Observations of: The Observation of Perception, considered through Drawing
An exhibition at LUGAR DO DESENHO - JÚLIO RESENDE FOUNDATION, Porto
(23 September - 28 October, 2023)
The following presents several projects undertaken by the exposition's author between 2021 and the present within a larger collaborative research project called ‘The Observation of Perception, considered through Drawing’, hosted by i2ADS (Institute of Art and Design Society), Porto University. While each of the projects involves drawing, they have been developed and peer-reviewed before pblication on the Research Catalogue (RC). Two of the clusters of work concern projects – or a single project divided into before and after the result of a DNA ancestry test – hosted in 2023 by i3S (Institute of Investigation and Innovation of Health), Porto University, called ‘Call for drawing – Genetics and Identity’. The brief to the i3S project’s participants has been for each of them to produce drawings in response to their individual test results.
Video
While wall-based artwork tends to prioritise its physical and assumed finished basis, the idea of conducting the projects as research suggests interest in process, both mechanical and experiential. In order to convey to the viewer some awareness of such basis, the exhibition includes four short video clips from the projects, and QR code links to the projects’ publications on the RC.
Diagram
In this instance, the artistic research is underpinned by some interest in academic theory. While such theory is variously evident in the drawings, a single dominant trend of the work may noticeably be towards the diagrammatic. Despite what may or may not be conveyed by drawings as diagrams, first and foremost they should project the ethos of diagram, or in other words diagram as part of their aesthetic.
Becoming
The six main pieces of work, around which smaller drawings are grouped, oscillate between drawing and painting. Such oscillation is their final iteration, when they had started more evidently as drawings and moved towards paintings. Ideally, the aim would be to capture this process of becoming. Their sense as paintings is partly due to the fact that their top-most physical layer of stretched clear plastic has enabled drawing with oil paint.
Action camera
A continually iterated image common to each of the six main works is a thin black vertical rectangle, which is in fact the imploded illusory rectangle of a small square black action camera worn in front of the eyes to enable the simultaneous audio-visual recording of the process of drawing, while drawing. This illusory image, that has become a visual image in either ink or oil paint in/on the drawings, is incessantly spoken of in the video clips. In the main, the action camera acts as a material and mechanical device between the artwork in process and the artist, which both determines and extracts aspects of mainly visual perception that re-presents as video.
The Gaze
The device of the action camera therefore suggests the orientation of visual perception in effect between the seer and the seen, or object and gaze. Theoretically, a main idea besides that of diagram is of the object, as well as the seer, as equally projecting the phenomenon of the gaze. While gaze is more commonly associated with the human and the animate, on this occasion the speculative point of interest is that the object, or objects, as having this capability. Since drawing is mostly a material medium, as well as being visual, the extent to which one’s choices of materials are personalised lends some increased validation to the idea of their projecting their gaze.
Coffee and Petri dish
In the two ancestry works, a dominant medium is that of coffee in its capacity to stain; this when the origin of coffee in the 15th century is in Africa, the region of the globe in which the earliest remains of Homo sapien have been found. The use of a hand-held Petri dish hovering over visual-material accumulations of interest is to further suggest the relationship between the idea of cellular mutation, the associative interaction of materials, and, by framing them, the artist as thinking and creating subject within the work substituted by aspects of the work’s own looking out towards the viewer.
The exhibition was curated by Paulo Luís Almeida
A exposição é composta por seis obras que oscilam entre a pintura e o desenho. Resultados unitários de desenhos de apoio de cada obra. A exposição é também acompanhada por um vídeo que apresenta os processos criativos de cada obra. Os QR Codes permitem ao espectador o acesso aos projetos integralmente publicados no catálogo da Pesquisa
Embora a afirmação do projecto de investigação organizado pelo i2ADS (Instituto de Arte e Design Sociedade - Universidade do Porto), seja a percepção visual, vários outros sentidos associados podem ser observados numa prática envolvente e através dela, cada um destes projectos individuais tem o seu próprio conteúdo.
Dois dos projectos respondem à questão do ADN ancestral, o antes e depois, mostrando assim os resultados do teste de ADN, apresentados no concurso de desenhos sobre o tema do i3S (Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde), da Universidade do Porto. Em todos os casos, a linguagem visual é resposta a ideias externas apoiadas pela leitura e escrita académica. Um motivo comum nas obras é a imagem ilusória implodida de uma câmera de ação, que está ali porque terá registado aspectos do processo da obra. Os suportes das obras são eles próprios materiais comuns: papel toalha, utilizado como cobertura temporária nos restaurantes do Porto; papelão ondulado, café derramado; folhas de plástico transparente devido à sua capacidade de homogenizar elementos de desenho, tinta, colagens e tinta a óleo. O café passa assim de uma associação doméstica para uma associação à sua origem, África, embora alguns milénios depois, mas junto com as primeiras evidências do Homo sapiens.
LUGAR DO DESENHO - FUNDAÇÃO JÚLIO RESENDE
Responsibility towards the Void. Painted drawing on newspaper attached to crumpled tablecloth paper, oil paint on clear plastic overlay, 92 x 123.5cm, 2021
Out- of- Af- ri- ca- / Ne- an- der- thal-. ink, coffee stain, acrylic, index cards on crumpled tablecloth paper; oil paint on clear plastic overlay, 100 x 124cm, 2023
Liberty with Logic (Panel 1). Ink, coffee-stain and filing cards on crumpled tablecloth paper, oil paint on clear plastic overlay, 100 x 121cm, 2022
Floored/Flawed Subject. Dermatograph pencil, acrylic, paper collage on cartridge paper and crumpled tablecloth paper, oil paint on clear plastic overlay, double-panel, 140 x 92cm, 2022
Phantom Presence. Acrylic on crumpled tablecloth paper, tracing paper, acrylic on corrugated cardboard, oil paint on clear plastic overlay, 100 x 113cm, 2022
Contingent Pocket. (from the project, 'Liberty with Logic') Ink, coffee-stain and filing cards on crumpled tablecloth paper, oil paint on clear plastic overlay, 100 x 121cm, 2022