Fetish: Human Fantastic
Fetish: Human Fantastic creates a dialogue regarding the effects of technology, consumer culture, and new comnunication platforms on traditional representations of the figure and its recent transmutations. This dialogue presents the concept of what I define as, "Post Media", which may be defined as actions relating to the mechanisms of commercial distribution that delineate the boundaries of formal artistic practices. Post media integrates, reconfigures and appropriates the action of all media, referencing the actions in context to the current landscape.
As entertainment media inundates society with false idols through the use of sex, violence, and excessive representations of wealth, it reflects back to us through the hypocritical mirror of advertising, and that reflection forms the basis of our inferior selves. While the ideal of the human form in artistic practice is divorced from corporate advertising, nakedness, and any sort of metaphoric use of the human figure, is frequently deemed pornographic and offensive. Even when placed in a historic or cultural institution. It is telling that as a society we are unable to differentiate between the truly pornographic usage of the impossibly idealized figure as a marketing tool, and the artistic idealized form of the figure. Pop Art's use of advertising techniques dislocated the documentation of the icons of its time. Enter a new set of parameters due to the effect of advertising on approaches to artistic figurative representation and identity. At this point the artist's gestures illustrated the human form literally, as well as using the icons of consumer culture. The art market as it's own medium began referencing the strategies of the commercial market, concerning itself with appropriation and copyrights.
The figure as a subject is anchored throughout history, as the human figure has been a predominant metaphor to represent social interactions in our society. Metaphorically, the figure has illustrated the meanings attached to our identity, sexuality and politics; overriding scientific, philosophic and historic parameters. As a society we interact with the physical and socio-political landscape, creating the contemporaneous context of constructed meanings. The rapid evolution of technology creates a convergence of the physical landscape, mass media, consumer culture and, the new public space, "the net." This brings forth a new narrative structure that takes place in a multi-planed conceptual landscape, ever in flux, as opposed to the previous linear approaches to traditional figuration. This relationship to new technology is slowly redefining the boundaries between cultures, space and time, as well as reconstructing the parameters set forth by previous generations. Thus, figuration within the new "post media" context connects us to our past and yet transcends the boundaries imposed by linear history.
Figuration lies among the reawakened modernist and formalist notions of medium replicating nature. Within this vein of thought, the created environment mimics nature through the uses of mass media and communication platforms, emulating a generative society. Through advanced technologies we are now able replicate or recreate prismatic characters or permutations of life to play in real or fantastic situations. Representing the complex form of a hybrid history, these situations are metaphoric reconfigurations of the current social landscape. Technology introduces the advanced avatar that is reproduced through 3d rendering, the poetic use of scientific and mathematical languages and gaming environments. Consumer culture deities, representing the human form as a documentation of a society, oscillate between virtual and physical realms, with frequent references to modernism, surrealism and pop art.
The capabilities of 3d rendering, gaming environments, and animated avatars have created a cross-breed between the animated figure of the super hero and gaming icon, such as Lara Croft. These hybrids project super-human affectations through personal styles of your game play. Power Puff Girls, as a symbolist trio, represent aspects of human characteristics and examine the link between mythology, fantasy and the need to be more human. The avatars, or animated characters, may be modern day deities or fetishes, accentuating components of human characteristic as they interact or represent the artist or the viewer (player). Humans are generative in regards to evolution equally important however, is the landscape as structure, generating new architecture to be inhabited. In these places there can be no ideals of perfection as the imagination and the construct can always take the player to a higher level.
Natalie Bookchin presents Meta Pet, a collaborative framework of the gaming structure emulating the surrealist structure of the "exquisite corpse" through the generative quality of the web as the new public space. Meta Pet depends on the user as an active participant to the body of work. In Meta Pet you must choose your character, defining specifics such as sex, name, age, and hobbies. Only at this point you are ready to play. The game allows the player to manage their own pet, providing the assets and power to create a super, or rebellious worker within a fictional corporate environment. The goal is to create the most productive, successful, and desired pet by overcoming the submissive pet mindset. This construct suggests a format of the corporate marketing strategy, metaphorically representing the goals of a capitalistic societies influence on ideals of success.
Meta Pet will be put in the gallery as an installation, with a "business card" (sticker) citing the URL (address) to the portal, thus allowing the player access to both the virtual and the physical space. The action of the "business card" replicates the social network, reminiscent of the word of mouth promotion of "happenings" generally associated with entertainment, or the sub-culture club scene. New Gaming is likened to interactive cinema, and emphasizes the continuing effect of video game infiltration into artistic practice, subcultures, and on society at large.
