Thesis Proposal

I am unwilling to limit myself. I believe that as an artist, it is important to express creation in every form necessary. My concentration is in printmaking but I work in sculpture, drawing, painting, installation and sound. I am a maker. My practice has developed significantly over the past year and I have begun to focus on select interests throughout my work.

I consider the starting point of my work material. I am genetically predisposed to hording and collecting objects. I view this as my inability to ignore my inherent subconscious connection with materials. This nexus is ensconced in aesthetic attraction and a longing to bring vitality to something through the construction of a new entity.

What is beauty? It is experiential and significant, a consequence of our perception. It is ingrained in every aspect of life and it is my duty as an artist to present this. There is a cliché attached to beauty, and I will refrain from reiterating it here, that associates importance with recognition, which can be understood as the identification of something as having been previously seen, heard or known. Déjà vu, literally “already seen”, defines beauty and gives reason to my personal fixation with the sensation.

The relationship between artist, viewer and art is imperative. As the creator, I see and understand everything that I do on an experiential level. Art in its purest sense is communication. Often, our first step to understanding art is looking at it. We translate (in the sense that art and language are two forms of interdependent communication) our optical experience, breaking it down to variables and process. Our eyes cannot see without our mind associating. This is the fallacy that nullifies optical painting. All understanding is based on a system of relativity, which is begot through semiotics, and the function of language. What every viewer longs for is the perspicacity of the artist. They are given the product without the process and left to decipher the denouement.

My work is process. It is about the conflicting relationship between artist, art and viewer. The idea that “what one sees is what one gets” is true. I am interested in why. I want to expose the ever-present gap of understanding in art. Art cannot exist without interpretation. Art’s purpose is to be interpreted, the effects of which are limitless. Every movement, from Impressionism to Minimalism, is subject to analysis but it is essential for one to be aware of the layers of recognition.

There are steps that one takes in the presence of art. They see the thing-in-itself, as Kant said, the object in relation to the viewer. Every aspect of an artwork has significance, whether the paint is dripped or evenly distributed, applied to wood or canvas, hung on the wall or lain on the floor. After a physical relationship to a work of art is established it becomes subject to cognition. Form is processed and content is derived. When one looks at a piece of art they always see their own self. This is a result of the human consciousness, which creates meaning in relation to personal experience and perception. What differs between viewers is awareness of this phenomenon.

What my work asserts is how the engrained history of materials, modus operandi and presentation advocate personal conjecture. I appropriate components and afford meaning to them through an aesthetic-driven decision making process.

I envision the physical embodiment of my thesis project as a mixed media installation. I will incorporate both sculpture and art books. The sculpture, a continuation of my current explorations, will act as the art object, the signified. I see the artist books as being a physical bridge between artist and viewer. They themselves are art objects, physically digested by the viewer through interaction.  The images and words will comprise a system of meaning that pertains to the sculptural objects. The viewer will reach a level of understanding indicative of their experience, interaction and aesthetics.

documentation

Okay so I finally got around to uploading documentation of some of the work I have been doing this semester.



 These two paintings are some of the first ones that I finished so far. They're pretty small, about 4" x 6", gouache and acrylic on wood.

cellular mobile 1

cellular mobile 2

This is a mixed media piece. It was a difficult piece for me but I received a really great critique from my discussion group on it. It really makes me question what I'm doing and saying which is something that should happen with every piece that one makes.

deep spaced

These are photos of a piece I had in the Mason Gross Annual this year. The piece is titled Drawing Practice II and it's 22" x 30", colored pencil on paper. As the title indicates, it is the second piece I've done in this style. The first one I made while studying in France. I really enjoy this way of working and I think it is informed from my first experiences with the work of Tom Friedman when I was in high school.

This is a new sculpture that I installed at LAB about two weeks ago. It did not last very long and at this point I've decided to rework the piece with some different materials. I will be documenting it when I have my critique with Catherine Murphy.

just for sport

This is the first of a serious of identical pieces. Essentially it is a maquette for a piece that I envision being fabricated in a mirrored acrylic plastic. This piece embodies what I am dealing with and thinking about doing for my thesis. At this point I feel that I have begun to branch out from this piece but it is still something that i am considering pursuing in one form or another.

metameaning

 These are photos of a sculpture that I had in the Mason Gross Annual this year. I am very pleased with this piece although I believe I was taking a risk with the use of the American flag balloon in the sense that it could be interpreted in a very direct way. The balloon was a later addition to the piece and essentially I was looking for something gaudy that would react to the simple beauty of the rest of the piece. This piece does not use any nails or glue and is held in place by gravity. I came upon this idea sitting in my studio at LAB. I had a couple pieces of scrap wood laying around and I stacked the first two pieces, was intrigued by it and then added the top horizontal piece. I've been really interested in this process of stacking and balancing things. I think it is a result of internal temptation and my own desire to see just how far I can physically push a material to the brink of collapse. It leaves one with a deep feeling of tension and longing for release.

