Art School Problems

At CIA we make artwork by accounting for things, rather than really imagining we get problems to solve. Numbers to crunch, more or less. Funny, right? Go to school to avoid math and what do you get… It all comes down to design.

We have a laundry list and it usually goes like this: Form, concept, formal support for the concept, assignment requirements, professor’s quips. Everything accounted for? Right. 

And then we stand in critique and talk about how it could be made foolproof, every single formal element supporting the conceptual architecture in an absolutely appropriate fashion. The funny thing is that we have to acknowledge that no work can ever be truly foolproof unless you are playing on the idea of making foolproof work. Maybe in this one instance could absolutely everything be accounted for, and then you would graduate right there on the spot. Sometimes it seems like the only option is to be sarcastic about everything.

That being said I love school.

artintelligence » Chance, Montage and Abstraction: Does Art Require Significance?

Really excellent. Check it out.

Help me with a final project!

Hey folks, send me your photographs! 

for a final project, preferably having to do with artists, artwork, the “A”rtworld, CIA, education, or business therein

dealing in metacriticism, theory, and hopefully achieving a breakdown of distinction between the art world and the regular world.

postmodernism without borders.

you will receive full credit and this work is totally non-commercial, no curation will be undertaken. nudes, selfies, total jokes, bullshit welcome and will be shown

if you have material to contribute send me an ask for my email.

Check out these artists:

http://bibbiana-mele-mongobi.tumblr.com/

http://antoinecordet.tumblr.com/

Both just followed me out of nowhere (greetings, by the way!) and they are both excellent.

Neo Rausch

Some thoughts,

His works always deal with the relationships between humans, environment, and the materials that we create from it. His works are always placed in larger context, be it outdoors, or in spaces which simultaneously confine and enlarge his human subjects. I believe that this is the ultimate comment Rausch is making. He often features humans confined, or enlarged by their own garments. His characters have gained control of the environment by separating themselves from it, via coats, clothing, or rooms. His works often depict manual processes or the creation of refined raw material which is often represented as amorphous, or gelatinous. In addition to control by the environment his human characters are often represented in varying degrees of controlling each other, be it through capitalism, through literal bondage, or through the indirect norm of clothing, I.e. the social constitution. Control is exerted from afar, yet also in immediate proximity. Rausch’s work is also representative of the surrealist, or perhaps post-modernist, tendency to abandon real situations in favor of more expansive imaginative landscapes, where myriad symbols and juxtapositions become so densely packed that the distinction between any given element becomes difficult to establish. In this way Rausch speaks to an ultimate interconnected form of social, environmental, material, and economic paradigm of control and the will to power. I would call Raush’s general thematic material the ‘impossibility of freedom.’

or perhaps the play between security and liberty, by avoiding cold we sacrifice mobility, we sacrifice the appearance of our skin. This seems to be in direct contrast to Greek ideals, which always explicated nudity. One would be hard pressed to find a nude in neo rausch’s work. In this way Rausch is distancing himself from western art history. He strives to represent contemporary realities through seemingly unrealistic collections of symbolism. The Greek ideal represents a disconnect from the social norms of clothing, from the fear of human nudity, and from realistic human thought and the current human condition. Rausch opts to confront the darkness of human behavior rather than to celebrate a fanciful ideal of human possibility. Admirable grit.