Gaming, animation and fashion magnify the use of socio-physical networks to create generative environments for artistic production and exhibitions, as well as acting as pure social tools. These actions also magnify the emulation of mass media production by artists, as well as the crossing of the intersection of entertainment and that which we call art. Media and gaming platforms allow for the creation of the avatar that emulates the strength and weakness of human characteristics and stereotypes, and allow a new avenue for concepts of forming the perfect human specimen. These actions stem from the ideals of a perfection paradigm that have been accepted since the mid 1950's as a prescription to acquire a perfect female form, and conveniently used as strategic corporate marketing tools.
The intervention of 3d animation with communication platforms creates a new interactive cinematic quality of games. Claudia Hart introduces her character e as a being that can de-form her features and body to correspond to any ambiance. Historically, reconfiguration of a main character within a narrative setting makes reference to psychological role-playing. This artistic gesture is most prevalent in the practices of the surrealists. As seen in Dorothea Tanning's Birthday (1942), the artist herself appears to the viewer as a bare-breasted enchantress. In the era of surrealism, the image of the woman was predominately a projection of male fantasy. Tanning and Hart elevate rather than diminish the female sex, sometimes assuming the role of a character themselves, connecting the art viscerally with the artist. Hart's e also alludes to the prismatic quality of the new art form, as the nature of e can be revealed in a variety of forms, e will be presented as prints in the gallery setting, though the character could be adapted into cinema or assimilated into fashion.
Recently, I viewed Alexander McQueen's spring line, hinting at Marcel Duchamp ready-mades and a surrealist affectation of quasi-magical beings. McQueen, like Hart and previous artists of the surrealist movement, have incorporated the female figure, transforming it into an alluring super fantastic extension of the landscape and human form. Historically artists have used the female figure, both literally and abstractly, to evoke the desire for ultimate perfection. As surrealist Hans Bellmer declared: 'I shall construct an artificial girl whose anatomy will make it possible to recreate physically the dizzy heights of passion...'
Yucef Merhi presents 90-60-90 a poetic sculpture representing the materialization of an ideal beauty canon. Merhi explains in conceptual, scientific and mathematical language, a spatial illusion of pleasure through the parameter of the measurements of Miss Universe. Merhi is from Venezuela, the country known as the "beauty factory", having produced five Miss Worlds and four Miss Universes. These contests are the representation of the ideal the parameters of "beauty" as constructed by a board of professionals, society, and the beauty industry. Marketing of "beauty" is one of the most lucrative financial investments, lending a strategy projected on society that the attainment of a prescribed beauty, is one of the highest honors a young woman can attain. Instant fame, glory, economic security and possibly even influence on Venezuelan politics are the perceived rewards. However, as represented throughout history, this flawless beauty is set to practically unattainable parameters. These yardsticks create censorship on the most basic level of our cultural attitudes. Merhi's work, alludes to the dangers of not only these attitudes but also of the erasure of the unwanted; identities, memories, the less than ideal of beauty and accepted social behaviors.
Kelly Heaton offers Dead Pelt, constructed with the product / byproduct of 400 interactive electronic toy "furby" special edition Santa's. Recently the reuse of toys has been likened to the animated avatar exemplified by Damien Hirst's Hymn which appropriated the Humbrol's Anatomy Set anatomically correct figure. Both reference Pop Art's recycling of consumer culture, representing the magnification of the human within the commercial market and further magnifying the message in the medium ten fold; revealing the detritus of our culture, historic practice, and fetishism of the human fantastic as an artistic gesture. Kelly Heaton's approach to the appropriation of the "furby" creates a narrative regarding one of consumerism's greatest icons, Santa, creating a metaphor of "giving". As opposed to Hirst's appropriation of the model as a conceptual configuration, Heaton reconfigures the toy forms and functions as an extension of human mannerism through the investigations of Artificial Intelligence. Just as the toy company used familiarity of a cultural icon as a marketing tool, the actions of Heaton's, (and Hirst's) appropriation of commercial toys plays rhythmically into the practices related to consumer culture, presenting in the gallery or institutional setting, an experience by which we may measure art. With Dead Pelt Kelly Heaton's approach claims, identifies and magnifies the effect and the decadence of consumer culture.
Michael Rees presents a group of figurative sculptures that emanate eroticism and dysfunction; his abstracted human forms eliminate the objective sexual identity and formal approach to figuration. Jose Carlos Casado Mancha gives us The New Body.v01 a grouping of prints that imagine ironically, a world of clones, separated by gender. Conceptually these works refer to the negative results that may occur in a society that would seek to eliminate the unique physical and mental gestures that are beauty in human form. Jose Carlos Casado Mancha investigates the relationship of human form in the new set of parameters relating to the advancement of artificial life. Rees' and Casado Mancha's bodies of works align with Andre Breton's supreme aim of surrealism, allowing us to observe two adjoining realities that seemingly fuse blurring the lines between them. History shows that we clearly identify with the human figure as a representation of whom we are. As Spenser wrote in his, Hyme in Honour of Beauty, "for the soule is forme and doth the bodie make".
