Term6-Week3-Symposium 2

We have done the symposium this week. 17 of us present our works using PPT.

I like Giovanna Petrocchi’s work, it’s neat, intriguing, and cute. It’s 3D printing,probably the most advanced method of printmaking.

I also think there’s connection between my work and Ellen’s work. She is interested “The in-between",such as life/death, internal/external, strength/fragility, and she mainly uses her body as the medium… I am very interested in movie like Muholland Drive, can’t tell what is dream and reality, therefore I think I am quite related to surrealism.

She mentioned a noun called “Archaic Space": “Our sensory experience of the world originates in the interior sensation of the mouth, and the world tends to return to its oral origins. The most archaic of architectural space is in the cavity of the mouth. “-Juani Pallasmaa, Eyes of the Hands 2012

I feel like we are looking for the connection between our society now and this traditional method, but for me, I like how it is. When I first time see an etching painting, I just fall in love with it, the material and the texture within it.

I think I have tried few things below during these semesters:

Etching, aquatint, Mezzotint, photogram, lithograph, photopolymer, photoplate…

I have been concentrating on reflection series, was doing two dead animal before. Overall, I think I am not brave enough, I think I did not use my time well for I have too much other things to think about including how to earn money and getting married…etc.

Workshop

I was planning to add more layer on this project. Brain suggested me to print more good print, so I can sell or apply for exhibition later. I am bit more worried about I will have time to finish it before head and frame them. I also think I should put another layer for other two lithograph. I just realize there’s not many offset press in London, bit worried now.

My own symposium: Here is the content for my symposium. I just find it impossible for me to talk in front of more than three people, and I kinda stop trying. (not only in English, I found it difficult to speak even in my own language)

INSPIRATION:

I am interested in my personal experience of daily life while traveling, led by my desire to understand the experience of selfhood. In these two years, I am focus on the reflection that happens unpredictably in my journey.

I get inspired by some literature like ‎Murakami Haruki, which use Surreal method to describe a self and a space. For example, the protagonist climbs down a stair on a freeway, and when she is reaching the ground, the world has become one with two moons on the sky. I also like David Lynch’s works, using the most conventional daily scene and event, to explore the subconscious.

I started from the series of looking myself and my surrounding to explore the sensation. For I still find it strange, the truth we can actually see ourselves.

It is a process from ‘Exteriority’(looking from the outside or back in time at the moment), through ‘Moment of connection’(seeing yourself seeing), to Interiority’(projection of self into future)

RESEARCH: 1,2 artist, book, theory, talk, film?

Book:

Lacan’s mirror stage, a theory of how infant starts to build identity through looking at their image in a mirror. At the beginning, they see the image and themselves as a whole, for they can’t separate themselves to another. They see themselves in somewhere else, therefore, they learn from “I am complete” to “I am separate” and then realize their individuality.

And this process causes a mixture of feeling, from confusing, exciting, naccistic, accepting. Think about it, it can be interesting if we are trapped in it.

Artist:

Selfie and self-portrait is common not only in art world but also in our daily life. I have looked at some photographer’s work like Francesca Woodman, John Hilliard,

Not only as a recording of one’s appearance, the glaze also giving messages.

American street photographer Vivian Maier’s works have impact on me, I like how she look at herself, her expressionless looking, as she is searching herself, and she could be everywhere but no where. Photography is her tool. It makes me feel like we are sharing more or less similar experience in our life. However, I have tendency to blur my image. I don’t have desire to see myself clearly, I am more interesting to see the hidden movement underneath the photograph.

Dorothea Tanning

In this painting, it looks like a sunflower is looking at herself by using a sunflower mirror, and all of this is a reflection from another mirror, or it’s reflection from the surface of eye ball. The floating of the glazing, to see and to be seen. The latter painting, she is more concentrate on colour combination, her stroke is more loose and abstract. But it also inspires me another way to see reflection. Which I will talk about later.

Experiment Material:

I have experience sort of material. Nowadays, using phone as a camera is the most convenient and quickest way to record a self and the moment. I think I don’t want to just take a photo. I have tried to make an intervention to the photo by drawing on another plate, thinking to combine the dream state and the reality. Later, using the physics of CMYK, to constitute a colour picture. To combine different selfie, situate in different time and place, to see if I can constitute a complete me.

I can’t say what I did is successful, or not successful. I think I just need to try more. However, overall, by using photopolymer, the deep and the dark black, seems surround me and trap me there. The process of printmaking, stencil and the paper, also like a viewer and the reflection, has different nature, and somehow link together.

Now, I am back to the drawing. the process of drawing, it’s like a ritual. In these two years, I am looking for what is the best way to express my idea. I still fond of this traditional practice. Lithography and etching. In here, I draw those snapshot on the streets. In the view, it’s some stuff in another side of the barrier, I can see my reflection, the back ground behind me, and the environment surrounding me. They are blurry, showing ,replacing, and merging.

Echoing the character of printmaking, layers and layers.

 

 

Term 6-Week1 & work in artichoke

I have working on this lithography for a month in Artichoke

It is based on one of my photograph from phone, it’s a shopping window that you can see the displaying and my reflection. (My reflection is not very obvious)

Was thinking maybe I can put each layer with different stencil. Howevr, I think it is going to be quite complicated.

Like what I did for previous work, I choice ink for lithography. I really the watery texture on the stone. For the first etching, I etched light and dark area with acid of different strength. Later on, I started to use the same but strong acid for second, third etch. It went wrong again, and everything is darken again. Colin used lot’s of acid to bring it back, that’s how I spent whole month working on this.

Colin(Artichoke owner) told me, ink on lithography is more unstable. Therefore, if I want to do something as complicated as this, I should use chalk.

Although I fail on doing lithograph and waste/spent lot’s of time on it, I still quite like it, and might use it in the future, for I really in move by Munch’s lithography works. I would like to do something as moving as his works.

 

This is the version I have not put grey photolithography layer on it