for ten years, the British novelist Marcel Theroux has been fascinated by wabi sabi, a theory of Japanese aesthetics in which imperfection and transience are a touchstone for unassuming, natural beauty. in this film he travels to Japan in search of the meaning of the elusive, indefinable wabi-sabi aesthetic...
but, is it art?
in terms of the history of art, from the objects of devotion, adoration or reverence that i once believed were the physical manifestation of beauty and art (but are perhaps only highly-crafted artefacts, objects of ritual and faith), i now see the contemporary art scene overrun by irreverence, vandalism and subversion - it's clever to be ironic, it's fun to be subversive, it's crafty to be non-crafted.it's art poking fun at itself and others, the absurdity of it, its being, its making, non-art becomes high art, the non-original is somehow now unique... it's an art spawned from the fallout of a messed-up world, to be torn apart and reassembled, painted over, repositioned, upsized, downscaled, remodelled, appropriated, stolen, created from the everyday, the mundane, the bad, and the plain ugly… it's uncool to be a mere object of beauty, anything is art these days, even a tea stain.. (we all have one of these original works at home)..
Gavin Turk Tea Stain 2004, tea on paper, 245 x 335 mm (unique edition of 1000, actual prints may vary)currently for sale on gavin turk's own website at £172.50 (inc. VAT)gavin turk studied at the royal college of art (at the same time as myself), but he was refused his degree, having made a blue plaque for his exhibition space with the words 'Borough of Kensington, Gavin Turk, Sculptor 1989 - 1991 worked here' (now seen as a seminal work in his oeuvre), which made a comment on the cult of the famous, ironically inventing a future version himself as notable artist, without having created or exhibited any major body work (he studied sculpture). it was a kind of of wish-fulfillment... and it worked..gavin turk's print tea stain fits in with the natural evolution of his work, in the ongoing concept of questioning the authenticity of art and its maker, and like duchamp, the everyday becomes art in the right context. tea stain perfectly symbolises the labour or hand of the artist, yet it is essentially a non-planned, non-thing, but by repeated printing it becomes an act of deliberate creation, calculated within a game of chance.perhaps it was born out of one of those serendipitous moments in the art studio, when the artist is thinking: what should i create, where do i start? when contemplating the surface of a workdesk? here, turk continues to reinvent the brand of gavin turk as the successful artist, in the history of another artist, a doppleganger, the artist he aspires to be.gavin turk created his first signed canvas in 1991 - his signature back then had the stylish appeal and mark of someone apparently important when seen blown up in scale, and it provided a basic critique on the false importance we place on names, the stamp of the artist that authenticates the artwork.the signature signature style of gavin turk is deliberately challenged by its multiple reproductions - but is an art joke only funny the first time? - re-appropriated and re-purposed like the 'picasso signature' badge on a citroen car - it's all about association.turk has appropriated the works of many artists (notably warhol, and more recently pollock in his new york show) and ironically situates himself as both the creator of the work and its subject matter, at the same time questioning the cult that surrounds the dead artist. manifestations of the gavin turk signature continue to be a key theme in his work, as a mirror with his signature [Your Authorised Reflection 2009] extends this idea even further when it reflects a limitless series of gavin turk signed portraits of the viewer...the art dealers and critics take this work very seriously, even when turk seems to mock the art establishment, the commodification of art... the problem with tea stain is that although it raises questions about the authorship and validity of art, by making it for sale as an edition (and those that buy into it; some 500 have sold apparently) it flips back on any subversion, it's plain old establishment art after all...and if you should hesitate to say, but i could do that! or is it art? this is exactly the sort of idea that gavin turk is seeking to provoke...view gavin turk's latest exhibition of work, jazz (after jackson pollock), at the sean kelly gallery in new york, or see more of his work here. he's not currently represented by whitecube, but you can read a couple of past articles there.
time travels
i have finally got around to cataloguing some artwork (from slides) from my student days in london...
shifting perspectives 1991
[detail... 25cm x 25cm]shifting perspectives, 1992... what i said about this work at the time..On a map, a river is shown by a simple line, with no indication of flow or force. Rivers are primary routes of exploration and navigation, shaping the surrounding landscape. All of these rivers (the twenty five longest rivers in the world) are made in high relief, with handmade paper and resin using moulds, recreating a geological process, arranged in ordered segments to evoke the charting and cataloging of the environment... underneath each tile is the total length in miles of the river in white vinyl lettering.(this piece of work was in my degree show and was later exhibited in the new contemporaries)
on the road (to newcastle) 1991, 48 ins x 64 insbased on a street map of newcastle, this piece explores how we are directed to move through a manmade environment. the dotted white line passes once through each square oblivious to the road infrastructures, and the red route roughly follows the same course, but is limited by traffic and road systems..
[detail of on the road..]my original idea was to create a series of large works based on major cities of the UK, but i only got as far as Liverpool..
[liverpool landscape; the left side..]
[liverpool landscape; detail]
[liverpool landscape, taken before completion of the right side, 96 ins x 64 ins]
[liverpool landscape 1991, showing left and right sides of work]in 1991, i wrote: on the left is a street map of liverpool, a metallic relief resembling a printing template.. i am planning to emboss each corresponding plate onto the earth coloured tiles, producing a positive and negative. the tiles mirror a landscape as seen from above, as in aerial photography. it comments on man's mark on the environment, showing the unique imprint of a city centre, as roads are determined by geological and sociological factors.