Aka: artists’ lib
By Té Baybúte
The Liberation of Expression was shown at
Gallery RFD's Art Movements Past and Present exhibition in Swainsboro, GA
The exhibition was open July 12th - August 4th.
the image hosted on the galleryrfd.org website
also, photos from the reception.
The Liberation of Expression
http://taxbax.net/libofexp
Té Baybúte
30x40 assemblage
$4000
301b E. Henry St.
Savannah, GA
31401
508.360.7576
taxbax@gmail.com
taxbax@taxbax.net
http://taxbax.net
hi-res images:
libofexp1.jpg
libofexp2.jpg
libofexp3.jpg
artist's statement:
libofexpstate.pdf
libofexpstate.doc
.......The Liberation of Expression is based on the teachings of Russian artist Kasmir Malevich. Malevich founded the movement, Suprematism, which was an effort to eliminate human understanding as a legitimizing criterion for art. Aesthetically, a piece must adhere to the academically taught elements of design and without thorough thought and execution of things such as line, color, texture, shape or form, a piece will be disregarded at a glance. Conceptually, though often disregarded, a piece must have an intelligent or merely complex communication in order to be taken seriously. Holding one’s expression to these standards surely eliminates the inept, however, does this mean that the individual’s intended expression, if created to the best of his ability (which all artists must strive for), is illegitimate, is worthless? If successful, Malevich believed removing the need to interpret and understand a piece would yield pure expression. The first step in this process was to eliminate natural forms in art. Malevich believed that to paint from nature is to copy, to imitate and he compares cavemen to renaissance painters because both have the decidedly unoriginal intention of painting what is directly before their eyes. This was merely craft and just as carpentry can be mastered so can painting. Once perfection was reached on this path of imitation, there began a gradual process away from direct representation and towards true creation.
.......The artistic journey was embracing distortion by the 19th century through artists like Degas, Monet, or Lautrec, but their forms were still based on representations of nature. The effort of distortion was accelerated by the invention of the camera and the realization that, no matter how talented the painter, he can only get so close to an exact representation and the camera will always surpass his representative abilities. During this time the Cubo-Futurist movements were founded and presented the world with the most extreme distortion of reality to date. Futurism presented a form moving through space, something a camera could not capture, a period of time. But video, or at least the concept of such, wasn’t far off and that was when Cubism introduced the concept of distortion for the sake of distortion. However, Malevich still wasn’t contented as cubism still was merely a means of distorting real forms therefore he founded Suprematism. His artwork that resulted from the Suprematist movement was but colored, inexact squares. Inexact so as to express that they were in space, not 2D on the page. A mass-less, weightless plane, a surface, a canvas, an expression void of interpretation – pure expression. Essentially Malevich invented the pixel.
.......It was under the spirit of Suprematism that 20th Century art blossomed and artists like Mondrian, Kandinsky, and Pollock created and were judged not on how well the communicated imagery, but how well they communicated their expression. Pollock’s efforts were an experimentation in the bounds of the medium. His paint was laid thickly, and the texture was deep and twisted. Paint mixed with sweat and cigarette butts to create a unique and spontaneous 3D composition. Pollock trivializes paint, the medium which had been previously worshiped as an idol by the renaissance artists who spent years on a composition, let alone the time wasted on crafting the paint itself. Instead, Pollock painted as rapidly as possible, no movement wasted in his most efficient path towards covering a canvas. The paint; from cans found on a store shelf, a ready-made ingredient in the assemblage that is “Lavender Mist.”
.......While these artists of the 20th century were destroying realism, they were still creating based on a set of understood concepts of design such as form, texture, balance, symmetry, color, and so on.
.......The Liberation of Expression communicates the destruction of human understanding as a criterion for the legitimization of art. Also Known as “Artists’ Lib,” the piece expresses Suprematism beyond painting, in assemblage. Each layer of paper represents a layer of human understanding and at the center is pure expression. Word is the closest that we can get to exact expression but in turn it requires the most elevated of human understanding to grasp, therefore, as we gradually eliminate understanding, the expression of each layer will grow broader, understandable by a larger and larger audience.
.......The first layer is symbols that we do not (though some will) understand to reinforce that the following layer is symbols that we do understand. The alphabet and the words it creates require an exact understanding. The artist (the author) chooses words specifically and if you cannot understand one than you fail to grasp the artist’s exact expression. A further example is this very document which exists under the assumption that the audience cannot exactly understand my visual expression without a thorough explanation in word. The third layer is a map, a seemingly ambiguous blob of color not understandable without the included symbols, scales, and the compass rose. The fourth layer is an illustration to stand for all representational art (including photography) and requires having experienced life with a human perception and a conscious brain. .
.......The following layer is seen as swirls of color (abstract expressionism) and requires the understanding of color schemes and texture. The fifth layer is a pattern which requires the understanding of balance and symmetry. This is followed by a solid color, representative of the works of Yves Klein and Malevich himself, this requires only the understanding that there is a single color and that the choice of the color itself (in Klein’s case the creation of the color – IKB) is an expression in itself. The next layer is blank and requires only the understanding that there is nothing there. This method of expression is employed as negative space, it is difficult to grasp but it is rare that we are presented with nothing as if it is something and once we are, it is important that we do not take that nothing to be something (a lie).
.......The next to last layer is transparent, as you can see the glue through the paper, this is representative of Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades. Duchamp managed to transcend creation by presenting reality itself as art and altering the form’s meaning only through the title or the addition of other found objects (echoed by Jasper Johns and his Painted Ale Cans). The final layer is pure expression, a reflective surface, yourself, whatever you want it to be.
.......Traditionally, after a given piece of art achieves the entire aforementioned human understandings, to further legitimize it, it is framed. Thusly the frame is destroyed to say, “Fuck the Frame”. Besides the assemblage of objects, my only altering touch is destruction (and titling). The burning of the paper is effectively subtractive in an effort to reveal pure expression just as Michelangelo revealed the human form in the marble. This piece is meant to be purely conceptual, though a visual representation, when informed it was, “looking good,” I would reply that that was just an added bonus. The cross in the center, as it has been seen, is more accurately the meeting point of four rectangles (notice the cross is actually a depression in the texture). This is there for a reason but is intended to be left open for interpretation. For what is art without a contribution from the audience?
.......The Liberation of Expression is accompanied by a new movement. The Artists’ Liberation Movement, also known as Individualism, is all encompassing and seeks to legitimize the expression of any individual so long as it is honest. Individualism states that the individual and her originality is the actual artistic work. The things that he believes, values, and defines himself with are the creation process - one's taste, input. What we call one's artwork is merely a result of the individual having lived and accomplished what she needed to in order to be content. Essentially a translation in the form of word, paint, marble, or other medium, of the principles that the individual deems relevant enough for reproduction and refinement. Additionally, the so called artwork is better defined as simply work, a broad term to include anything that the individual outputs. Individualism encourages all beings to develop their personal methods of expression but recognizes inability and inexperience. Individualism views the entire universe and its contents as the result of a creative process with inescapable forward progress as the product. If truly nothing is yet to be said, expression is merely the realization that you can communicate your thoughts better than you have seen thus far. It is only through change that we can improve the world, no matter the scale on which we operate. The degree of innovation in an artist’s medium and communication is the only criterion on which to judge a work
.......Thusly the Scientist and the Sculptor, the Coach and the Choreographer, the Surgeon and the Singer, the Politician and the Painter are all equally artists so long as they seek improvement. It is with this mindset that I approach art itself, in all the encompassing and limitless terms with which I have defined it, for as an artist I cannot but seek the different, the original, the new, the NEXT.
