Simon Beck
The first artist that comes to mind to me as an ‘expanding field’ artist is the snow artist I discovered a couple of week’s ago: Simon Beck. British engineer Beck, after he suffered some injuries and could no longer run, decided to get some exercise by taking long walks. As he lives in snowy climbs he puts on his snowshoes and walks in geometric patterns. That’s how his art is created. It doesn’t last long, often less than a day.
Art linked to the landscape
Andy Goldsworthy
In the tutorial in which we discussed the essay ‘Sculpture in the Expanding Field’ the name Andy Goldsworthy cropped up. Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its ephemeral and transient state. Goldsworthy aims to photograph his work at its height of beauty, capturing intensity. His materials include brightly coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs and thorns.
Stunning, yet short lived
Susan Collis
We were introduced also to artist Susan Collis in our tutorial. This is an artist whose work at first glance appears to be ordinary, not art at all, e.g. ‘Better Days’, from 2006, which looks like a paint splattered cloth lying on the floor. However, the paint splatters and drips are actually embroidered. What is even more remarkable, perhaps, is that she doesn’t do the delicate artwork herself, she commissions someone else to do it. Surely this is artwork in the expanded field?
Paint or embroidery?
Werner Feiersinger
Austrian sculptor and photographer Feiersinger encompasses architectural, art-historical and personal influences in his work.
Untitled, 2010
Gordon Matta-Clark
Neglected structures left for demolition formed the material for Matta-Clark‘s work. He has carved out sections of buildings to display their hidden constructions. The aim was to provide new ways of perceiving space, and to make metaphors for the human condition.
A good example of ‘not-architecture’
Ann Veronica Janssens
Janssens floaty, misty brightly coloured installations scream ‘expanded field’ to me. Colours, visual light and sound effects are combined to give a new purpose to the architecture of the space and appeal to the audience’s senses.
A sensual experience
Ryoji Ikeda
Ikeda is a Japanese sound artist from Paris. Ikeda concerns himself primarily with sound in a variety of ‘basic’ states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. He focuses on the important characteristics of sound and of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics.
What does it all add up to?
Tomas Saraceno
‘Space Time Foam’ was an installation artwork created by Argentinian artist Saraceno. It transformed and changed shape as people moved around in it. It was an example of a total body art and sculpture experience.
Like giant bubble wrap
Ernesto Neto
Brazilian Neto’s work has been described as ‘beyond abstract minimalism’. His installations consist of large, soft, biomorphic constructions that take over an exhibition space. The audience are invited to touch, poke, and walk around, on and over the structures. They are made of white, stretchy material.
A bouncy castle for grown ups
Robert Morris
I mentioned this artist in the previous post and I’ve just come across this piece, a good example of art or sculpture in the expanding field, and from the right era (1960s-1970s). Morris had been an Abstract Expressionist artist as well as a sculpture and choreographer and prop maker. Morris, as other artists of his era, sought to take away the imprint of the artist from the artwork.
Untitled 1965/70
Robert Smithson
Smithson became famous for his artwork ‘Spiral Jetty’ which was made using the natural landscape in 1970. His art was not limited by genres or raw materials. He was a true expanding field artist.
The infamous Spiral Jetty by Smithson
Richard Serra
Serra is an American minimalist artist famous for his challenging and inventive site-specific sculptures. His iconic piece of ‘expanded field’ sculpture is the ‘Tilted Arc’ of 1981. It was removed in a cloud of controversy over it’s aesthetic value from the site in 1989. Serra was vehemently against the move stating that it had been built specifically for that site.
The famous arc
Man Bartlett
Here is an example of an artist mixing technology, social media and art. Born in 1981, Bartlett is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. He carries out much of his work through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
This picture makes me, as a balloonphobic, shudder.
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg deserves to be in this list partly for his immense career that started before the era of the ‘expanded field’ and continued beyond it. He is well-known for his frequently-quoted statement that he wanted to act in the gap between art and life. Rauschenberg’s Combines, which he started making in the 1950s, marked his beginning in the expanded field. These were found objects covered with slashing strokes of paint that blurred the gaps between art and sculpture. In the 1960s he began transferring photographic images from newspapers directly onto his canvases.
Is it art or sculpture?
Eyal Gever
Israeli artist, Eyal Gever, works with the convergence of technology with art. He implements his ideas into three-dimensional software technologies and web technologies, mostly using interactive real time multimedia communication software but also three-dimensional animation.
This just made me say ‘wow’
Ollie Palmer
Ollie Palmer describes himself on his website as an artist and designer. His ant ballet project is a good example of art in the expanding field. Working with Dr Seirian Sumner and the Pestival project for insect art, he developed a synthetic pheromone that a particular species of ant follows. The ants create the art.
Ant Swan Lake
Beate Gutschow
Gutschow is a German photographer who works on large scales. She is well-known for creating landscapes that never existed, by splicing together different negatives (digitally) and presenting each picture as if it has just appeared at the same time in front of the same lens.
Is it a painting from the 18th-century or clever photo-trickery?
Yayoi Kusama
Kusama s a Japanese artist who works in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, sculpture, installations and performance. Kusama’s work is described as ‘conceptual’ and shows traces of abstract expressionism, minimalism, surrealism, feminism, pop art and Art Brut. She is an artist of isms.
Infinity Room by Yayoi Kusama
Carlos Cruz-Diez
Cruz-Diez has experimented intensely with the origins and optics of colour. Searching Google images for ‘Cruz-Diez’ throws up a brilliance of colour and light. His wide-ranging body of work includes unconventional colour structures, light environments, street interventions, architectural projects and experimental pieces that invite the response of the human eye yet insisting on the participation of colour.
An experience in colour
Thom Faulders
Is he an artist or an architect? I’m not sure. This amazing structure created for the Berkeley Art Museum just invites you to sit on it and day dream all day long.
A sea of orange waves
References:
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phef/hd_phef.htm [last accessed 6 February 2013]
Wikipedia on Andy Goldsworthy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy [last accessed 5 February 2013]
Eyal Gever’s website, http://www.eyalgever.com/ [last accessed o6 February 2013]
Ollie Palmer’s website, http://olliepalmer.com/ [last accessed 6 February 2013]
Frieze Magazine, http://www.frieze.com/shows/review/expanded-field/ [last accessed 5 February 2013]
Wikipedia on Ryoji Ikeda, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoji_Ikeda [last accessed 5 February 2013]
Wikipedia on Yayoi Kusama, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama [last accessed 7 February 2013]
Wikipedia on Ernesto Neto, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Neto [last accessed 6 February 2013]
Wikipedia on Cruz-Diez, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Cruz-Diez [last accessed 7 February 2013]
The Daily Mail online, Rick Sharma, 6 November 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2228609/Artist-Tomas-Saraceno-creates-living-adult-playground-Milans-HangarBicocca.html#axzz2K3yBSqTw [last accessed 5 February 2013]
Blouin Artinfo, Kyle Chayka, Tom Chen, 25 July 2012, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/814992/video-artist-man-bartlett-turns-social-media-into-playful-social-critique [last accessed 5 February 20013]
Wikipedia on the Titled Arc, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc [last accessed 6 February 2013]
California College of Arts, http://www.cca.edu/academics/faculty/tfaulders [last accessed 7 February 2013]