C a r l o s S e b a s t i á
A r t i s t
Joan Jonas GO TO Critical Analysis
The work of Jonas and mine is connected to the sensory elements rather than in the discursive ones. My work is not a feminist or animalistic work, I practically refuse the direct use of human presence or leave it almost on a testimonial level. But his way of using video, his interest in research into the physical characteristics of it, the use of light and the surreal way in which she presents her installations connect me completely with her work. There is one last element that I consider essential and is the continued use that she makes of her installations. They move from installation to documentary recording and from there a new installation springs up
Wolfgang Tillmans - www.tillmans.co.uk
I admire his social commitment, I think he is able to engage with current issues in a grounded way, when we look his images we can feel how the photos provide from inside. The artist is not someone talking about a trendy topic, he is part of the problem and the solution. He is and he makes us part of the action and the thoughts because everything looks true. In my opinion, he is able to produce this sort of connection because he use the composition and the light so masterfully. Simple images become poetical, become spiritual. He is capable, as Kristeva propose, to abject folding the reality in order to offer us, as spectators, a new perspective from a aesthetic experience. Also, in all this process, he plays with the photography boundaries and the installation disposition, leading us to embrace this personal "catharsis".
Sara VanDerBeek
Maybe I started to feel a connection with her work because she uses to set up installations to shoot them to be aftershow them as a photography. This mix media somehow theoretical is certainly interesting because it takes the discussion beyond the technical boundaries in a very subtle way and questions what is the piece of art, which is photography while wrapping its work in a way conceptual very appropriate to her topic.
Raimund Kummer
Kummer is one of those artists who is able to take a mountain of rubble and convert it through his lens into an attractive image to be seen with patience. As if we were able to discover something new in it. And it is true, that this new exists. It is capable of altering our perceptive feeling. Besides, he manages to play with the image in a successive way creating new spatial fields and new objects. I am quite interested in looking for beauty in the simple, and he is one of those artists which has this ability. I realized during and after my visit to his last show in Berlin, how important this fact is to me. I started to observe myself and my videos or pictures and see how I like to discover or explore as a child. And this is in part thanks to Kummer.
Jessica Stockholder - http://jessicastockholder.info
She is an artist which use the space and the composition in a very particular way. The color, the objects, and the distribution in the space are definitely masterfully controlled. I think I can learn many new things observing her installations and use it in my final show. However, I still observe her work from a photographic perspective.
Matta-Clark - www.tate.org.uk
From Matta-Clark, I am interested in the use of empty to fill, in other words, how he is able to talk about the subtraction in a way that adds information.
In the other hand, Matta use of materials is also a great interest for my practice, recycling materials, working in the space and the textures.
Finally, he showed great ability presenting his work with a unique language, regardless of the technique he would use.
William Kentridge - www.william-kentridge
Kentridge would highlight his ability to generate imaginary spaces where his artifacts translate us to a new reality. It is very interesting in that it accomplishes this, adding a cultural-historical load so important.
On the other hand, it is able to handle time and action through video, drawing, and music in a way that apparently looks chaotic but is perfectly well articulated.
Uta Barth - www.utabarth.net
She uses the image very delicate, the use of light is superb, as she uses the color fields in his photographic abstractions to generate areas where our eyes relax and breathe and others where our brain is activated to understand generating a controlled rhythm. This rhythm also I observe it in its series where the images are transformed, from the repetition. Uta includes transitions through exposure, focus, tonal inversion, filters or almost collage cutting.
On the other hand, she plays with space, introducing lights, lines or any element that exerts an object function and connection between the cut-out space of the photograph and its surroundings, makes us think about the intimacy of the artist through the daily and the personal.
Another way to distort reality is to confuse the background and the object as defined by Merleau Ponty, we see the object through the objects that surround it. The background that we do not perceive also configures it.
John Houck - www.johnhouck.com
John Houck examines questions of human perception and memory through the use of technologies that range from digital photography to software coding. Houck’s work involves still lifes composed of diverse objects from his youth that he photographs, rearranges, and reshoots. Images of these iterations are subsequently layered to create what Houck calls “aggregate photographs”—emblems of the manner in which imagination and recollection alter and distort our views of our past lives.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
This is one of those artists I started to look at their work with more attention recently. His work is "simple" but not in the same way as Tillmans or Kummer. He shows us a reality layer not able to see without the lent and the exposure. He is able to show us the time and frame it in a very interesting way. Damian Sutton in his book - Photography, Cinema, Memory - The Crystal Image of Time says "Here, in the attenuated instant of Sugimoto’s photographs, each frame burns through the moment of its presentation into the future yet leaves on the photograph’s emulsion a record of its passing. The still image as a record of the past, named as the Memory of cinema’s motion, is the blind spot in cinematic thinking on time. Here in Sugimoto’s images is the Memory of cinema passing into sensation, through the blinding glimpse of immanence that only the photograph can reveal."
Nan Goldin
About Goldin, I would like to focus on the compositional part of his work. I am interested in analyzing its inclusivity in photography through the angles or reflections in the mirror. In her images, the existence of the observer or the voyeur persists in the corners, in the mirrors in the regards. We, as observers, are questioned by our positioning.