oh, it's alright over

interpretation

So now that I have a week to figure out my proposal I'm stressin' a little, as I'm sure everyone else is. I've been thinking more about my recent sculptures and how I want the work to move towards thesis. A lot of my materials are found. I just had a conversation with my friend Adam, who also works with found material, about what attracts us to objects and why. The material that I use are engrained with their own history. They have their own meaning and I enjoy making material conform or react to the situations that I put it in. A lot of the time I just collect objects that catch my eye. They sit around my studio for a while, sometimes a year or more, and then all of a sudden I realize exactly what I want to do with them. I really enjoyed James' comment at BHQF about taking two things, facefucking them together, making a metaphor and that's art. I don't think you could break that down into anything simpler. So that's something that is important to me. Considering how materials, when combined, can be interpreted by a viewer. I also find it interesting that interpretation and understanding are completely reliant on experience. My sculpture of a goat skin stretched and tied around a large solid block of wood would be interpreted by someone from an urban environment completely differently than someone who grew up on a goat farm. I suppose this is obvious, and maybe redundant, but I think it's really interesting and something I would like to focus on a little bit more.

flaaaasssssshhh

I can't do anything I want with this blog because none of the computers have the latest version of FLASH.

Anyway, I feel like I have been getting side tracked from my thesis. I have been painting a lot, which isn't a bad thing, but i think of it more as practice or experimentation and less guided. I've given up on a couple sculpture ideas due to lack of funds etc. One of them has manifested itself in a new form and I was really pleased when Allison told us we should worry if our work comes out the same way we originally envisioned it. I've come to realize that I do have very strong vision when it comes to forming a piece in my mind but they always change along the way. I think it is important to work with materials instead of force materials. My recent sculptures have been addressing material symbolism and aesthetics. I recently discovered the work of Katie Bell and almost pooped my pants out of excitement. CHECK THIS SHIT OUT.

...if I had to marry an artist based on their work.

I've finally started working on some prints. It's been a couple months since I've printed anything. I started with some simple citrasolv transfers of an image that i've had sitting in my studio. I basically turned it into little postcards to send to friends in France.

been away

I've been crazy busy lately and haven't had much time to actually sit down and write about what has been going on. Thesis has been going well and I am just excited to be in the studio and working although it never feels like I spend enough time here. The last actual thesis class was a couple weeks ago when Group A was doing critiques. I had already shown two of the three pieces to a different discussion group that I am a part of and I got some really amazing feedback from them. However, when I showed the pieces in Thesis crit no one except Catherine Murphy had anything to say about them. It was a little annoying to be sitting there quietly with nobody saying anything, especially when I am one of the main contributors to everyone else's critiques. At least, I had already gotten good feedback on the work before Thesis.

We spent the next session "speed curating" the show which was an exercise in futility. I do not see the point in "curating" when Gerry tries to push all of the submitted work into the show anyway. The gallery that my team curated turned out great because we would not except additional pieces for the room and we made sure all of the work had enough space to breathe. Overall I have never been satisfied with the BFA shows. There are always a few good pieces that address the theme and are executed well, but most of the work is shit. It seems like they pick a theme to guide people but end up hanging a lot of work that is completely contradictory to the theme or ignorant of it. Better luck next year right?

Yesterday we all went to Brooklyn which, once again, was an exercise in futility. We spent close to 3 hours on the bus before my group finally got to the first studio. We talked with Allison for about 30 minutes and then got back on the bus, drove around for another hour and then went to the Bruce High Quality Foundation for 45 minutes. It was completely ridiculous and poorly planned. I would have much rather just spent the entire time at BHQ instead of being dragged around Brooklyn for several hours. Better luck next year.

My work has been coming along nicely and I have begun to explore new ways of working in both sculpture and painting. I see my new sculpture work addressing stronger ideas and concepts and the paintings feel more like explorations grounded in aesthetics and process.

I have been reading a couple of books that have really touched on concepts that interest me. One of them, "Why is that Art?" discusses formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism and aesthetic theory. Another book, "Lyric Postmodernisms" is a collection of writings from 30 postmodernist poets. They talk a lot about form and content and I really enjoy some of the poetry, especially the work of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

nues

I keep hoping that things will slow down a bit but that doesn't seem to be working. I'm super stoked to have a thesis studio at CSB now and I've finally started working on some drawings, paintings and planning out a book based on some drawings I did in France.

Last night we had our first Make Food, Eat Art meeting and it was really exciting. It's nice to know that there are people at MGSA that are actually interested in art, making it and talking about it. It's gonna be a weekly thang and I can't wait for next week's meeting.

