I'm trying to figure out a new series of work. My work tends to be about fantasy in popular culture and dumb/banal objects. Basically, moments when fantasy or ideas of wild nature or "natural-ness" accidentally come out of ignored, stupid, and mass-produced objects. anyone ? ? ? ?
10 comments:
Hey Mike its Paul, I like the explaination you gave of your work. I've seen a bunch of it and now that you explain it that way it makes more sense to me. One thing I think about a lot is the balance of recognizability vs fantasy/abstractness. It's hard to compare this to the work you've done since Bard cause I haven't seen it. Do you have a web site? One thing I notice is that the overall effect of your senior project was more ominous than what I get from this photo. I guess it would all depend on what you put with it though.
well i like the photo...i have to say i feel a bit uninformed to give you good advice about yr work in general right now...but i like the collection of objects...well i think the sky and the pole match really well...lines...or something...i like the stickers on the pole...people always have to stick things on things..like humanizing the landscape...i think i want to see more...im with paul...let me know if i can post yr webpage.
paul i do have a website, michaelmarcelle.com
henry was asking me about what i meant by fantasy, so i'll just respond to it here :
By fantasy, I just mean any sense of the objects taking on a larger meaning in the context of the photograph. sometimes there is reference to fantasy in the object itself, like the tchotchke wolves in one photograph, or the photograph of the indian girl painting with the nintendo console next to it. the painting is a kind of idealized vision, a fantasy, of the wilderness, and the nintendo is this dumb plastic machine that plays out fantasy also.
though these objects are centered around fantasy, the point of the photograph is to illustrate how they are just meaningless objects or representations which initially fail and YET through the photograph they regain an uintended wildness.
ok...i added mike's page (michael) (and pauls too! BRAND NEW!) and looking over his images helps...so something i see in mikes photos is kind of being a landscape architect, but with prefab objects...so it kind of treats a living room...or a street...as though it was a garden that had been planned and designed, and then left to grow...but whereas one would notice this planning and development in a fancy pants garden...one would lack noticification "on the street where you live"...although in some of the earlier stuff you have a lot of people in tha work...cool people...but in the most recent set...lo...there are no people..what i like is that it seems you have strayed away from scenes that look prepared...most of the images are too mundane to be prepared...but too bizarre not to be...so...yeah
i really REALLY like the 'untitled' work from 06, mike.
the 'fantasy' element is lost on me, as well, tho. even after your explanation, it seems a bit vague and undefined. the work certainly seems to be about the intrusion of chaotic elements or aberrant objects into an urban landscape, or framing the ordinary and banal to make it appear aberrant.
what i also find is an almost mystical/religious quality in some of them - objects assuming talisman or shrine-like qualities. i'd like to see you explore this more (without stooping to anything too obvious - like the wolves and christ pictures in 'wilderness').
i love the stuff of big mechanical phalluses like poles and soda machines (the one of the pole in 'untitled' i particulalry like.. it's so geometrically severe, you turn it into a fascistic logo or something)....but i'd maybe moving away from those, because you seem to have explored those things pretty thoroughly...either that, or maybe focus obsessively on them, heh...
total cool dude,
giving the objects a religious intensity is something im totally interested and have thought about a lot. im glad to see it reads that way for other people.
i guess i've just gotten used to using the word "fantasy" to mean a million different things, but at its just about giving a chaos, intense, and spiritual feeling to the common mass-produced landscape.
what a good blog henry !
oh thanks mike....i was despairing but i think its really taking off....ok...back to the smart patrol...i read what"total cool dude shawn" said...and i think he is right....there is something in yr work that reminds me of a shinto shrine popping out of a natural japanese landscape with yr shit...xcept instead of shinto its like logo-ism...like its pretty obvious you like the logos...and you should...because in any decent modern landscape there are crazy logos...advertisments at least....the thing is i feel like you and i are working in the same field...but in opposite directions...which i cant really explain...but i can state as though it were fact....anyway...when you think about it this idea of religiosity in the landscape is everywhere...and its fascinating...one thing i think about is how people place little shrines on the side of the road where they loved ones died...i think about it because of people i know who died and the shrines that are erected to them on the side of the road...and they exist everywhere...like in tivoli..if you walked down north road there was that scary ass red light shrine that was always there...anyway...people erect these shrines and "religious" stuff everywhere...i mean its everywhere.....so i dunno man...what is the difference between a roadside shrine and a tag on a bathroom stall....i mean its all evidence...am i way off here?
I don't mean to get off topic here, more of a side note or an observation I guess. I notice that many of your recent photos are shot through glass or plastic. I am wondering how that works with your ideas of representing wild nature or naturalness. Is it working to maintain a balance between the mass produced and the wild? I'd be interested in your ideas about this.
One thing i've been thinking about recently is how many of the stickers you see put up all over is that they are in themselves becoming so commercial. They seem to have crossed over from being commentary to being pure advertising for the grafiti artist - consumed by the spectacle sort of thing.
What strikes me about this photo is that the characters of the stickers are very life like, and I feel like the bear is chasing the wing on the left. So I definitely get the spiritual / mystical / pole connection.
I love the rest of the untitled photos. They evoke similar feelings. I think fantasy is the wrong word. It's less fantasy and more spiritual, like cathedrals.
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