Analyzing an Art Work by Lisa Holzer - Essay Example

Analyzing an Art Work by Lisa Holzer Introduction The trend adopted by artists in their artwork appears to have a taken a different direction relating to the various works presented at the New Museum Exhibition 2015 (Zuroski and Rogers, page 19). Of the fifty-one artists from twenty-five countries in the world, all displayed a change in the technical and stylistic choices in the composition of the art. We are in a modern era. The changes in aesthetics have significantly influenced the works of artists in the 21st -century. They too have conformed to modernity in meeting the demands of the modern audience. The artworks displayed in photography, poetry, and dance, comedy, sculpture, painting, films and videos is an implication of the divergence from the historical work of art. Lisa Holzer is no exception to this demonstration made by the artists at the New Museum. As an artist, Lisa appears to have shifted to a digital aesthetic, blending text, photographs and digital mark making and layered allusive compositions. Rather than retrospective, the predictive Triennial model makes a thirty-five-year commitment to exploring the future of our cultures through the modern art. The third iteration of the Triennial, ‘Surround Audience was co-curated by Lauren Cornell, a curator of the New Museum and artist Ryan Trecartin. The objective of Surround Audience is to make an exploration of the much-connected world in the art form, identity, the sense of self and the larger social role (Alberro and Stimson, page 39). The culture in our today’s world has become more porous. A new consideration of the current and potential role of art in the porous culture is surfacing. Artists have made efforts to respond to the change in culture in different ways, some through critical interrogations, calculated appropriations and others poetic or surreal statements. Artists, their artwork and the audience may be thought of as being subjective, cultural, structural or postmodern. Under the personal category, artists can be thought of as naturally talented or emotionally compelled individuals with intentions that are significantly influenced by the free play of the imagination. Artists under the structural category know and make use of formalist language outside themselves to present ideas in a system of signs that communicate meaning (Alberro and Stimson, page 43). They can also be considered as social agents who contribute to and are influenced by the social, political and economic conditions that surround them under the cultural category. Finally, the post-modern artists are the challenges of the current prevailing views concerning materials of value in art. They then use irony, parody and satire to expose power assumptions (Coker, page 13). The aim of this essay is to analyse the historical context, the technical and stylistic choices of the artwork by Lisa Holzer and the connection between her work and that of other related artists. Analyzing an Art Work by Lisa Holzer Like many other artists, Lisa Holzer has portrayed the abilities of a subjective, cultural, structural and postmodern artist in a variety of artworks recently displayed at the New Museum Triennial (Crow, page 53). In analyzing her work, the perceptions of the audience about the implications of the formal elements of her work shall be prioritized. Among the fascinating works by the artist on display is the ‘Omelette passing under a door’ produced in 2012. We are prompted to ask, can an Omelette pass under a door? Moreover, what door is referred to in the poetry? The questions posed in this work may not be the most obvious ones, but they are for real funny. In the recent series of collages by Lisa Holzer, a literal interpretation of the questions posed must be taken (Fassi et al., page 122). The Omelette passing under a door is a Japanese Omelette photograph rolled on a sheet of cellophane laid on a green screen. With a strange offering, the Omelette disappears through a door, recalling the grooves on a bar of chocolate. The image of the door, according to the superimposed website address was found on the internet by the artist (Fraser and Alberro, page 346). The aesthetical focus in this work is not the food. Rather the focus dwells much on the exploration of flatness in three primary senses. Firstly, the Omelette can be explored as a motif. Secondly, it can be explored as an aesthetic. Here, the computer-generated images that bear sculptural appearances that are intended to evoke depth can be analyzed. Finally, the Omelette can be interpreted as a joke that falls flat. In her other works such as the Passing Under, Lisa appears to vary the principle with increasingly arbitrary motives (Horowitz and Sholis, page 138). Placed under a bleaching shampoo is a blue colour field. Resting under a poem is a kinder chocolate egg. Below the rectangles of colours that are photographs of the streaky surfaces of carrot juice or cocoa is a nail varnish. Although some persons view songs as bridges, for Lisa, everything is a door. The constant repetition of the method adopted by Holzer hollows out the particular motives to the verge of randomness. The illusion of the picture in her work is given by the motif of the door (Kelly, 69). Its depth beneath the surface is unknown. As an audience, we are prompted to ask; what lies behind the door and the ‘flat’ pictures? The answer is simple. Most obviously text. The idea of the flat omelette is borrowed from Jacques Lacan, a French Psychoanalyst, who used the diminutive ‘hommelette’ and its homonymy ‘Omelette to analyse the concept of desire. The egg represents the notion of desire as unity and more precisely the object cause of the desire. The Omelette object is what makes the desire what it is. It is an unfulfilled forever wish for oneness. The hidden secret of the omelette, cocoa, surprise egg and a nail varnish are the desires we hold. Lisa’s work, compared to the work of many related artists is not overloaded with theory. Her reference to Lacan’s work is a gap that brings in the projective capacity of desire and sets it in motion. The audience will, therefore, want a superstructure and content behind the whole picture. Her earlier works were majorly based on the spaces available on the bellies of letters what typographers came to refer to as ‘counters’. These are rudimentary graphical forms (Lamson, page 92). She is known to work with direct links and texts in most of her work written in English and German. In her 2011 ‘I’m not there’ for example, Holzer places a ‘song to pictures, pictures of ketchup. The content of the song is a dedication to the singer from The Red Krayola, Mayo Thompson. The works of Lisa Holzer, and, in particular, the ‘omelette passing under a door’ include text fragments that are printed in a tiny type. Holzer refers to the little text as ‘text blots’ which are too small almost to be indecipherable. Most of her texts read like songs and poems that have a definite rhythmic structure. The texts have elongated vowels that evoke the voice sound as they are meant to be recited. Conclusion The work of art is taking a different path with the immense use of sophisticated technology that helps in the creation of web-generated images (Oliver, page 8). The changing of the culture around the world following the modernity and globalization that have increased interaction has a critical influence on art. Aesthetics is changing both in structure and meaning. The representation of this and the much more potential change is evident in the ‘Omelette passing under a door’ by Lisa Holzer. References Alberro, Alexander, and Blake Stimson. Conceptual Art. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Print. Alberro, Alexander, and Blake Stimson. Institutional Critique. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009. Print. Coker, Gylbert. The Multiculturalism Policy in Museums. Tallahassee, Fla.: Florida State University, 2010. Print. Crow, Thomas E. Modern Art in the Common Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Print. Fassi, Luigi et al. Time Out of Joint. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2009. Print. Fraser, Andrea, and Alexander Alberro. Museum Highlights. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. Print. Horowitz, Noah, and Brian Sholis. The Uncertain States of America Reader. New York: Sternberg Press, 2006. Print. Kelly, Mary. Imaging Desire. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. Print. Lamson, Laurie. Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA), 2014. Print. Oliver, Clare. Jackson Pollock. New York: Franklin Watts, 2003. Print. Zuroski, Emma, and Hannah Star Rogers. Picturing Science: Museum Scientists And Imaging Technologies Picturing Science: Museum Scientists And Imaging Technologies American Museum Of Natural History, New York, NY, 25 June 2011–14 December 2014. Exhibition Website: Www.Amnh.Org/Exhibitions/Current-Exhibitions/Picturing-Science.. Leonardo (2015): 301-302. Web. Read More