Ansuya Blom
"The work of Ansuya Blom is rich in its material evocativeness and facture, its content, and most of all its abiding sense of the complexity of the mind's processing of its moods and understandings. It makes use of different strategies also -- collaboratively made films as well as a steady practice in the studio. But whatever the form her work finally takes, a communicative pressure is felt that can at times resemble the receiving or the finding of a letter; the narration of the film Dear… makes particular use of the letter form, though leaving the addressee and the writer of the letters unlocated and unnamed. When considering Blom's work, the important questions are those of its meaning, for when communicative and expressive urgency is found in an artist's work, our first thoughts are, what is it that is being expressed? And the situation which governs what we consider the meanings to be is not simple." Source 1
Form is properly considered as 'inner content', and was defined as such in German Romanticism. In any art that engages us form and content can never be fully separated, though for purposes of discussion we can train ourselves to think about them independently. Beyond the type of space made in this new series, and the kinds of line used, line does here take on a meaning of its own; it becomes a motif. There is not so much modern art that makes use of Blom's kind of line, that is simultaneously idea and embodiment; 
Return to the decisions that you make when drawing. To draw any bounded object within space, most of us would jump immediately to the decision of what kind of line to use -- hesitant, broken, feathery or firm. But this is actually to skip a stage of decision-making we may not realise we are making, which is whether or not to draw using outlines at all. Our drawings would turn out feathery or firm, but they would nearly all depend on the convention of outlines. Outlines have a purpose and our experience of objects as bounded is reasonably expressed by using them. Diagrams, on the other hand, make use of a purer mathematical precision, or use conventions that mean we can reconstruct what is depicted without ambiguity, or sometimes drastically simplify, neglecting outlines for inner structure. They have a different kind of objectivity, and a useful one, but tend to omit the sensual aspects of space. If you look closely at Ansuya Blom's drawings, you will see that in some respects at least, they are closer to diagrams than to outline drawings. Of course it would be hard to reconstruct their spaces, especially as, quite unlike diagrams, they often demonstrate a need to go over a line with many many others -- though it should be pointed out that this is not done in a spirit of revising or approximation, or as though drawing from observation. The diagramatic approach can be seen in how in drawing the pipe that leads to a shower-head, for example, she uses one line to depict the hollow pipe, not two. It's the idea-aspect of the thing rather than the visual experience of the thing. Although the overall effect is very often tactile and delightfully so because of the quality of the line and the conventions for making space used, at the level of the most basic decision-making we are in the realm of the diagram rather than an outline drawing from observation: we are in a mental space, but one that has sensual aspects.
Reflection
The usage of masses and voids, within the Artist work is what for me creates a correlation between obsessive behaviour and neglecting behaviour which can often be found representing two sides of the same coin. What really shines out for me upon viewing Blom's work is how she draws quicker then thought. Giving a totally honest account of her emotions, and inviting the viewer just to sit with them, in acceptance. Undoubtedly the quality of line plays a huge part in orchestrating this performance of the heart. The fragility of the line creates delicate brain waves like lines that appear on paper to be so soulful and yet so simplistic in there movement. Form has been of rising importance within my on going work as an artist, and Blom's work has certainly been a thought provoking encounter. As I work to unveil both the conscious and subconscious truths around thought.
Sources
No comments:
Post a Comment