I've found a couple people who's work I like a lot. Melanie Authier's pallet is similar to mine and I love her use of form to define space. Her use of the materials is a lot looser than mine but it's definitely something I would like to explore more.

David M. Cook's drawings have some really interesting content. They remind me a lot of the masks of Dia de los Muertos. The spectral lines add a lot, something that I have used in the past in etchings and drawings.

lovin' the cross in this one

Andrea Wan does makes these awesome mini journal drawings and this one reminded me a lot of the book project I mentioned above.

Here's a digital image that I'm working on for the book that will eventually be silk-screened.

As far as the Welcome Back Show...I think Jason and co. did a great job curating and setting it up. There was a really diverse body of work which can sometimes be a nightmare. I was pleased with most of the work that I saw. The only piece I wasn't to excited about was Traci Molloy's photo piece. I thought all the thumb tacks were a little excessive for such small works. It also conflicted with the general vibe of the gallery it was shown in but I understand that was a room curated according to color. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. My favorite piece was Travis' Glory Days. It immediately spoke to me on an aesthetic level. It was a very strong piece and I feel that his use of materials and execution were well thought out.

I've started working on a sculpture and drawing for the MGSA Annual and I am excited to see what kind of work people submit for it. Hopefully it will turn out to be a stronger and more cohesive show than last year's Water. We'll see.

On a side note, tomorrow is the first Critical Mass of the semester and it is going to RULE. Everybody should be riding...especially like this V
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workin on leavin the living

It took a lot of frustrating days but I finally got set up with a studio at LAB. I've had some ideas floating around so I began locking them down into working drawings and seeking out materials to start making maquettes. I spent this past weekend in New York. On Friday I took the train up and met some people from my art history class, "Women and Art", to see some exhibitions in Chelsea by female artists. The first show we saw was Siona Brown's My Magic Carpet. Her work was based on her experience growing up as a member of an extremely small Jewish sect in Mumbai. She showed mostly gouache paintings on mylar along with some larger works on board and a tent installation. We were fortunate enough to be able to speak Siona in the presence of her work. To be honest I was a little unimpressed by what I saw and heard. I questioned her about a painting of a woman with a comic book speech bubble saying "Who goes there...Friend or Foe?" in regards to her decision to include text in a painting, especially text that beats the meaning of the work onto the viewer. Her response was not satisfactory and so I dropped the issue, not wanting to be an asshole to her in her own exhibition.

We moved on to some other shows down the street. None of them struck me as significantly interesting, they just happened to be shows by women artists. Eventually we stumbled into Mixed Greens, where I have seen several good shows in the past, and I experienced Stacy Fisher's work for the first time. I was not expecting to be so pleasantly surprised but when I turned the corner into the back room of the gallery I immediately fell in love with her work. Rory told me it wasn't the best representation of her work, she only showed 3 pieces, but the one I really liked was Green Sculpture with Painting.

After Mixed Greens we walked over to see David Byrne's Globe piece as well as the Social Media show at Pace. I really enjoyed this exhibition because it explored a lot of ideas that I had been thinking about over the summer while I was taking classes. One was a Sociology of Mass Communication and the other was a Cultural Anthropology class with a focus on Social Networking. The show at Pace explored the boundaries of public and private on the internet and within social networking platforms.

After Pace our class was free to go so Rory and I walked around the corner to the Edward Thorp Galery opening. I really liked the paintings by Anthony Masullo, Craig Taylor and Gary Petersen. Next we headed uptown to 45th st. and 9th ave. I forget the name of the gallery we went to but they were having an opening and it was very crowded. The artists was showing three paintings and a sculpture. We saw a guy who teaches painting at Rutgers that Rory asked about the show. Apparently the artist had a very large body of work that had been leading up to this show and at the last minute decided to cutback and only show a few pieces. It was an interesting experience and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

After that, Rory headed back to New Brunswick and I headed uptown to the Bronx to stay with a friend. The next morning I woke up and walked to the Riverdale Metro North station. I walked up Independence Ave through a crazy-beautiful neighborhood with huge houses and well groomed yards. It did not feel like the Bronx at all. I stopped by Wave Hill Park, since it was a Target sponsored free admission day, and took in one of the greatest views of the Hudson River. Eventually I made it to the Riverdale stop and hopped on a north bound train headed for Beacon.

An hour and a half later I arrived at Beacon and began walking to Dia Beacon, an amazing sculpture museum that I have been waiting a long time to visit. The museum was everything I expected it to be. It houses works from a lot of artists I admire including Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, Joseph Beuys and many more. They also had a special exhibition showing the work of Blinky Palermo.

