Author: Rita

I made various ice sculptures, focusing on the question of solidity defining the truthfulness of a sculpture. This links back to the idea of verisimilitude and the things we view to be ‘real’, as some people may believe that ice slowly loses itself as a sculptural object as the state of matter changes. The ice frames the sculpture. However as you watch the timelapse and the photo sequences of the ice melting, do you see the sculpture slowly disappearing?

I didn’t use many objects in my ice as I did in my assemblages because I wanted the ice to be the main subject of the sculpture. I put in some beads and coins to create reflections from the sunlight and allow the ice to encapsulate these objects. I also wanted to focus on the aspect of ice as a mode of ‘freezing time’. I cut out some silhouettes of people on coloured paper and placed them in the water before freezing. They look like pedestrians walking, frozen in time. The solidity and the fragility of the paper also create interesting relationships. I also put in some yarn, which I thought was interesting because such a light weight material would move around in the water. However, when it is frozen, it captures the yarn in a moment in time. Using flowers in the ice was also important because flowers decay at a fast pace. However freezing the flower in water can freeze a moment in time, and the bright colour and freshness can live for longer.

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I tinted the water before freezing them, so you can see a slight tint to the ice in these close-up photos. What is interesting about this, is that the colour also slowly disappeared as the ice melted. Because I had to wait for my ice to form, I had limited sunlight when I took my ice outside. Although it wasn’t the sunniest day, the ice absorbed and reflected on the ice.

There is a lot of real conversations that arise when working with natural materials. Some may simply think about the states of matter and the way this material works as a sculpture. However, some people may immediately view melting ice as a visual metaphor for our climate crisis. Perhaps it is the deep, important conversations about global issues is that makes a sculpture more real.

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‘Minimum Moment’ by Néle Azevdo contradicts what a public sculpture is, through using ice in her installation. With ice, she creates small, temporary sculptures which contradict the large-scale, permanent aspect of a public sculpture or monument. Azevedo compares ice to music, theatre, or dance. as a form of art. You spend so much time preparing for it and until it is quickly over.

Question or provocation:

Temporary public sculptures are generally where a sculpture is temporarily placed in a space. However, when using ice as a sculpture, the temporality of the sculpture is out of our control. Water is the most real, true, pure substance in our world. However, does the temporality of an ice sculpture question how true it is as a sculpture? We question if the solidity of a sculpture determines the truthness. When it starts melting and the state of matter changes, does it slowly lose itself as a sculptural object? Explore these questions by creating ice sculptures that question what a sculpture can be.

Materials and processes

Place objects in the water before you freeze it, so they will also act as an assemblage. It is interesting to see how states of matter can confine and release objects in the water. Also experiment with using various shapes of containers to make ice. Using food colouring to tint my water will create interesting colour relationships as well. You will need to prepare the ice hours beforehand, while also thinking about the sunlight outside and how light will refract on the ice.

Presentation

Like Nèle Azevado, you are able to intervene in a site through the ice sculptures. Especially since you can only let the ice melt outdoors, you can utilise the space that the sculptures are in as a part of the work. You will be presenting my work in photographic sequences which show the melting of the ice. You will also be presenting a video of a timelapse, showing, the movement of the ice as time passes.

the embedding is not working for me, so ill paste a link here:

https://www.artsteps.com/view/6163f895e782cbfdeda400fe?currentUser

All of my sculptures in this installation tie in together as they capture the different aspects of ‘dreaming’. ‘breakfast in bed’ explored a dream that seems realistic. However, the ‘orange-go-round’ is an object that seems familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, which is a feeling I often get when I am dreaming. The ‘is this a nightmare’ sculpture explores how surreality in dreams can be the scariest nightmares. The beauty of a virtual experience is that you can present art in a way that you could, or have never. The rules of physics do not apply in a virtual space like this and there are endless possibilities. This virtual space allowed me to able to make the sculptures float, and present them on a scale that would be highly unrealistic in reality. Therefore I think the installation itself becomes part of the work as I was able to present and create my works in a way that could not be physically possible. Just like the concept of a dream where we often experience surreal, imaginary situations.

