OCAD DPXA Artist Residency Talk

1Helvetica;
;;;
-3140
Alex Fischer\
OCAD Talk March 11, 2014\
SLIDE\
Versions\
Hello!\
My name is Alex Fischer and I am a visual artist living and working out of Toronto, Canada.\
I was recently invited to do an Atelier at OCAD University as part of their Digital Painting and Expanded Animation program\'85 the workshop was set up for final year students who were putting together their thesis\'92 and it involved a series of critiques and lectures by each visiting artist.\
Uh, I was lucky enough to be one of those artists and for my workshop I put together a lecture on what it is I do and think about as an artist who has practiced and exhibited for a few years with commercial galleries.\ '85\
So yeah, as an introduction I should say that medium-wise I\'92m primarily a digital artist, though I also make prints and some mixed media assemblage type sculpture\'85 I make most of my work by layering and collaging images and materials digitally and then drawing and painting them together with a wacom tablet\'85\ '85Most of my digital images are also done with the intention of being printed and displayed in a space\'85 These are the Limited Edition Prints that I sell to make a living.\ '85I do try and made both the digital and the print versions a relevant part of my practice. So as you can see here,

Refer to slide
I like to customize each aspect\'85 '85from designing the frames\'85 to making a responsive website so that the works will look their best on any surface or screen\'85\ '85I consider myself.. sort of a digital-native since really I
grew up
making digital art\'85 It really wasn\'92t until I went to do my BFA in 2005 that I tried out and took seriously other traditional media like painting and photography '85. And even though those media became integral for how I think about images, I always came back to working digitally.\
SLIDE\
Nowhere To Fall, Following A Lead\
Um, I\'92m not going to show you much of my really early work but here are a couple just to give you an idea\'85\
Here are two digital collages from 2003\'85\
With the limits of the technology I had at the time these were limited to being tiny tiny tiny digital collages. Like 500 pixels square.. only a quarter the size of a instagram photo. Postage stamps now.. but they fit on a CRT monitor nicely a decade ago.
I wanted to start off sort of chronologically because while I don\'92t do talks very often, the decision to come here and speak has had me thinking about how I got to where I am, what I used to make and how and why that\'92s changed in the last few years.\
So ya, in the beginning\'85going to art school was always a certainty for me. I had a talent for drawing and rendering things growing up, family and friends supported me, and I was into new media stuff and kept making THIS sort of work that developed my interest in thinking about abstraction and media specificity and that sort of thing\'85\ '85Now because I did this sort of '93sophisticated\'94 abstract work when I was 16 I also developed AS huuge an ego as any young artists can\'85 aaand I wanted to mention that I used to have an ego\'85 because after a few years of practicing art outside of school it has certainly\'85 waned away a bit.
I think this is worth bringing up as many of you are probably about to graduate\'85. And while it\'92s important to maintain confidence about your art within a community of your peers\'85 The art world is big\'85 and once you\'92re out of school you\'92ll suddenly be vying for the same attention as every other artist out there. '85just because you make good work doesn\'92t mean people are going to pay attention.
Now, I don\'92t mean to get you Down right off the bat\'85 of course there are many different avenue\'92s you can take to have a life as an artist\'85
I\'92m going to talk mostly about what I do today, but I should mention now that\
I\'92ll going to put some links up at the end of this talk to some great resources which provide advice on how to pursue many those avenues\'85\ '85\
ya.. For me anyways\'85 even after selling lots of my thesis work\'85 I found I had to think hard about how I was going to practice and get on in the art world.\ '85Nobody was telling me what I should do, nobody was telling me what was important and so in basically just trying to maintain my authenticity and my career..\
most of what I kept repeating to myself were the sort of art school mantras of '93Keep working\'94; '93Pay more attention\'94; and '93Think again\'97(asking) am I really sure about that?\'94\
SLIDE\
Mantras\
When thinking about how I was going to do this talk I kept trying to think of the most important bits of wisdom that I might be able to share with you guys\'85 and the things that stood out the me most were those sort of mantra\'92s. '93Keep Working, Pay Attention, Think again.\'94\
The first one should be obvious, you have to work hard. Practice as much as you can.\ '85For me that means get up every day and put in the hours: Draw, Paint, experiment with filters and new software\'85 I try to always work more often than I think I have to.. and I sit at my computer more hours than I\'92d like to admit\'85 '96I read articles, magazines, and look through artists books and read theory and criticism all as part of my practice\'85\
It\'92s kind of a lucky profession in that even going to exhibitions and openings is something you can think of as part of your job\'85\ '85 and really looking at what others around you are making is probably a good idea\'85\ '85Then there\'92s the second manta\'85 '91Pay Attention\'92.\
I initially interpreted this as a sentiment that I should '91Pay Attention\'94 to my precursors.\ '85There are and were a whole lot of creative people who have worked through their own issues with art for a long time and just because they were of a different time doesn\'92t discount their achievements. Their efforts are what set the precedent for all the avenues of art today.\
This looking at and paying attention is something sort of leads into the third point\'85 which is\ '93Look again\'94, '93Think again\'94 and ask '93am I really sure?\'94\
It\'92s this checking myself and thinking about thinking that directs my research now. In Psychology the term for thinking about thinking is metacognition. In practice it means trying to understand ones own biases and the context by which we look at the world.