It was really great to get away from New Brunswick for a few days and see a bunch of great art. The following are some photos of my studio and random things I have been working on...

horse realm

drawings, cardboard and wood maquette for a series of wall sculptures

sketch for a new glass and wood piece

sketch for a potential sculpture for the MGSA Annual

drawing for a wall sculpture, each line would be a sheet of cardboard.

side view of the wall sculpture (should be rotated 90 CCW)

INTERVU: Sal Forgione

Sal Forgione is a Design and Photography student who also experiments with mixed media collages.

from Pinhole Series

Ethan Sherman: How do you define the difference between commercial art and fine art?

Sal Forgione: I feel that commercial art, unlike fine art, almost always has a set of parameters and a sort of defined destiny, but that does not mean that there has to be a set of rules to follow.  I do find it to be a bit more difficult working with commercial art and art for informational purposes, but I always try and find a unique and interesting solution to these problems.  As for fine art, I believe that design and photography, if executed to near perfection, can be a fine art practice.  The ideas of fine art may not translate for some [people] right away through painting, sculpture, and drawing, but there is a way to define fine art. Some consider fine art as not design practices, but I would say that fine art, as opposed to commercial art, holds true the very own art’s intent.

ES: Design work often has a predetermined message, have you ever found it to be difficult working within a client's guidelines?

SF: Again, working with a predetermined message does have its flaws, but I try to make whatever I am doing interesting and make the message as clear as possible through my work.  It is difficult when the message that needs to be conveyed is rather broad, or quite frankly, idiotic or stupid, but again, referring back to design principles and the idea of the glass vase; what is more important? The actual content or the glass holding it. If you have a glass vase you can see the content and it does not compete with the vase, when you have an ornate gold or metallic vase to hold the contents the ideology is shifted from a focus on the vase rather than the contents. I use this principle in all of my design.

ES: How do you decide upon subject material for your photography?

from Churches

SF: Photography is a chance for me to see the world the way it really is through stills.  Capturing life in its current state and the idea of that photo being a stand still image of a moment is also in the back of my mind. Posterity is the most important part of photography in my mind, and what I capture through the lens is almost an after-affect.  Subject material is important, and I shoot a lot of architecture and people, probably for the sheer fact that in one hundred years no one living now will be alive, and in a few hundred years buildings I shot might not be standing.

ES: What inspired the Church and Hudson River series?

SF: I would have to say the same idea as is behind all of my photography, the idea of timelessness and the idea that ideology might be the same and live on, but structure and form change, i.e. the buildings of worship or wall street. 

from New York City Stills

ES: What medium or process do you enjoy the most or which field do you feel you have the most skills in?

SF: I feel that I have the most knowledge in design, and with design I am also learning new things everyday and it really helps my compositions for my other mediums and gives me an outlet to a plethora of ideas.

ES: Frame and setting are important elements in photography, how do they affect the decisions you make behind the lens?

SF: As mentioned previously, time and photography go hand in hand for me. As a photographer, it is important to realize the idea of the still, and hopefully having a narrative between the viewer and the image itself.

ES: What do you shoot with? Do you have a preference, film, SLR, pinhole etc?

SF: I really like the pinhole camera.  Most of the time I am shooting with a digital SLR but I really like the idea of slowing down and knowing that you have maybe a tenth of the material to work with as far as film and paper is concerned, and it gives me the opportunity to really focus on my work. Even when shooting with film or digital, I am always trying to give it a rustic and timeless look through Photoshop, giving my images a grainy look, or hand-made scratches, that’s probably why I like the blurry, gritty pinhole.

ES: How do you decide on the content of your mixed media collages?

SF: Content for my collages, unlike my photography and design, is [based] more on chance than anything.  I go into a collage with a white board, knowing it will be filled, knowing it might be cohesive or not, but that the canvas will get filled and whatever fills it might not be relative to juxtaposing content. It is also a nice break from commercial art and the computer to hand-cut and paste images. 

ES: Who influences your design and photography? Whose work do you look at the most?

San Antonio Meat Market Bag

SF: Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Stephan Sagmeister, and Milton Glaser for design. Elinor Carucci and Edward Burtynsky for photography.  I think all of these artists feed off of each other, even though some are not necessarily contemporaries of one another, they help me frame my work.

ES: Where/What would you like to be doing in ten years?

SF: I would like to possibly own an art gallery or a design studio.  I never really liked working for anyone per say, and hopefully I am given the opportunity to go in my own direction and shy away from the structured 9-5.

ES: Do you have any ideas for thesis? Will you expand or combine any processes?

ES: I’m not to sure what I am going to do for thesis, but I would like to use collage, the principles of design, and photography as a way to convey my message.  I might stick on the idea of timelessness or the actual timeline itself of events to make a cohesive piece.

ES: What inspired you to go to art school?

SF: Well I figured if I had to be in a structured institution for the next four years of my life it would have to be art school and a place that I can feel my personality and ideas working.  It is really nothing less than I expected and glad that I made the decision.

Hank Schmidt I want to be you when I grow up.