Human: Fetish Fantastic documents the effects of the reconstruction of history through the uses of modern mediums and current practices in relationship to the prismatic, circular nature of human experience.
Michele Thursz
As entertainment media inundates society with false idols through the use of sex, violence, and excessive representations of wealth, it reflects back to us through the hypocritical mirror of advertising, and that reflection forms the basis of our inferior selves. While the ideal of the human form in artistic practice is divorced from corporate advertising, nakedness, and any sort of metaphoric use of the human figure, is frequently deemed pornographic and offensive. Even when placed in a historic or cultural institution. It is telling that as a society we are unable to differentiate between the truly pornographic usage of the impossibly idealized figure as a marketing tool, and the artistic idealized form of the figure. Pop Art's use of advertising techniques dislocated the documentation of the icons of its time. Enter a new set of parameters due to the effect of advertising on approaches to artistic figurative representation and identity. At this point the artist's gestures illustrated the human form literally, as well as using the icons of consumer culture. The art market as it's own medium began referencing the strategies of the commercial market, concerning itself with appropriation and copyrights.
The figure as a subject is anchored throughout history, as the human figure has been a predominant metaphor to represent social interactions in our society. Metaphorically, the figure has illustrated the meanings attached to our identity, sexuality and politics; overriding scientific, philosophic and historic parameters. As a society we interact with the physical and socio-political landscape, creating the contemporaneous context of constructed meanings. The rapid evolution of technology creates a convergence of the physical landscape, mass media, consumer culture and, the new public space, "the net." This brings forth a new narrative structure that takes place in a multi-planed conceptual landscape, ever in flux, as opposed to the previous linear approaches to traditional figuration. This relationship to new technology is slowly redefining the boundaries between cultures, space and time, as well as reconstructing the parameters set forth by previous generations. Thus, figuration within the new "post media" context connects us to our past and yet transcends the boundaries imposed by linear history.
Figuration lies among the reawakened modernist and formalist notions of medium replicating nature. Within this vein of thought, the created environment mimics nature through the uses of mass media and communication platforms, emulating a generative society. Through advanced technologies we are now able replicate or recreate prismatic characters or permutations of life to play in real or fantastic situations. Representing the complex form of a hybrid history, these situations are metaphoric reconfigurations of the current social landscape. Technology introduces the advanced avatar that is reproduced through 3d rendering, the poetic use of scientific and mathematical languages and gaming environments. Consumer culture deities, representing the human form as a documentation of a society, oscillate between virtual and physical realms, with frequent references to modernism, surrealism and pop art.
The capabilities of 3d rendering, gaming environments, and animated avatars have created a cross-breed between the animated figure of the super hero and gaming icon, such as Lara Croft. These hybrids project super-human affectations through personal styles of your game play. Power Puff Girls, as a symbolist trio, represent aspects of human characteristics and examine the link between mythology, fantasy and the need to be more human. The avatars, or animated characters, may be modern day deities or fetishes, accentuating components of human characteristic as they interact or represent the artist or the viewer (player). Humans are generative in regards to evolution equally important however, is the landscape as structure, generating new architecture to be inhabited. In these places there can be no ideals of perfection as the imagination and the construct can always take the player to a higher level.
Natalie Bookchin presents Meta Pet, a collaborative framework of the gaming structure emulating the surrealist structure of the "exquisite corpse" through the generative quality of the web as the new public space. Meta Pet depends on the user as an active participant to the body of work. In Meta Pet you must choose your character, defining specifics such as sex, name, age, and hobbies. Only at this point you are ready to play. The game allows the player to manage their own pet, providing the assets and power to create a super, or rebellious worker within a fictional corporate environment. The goal is to create the most productive, successful, and desired pet by overcoming the submissive pet mindset. This construct suggests a format of the corporate marketing strategy, metaphorically representing the goals of a capitalistic societies influence on ideals of success.
Meta Pet will be put in the gallery as an installation, with a "business card" (sticker) citing the URL (address) to the portal, thus allowing the player access to both the virtual and the physical space. The action of the "business card" replicates the social network, reminiscent of the word of mouth promotion of "happenings" generally associated with entertainment, or the sub-culture club scene. New Gaming is likened to interactive cinema, and emphasizes the continuing effect of video game infiltration into artistic practice, subcultures, and on society at large.
Gaming, animation and fashion magnify the use of socio-physical networks to create generative environments for artistic production and exhibitions, as well as acting as pure social tools. These actions also magnify the emulation of mass media production by artists, as well as the crossing of the intersection of entertainment and that which we call art. Media and gaming platforms allow for the creation of the avatar that emulates the strength and weakness of human characteristics and stereotypes, and allow a new avenue for concepts of forming the perfect human specimen. These actions stem from the ideals of a perfection paradigm that have been accepted since the mid 1950's as a prescription to acquire a perfect female form, and conveniently used as strategic corporate marketing tools.