It\'92s been really humbling for me to pursue and think about this since it requires acknowledging that I\'92m working from some form of ignorance. '85I think this is also a relevant thing to bring up because we\'92re all working from ignorance of some respect. '85The idea shouldn\'92t be too dissuasive though\'85 if anything it\'92s equalizing\'85 that all of us, at the same time, are '91winging it\'92 in a sense.
SLIDE\
Harold Rosenberg Quote\
To give you an argument from authority for this theory of practicing within ignorance\'85
I\'92ll give you a quote from Harold Rosenberg who in his book on the de-definition of art recognized that while: '93The function of the university is to impart knowledge, [it\'92s important to remember that] art is not solely knowledge and the problems proposed by knowledge; art is also ignorance and the eager consciousness of the unknown that impels creation. No matter how cultivated someone is, every creator is in some degree a na\'eff, and relies on their particular gift of ignorance.\'94
One way of reading what Rosenberg\'92s saying here is that if we really knew everything, if universities could just feed information to us and we could retain All of it then we might all just be making the same art\'85 and how boring would that be\'85\
I mean\'85some people might even argue that this has happened to some degree (\'85we\'92re all so similar today in that we\'92ve pursued degrees in art and more or less read the same theory\'85)\ '85But luckily retaining everything isn\'92t the way our brains work.\ '85We all get to work from our own
more or less
unique albeit naive perspective.\ '85\
Now\'85 I don\'92t want you to think that I\'92m encouraging you to be naive\'85
Really I think the more important point in that quote is about '93the eager consciousness of the unknown that impels creation\'94\
Recognizing ones ignorance, learning that you were wrong, is the
most
important part of learning\'85 It forces us into thinking about things in new ways.\
But of course.. practicing art within your ignorance could be still seem somewhat disparaging\'85 it\'92s certainly at odds with the artists ego, and It\'92s hard to sell when you\'92re pursuing a BFA or MFA and are supposed to be exhibiting some knowledge and expertise of something\'85
Universities don\'92t escape this quality of ignorance and bias though\'85\
In all sorts of educational institutions there\'92s this paralleled uncertainty today about how to teach students for a future which no one can predict.
Technical proficiency and some historical context sure\'85 but really I think a schools best bet is to provide students the inclination to be curious.
