Moving on from my last post on the ubiquity of surface and
the primal nature of the artistic urge.
Surfaces and skins may represent
impenetrable barriers or boundaries for our physicality yet
are easily penetrable by our vision. While we all
perceive our reality as external the actual business of vision or
sight takes place inside our heads in much the same way as a
photograph takes shape inside our camera.
Knowing this fact allows visual artists to play with our
mechanism of vision to persuade our senses of the
impossible.
From asphalt to ice.
Notice how no one is willing to test the hypothesis that
the road surface is definitely still there!
The real value of art such as this is to lead us to question and
become more aware of the active role we play in coding our
reality. It also illustrates how our vision works in concert
with our other senses to regulate our interaction with our
environment.
On another level these pieces are a powerful demonstration of
the power of art. Of how art can literally force us to see
something that is not there physically, yet our bodies and minds,
our deepest instincts, beg to differ.
The manipulation of the light signature of the surface i.e. art,
provokes a reaction within our minds that in
effect influences us to see beyond the surface, replacing
it with an entity that causes changes in our perception of and
interaction with our environment, which illustrates our
subjectivity in constructing our reality, and the plasticity of the
superficial.
Gotham City?
This is powerful visual art, but all art in effect takes
us beyond the surface. Books, music, photography open windows
which allow us to see what we will see.
Reality or illusion?
Who decides?