A Conversation
Inside the Smudges Studio
This book documented an interview with Yan Ping (Amy) about her works in the design studio “How to Encounter Smudges, Surfaces and Surblime”. Questions were asked by the studio from aspects of idea, method, and process through the development of the work. For more details, please go to: http://pingsmudgessurfacessublime.tumblr.com/assignments Note: “SSS“ stands for Smudges studio “YPA” stands for Yan Ping (Amy)
SSS: Painting is a type of surface, and our vision is the first and only sense that encounters it. How do you interpret the topic “Looking at looking“ through your work?
YPA: My work is a portrait of myself painted in pencil, hung in the same height as mine. In terms of the topic looking at looking, literally, when audience looks at the work, he/she in the same time looks at “me� staring at them. But when the content of the painting is created by the content in reality, and replicated by a real me standing beside, audience starts to question the subject and object of the staring. And the time of the looking is extended from the present moment to the whole process of creating, presenting and performing.
SSS: As a figurative work, what method did you use in order to pull apart the elements of it as required? YPA: I moved away from the leading idea of “self“ which lies in the content, to the materials which are put together to make a piece of painting. When considering the painting as an object, it consists of lead, which came off from pencil, and paper, which served as a media to hold. Therefore I extracted the lead from the original drawing and piled it up.
SSS: I understood you brought your camera with you all the time and recorded those surfaces which encountered your daily life, what did you take? YPA: I captured those surfaces that showed themselves in a verified appearance. They were either marked by people deliberately, or eroded by nature though time. I presented the images in a suggestive, fragmented and painting-like way as a series of documentary of the becoming of the surfaces.
SSS: Abstraction can refer to an object or image, which has seen distilled from the real world. How did you abstract the former works?
YPA: Instead of doing 3D versions of the images, I imitated the process of making and put it into other materials, especially those used for drawing and modelling. For example, I die-tied a piece of white cloth, in order to show how substances change each other with the help of human force, which is used in the making of patterned-concrete surface as in one of the images. For me, the process of abstracting is the process of replicating, paralysing, comparing, and recreating.
SSS: After talking about images and the pulling apart of the images, surfaces and the abstraction of the surfaces, let’s turn to the concept of time, what’s the relationship of time and space? YPA: A space is only alive when there are people in it. So I spent a period of time in the space and collecting dirt from it. Those marks left on my body proved my presence as well as the living time of the space. Here, dirt is the direct media for me to physically connect to the space, while I am the media to document time in the space.
SSS: By going to a site and transforming it, what did you learn? YPA: The experience of really going to a place is different than the existing knowledge. All elements that can’t be implicated in images or videos such as time, distance, and senses indicate the importance of site-specific design. Real life is always richer than imagination, and within site visit can the imagination be fulfilled. Perhaps that led me to the idea of thinking the site as a grown-up place which finished the process of splitting itself.
SSS: You said this is a documentation of site, but it is visually misleading. Can you tell me why? YPA: I think the composition of elements in the image is important. It decides what is important, what is hidden, what is the artist way of seeing. It can be considered as the narrative of the image. Therefore void, among all framing techniques, is one of the most suggestive and rich-in-meaning ones. It’s the empty that weighs everything.
SSS: What do you want to comport within the series of similar pictures?
YPA: In terms of the layout of the whole work, I wanted to try out a different method of showing work: Instead of showing a moving video, I separated it into frames and aligned them in a line. The outcome shew a new strange, delicate and fragmented experience by the viewing though moving. It’s no longer the meaning of content that caught attention but the understanding emerged though time and behaviour.
SSS: Going through a rich experimental class not only in the aspect of thinking but also behaving at Dance House, what do you think was the most impressive?
YPA: I think I learned that experience can be in multiple ways, such as putting limitation on doing things. Additionally, I tried to work intuitively and see how the outcome went. And that led me to the series of work exploring the difference in presenting within scale, media, layer and quantity. Through experiments, I found it interesting to put sound and still image together to show the conflict and give the sense of time.
SSS: I see each work was inspired by a text, a movie, an exhibition, a site and the Blindside Gallery, what did you find most engaging? YPA: I explore the technique of involving audience, which was really engaging. The viewer was controlled in their way of seeing and walking either voluntarily or unconsciously. Such technique can be used in exhibit planning so that people are physically approaching the works as well as understanding them freshly.
Untitled Mixed material on paper Rebecca Salter
SSS: Are there any precedents you particularly looked into? YPA: Yes. I enjoy looking at Rebecca Salter’s paintings that are the combination of eastern essence and western materials. And for the process of making, Sol LeWitt’s idea of works accomplished by others rather than the artist intrigued me. Ideas from thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze’s idea of “becoming”, Olafur Eliasson’s idea of time and space and Brian O’Doherty’s explanation of gallery space all helped me develop my ideas.
SSS: For your CCP project, what do you think were the most valuable for your design in the future? YPA: The thinking process of the work was no longer a single line of idea going straight forward, but bunches of ideas mapping the final view. The design process was filled with coming up with something, trying them out and abandoning some. Eventually, when the amount of work was over-load, I started to do a diagram which helped me narrowing them down into the main points which served my final design.
SSS: What do you think you’ve achieved and what do you still want to improve though out the whole semester?
YPA: In regard of achievements, I learned how to do researches by multiple ways such as reading, visiting and making; I explored different techniques that contribute to documentation, explanation and presentation; I have more profound understanding of smudges, surfaces and sublime in the sphere of interior space. In terms of defects, I wish I can be more organized and grow the ability to distil and polish works; I certainly need more readings to support my thinking; and I want to build up a pair of exploring eyes and a strong mind that keep questioning.
A Conversation: Inside the Smudges Studio Yan Ping (Amy) s3270131 RMIT Interior Design Studio 5 How to Encounter Smudges, Surfaces and Sublime
BIBLIOGRAPHY Massimiliano Di Bartolomeo - Dan Graham, Artist, Maybe Architect Simon Gregg - New Romantics: Darkness and Light in Australian Art James J. Gibson - The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception Simon O’Sullivan - Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation Brian O’Doherty - Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space John Berger - Ways of Seeing Emma Dexter - Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing Gillian Forrester - Rebecca Salter: Into the Light of Things Tania Kovats - The Drawing Book: A Survey of Drawing: The Primary Means of Expression Simon Morley - The Sublime John Carlin - Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings: 1986-1981 Elizabeth Grosz - Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth
EXHIBITIONS New12 - ACCA The Human Remains - West Space Gallery Easement - Blindside Gallery Relics - Blindside Gallery Looking at Looking: The Photographic Gaze - NGV William Kentridge: Five Themes - ACMI 13th April - 27th May Exhibition - CCP 10th February - 1st April Exhibition - CCP
BLOG Ping Smudges Surfaces Sublime: http://pingsmudgessurfacessublime.tumblr.com/
TECHNIQUE BOOK The Sur-blime: http://issuu.com/pingelingeling/docs/final_book