Art school is a safe place to explore and recognize ignorance and then begin to think again in order to determine what you want to actually express and communicate.\
SLIDE\
Seeding Layers\
Now\'85\
For me, with my art\'85 what I\'92ve found is that I quite generally like to communicate recognition of some shared human experience\'85 like many of you I\'92m not content just to feel something. I\'92m compelled to work on things as a means of expression\'85 '85\
In terms of making an image, I often say that I work not From concepts but Toward concepts.\
Sometimes I\'92ll have something specific in mind when I start.. like a scene, or a gesture\'85 but more often than not I just open up a canvas and start throwing things around\'85\
I set out to fail in a way\'85. but I use the techniques that I\'92ve practiced until some concept emerges. Until the shapes I\'92ve put together start to suggest things\'85 '85I\'92m a bit like a painter in this respect in that a composition must emerge from the process\'85\ '85But '97at a point, I become more like a photographer\'85 I capture something that I\'92ve seen.. and then I crop and polish it to engage the ideas that I want to come across\'85\ '85And like I said, the ideas I like to touch on are often heavy with themes of introspection and understanding human experience\'85\ '85In order to reference these themes\'85 I like to draw on the rich history of aesthetics\'85 I include remnants of all types of media\'85 '85and then with the digital canvas I create a melting pot for all these things to come together.\ '85\
Now.\'85It\'92s impossible not to incorporate abstraction through this process\'85\
By mixing things together there is a unavoidable obscuring of media and an obscuring of the meanings and the world that the constituent parts represent. '85I use abstraction as a tool though\'85 it\'92s less explicit, less specific\'85
more interpretable and therefore more universal in its ambiguity\'85\
SLIDE\
Vasily Kandinsky Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 4, 1914\
This aiming for abstract '91universality\'92 is already sort of and an old romantic idea that artists have been playing with for a long time.
To bring in a little art history now, I want to talk about this Kandinsky that was at the AGOs '91Great Upheaval\'94 show that just closed\'85 '85 Kandinsky, already 100 years ago, spoke about the universality of images and the reduction of reality in all artistic representations of the world. He painted with the impression of all images being just combinations of different colours and shapes\'85 And he understood that while the world that a painting represents may disappear, that painting can still act as a school for the spectator\'85 that the observers open interpretation of abstraction, colours and shapes and artistic variation can make an image more universal\'85 and more approachable.\ '85I think this is why abstraction has taken off in the last hundred years.\ '85It promises to be timeless.\
SLIDE\
Malevich, Black Square, 1923\
Truly abstraction has become a common tool for artists since it reached it\'92s peak with the neu-avant-garde and their wholly universal images of extreme minimalism\'85 as seen here in Malevich\'92s '91Black Square\'92 of 1923.\

Refer to slide\ '85 This painting was meant to transcend the subjectivities of any particular era\'85\
But as a side-note:
I do find it a little funny that while digital art still has a stigma surrounding its temporality or impermanence\'85\
SLIDE\
Malevich, Black Square (Recent Photo)\ '85some of these paintings intended to be universal and timeless are showing their own impermanence\'85 as you can see here by how '91Black Square\'92 looks today.\ '85\ '85\
SLIDE\
Travess Smalley, Computer Graphic on Vinyl (5), 2013\
Jon Rafman, Auerbach Train, 2013\ '85\
To bring things into the present\'85 I\'92d like to show you how some digital image makers today are using abstraction.\ '85Like with these works by Travess Smalley and Jon Rafman.\
Smalley and Rafman often provide beautiful psychedelic views of our contemporary landscape. They utilize the public understanding of digital motifs and make works that are firmly self-conscious of when they fit into art history. They are very much of the now\'85\ '85\ '85 The trend with post-modernism in general is to deliberately mix different artistic styles and media, and exhibit a self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions.\
With post-modern
digital
artist then\'85 there\'92s plenty to pick from since digital images can so easily reference the qualities of many different traditional media\'85\ '85Scanned photographs, paintings, generative textures, and 3D models are all one in the same when saved as a jpeg. '85This to me makes the digital canvas seem like a
most
natural melting pot for post-modern image making\'85\ '85It\'92s worth mentioning briefly when talking about post-modernism and deliberateness\'85 that while many types of artists actually work with digital images\'85 it\'92s not until there\'92s this
intentional
blending of media on the digital canvas that an artist usually considers themselves a digital artist.\
SLIDE\
Shane Hope, map_auto_expand_sym (detail), 2011\
Rafa\'ebl Rozendaal, Into Time 13-08-14, 2013.
Now\'85 I do find it a little funny showing a slideshow of digital artwork\'85 since it\'92s kind of like Im just going through my tumblr with you\'85
I do want to quickly show you a few more though..\
and I should let you know\'85 um, if you see something you want to check out later\'85 this whole slideshow is actually a website and the url will also be included at the end so you can find it later\'85\ '85\
To continue\'85 '85Really Uh\'85 I\'92m not going to explain or talk about stuff like net-art, gifs, or video\'85