Getting a foot in __ Luke Fennell: September 2012

Friday 28 September 2012

Menashe Kadishman Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin isn’t a Holocaust museum; it’s a museum of German Jewish history, telling a complex story about the contribution of German Jews to German life and of the relationship between the Jewish and German identities of German Jews. However, of course, the Holocaust is always present and the Museum is a solemn, sad and reverential place. It is a very quite place, people hardly talk and when they do, they talk in whispers.
The permanent exhibition is on the second floor, the first floor contains a temporary exhibition space and access to one of the architectural voids that pierce the building. There are five voids, angular holes rising up through the floors, they represent “what can never be exhibited”, the history and humanity lost with the murder of the Jews. Three of the voids are inaccessible, you look into them through slit-like windows, the other two you can walk into; they are the Void of Voidness, a disquieting unheated tower with a heavy metal door, lit only though a narrow window near the roof and the Void of Memory, which you enter through the first floor temporary exhibition space.
There is an art work in the Void of Memory: Menashe Kadishman’s Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves). I think it is the most effective and shocking piece of public memorial art I have seen. The first part of the art work you experience is the noise, a loud clanging, like heavy chains, that fills the exhibition space you walk through to get to the void. After the quiet of the museum’s permanent exhibition the noise is violent, disturbing and foreboding. As you enter the void, you see the floor is covered with metal faces, crudely sculpted faces made from flat heavy disks of iron. The features are cut out: two eyes, a nose and an open, horrified mouth. There are ten thousand of them, piled four or five deep.
Amazingly, people walk on the faces. The surface is very uneven and the faces shift as they are stepped on so walking is obviously difficult and the walking people are hunched, stumbling as they trample on the faces. As the faces shift about under foot they clang one off the other causing the noise that echoes off the high concrete walls of the void.
The effect is devastating: the shuffling figures of people walking on a multitude of screaming metal faces.
[Picture from http://www.jmberlin.de © Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Marion Roßner]

Being influenced by menashe kadishman's fallen leaves exhibition .. amazing idea and piece ... incorporates the senses in an eerie light ..

Monday 24 September 2012

In a fit of madness i've decided to join the LIT football team , on one side of things it'll give me a deeper insight to my project "To Sense My Space".
what better place to determine your space than on the football pitch !

May do a few studies of the human form .. looking to artists such as Leonardo and Andreas Vesalius..

http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/images/masters/vesalius.html

Friday 21 September 2012

Fantastic piece of animation by Christopher Kezelos ... love the textures and subtle emotions portrayed in simple forms... link below... Check It Out !!

http://shortlistfilmfestival.com/films/maker

Looking to the designer Alexander McQueen's Alien Heels.

I love the shapes, colours, patterns and textures created by the artist.

Thursday 20 September 2012

David Adey has taken the iconic graffitti artist Shepard Fairy's obama print and re-moulded it into a vibrant journey for the eye.

Looking at the intricate collage work of artist David Adey today ..

This inspiring work has given me a lot of ideas for my sketchbook and even possibly a piece ..

who says shapes have to be blocky , i plan to explore intricate patterns , grometric and abstract ...

i'll look to cubist artists for inspiration ...

Wednesday 19 September 2012

REsearch

Adam Beane ... beagan sculpting in 2002 with the development of his on unique material CX5 .. a material as soft as clay when warm but as hard as plastic when cooled.

i love the expression and emotion he manages to capture in his minute pieces

A turn ...

As interesting as hands initially present themselves .. i'm debating changing paths on my project ...

However i will be still basing it on touch , just more orientated to how we figure our space in relation to touch , how we cover the ground ... by walking ... or even by our first means of transport as a toddler "crawling" ...

I'll be lookin to artists such as Durer and Michelangelo ..

Start at the renaissance and work my way through..

Albrecht Durer's sketch of feet

First attempt at photoshop ... didn't go as dire as i thought .. xD

Portrait of Camille Claudel (from 1884)

Sculptor of genius, early feminist, sister of Paul Claudel, Ambassador and academician, she was the mistress of Rodin.

I love this method of painting , it blovks the colour while giving a basic portrayal of the woman's face ... i will try to encorpoate this method into one of my works...

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Research...

GIVE A HAND

My inspiration for today is the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. He has created many exquisite works based on his perception of the human form; such famous works as the thinker and the kiss.

I'm focusing my study today on the artists hand sculptures.

I can't quite put my finger on it , but you have to hand it to Rodin. He has a certain magical ability to bring a piece to life. The contorted hand movement echoes a pain or struggle in the piece. Focus your attention to the angle of the thumb, a near impossible movement to re-create at your ease. The fingers are bent backwards clenched tightly. Is the piece bursting out of the ground/material, or is it recoiling in fear.

This is the energy and drama i wish to create in my future pieces.

My theme of my project is "To Sense my Space" ... so what better way to sense your space than by touch.

Things to do today ... sketchbbok and wire sculpture .. pics will be up later :D