Divergent Disciplines
Radka Salcmannova
Architecture, sculpture, and painting have matured as separate disciplines. Their independence has allowed them to develop with intellectual and artistic parity, and along with photographers, filmmakers, and video artists, to learn from and transform each others’ endeavors. Architectural elements expressed in works of art are increasingly common just as the use of abstraction and other elements of visual art has led to the invention of new architectural forms.
This issue of Psychology Tomorrow Magazine, which celebrates our first birthday, presents artists whose work transgresses conventional categories that define what a class of art should be. Their work pushes beyond traditional borders, rejects stereotypes and applies familiar elements to new contexts. As a result, the work cannot be labelled because each piece is so highly individual.
Kathrin Koster blurs the boundaries between painting and architectural space. Walls are part of her paintings and shaped canvases create a temporary architecture. Viewers who enter her exhibitions are confronted by it’s fluidity and challenged to rethink artificial distinctions between art and architecture. The work raises questions about what identity means. Is art posing as architecture, architecture as art? Who decides?
Similarly, Danish Artist Magnus Pettersen’s redefines the existing separation between art and design Through his work, he asks the question: Can art be practical? Pettersen creates objects that are both fragile and monumental. Many have a purpose — you can touch. move, sit, rest or reflect on their beauty from a distance. For the exhibition ” Mind in matter,” he created furniture from concrete blocks reminiscent of childhood toys recreated on a huge scale.
Otavio Schipper’s practice includes the production of installations, sound pieces, sculptures, objects, drawings and photographs. Holding a degree in physics, his recent works explore the memory of sound such as Empty Voices, composed of several bronze-casted tuning forks. In Mechanical Unconscious he creates an actual sound installation consisting of a dialogue between old-fashioned telegraph machines, synthetic voices and telephone sounds, in which the limits between natural and artificial language are experienced.
Tomas Moravec works simultaneously with installation, light structures, and video. In Question of Superficial Affection, an illuminated object rotates, its mesmerizing image changing shape. In Agua, liquid is flipped in a projected cubic space, changing and deforming the space. On a larger scale, Moravec alters public spaces to create an expected scenario for a viewer or passersby.
German artist, Philip Emde captures everyday moments from life with paint and paper — drinking coffee in a cafe, playing at the beach in the sand. But there is nothing ordinary about what he creates. Words like drawings, illustration, or sculpture don’t accurately describe Emde’s art. His exhibitions are highly conceptual. Objects or sculptures are curated like three dimensional illustrations. And “illustrations” are hung as if they were objects. Exhibition itsself is presented as a work of art.
This month artist-in-residence Bill Hayward photographed ninety year old poet Edward Field whose work and politics spawned generations of poets.