Description
TitleThe complex and fugitive kind
Date Created2010
Other Date2010 (degree)
Extentiv, 30 p. : ill.
DescriptionThe Complex and Fugitive Kind is an exhibition of drawings comprised in two parts. The principal piece is a large-scale panoramic drawing entitled, The Complex. [Fig. 1,2] This piece measures twenty feet in width and six feet in height. The second component is a series of seven small drawings installed on the opposing two walls of the gallery space. The smaller drawings are titled Fugitive Kind. [Fig. 3, 4] The Complex is a palatial, sprawling, yet isolated utopian city depicting a montage of architectural forms, exotic wilderness and the quiet stillness of an imagined civilization. The drawings emerge as a fever dream of cult film references, a myriad of pan-cultural, literary, historical and art historical references. With this work, I aim to present sympathy for the fundamentally human urges for the paradisal, for independence, shelter, innovation, and an existence within a free zone, yet at the same time, providing a critical model for the potentially sinister and disruptive urges for ownership, domain, occupation and totalizing control. The artwork is not utopian, and does not propose to offer any form of utopian solution; yet, the work does take utopia as it's subject. More specifically, I am speaking of the aesthetics of utopia: the spaces and forms, as well as the systems of propagation for these aesthetics in contemporary life, ranging from film maquettes to corporate spaces. The work aims to contradict itself by taking on both the utopian imagination and critical utopias, as experienced through architecture and the landscape in art and culture. It is through the mediation of contemporary art and culture that we experience the collective consciousness of our utopian longing. The work reflects on the struggles to create a fair, pleasurable and self-sustaining society in the collective imagination, and political will, as well as the false appearances of these types of utopias through the economy of visual aesthetics. My drawings are a heterogeneous montage, which suggest that there is no singular vision for utopia (i.e. communism, hippie communes, corporate utopias, etc.) that dominates. My aim is to intertwine the social and the aesthetic, offering both an escape from and a critique of our current conditions.
NoteM.F.A.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references (p. 29)
Noteby Brian Scott Campbell
Genretheses, ETD graduate
LanguageEnglish
CollectionMason Gross School of the Arts Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.