| Writings | ||
| About the "Statement" Drawings | ||
| About the “In Place” Project | ||
| Some writing by other people... | ||
| Statement, January, 2007 | ||
| I consider each of the marks in the paintings a “character,” whether
it is an abstract gesture or something that looks more recognizable. The
characters interact on the “stage” of the canvas or paper,
and a meaningful narrative ensues. Rather than define the narratives, I
describe them as I see them, both as the person that made them and decided
they make sense, and also as a witness to the end result. By not providing
a literal translation of the visual elements, I have relinquished some
control over what is read into the paintings. The person viewing a painting
deciphers it within his/her own frame of reference, and is invited to enable
the very act of looking to generate the meaning. I think of both painting
and looking as pleasureful experiences. Generally, the work I do is especially influenced by the weather and my physical environment, which can manifest itself in references to touch, landscape, sex, taste. The work I did in Dublin in Winter of 2005 was done while I was an Artist-In-Residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which is housed in a former Veteran’s Hospital for the (then) British soldiers. Built in the 1800’s, the building was made of blocks of white stone and feels like a castle or fortress. The paintings resulting from my time there are filled with varying shades of grays, greens, blues, as well as crumbling bricks, tongues (wanting to eat everything up), homemade industrial pipes with fire coming out, and squirting breasts heralding Spring. The work I did that Summer in Berlin records misplaced tram tracks and hot pink graffiti, introduced as postindustrial orphans greeting each other in a heavy white space. Poplar trees shake their leaves in warm wind and abandoned yellow brick buildings maintain a stoic stance. My most recent work, the Costa Rica Revisit paintings, are my attempt to re-experience an event I witnessed in Costa Rica in 2004. I was sitting on the beach when I looked up and saw a red pickup truck with speakers and people piled in it with latin music coming out. Behind the truck there were local people from the town in their Sunday Best walking in a procession. Little girls in white dresses were being towed in carts carried by bulls with flowers around their horns. And in the middle there was a large, chipped and cherished plaster statue of Mary in a cart overflowing with greenery pulled by blonde cows. In the paintings, the red pickup truck is filled with breasties squirting milk, and Mary is a giant cake with yellow frosting. Here is a quote from Nicolas Bourriaud’s Postproduction: “Meaning is born of collaboration and negotiation between the artist and the one who comes to view the work. Why wouldn’t the meaning of the work have as much to do with the use one makes of it as with the artist’s intentions for it?” |
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| About the “Statement” Drawings | ||
| Quite different from anything else I’ve done are the “Statement” drawings, with which I am seeking to make a sincere statement using a visual language. These drawings have as their centerpiece various hand gestures that in Hindu traditions signify something particular when a god or goddess takes that pose. One gesture signifies that the god is granting a blessing, another issues a warning. Because many coming to view these drawings might not know the meaning of these gestures I have made the titles as specific as possible to reveal information I have regarding them. These drawings are particularly political and personal, as I attempt to use them as sentences composed with images rather than words; which is why their compositions are somewhat sentence-like. Just as with my other paintings and drawings, not all of the marks within these “sentences” are translatable into text, and so the viewer must rely on their own understanding of a purely visual vocabulary in order to interpret meaning. | ||
| About the “In Place” Project | ||
| While on a trip out to the southeastern U.S., I did these paintings as a way to more fully experience the places I was visiting. I did them outside on friends’ porches in North Carolina and Georgia, and on the beach in South Carolina. | ||
| Some writing by other people... | ||
“Susanna Bluhm’s paintings are an exploration of sensory experience. Recognizable images and abstract mark-making interact as though they were characters in a play. The meaning of the ensuing narrative is activated for the viewer by looking at it. The act of looking becomes a feast for the imagination as the ‘characters’ in the paintings engage in various sensory/sensual acts, such as touching, sex, eating, and temperature changes. A literal translation of the narrative becomes irrelevant with this visual language that transcends verbal language barriers.” -Janice Hough, Artists Work Programme Coordinator,
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland.
“The paintings of Susanna Bluhm draw on a variety of source materials, among them Asian and western landscape paintings, symbols of body parts and weather, and the retro colors and shapes she associates with her grandmother’s house. Her lush yet airy paintings are at once abstract and peppered with recognizable references to snow laden trees, suburban swimming pools, smiling lips. Paint is applied in a variety of ways, sometimes in thickly lathered swipes, sometimes in thin translucent veils, sometimes with graffitiesque lines. These compositions add up to a celebration of painting as a realm of sensual and sensory experience.” -Eleanor Heartney, critic, author, and contributing
editor for Art in America.
“Susanna Bluhm asserts in the work of her paintings and drawings, ‘What language will you use?’ challenging viewers to move beyond expectations for easy narrative, calling onlookers to look and do the hard work of establishing meaning via the act of seeing itself. In the material and markings of paint, Susanna creates viscous surfaces where ideas stick from the outside, where the work is always vibrant in the fluidity of its interpretation.” --Thomas Albrecht, Assistant Professor, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
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