Berlinde De Bruyckere

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Bruyckere’s work is extremely provocative. She manages to exhibit fragile and tender figures, transfixed in an unforgiving public display. Using wax, wool, branches, horse skin, antlers and many other materials, she builds an amorphic portrayal of our physical substance, our fears, our pain, our lust. I really love her work and how intriguing it is. There’s room for interpretation but regardless, the feelings are powerful when you interact with her work. I love the use of natural materials in her pieces, i think it enforces the endless flow of life, from one form to another. I think this is really the key to the work i want to be making. That the inevitability of physical decay is not something to avert ones eyes to, but rather be aware that we open our arms to all of life through the dissolve of our own.

Jenny Saville

jenny Saville is best known for her female nudes, presented in extreme and exaggerated states, either by mutilation or physical deformation. Her work has been seen as grotesque and objectified due to the stark nature of her imagery.

I feel that her work is provocative and again, focuses on a lesser known world. She says that she wants to be a painter of the modern woman, but not as we see from media portrayals. Her depiction of the modern woman is far more fragile and real. The use of her painting technique, similar to that of Lucian Freud, exposes the subject as a tender and abused creature, torn apart my the modern age and is almost ridiculed by the artist. However, i admire the intention and sincerity behind her work. I don’t think i want my work to be aggressive or insulting to the viewer, as if they have in some way allowed for the ignorance of death to be common opinion. But this brash exposure to Saville’s themes seems to be too invasive or accusational to the viewer. I think i want to be more playful, more inviting to testing the perceptions of physical death.

NAOKI SASAYAMA

Sasayama’s work focusses on the realism and the facets of life, which includes allusions to social and cultural ideas. The smooth and clean nature of his work gives an almost serene aesthetic. I appreciate this approach to his subject of life, as the affirmation of death. Some of his work is more evocatively representational than literal, but it’s all grounded in the exposure to scenes and daily occurrences, such as car crashes, that are of a graphic content. But there seems to be a sensitive side to the images, that it’s offensive tone is not brandished about like a manipulative ad campaign, but rather in an attempt to acquire a sense of sympathy from the viewer, that this graphic sight is familiar and taps into a part of us that we are perhaps too fragile in nature to acknowledge.

Why am i doing this?

At the start of this year, i didn’t know why i wanted to focus on the physicality of death. It was an interest i’d had for a while but there was little substance of thought to back it up with. Having myself had a near death experience and been exposed to physical changes and significant shifts in perception of death, It eludes me why death is something that’s tucked away in the corner of ones mind. That the desensitization of death in modern society dramatically impinges our ability to process death as a physical and inevitable reality. The mental process of death is a personal and impossible realm, and any attempt to try and depict it would be ridiculous. People would have to step outside their mind and attempt to conceive something that is not known to a living soul. And yet majority of the exposure to the physicality of death is through film and television, we think of film franchises like SAW or popular programmes like CSI, such things allow us to be amused by such a spectacle as torture and physical decay. Now i feel that my aim, is to created a relationship between the viewer and the nature of decay, that it is natural, it is inevitable, but it’s nothing to fear…

A Short vision

I’ve been greatly inspired by the stop motion animation technique used in this short propaganda film made by Peter Foldes in 1953. Although, the film focuses on the horror of atomic war, the animation technique itself, with the manipulation of the face being eroded by the bomb 3:45 minutes into the film, is a really powerful and disturbing combination of images. However, i want to try stop motion in my work, and experiment to see how effective the technique is to purvey the concept of decay. the beauty of stop motion animation is each image indicates a shift in time, and motion which would capture the essence of my theme.

Erin McCarty

http://www.erinmccartyart.com/