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breakfast in bed

When I was stuck on ideas for my digital sculptures, I looked at my collection of objects and thought of a narrative. As I had many breakfast-related foods, I thought it would be interesting to create a sculpture that shows someone dreaming of breakfast in bed. This is a surreal scene as I tried to show that the sleeper’s thoughts were appearing through the pillow that they are sleeping on. I used the sculpt tool to show an imprint of a face on the pillow, implying that someone is sleeping there. The teddy bear also implies the presence of someone on the pillow, without a person actually being there.

merry-go-round

This reminds of a musical jewelry box or a merry-go-round. The teddy bear, flowers and butterflies have a nostalgic, childlike aspect to it especially when it is put together in this way. I like how the separate objects are connected physically, but come together as one body of work. It also has an ethereal, dream-like atmosphere to it, which also ties in with the sculpture above.

I feel like these two sculptures also tie in with the ice sculptures that I created last week. In the ‘breakfast in bed’ sculpture, the food items are confined, and inaccessible as they are growing from the pillow. In the ‘merry-go-round’ sculpture, the objects are all floating. They are released and accessible. The difference between these two sculptures remind me of when the ice melted from the ice sculptures and the objects in them were released from confinement and became usable again.

Jon Rafman

http://jonrafman.com/

I haven’t come across much digital art, but upon researching I found Jon Rafman’s work. I really enjoy looking at his practice with digital mediums. Through his video and digital sculpture works, Rafman explores the impact of technology on our existence. A topic that heavily impacts us in this day in age and especially in the future. He also utlises google maps as a way to capture the world through our heavily digital world.

I especially enjoyed looking at all the video works that he has done. I think they’re so fascinating and makes you deeply think about how technology and our existence are truly becoming one. The sound track and narrations make incredibly striking works.

In “Oh, the humanity!”, Rafman creates a human wave of people, floating on tubes. I think this work represents the difficulty we have, focusing on our realities in this digital age.

I feel like this film goes through the history of our world, through the digital eyes. Everything is chaotic and feels like a bad dream. Perhaps Rafman believes that this is how the world is in the digital age.

Atlier Martini

Atlier Martini creates digital works with the focus on capturing playfulness, joy and humour creating digital assemblages. His series of digital sculptures are called ‘imaginary sculptures’. Martini fits well with the digital assemblages which we are doing on Meshmixer right now. Martini is able to create simple, yet capturing works which instantly express the seen of surrealness in a joyful way, through the objectscombined and the bright colour palette.

He also digital deforms and remodel everyday objects to create interesting compositions. This style can be replicated through the ‘sculpt’ tools on mesh mixer.

Here Martini shows the ways these different objects can come together without morphing them together or attaching them. He utilises the way they can hook, and latch on together. It would be interesting to take this idea into mesh mixer, and when making physical assemblages.

to be honest, I struggled a lot with navigating this software. Sitting down and staring at my screen for hours trying to comprehend the instructions was definitely draining for me and for my laptop. I did attempt at assembling the objects on the software as well as some of the objects I downloaded. Hopefully, I can get the hang of meshmixer and create work that I am proud of.

through browing some digital libraries, I downloaded 15 objects which I will experiment with on Meshmixer.

teddy bear

pancakes

pillow

shoes

skull

amy from sonic

tree

key

milk carton

fish

tulip

bread roll

palete

butterfly

toilet paper

I find the concept of utilising ice as sculptures interesting. Like Erwin Wurm’s one-minute sculptures, they are temporary however they take hours for it to freeze and melt. It questions what a sculpture can be.

tightening the ice

securing and tightening were the ways I created by initial material assemblages. The air in the bag showed allowed the string and belt to hug onto the bag. To develop further, I utilised my freezer and created a frozen version by putting water in a ziplock bag and securing it with a string as it froze. I love how the the ice has been molded from the creases of the bag. By tieing a bright coloured string around the tightened area, it creates an illusion, as if the bag is still there.

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Is it still a sculpture if the ice has melted away and the string is the only thing that remains?

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this took hours to melt especially with the inconsistent weather. Even the neighbourhood cat came along and melted by licking on it.

ice block

Freezing can help preserve food, so it can last longer. Like that, I am able to use ice to create a “still-life”, like Armand Fernandez who I have researched who uses resin in his sculptures. Except the ice melts and the “still-life” that I have frozen, doesn’t last forever. I combined random objects that I could freeze in this ice block and I would say that this is a “still-life” of my desk drawer.

