Abstract and modern art can be weird, obscure, it can defy explanation or conjure emotion.
However, just because the art is, doesn't mean the artist statement needs to be as well. I'm sure everyone has had the experience of going into an art gallery, not quite understanding a work of art, reading the artist statement on the wall and ending up even more confused.
They can be frustratingly vague, overbearingly obtuse or just completely nonsensical. They should help the audience to understand the art, rather than have them curl up in a ball, crying, feeling like they don't even know what words mean anymore.
So many times it feels like the artist has just thrown artistic sounding words together, taken complex concepts and mixed them all up in some kind of artist statement generator. Which, it turns out, there are quite a lot of online.
Throw in 'Vincent Van Gogh,' 'Landscape' and 'Minimalism':
Vincent Van Gogh makes paintings and drawings. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, Van Gogh creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic and a cool and neutral imagery is used.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for maneuvering with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of painting: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. With a subtle minimalistic approach, he investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.
His works establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for maneuvering with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of painting: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. With a subtle minimalistic approach, he investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.
His works establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence.
Genius! How about 'Banksy,' 'Social Criticism,' 'Pop-culture':
Banksy is an artist who works in a variety of media. In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, Banksy focuses on the idea of ‘public space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment: the non-private space, the non-privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting.
His works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.
His works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created.
His works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.
His works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created.
And, just to really cap it off, I'm in a silly band that writes dumb songs about sex. Or, should I say I create:
Work of Post-Art in the Age of Symbiotic Reproduction
The mind creates, the body reproduces. In the material space, art objects are reproductions of the creations of the mind - a mind that uses the body as a zeitgeist to enmesh ideas, patterns, and emotions. With the synergy of the musical environment, the mind is conceiving a point where it will be free from the body to transcend immersions into the ejaculations of the delphic space. Work of Post-Art in the Age of Symbiotic Reproduction contains minimal artistic engines (also referred to as 'soundtoys') that enable the user to make erotic audio/visual compositions.
measuring chains, constructing realities
putting into place forms
a matrix of illusion and disillusion
a strange attracting force
so that a seduced reality will be able to spontaneously feed on it
Brendan MacLean's work investigates the nuances of vibrations through the use of experimentation and soundscapes which emphasise the symbiotic nature of current media. MacLean explores abstract and full-bodied scenery as motifs to describe the idea of hyper-real space. Using loud loops, irony, and interactive images as patterns, MacLean creates meditative environments which suggest the expansion of art...
The mind creates, the body reproduces. In the material space, art objects are reproductions of the creations of the mind - a mind that uses the body as a zeitgeist to enmesh ideas, patterns, and emotions. With the synergy of the musical environment, the mind is conceiving a point where it will be free from the body to transcend immersions into the ejaculations of the delphic space. Work of Post-Art in the Age of Symbiotic Reproduction contains minimal artistic engines (also referred to as 'soundtoys') that enable the user to make erotic audio/visual compositions.
measuring chains, constructing realities
putting into place forms
a matrix of illusion and disillusion
a strange attracting force
so that a seduced reality will be able to spontaneously feed on it
Brendan MacLean's work investigates the nuances of vibrations through the use of experimentation and soundscapes which emphasise the symbiotic nature of current media. MacLean explores abstract and full-bodied scenery as motifs to describe the idea of hyper-real space. Using loud loops, irony, and interactive images as patterns, MacLean creates meditative environments which suggest the expansion of art...
I'm not railing against complex concepts in art, or even removing the veil of mystery entirely. I just wish maybe sometimes there was an 'Artist Statement For Dummies' next to the real one. Just in case...
Some popular Artist Statement Generators include:
500 Letters
Arty Bollocks
Play Damage's Market-O-Matic
10 Gallon's Statement's 2000
and
Kyle Clements
