Untitled Process
When my professor asked us to show works regarding political topics I mentioned that I did not feel comfortable with that. Reason being: I either work towards a topic that affects me but is not really important in the grand scheme of things or towards a topic that is important but doesnt really effect me (think a rent price increases affect me but doesnt really matter in comparison to family getting their homes bombed away in the Gaza strip).
I then had a conversation during lunch with my classmate Jacobo, who agreed with me but also said, that as an artist you have to take a position publicly. Simply not exhibiting is not a public position, as no one knows you are not exhibiting. I thought he was right. So I saw this as a challenge to work towards a topic that was part of what my professor gave us but that I was also comfortable working towards.
I had recently learned to use clay printers. I was fascinated by them. Especially because they worked with small flaws, so you had to constantly watch them and help them out. It was like working with the machine instead of having the machine work for you.
And the errors, when they happened, looked beautiful. My idea was to print an object with errors, scan it and then print it again. And to repeat that until the shape became reproducible by the printer without human aid. Until the machine understood itself so to say. I first did a test run with a 3D printed Klein bottle which went sort of well.
I then thought a lot about which object to use for the actual work. I originally wanted to use an object with a hole in the middle and lots of texture, as that lead to good results in the test run. I did experiments with a couple of vases from Butlers but the test prints failed too hard.
I decided againt using a politcally charged object like a handgrenade after having a talk with my professor. He was right about this leading to the work becoming too flat as one would just assume the work was about something political. So I finally went for a simple shape that was easy to print and had a size I felt good about. Larger then a fist but still small enough to be held in one hand.
In the end I had to help out a bit with clay to create a stable and reproducible final shape. The process went like this: print, scan, slice and print again.
The final series of vases was then fired once and left to dry. I then decided to glase them in a dark stone color. I originally wanted to leave them as raw as they were, as my professor mentioned that he liked me combining one of the oldest techniques known to man with modern technology. But I wanted the objects to be looking alien, as if they had been passed down to from an ancient civilization.
I left a small part at the bottom unglased as the glase was supposed to run down in the oven. That didnt work out as planned and as I felt this gave the objects an unfinished look that would distract from the errors that were meant to happen I painted each vase black at the bottom by hand.
I originally wanted to present the objects on a board against the wall but my professor mentioned that objects need to be walked around and I think he was right. So I constructed a pillar next. There simply weren’t any premade ones that would have the long but narrow dimensions I needed.
I built an inner frame to fix the pillar to the floor and added small wooden sticks to make sure the vases wouldnt tip over during the exhibition.
Jonas took some very “I am an artist pictures” of me :)