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old gift card, string, beads, coins, dice, balloon, mini hand, spoon, hair tie drop on the ground as it melts. The ice helped assemble these objects together until it melted and they all became objects of their own.

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flower ice puck

flowers and nature thrives in water. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to freeze some flowers and clovers into a frozen “still-life”. The circular container I used created a beautiful puck shape. When I took this out of the freezer it wasn’t frozen all the way through. I loved this because I could see all the way through the ice as it was very transparent. It really did remind me of resin, but in a more ethical way.

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I also tried this in a bag, and it created many creases. This was only frozen a little bit whn I took it out. When I cracked it open it was fully hollow and the water flowed out. HoweverI didn’t catch a video as I accidently cracked it.

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The cracked ice is also reminicent of glass. Through using ice I realised that I can make glass-like sculptures but make them in a temporary manner.

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Julia Couzens

Julia Couzens explores the relationship between craft, abstract painting, and sculpture. She emphasises the imperfectly perfect flaws of scrap fabrics through wrapping, stretching, stitching, and bundling fabrics from used clothing or goods. They then become an object full of memories and history as these materials may have come from discarded, damaged, worn and used objects/clothing. Couzen’s work operates as an assemblage as we can clearly see the ways different materials are combined. Through the many strings and stitches which secures the textiles , these fabrics from many different sources, come together as a single sculpture. I was heavily influences by Couzens work and tried to use the verb of securing in my material assemblages. Except I tried it with random objects around me such as a stapler, a gnome, camera, etc. This reminds me of packing a suitcase. We have to fit so many important things in our everyday into a tiny space with almost no spare space at all. Much like this, Couzen is able to secure the history and memories filled in these scrap fabrics into a small, confined panel.

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Armand Fernandez

Armand Fernandez is influences by the philosophies of Dadaism and found-object style sculptures stating “I maintain that the expression of junk and objects has an intrinsic value, and I see no need to look for aesthetic forms in them and to adapt them to the colors of the palette,”. His sculptures consist of displaying objects in plexiglass and using resin to set objects in a panel-like box. I’m intrigued with the fact that he also presents strewn garbage which he picked up in Paris. By putting the trash in a confined box, he creates a still-life of streets of Paris which are scattered with litter and garbage. His work operates as an assemblage as he uses the everyday as a source of materials and objects. Fernandez is able to reflect on the realities of society by adopting the still-life painting style into a sculptural manner.

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Jessica Stockholder

Jessica Stockholder’s works use visually stricking colour compositions and structures through assembling a variety of objects such as toys, laundry baskets, curtains, heat lamps, fans, yarn, newspaper, bowling balls, automobiles and so on. Stockholder explores the aesthetic values of these objects while also expressing a narrative. She utilises consumer products to build a relationship between painting ans sculpture. She uses paint to emphasise to the energetic colour pallets on these plastic objects. Stockholder shows the true nature of an assemblage. She combines recognisable objects into a compositions that is visually satisying. By examining close, we can also see the painting elements ant the way these recognisable objects come together.

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I poked my glasses through a piece of cardboard and stuck it into my plant with a belt around it.

here I also tried to add human-like aspects to a jar by placing glasses and headphones onto it.

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I think this assemblage is interesting because the belt, cardboard, and bag are essentially wrapping, and securing nothing. By putting air in the bag, I allowed the belt and cardboard to easily secure itself to the bag.

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Through researching, I found interest in Julia Couzens’ work. She is able to make painting-like sculptures by gathering random fabrics and materials into a tight canvas-shaped surface. In this assemblage task I utlised the cardboard used previously and gathered random objects and secured them tightly onto the cardboard surface. I think this is interesting as we question how these objects are stuck together especially when we look at it upfront without the cardboard in sight.

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After taking apart the previous assemblage, I loved the colourful strings which remained on the cardboard. I tied it onto the bag full of air and I think it creates an interesting relationship between the flat surface and the bag material which used to be a flat surface and is now a 3 dimensional object.