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Throughout our daily lives we go through a mixture of emotions, some happy and some sad. Many people express their emotions and thoughts in various ways. From historic artists to modern painters, all these people have used art as a way to explore and express their inner feelings through their paintings. Some of the paintings from these artists sometimes involve a background story of their personal life. In this essay, I will be exploring how has the setting of a story been fundamentally used in portraying a feeling of loneliness by the artist within the last ten years. Furthermore, I will be looking into the work of artists such as Dawid Planeta, Levi van Veluw and KangHee Kim to relate to each of their work to show if they express feelings through the settings, to portray the feeling of loneliness. Also I would look further into how their art is part of them expressing their inner emotions and will delve into their background history of the artist. Do the artists get inspired by thing that happens in their day to day life?
Dawid Planeta
Levi van Veluw
KangHee Kim
I will be looking at the personal side of how the artist Dawid Planeta feels about his work. His work is mainly based around the topic of depression. All his recent work includes depression and a figure of a man that is featured in all his work. The man inside his artwork represents the artist. For example in the artwork of ‘face of fare’, there is a small man holding a torch light and looking towards a huge rhino. This larger and dominate object is a pattern throughout his work. The dominate rhino is infact the depression and he tries to make it seem as though the man is very alone. One challenge at a time, I try to turn into the face of fear and tell it “you are not my master, you are the product of myself and I am your master. [1] This is a quote from the artist and this is something the artist has said as he is someone who personally suffers from depression and he wrote this to portray the emotions and feelings he feels through his work. This image that he created he wanted to make the viewer feel the emotion of loneliness by placing the character in the art to be isolated in a huge environment. Overall, this artist has use colours and setting within his art work that demonstrate that the artists use the sense of the surrounding environment to portray the feeling of loneliness. This artist has also 1
experienced depression which is why he tries to implement the feeling more of the viewers understand. Here I have been influenced to create a piece of work in the style of Dawid Planeta. His work used the setting to create the feeling of loneliness. Therefore, similarly I created a piece of work similar to Dawid Planeta. My piece contained a scale up of the parrot, and the glowing eye. The greyscale theme gives the darker feel to this picture and the secluded background help create that lonely atmosphere.
My second artist is Levi Van Veluw. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam and I believe that he uses the nature in his surroundings as an inspiration for his work. Levi uses things like pebbles, moss, forestry and bark as well as his own body in his artwork. There is also only one subject in his art work, though the subject dominates the page. Levi studied at the Artez Institute of Arts in Arnhem and has won numerous awards such as the Photographer of the Year Award at the IPA International Photo Awards in the U.S and the public prize De Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst prijs at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Levi Van Veluw uses real things such as moss, stones and forests in an unreal situation, such as a forest growing on a man and on himself. His work is of a dark tone, in my opinion, not through colour scheme rather than facial expression, in his photos he almost always looks unhappy, "drawn from many of the elements that have populated his previous works, each intimate chamber explores dark themes of fear, loneliness and loss of control, forming a stenographic and surreal landscape that stimulates the senses." [2] The artist has used a portrait image and has covered it in trees and greenery. This looks very interesting and is very effective because the overcrowded imagery of three dimensional trees and grass means you cannot really are the portrait of the male subject clearly. This means the audience have to look closely to identify the eyes of the model. In this art work there is a lot of dead greenery. The brown colour of the trees indicates the trees and grass are dead. The artist has created the branches and tress to edge off the model to look three-dimensional. The setting of the artwork looks as if the scene is from a 2
bird’s eye view. The words I would use to describe the image are abstract and imaginative. From this piece it’s clear to say the artist has really been creative and used a lot of imagination to create a beautiful piece of art like this. The reason why I chose to use this picture is because of the abstract imagery. The piece is very crowded but yet there is a good amount of empty space that helps make the portrait look balanced. It is very over crowded due to the detail of the three dimensional trees and landscapes that are arranged on the model. In our current day, many of the things we are seeing, from posters, books and magazines all have been adapted via Photoshop. However, the majority of the thing you see in Levi Van Veluw work is actual objects that get stuck on to the model or on him. This is more traditional way of working and the images are much rawer. Which means less editing is needed. The pebble face image creates the mood of sadness. There are very basic colours used within this piece of work. The third and final artist I’m going to look at is KangHee Kim. This is a female photographer. Unlike Levi Van Veluw, KangHee Kim uses Photoshop to manipulate the pictures to create the illusion of beautiful scenery is peeking through the cracks. Brooklyn-based photographer KangHee Kim never ceases to amaze us with her saturate, eclectic photographs. Kim’s images usually show surprising fragments of the urban landscapes. Focusing on vibrant colours and unexpected compositions, the photographer continually experiments and plays with her vision to explore something new. With an endless flow of ideas, Kim creates a fascinating kaleidoscope of bold images that all together create an addictive visual diary. As the photographer describes, the humour and playfulness are the core of her creative practice as “life is already is already so serious and complicated in the first place”. [3] 3
Here is a piece of work that was created by KangHee Kim. This piece of work is cleverly created by using the crack within the wall to reveal something more beautiful on the inside. Compared to the other three artists this artist has used uplifting and bright colours in the majority of her work, yet the sunset and grey scenery helps set the mood of a story. There are many ways people can interoperate her work. How I see her work still shows a sense of loneliness, the cracks and the images she uses are very secluded and empty. This is a complete different style of work compared to the other two we’ve seen. Yet, each artist pulls towards the feeling of loneliness. This artist doesn’t really explain much about her inspiration of where she gets her ideas from. She doesn’t really explain about her life history. But I’m sure the artist expresses the way she feels within her work. Her work shows she’s really likes the very bright splash of colour which is why she is so unique and stands apart from the other artists that we’ve looked at. To conclude, the setting of a story has been fundamentally used in portraying a feeling of loneliness by the artist. We can see this by looking at the artists we have evaluated within this essay. If you look at Dawid Planeta he has used the environment throughout his work and has been able to create the most strongest and clear imagery of depression and aloneness. We can also see this because he relates his work as a way of expressing his own feelings about the way he has suffered from depression. This is one of the strongest artists that I have evaluated. Nevertheless the other two artists, Levi Van Veluw and KangHee Kim have shown two different ways of working. One artist works with real life objects and captures them and creates 3D portraits. And the other artists use photography and manipulate them in a creative way. Both have strongly used locations and environment to help form not only a story but build emotions and get close to the work. These artists create feeling of loneliness through colour and scenery. Furthermore they also do build more emotions as well. This shows that work can be interoperated in many different ways, but how the artist wants the audience to feel also can be strongly portrayed by simply using strong scenery and colour.
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Bibliography [1] https://www.artstation.com/dawidplaneta [2] https://www.designboom.com [3] http://kanghee.kim [4] https://blazepress.com/2017/05/artist-battles-with-his-depression-through-darksurreal-Paintings/ [5] https://www.designboom.com/art/levi-van-veluw-the-relativity-of-matter- installation03-14-2016 [6] http://www.fubiz.net/en/2017/05/02/mysterious-dark-paintings-by-dawid-planeta-2
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