Art as energy / energy as Art

 

Jennie Kiessling is an artist, an educator and a good friend who lives, works and teaches here in Colorado.  While I was making work and creating the working pattern for installing PLEASEtouch Jennie and I discussed the possibility of creating a catalogue for the installation.  The catalogue evolved into this blog.  Below is a piece that Jennie wrote for the catalogue / now blog. I offer it as the introduction to our discussion about energy.  Our discussion meaning between you and me, as you can leave comments on this blog that contribute to the dialogue if you like.  I would like you to.

Thank you, Jennie,  for opening our discussion about Art as energy / energy as Art.

That Objects Have Energy

Saint Barbara was brought from home to home in Española, NM. Households affiliated with the local church took turns caring for the Saint through the year. Ritual statues from many places around the world are blessed with spices, wine or blood or a combination. Water, a universal offering, is left for many seen and unseen entities. In the Tibetan tradition, yün is considered to be the essence of richness. If one is aware, they can identify the spot that holds yün.

These and many other ways of knowing acknowledge the magic of the phenomenal world. This is something in which many artists engage through their use of material and content. What is important to recognize about this reality, is that preciousness emanates from objects to which we currently attribute monetary value.  As a result, we often do not see the energy of the objects that surround us, because instead, we are thinking of their value. 

Does this mean that objects posses their own energy? Or do we attribute that energy based on our energy. Or is it both? When someone is said to be able to “read the room”, what exactly are they “reading”?  In the case of yün, what exactly is the chemistry that is occurring?  When we pose this question academically, do we lose the essence of the genuine ability to connect with the object?

Sharon Carlisle’s installations are part of an art making lineage that can be traced back to artist Marcel Duchamp’s 1942 installation His Twine in which he filled a room with a string barrier that prevented the audience from entering to see his paintings. This art historical lineage is only one of the lineages of which Carlisle’s work is a part. When experiencing the installations in this exhibition what is it that you feel in the space as you walk through? Where is the energy of preciousness in the work?  Is it in the energy of the objects or the material? Is it the energy of the artist’s hands, or is there no energy and your mind is conjuring a relationship with the object?

How do we as participants in an artwork “touch” the work? We are limiting ourselves if we think that the answer is only “with our hands”. We touch with our eyes, ears, nose, and mouths. All of our senses are at work when we are experiencing an art installation. An installation is a four dimensional sculpture. We are in it as opposed to moving around it. We are active instead of passive.    

In the late 1990’s art curator Nicolas Bourriaud coined the term Relational Aesthetics – his book of the same name deconstructed what was happening in the art world at the time. Relational Aesthetics was both a theory and a form of art making. What Bourriaud pointed out was the audience’s engagement in a work of art. Not passive looking, but active involvement. This involvement could be as simple as walking or as complex as having a small meal of curry and rice with a stranger. Bourriaud’s observations of the human “chemistry” of installations among artists and audiences identified a cataclysmic change in the practice of art making and viewing that is considered to be one of the most important developments in art history and theory in the last 40 years. It dominates the art making practice to this very moment.   

What, then, do these strings of information bring together and what do they create?  They are a ground from which we can translate our experiences as we engage in Sharon Carlisle’s work.

Art in the 21^st Century continues to hold all of the elements and principles of art making that have been taught through the centuries. What has changed is the viewer is no longer the observer of something separate from them. You are instead, invited to be part of an experience in which the energy of the objects comes through the artist to the viewer by way of the care and preciousness of making. The artist’s touch is your touch with hands, eyes, ears, nose and mouth. The energy of the exchange is found in the objects, the artist, and you.

Do objects and materials hold energy?  Does the space they occupy and entangle with also hold energy? If they do, does the visitor perceive it?  Feel it?  

Let's discuss Art as energy / energy as Art further in the next blog.

This is a pic (below) from the installation PLEASEtouch, is  a view of the south wall of the gallery space.  

           

In it you see Water Table, an artifact from the installation Tended Primitive Emergence.  The wall pieces are The Four Enola Geishas, work that will be included in an upcoming installation pinkStardust, the 2nd in the series of installations in My Manhattan Project.   There is also an artifact, Red Branch, from the installation Landscape for an Institution of Higher Learning.  And markings on the floor of chalk and sand.

I will be discussing Water Table in more depth in the next posting for 

Photo by Robin Snyder.