necessarily see everything I've poured into it, it's that intensity of emotion that must be conveyed." This means that the images are enigmatic pieces, each element strangely related to the other, which we as viewers can only try to feel. Garouste also redraws art historical classics, such as Saint Teresa of Avila in Fig. 4 or Manet's 'The Dead Toreador' in Fig. 2, but still in the same quirky style.
Reading Group
Both Gerhard Richter's and Catherine Anyango Grünewald's works respond to historically significant traumatic and violent events, utilising and reinterpreting found media images/videos. 15 works from 18 October 1977 evoke fragments of the life and death of the Baader-Meinhof group, reflecting Richter's distrust in the ability of painting to accurately represent the world, a recurring theme in his work. Their inarticulate and gloomy subject matter comes from newspaper and police photographs or television images. A drab palette dominates; the absence of colour conveys the way in which these second-hand images from the mass media sublimate their own emotional content. Richter's paintings make us question the authenticity of the images, what is the true reality? I have come to realise through Richter's work that we need to be flexible in our use of images without abandoning the nature of painting itself in order to preserve the meaning of its existence.
In addition, what Richter means to me is how figurative painting can be used to achieve weakening narrative effect effect, something I also shared in the reading group. There are some methods, such as using pure line or colour to express emotions, or to depict something without a concrete image. But is it also possible to do so by depicting an objective scene, person or object. By blurring a painting with a brush, Richter makes all the elements of the image equally important, does he not also achieve the aim of dissolution. For example, when I look at Gérard Garouste's work, I want to know the message of the image, but the deeper I look, the more you feel unaware of it. Isn't this deceptive figurative narrative also a kind of dissolution?
Kefan Bai 's Lecture
Fluidity is the direction of Kefan Bai's research and practice, and Kefan's work constantly switches perspectives between East and West. From the binary study of Eastern and Western art during the Modernist period to the 'networking' of artworks, Kefan identifies the forms of mobility in contemporary art through the analysis of related works. As globalisation has led to the mixing of different cultural backgrounds and philosophies, we are forced to deconstruct and reorganise each piece of information, which is a huge challenge. And BAI raised a very interesting question in this lecture. How can we enter into a purely creative and direct artistic experience, creating and perceiving the work in its purest form, without overdoing it from one language to another, without any cultural distractions or any ideological thinking behind the language?This is very important for me to think about.How to translate freely in two cultural contexts.
Group Crit
On the day of the pop up exhibition, we did a group crit with Rosalind and Geraint and had a group tour of each individual's work. We mainly discussed the overall layout of the exhibition rather than the individual pieces.
As a group exhibition, the most important thing is to organise the connections between the different works, what kind of works will react better in one area, the distance between the works and the distance between the works and the works from the ground are all very important to think about, a proper layout will make the overall effect better.
What I find most interesting is that both the Zhang yuang and Ksenia's works(image 2) depict a rather indifferent space, while opposite the wall is a series of my works with religious elements and a series of ghost-like faces painted by junnan. Even though they are completely different styles, they can positively form a connection.
After this crit, I thought it was a good opportunity to tell someone about my work and my ideas for curating, and to deepen my understanding of the curation.