Many thanks to Lisa Gray and The Flux Review for selecting four of my works for their April Virtual Show. The interactive exhibition features a range of international painters, photographers and sculptors; a guided virtual tour and artist website links are all available.
“Curious Minds” will run until May 4th 2022
September 17 - October 5 / Via Riccardo Sineo 10 / Turin
Photo gallery of the private view and accompanying critical review by Alessandro Allocco, ATB founder.
Works on show: Choice Material (2021), Bums on Seats, First Past the Post, The Dilemma, A Coincidentalist Work (2020), 14 Exposures (2018)
by Alessandro Allocco
Pure meaning, pure matter, poverty of subject, but the infinite richness of a staunch belief in the change of art.
"Collected from an exile" is the work and result of Sam Vickers’ passionate research, exhibited at the ATB Cultural Association. It is an experiment of "non-art as art" in the age of social media. A series of interactive works based on time and the choice of materials that find their raison d'etre between conceptual emptiness and material value in constant fluidity of meaning - either full or devoid of emotional value depending on whether or not it falls within a market trend (in itself devoid of phatos, sensitive only to economic logic). Sam Vickers' works visually translate the need of perceiving art as a sign of effective change through coherent concepts inspired by social media. On his crusade into "exile", the British artist renews a pictorial language with the refinement of the material provocatively transformed only by time. The works on display, both material and social, are a concrete statement of the British artist's style. Sam Vickers seeks the avant-garde in the 21st century, as many of his fellow artists did in the 20th from Fontana to Burri, through the tendency to recognize matter’s fundamental meaning - that is no longer subordinate to the image being represented, as it is the very same protagonist of the work.
Neodadaist artists such as Rauschenberg, Johns, and Nevelson or of Informal Art such as Burri, Milani, Somaini or even the Gutai group, are part of the circle of “matter” supporters but we can also find considerable interest that confirms this important artistic current in Surrealism and Futurism.
The first material paintings were made with clear provocative intentions of social denunciation: violent tears, disturbing black backgrounds or jumbles of fabric without a precise shape, but with symbols inherent to the historical context, jewels of undeniable charm that arouse curiosity and interest. "Collected from an exile" addresses a complex question - is non-art art? This concept is not new even if, in our western world today, the split between art and non-art is quite recent. There is a long history linked to the "everyday" (especially within modernist thought) in which the mundane provides that "creative charge" so typical of contemporary artistic language. Sam Vickers’ works on display support "a cultural and holistic approach, above all non-ethnocentric, in the delineation of the process of construction of the ideas, practices and institutions of the arts ..." (Larry Shiner, The invention of Art. A Cultural History 2001).
The concept of non-art as art is linked to the new and improved social conditions of our opulent West, which have stimulated new tastes and aesthetic conceptions that are actually dissimilar to the academic achievements of the past: new places in which to experience and discuss poetry, of instrumental painting or music outside their traditional social functions, physical and virtual places, material and immaterial.
Equally, the concept of non-art as art cannot disregard the history of art through which it is perceived, namely to understand what our culture considers artistic there is a variety of time, place and social strata to consider; as well underlined by Picasso, who recognized art in African and Oceanic everyday objects (for work or otherwise: ritual masks, sticks, spears) and raised them to museum object status. He was right because beyond the system of social relations that art has always generated in culture and beyond the different ways and styles of formal creativity, aesthetic dimension is always proper to every human activity.
The concept of non-art as art is a commonly experiential element that affects all social levels because, after all, being artists is a fundamental characteristic of our species, it is a need and capacity encoded into our genetic memory, it is an elementary necessity of human beings constantly looking for fulfillment, satisfaction and ease, beyond mere utility.
The habit of considering art distinct from what is not currently dominant art in the West, is spreading further into the rest of the world and collects peculiarities of one’s own life as an artist, of unique pieces, of unerring research and the authorship of wonder. All that is called art is a cosmopolitan phenomenon that globally connects not only the markets of aesthetic products, but also many (if not all) local aesthetic dimensions that are, more or less, already "contaminated" - often consciously and programmatically hybridized with non-art.
