CRITICAL STUDIES - The Ordinary

 Working with the idea of the ordinary in art can be a way of documenting some of the most overlooked every day moments, or subverting expectations of normality through elevating the status of mundane objects and scenarios.

David Mach is known for his large scale sculptural works using old magazines, objects and furniture.

This piece of work is quite an extreme example of the use of multiples, with thousands of magazines stacked in a huge wavy mass with chunky items of furniture embedded in it. A magazine alone is something we are used to seeing in the domestic space as well as public areas like waiting rooms and cafes, they are such a normal part of that environment that we hardly even notice them, so to see thousands in a sculptural form questions what we consider to be worthy of making art about and what we expect to see in a gallery. The magazines are arranged in a very fluid, organic style which is a drastic transformation from the rectangular shape of an individual copy. There is a sense of motion like a thick volcanic flow, carrying away the furniture as if the home has been flooded, suggesting that our intake of popular culture and information can become too much and consume our lives. It also reminds me of the scene in Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away with the stink spirit who has a 'thorn' in his side, and when they pull it out loads of junk comes flooding out, and then he is cleansed. 

Spirited Away River Spirit Scene from Lauren Mueller on Vimeo.

The spirit is an unhappy looking viscous mass

Various everyday objects are pulled from the stink spirit including tyres, a children's slide and metal beams

This is all that's left of the spirit after his cleansing, the scene is of tranquility and freedom

I think there is a real parallel here because both  Mach's sculpture and Studio Ghibli's stink spirit show how overwhelming it can be when our lives are full of clutter, and minimising the 'stuff' in our lives can bring spiritual feelings of clarity and peace.

Another artist who's work deals with the ordinary is Antoni Tapies.

Llibre i coberts (Book and cutlery)

I chose this example because I find it really mysterious and intriguing - the crude markings in the book don't make any sense from the viewers perspective and maybe the artist didn't create them with a meaning either, but there's no way of knowing. There is a big juxtaposition between the durability of materials in this piece with the metal utensils and the fragile book pages. The colour of the book speaks of decay and age, it looks like it has been completely ruined especially since there is a cross shaped chunk cut out of the middle. The clean cutlery has a very different visual language to the dirty book with a higher sense of status represented by the shiny silver. The way the utensils are impaling the book reflects the way we consume information everyday, but I think there are more sinister implications- maybe a comment on how we carelessly destroy things if we over exploit or don't look after them, like the planet. Although I don't truly know what the art is about I still think it's a very captivating use of ordinary objects and the clash of materials is really disconcerting overall.