A Space To Move Into
Outside The Rectangle
During unit 1, my core practice was in the process of canvas making and breaking. It was to prepare altered space to paint, however peers saw it as solid object in terms of expended painting. I still wanted my process to create a space without boundaries. So I tried to look into elements in my work as colour, volume and material to develop my work.
I tried to pour paint directly or use 1 colour on a canvas but I had no fun. I realised that painting, for me, is about gesture or action of painting as a process of creating space rather than colouring. Through artist research on Paul Klee, Lucio Fontana, Anish Kapoor and Jessica Stockholder, I started to think colour can conceal characters of materials, yet applying to my work was not easy.
As for my view on canvas since I mainly used paper or board for painting before this practice, it is combination of wood and fabric which I like their flexible and analogue aspects. I liked the contrast that making process was carefully planned but breaking process was spontaneous. At the same time, canvas is technically 3D object and it has space between itself and the wall so I liked to use it as object containing space on it and behind it.
My ideas became scattered. I found it very challenging to visualise my perspective or my expression of building spaces. I confused between making object and creating space, or forgot the other during my process. Therefore I focused on the relation between my 3D work and the space around them as well as the capacity of the 3D structure.
Then I realised materials carry cultural references and some of them strongly contain general understanding related to people’s background. Especially, stretched canvas is often regarded as either illusion inside of 4 edges or the object for breaking its traditional purpose.