Will Cotton

Will Cotton is a contemporary artist currently working in New York City. He has earned his BFA Cooper Union and his MFA at New York Academy Art. He directed the Katy Perry “California Girls” music video. While he works with a variety of different mediums such as drawing, sculpture, and painting, Cotton’s work all center around candy in a very surreal way. For example, in some of his realistic oil paintings, he replaces the hair with candy ribbon. Also, he paints a lot of surreal Rubeniste paintings where the clouds are cotton candy.

I find his cake sculptures really intriguing and interesting too look at. I love how realistic they are. Yet, at the same time they seem absurd. I think that his color placement very well balanced, and the pastel colors give optimistic and light hearted feel. I think that his attention to detail in the icing really draws the viewer in and holds his attention. The cakes remind me of weddings. Perhaps, the massive amount of cakes collapsing on each other could be representing the absurd consumption of weddings. Another interesting part of the sculpture is that he is able to use very recognizable shapes in our culture to create a very organic shape.

Andreas Slominski

Andreas Slominski is a comtemporary artist who creates simple yet compelling colorful sculptural flowers. In his latest show in London he did a series of these flowers that represent the social and financial unrest throughout europe. He shows this through the bright, branching forms of the flowers that remind me of snowflakes or garden decorations. Their designs have a graphic form to them that comes from the combinations of basic shapes and lines that connect them and gives them a clear and almost playful feel. One piece has a two branches but only one has a blue flower. The other side looks as if it had been plucked off which is a metaphor for financial cuts taking place in many european countries. It is a simple shape created out of welded metal but it has a visually interesting pattern. Andreas Slominski creates relevant and current pieces that are a commentary on world events and are also artistically creative.

The Value of Sculptural Materials

One idea in the Matter chapter in The Sculptural Idea that I found intriguing was the section on “the intrinsic character of the material”. It is interesting to think about the physical and psychological effects of the materials themselves rather than the sculpture as a whole. The idea that the material of the sculpture gives another dimension to affect a response from the viewer in a similar way to the colors of a painting. However it is more complex than a painting in the idea that a piece of blue painted metal will create a different feeling than a blue strip of cloth. The artist can take advantage of the primal instincts a viewer will have toward the different materials and use them to craft a certain emotional response to the sculpture as a whole. Combined with color and form this allows the artist to create a very specific type of feeling for the whole piece. I find it very compelling to think about all of the possibilities an artist has with sculpture in order to elicit different emotions from a viewer and also how each person will interpret the use of materials differently.

James Norton

James Norton is contemporary artists whose work emphasizes the expansion of material available for current art. He is a sculptor who creates individual pieces rather then installation art out of a huge amount of cable ties. Most of his pieces are shapes suspended from the ceiling. I think the reason why I find them so fascinating is because of how typical his medium is. By essentially creating massive chains of something so simple, he creates something so complex. Ironically, his process is certainly not that trouble-free. You can tell in each piece that there is care, there is a pattern, and a plan used to complete the end result. He also uses color to add another level of complexity to his work. He seems to place balls of color within the larger object creating a nest and egg type thing that looks very natural. On the other hand the harsh and sharp lines of the cable ties give the pieces a somewhat aggressive and hostile effect. The safety of a nest or a home in juxtaposition to the severe material presents an interesting contradiction in my mind. Overall I like his pieces and appreciate his methods and outcomes.

David Phelps

David Phelps is the contemporary artist I have chosen to focus on for this study. He first came to mind because I saw one of his pieces in person on the OU campus last spring, and I remember loving it but I didn’t pay any special attention to whom the artist was at the time. So a couple of weeks ago when I saw I short article on him, with the piece I had seen, I became intrigued and decided he was an artist I really liked. His sculptures are usually huge and cast in bronze. They are traditional in the sense that they are realistic depictions of humans, and bronze is a very traditional sculpture medium. However he is untraditional in his posing and placing of the models. Each is in a position, or doing something in the water. For instance in his work, “Oarsman” it is simply a man rowing a boat, but he makes it interesting by placing it as it would actually occur in water, on land. Instead of the man rowing across a lake, he appears to be out for a relaxing afternoon on a brick walkway in Tennessee. So as beautifully realistic and relaxing as his sculptures are, they are juxtaposed on completely unexpected terrain, giving the artwork a fun and unexpected twist.

It is or it isn't?

Throughout the presented stories, what I was most intrigued with was the argument posed: How do you define what is sculpture and what is instillation? I am of the opinion that they are almost one and the same, but I am sure there are artists out there who view themselves as sculptors and would be appalled to be called ‘instillation artists,’ and likewise many instillation artists whom would never refer to themselves as sculptors. However if this line between the two really does exist, how and where should it be drawn? In the story on matter, matter is referred to as pretty much any sculptural tool, but to be defined as a tool representative of sculpture is restricting, because many of the materials described as matter are used in other areas of art. This whole idea brings back the topic from the beginning of the year where we tried to discover what was really drawing, for instance, it could be many things, not just drawing with a pencil on some paper. So what is really happening here and with every aspect of art, is that the lines are starting to blur. The edges and definitions we have used are starting to disappear, and calling something a ‘drawing’ or ‘sculpture’ has become a much more defining and hard to accomplish task. The role of the artist has started to complicate itself because we no longer even know an exact title for what it is we’re doing anymore, which if you think about it, is kind of hilarious.

Damien Hirst

A contemporary artist who does sculpture and installation work is Damien Hirst. Hirst is a British artist who is an active member in YBA or Young British Artists. His work circles around the theme of death. Some of his most famous work the materials are simply a huge tank full of formaldehyde and a dead animal, including a shark, sheep, and cow. Some of the animals were even dissected before being put into the tank. Much of Hirst's work in very controversial and he is a controversial person as well after making some insensitive jokes about the 9/11 attacks against the twin towers in the United States. One piece of his, a rotting cow and bull, was pulled out of a show due to the inhumanity and unsanitary quality of the piece. Health officials banned the piece because they feared visiters might even throw up when they saw the piece. Hirst's other works include "For the Love of God", a platinum cast diamond encrusted skull that cost around $14 million dollars to make with an asking price of $50 million. If this piece were to ever sell during Hirst's life it would be the most expensive piece sold while the artist is still alive. The piece was inspired by Hirst's mother who asked him once, "For the Love of God what are you going to do next?" While I don't particularily like Hirst as a person, he has done well with his work and is successful with his sculpture and is known throughout the world; He is even the worlds richest living artist. He uses all materials from from dead bugs, pills, formaldehyde, and diamonds to make his sculptures