Sita Suzanne: Spillage and stuff...some random thoughts and new works in progress.

What is it about bodies that excite the(my) imagination so? I don’t mean this in the sense of pure titillation, though eroticism is most certainly part of it, but more in the sense of their incredibly base beauty, alluring yet discomforting. Perhaps it is just me, but the tension between needing to ward off the foreign touch and to reach out and caress it, to let one’s gaze linger over it, is quite compelling. Its not always there, it flits in and out of of my consciousness, but when it is it can be quite the heady aroma. I have realized that no matter how my ideas change, how cerebral they become, there is always a carnality to the images I make. It is based perhaps, in the need for connection and to reach across the strange disjuncture, which is probably largely illusory, between the stuff in my head and the physical dead heaviness that sometimes overwhelms the rest of me. In the recognition of the interesting things that happen when this disjuncture is overcome, when everything fires up, becomes tautly wound, bristling with energy and wild abandoned precision.

I have a passion for figurative art, not just any mind you, but those images that are visceral, that jar slightly, that make you realise the wetness of what lies within them. I find the idea of imperfections intriguing. And the smoother the paper, the more tactile and broken the body needs to be to bridge that gap.

I was once given a DVD entitled Destricted containing artists’ attempts to grapple with the the shadowy distinction between what is art and pornography. Is it a subjective distinction? Or are there empirical evaluations we could apply? Most made little impact on me, they came across as a little gimmicky, a failed attempt to engage with the taboos, as if just because you are depicting sex in some way, you’re edgy as fuck. You aren’t really, its about how you engage with the topic, anyone can put tits, ass and a cock onto film, canvas, paper, or the walls of public toilets if they really really want to, but this doesn’t suddenly make them artists. In this series, Marina Abramović created something quite hilarious, creating an instructional video depicting bizarre fertility rituals. It had a light-hearted tone, and even though it had ample nudity, I would not have deemed it erotic, though of course this is subjective. The one that sticks in my mind however, was by Matthew Barney, its described in wikipedia as ‘mostly an art film’, which is interesting as the others receive fairly forthright if short descriptions. It provoked a degree of discomfort, from my point of view at least. A man is trussed up to a looming (compared to his painted body) deforester engine, which he is using to masturbate. Its a little mythological, very strange, and somehow hints at taboo, despite the fact there is nothing one could genuinely complain about ethically. But its strangeness was compelling, precisely because it was not easy and comfortable. And it in some way goes to illustrate my thoughts, which is why I mention it here.

However, there are many more subtle and less overbearing examples of what I am trying to describe. I will always love Edvard Munch’s Puberty, it epitomizes vulnerability, without resorting to grotesqueries. And perhaps, when I speak of faults, of the brokenness of skin and gaze, this is really what I am looking for. It is the vulnerability in the other that suddenly makes their various masks penetrable.

Edvard Munch - Puberty

Another, more recent painter who’s work exposes the rawness of the human body, then shows it to be beautiful is Lucian Freud.

Lucian Freud

I'm not heading anywhere specific with all this, just trying to isolate some thoughts around where I want to go with my work. Why the vulnerability of the human body fascinates me so, and how I can decode the language of it. So I am posting some works in progress as promised to one or two individuals, and will post more (as well as the finished versions of these) as time goes on. Hopefully, as once I inhabit a studio space a very kind lad is going to help me to outfit, there will be more work in the offing.