Art 21 | Memory curtis.gessner

The first art21 video that I viewed was entitled memory. I searched for a video that other people haven’t already written about, and the fact that this particular video was relevant to something that we did in class made me want to write about it. This section was just over 50 minutes long. 

Susan Rothenburg was the first artist interviewed. She goes over her introduction to life in the Midwest and how it differs and offers a completely different viewpoint on your life when compared to a more urban area such as New York. She mentioned a few of her memories, her roots in the 70s, her college and high school careers, similarly to the art exhibitions, I feel like the artist raises more questions than she answers. She doesn’t really talk too much about memory, but does go through her daily routine and what goes through her head a little bit when she is painting. Her style is very dark, she uses old brushes that are generally unclean, and puts some surrealistic elements into her works.

The next artist in the video was Mike Kelley. He was a much odder artist in my opinion; he said “all of our motivation is the result of some oppressed trauma”. I thought that this was a very interesting statement, and the various pieces he goes through confirm my suspicions. All of his works are very colorful, and the first piece he talks about is a series of videos that he records for a year, for 365 videos. He doesn’t take everything very seriously, and mixes styles. Mike also utilizes animals in almost all of his pieces. Watching the video makes me imagine that he could have been an excellent director, as it seems as though he’s constantly animated, and obviously enjoys his work. 

The next artist was a Japanese man named Hiroshi Sugimoto. He lives in New York and works mostly with light and shading. He actually uses an archaic contraption to take pictures which become his art. He combines photography with sculpture to some extent. This artist certainly takes advantage of memory more than the above two do; his works have a very historic feel to them. The photography he does is exclusively black and grey photography. Most of his work is very interesting and has a link to the past.

The last artist was the most interesting in my opinion. He worked in glass, and his name was Josiah McElheny. The first thing he mentions is his earliest experiences working with glass. He studied in Europe, and did not intend on becoming a glass artist. He makes a point of mentioning that during the creation of the piece you absolutely cannot touch it, due to the temperatures associated with glass work. His work is also very historical and linked to more scientific theories than have been mentioned before.

Similarly to other artists, this video did not answer any questions for me. As a matter of fact, I did not feel like it was particularly relevant to memory. However, I would watch the movie at length again.