The other day, one of my classmates, Ruofan Shi, recommended me watch Rick and Morty, which is a TV show seen by adults and made a big hit. She thought that the imagery of this animation was relevant to my surrealistic paintings. Fantastic colours and winding contour lines, and weird forms are appealing to me. Although I haven't watched it yet, I have convinced that the animation might help build strange ideas. However, my works don't show spatial distance, unlike the sceneries of it. Regardless of the matter of perspective, I can develop my images that can be about oneiric and otherworldly pictures by constant drawing.
With my classmates and course leader, I went to Hyde Park to see ongoing exhibitions. The first gallery I visited was Surpentine. There was an exhibition of Albert Oehlen, who's from Germany. Since last year, I mainly focus on seeing what artists do for accidental mark-making. I think painting randomly is one of the fascinating things to see for beholders. To be honest, I don't know what this painter does, what he wants to convert meaning or story by painting. I just see and record the marks as a reference for my future. There were many works of him, but some of them were not that interesting. What I mainly invest time to see was the combination of his layering and mark-making. That is, brushstroke could become one of the layers that pile up. Eventually, where he did this action a lot would be dense. In this way, mark-making and layering could be linked and merged. For me, it seems that he tries to express his unconscious mind. I can guess it from his painting. He repetitively painted tiny faces and big ones. Sometimes he just let the oil flow by holding them on the brush. Otherwise, he just painted colour line or splattered oil. This kind of thing inspired me because I wanted to enjoy and feel the pleasure of painting. Likewise, he might have gotten some interest in this, I guess. I think that an artist's thoughts should be revealed, disclosed by her or his works, which means it's an artist's work that shows the artist.
While looking at his works, I was wondering why he put two artworks together to be seen as one work. So I asked gallery people why he would do that. It was because he wanted to test how it would be if things were together. Also, he was testing if he could have organized the relationship between paintings and the gallery space. That means a method of the display can be different whenever his solo exhibition takes place. The thing he interpreted with this gallery was based on four windows. For me, that sort of thought was surprising and slightly broke my thoughts of how works should be exhibited. As I was struggling with the way how to present my unstretched paintings, his inventive artistic approaches were a good reference for me. However, I think my art has more potential. Also, although my paintings are surrealistic, I just disliked the term 'surrealistic,' ' unconscious,' etc. He admires paintings made by Surrealism, it, therefore, becomes a methodology or attitude to the world and to paintings. "Surrealism is not a style, nor is it a technique. There was no veto, no prescription, no aesthetic rule. When Oehlen says he sees himself in the tradition of Surrealism, it is not just because of a history that he mines, but because it questioned the nature of the real, which must include more than the immediate material world. Painting has extensive means of divesting reality of its verisimilitude." These quotes encourage me to keep doing what I like!
I went to Michael Werner gallery on 2nd November to view Peter Doig's recent works. I did know that he was a painter of canoe and brilliant landscape. However, as soon as I arrived at the gallery, I was questioning whether his exhibition was about his works. I had not seen yet his new paintings which was showing his new neighborhood, Trinidad. I might have had particular thoughts to his works; every works should be linked to his canoe paintings! The first thing I found was 'dispersion on linen'. I didn't even know what does that meant. I was wondering why he mainly used the material. From my point of view, the colour palette he used was pale and glassy. I think the reason why things look like that was he frequently painted on linen with transparent binder and mixed some oil colours with white so that paintings could be oneiric.
The other thing I admired in his paintings was that they might have each story; Women lying down on the sand, bright moons, ghostly people. Also, Horizons in his paintings make me think of endless and enormous lands. I think he was somehow obsessed with occurrence when nights. I would say that his works are fascinating because they are realistic yet unrealistic so that beholders could imagine narratives. That's why he gained popularity and was generally to be appreciated. For me, I would like to make the imagery more unrealistic, surrealistic. So, viewing his works steadily would be helpful to feel the otherworld. . Even though imageries we paint are different, his works are useful to enhance my eyes and refer.