The exhibition "Collected from an exile" by Sam Vickers welcomes the two sides of art and non-art as art and treats them as complementary attitudes towards traditions and post-modernity; also making them part of a complex framework of hybridizations between local traditions, mass culture, experimentalist elitism - in an intrinsically "postnational" dynamic.
It seemed a shame to ruin it really, this satisfyingly square first attempt at a canvas. Last week’s fear over what to do next turned into what I can only describe as a modernistic inertia, as it sat in the studio waiting to be defiled. I had built it up too much; that first gestural mark felt like it had to encapsulate everything that I’ve written about so far: the internet, attention culture, the old theatre crowd, colour theory and the death of interest. All things considered, this reluctance is the down side of having a clear concept in mind, there could never be anything spontaneous or automatic about this work, otherwise it would be a stab in the back- if only with a paintbrush. Yet, working to a plan gives a visual idea some semblance of intention and meaning, especially when something as flippant as colour comes crashing into the room; such a thing can throw you completely. A plan honours the original idea; if something stuck out in your mind as being better than something else in the beginning, then why not try to stay as close to that moment as possible?
I have said many times before that my work comes from the concept, a contextual version of base camp if you will. The best route, potential hazards and the appropriate equipment all depend on what’s decided over bacon and eggs- how do we get to the top without dying or losing sight of why we’re even here? They say each mountain climb is different and that goes for making art too but to continue this ‘lofty’ analogy would give you altitude sickness sooner or later so let’s get to the point- the interesting thing about “Bums on Seats” (working title) is that it carries on from “First Past the Post” and “Straight from the horse’s ass” in the sense that they are all rigorously planned, painted abstractions that represent a system. I say interesting because producing three examples of similar work in close succession is strange for me- I should be bored with it by now.
Onto the painting itself- I have started out with the data that relates to January and February. The composition relies on each edge of the canvas serving as the original x axis and the centre as the void that the subjects try to reach into. I’m looking for some balance within the painting so the matching colour spikes (relating to page views, visitors etc) will mirror each other from opposite sides. After conducting some experiments recently I am choosing colours that worked, or at least complimented or blended into each other to form a range of darker tones. As the layers become more complex I hope to see some colours either dominate or fade at first glance (in the same way that visitor hits from earlier this year barely seem relevant to what’s happening now, even if was an impressive statistic at the time).
My knowledge of oil paint is sketchy at best so this piece is being made with gloss medium and acrylics. Using the former would be like going up K2 without any decent boots…
The concept took prescedence last week in part one, so I thought part two should contain some more technical details on the work but include some more insight as to how it is being made and why. The photos in the gallery (click to enlarge) are of the first piece in a series of five. They show the progression from the initial photograph to colour study and then full scale.
Speaking of scale, I found it essential to get as close as possible to a 1:1 (from the view at street level at least) to convey the uniformity that the chosen subjects have in the real world. Seeing as the concept is based on power, I found the decision to replicate and repeat entirely fitting.
The material is polythene, each of the five sheets measuring 2100x1500 mm. As painting on plastic is damn near impossible I had to experiment and produced a formula which I cannot disclose for obvious reasons.
When it came to the colour scheme (as you can also see in part one) the work relies heavily on the complimentary scale to represent duality. Contrasting colours such as blue and yellow speak of a number of different things, high on the list being political parties, moods or even personal preferences. However, the very nature of a clash, presented on two sides of the same object emphasises what people in power are inevitably conflicted by; that human nature often derails a principle.
The composition of each piece (as aforementioned) is based around the front and back of each monument. Due to the subsequent narrowness, each side makes an abstraction of the other (see part one for a better example) and the combinations sometimes give no real clarity on what you’re actually looking at. The blank areas on one side render the base layer of the other entirely visible and create an interesting dilemma on where to shift your vision.
In light of recent events in the UK; once the last part of this work is underway, the further political context of the work will be explored next week.