The intervention of 3d animation with communication platforms creates a new interactive cinematic quality of games. Claudia Hart introduces her character e as a being that can de-form her features and body to correspond to any ambiance. Historically, reconfiguration of a main character within a narrative setting makes reference to psychological role-playing. This artistic gesture is most prevalent in the practices of the surrealists. As seen in Dorothea Tanning's Birthday (1942), the artist herself appears to the viewer as a bare-breasted enchantress. In the era of surrealism, the image of the woman was predominately a projection of male fantasy. Tanning and Hart elevate rather than diminish the female sex, sometimes assuming the role of a character themselves, connecting the art viscerally with the artist. Hart's e also alludes to the prismatic quality of the new art form, as the nature of e can be revealed in a variety of forms, e will be presented as prints in the gallery setting, though the character could be adapted into cinema or assimilated into fashion.
Recently, I viewed Alexander McQueen's spring line, hinting at Marcel Duchamp ready-mades and a surrealist affectation of quasi-magical beings. McQueen, like Hart and previous artists of the surrealist movement, have incorporated the female figure, transforming it into an alluring super fantastic extension of the landscape and human form. Historically artists have used the female figure, both literally and abstractly, to evoke the desire for ultimate perfection. As surrealist Hans Bellmer declared: 'I shall construct an artificial girl whose anatomy will make it possible to recreate physically the dizzy heights of passion...'
Yucef Merhi presents 90-60-90 a poetic sculpture representing the materialization of an ideal beauty canon. Merhi explains in conceptual, scientific and mathematical language, a spatial illusion of pleasure through the parameter of the measurements of Miss Universe. Merhi is from Venezuela, the country known as the "beauty factory", having produced five Miss Worlds and four Miss Universes. These contests are the representation of the ideal the parameters of "beauty" as constructed by a board of professionals, society, and the beauty industry. Marketing of "beauty" is one of the most lucrative financial investments, lending a strategy projected on society that the attainment of a prescribed beauty, is one of the highest honors a young woman can attain. Instant fame, glory, economic security and possibly even influence on Venezuelan politics are the perceived rewards. However, as represented throughout history, this flawless beauty is set to practically unattainable parameters. These yardsticks create censorship on the most basic level of our cultural attitudes. Merhi's work, alludes to the dangers of not only these attitudes but also of the erasure of the unwanted; identities, memories, the less than ideal of beauty and accepted social behaviors.
Kelly Heaton offers Dead Pelt, constructed with the product / byproduct of 400 interactive electronic toy "furby" special edition Santa's. Recently the reuse of toys has been likened to the animated avatar exemplified by Damien Hirst's Hymn which appropriated the Humbrol's Anatomy Set anatomically correct figure. Both reference Pop Art's recycling of consumer culture, representing the magnification of the human within the commercial market and further magnifying the message in the medium ten fold; revealing the detritus of our culture, historic practice, and fetishism of the human fantastic as an artistic gesture. Kelly Heaton's approach to the appropriation of the "furby" creates a narrative regarding one of consumerism's greatest icons, Santa, creating a metaphor of "giving". As opposed to Hirst's appropriation of the model as a conceptual configuration, Heaton reconfigures the toy forms and functions as an extension of human mannerism through the investigations of Artificial Intelligence. Just as the toy company used familiarity of a cultural icon as a marketing tool, the actions of Heaton's, (and Hirst's) appropriation of commercial toys plays rhythmically into the practices related to consumer culture, presenting in the gallery or institutional setting, an experience by which we may measure art. With Dead Pelt Kelly Heaton's approach claims, identifies and magnifies the effect and the decadence of consumer culture.
Michael Rees presents a group of figurative sculptures that emanate eroticism and dysfunction; his abstracted human forms eliminate the objective sexual identity and formal approach to figuration. Jose Carlos Casado Mancha gives us The New Body.v01 a grouping of prints that imagine ironically, a world of clones, separated by gender. Conceptually these works refer to the negative results that may occur in a society that would seek to eliminate the unique physical and mental gestures that are beauty in human form. Jose Carlos Casado Mancha investigates the relationship of human form in the new set of parameters relating to the advancement of artificial life. Rees' and Casado Mancha's bodies of works align with Andre Breton's supreme aim of surrealism, allowing us to observe two adjoining realities that seemingly fuse blurring the lines between them. History shows that we clearly identify with the human figure as a representation of whom we are. As Spenser wrote in his, Hyme in Honour of Beauty, "for the soule is forme and doth the bodie make".
Human: Fetish Fantastic documents the effects of the reconstruction of history through the uses of modern mediums and current practices in relationship to the prismatic, circular nature of human experience.
Michele Thursz
