#gam gallery

Here is my piece from the An/Aesthetic Exhibition at the GAM Gallery (Anaesthetic part).

Materials: Gum, Yarn, Lightbulbs

Oct. 21, 2011

GAM Gallery - Aesthetics Exhibition

            The first aspect of the show that needs to be taken into account is that the central theme revolves around a specific aspect of Susan Buck-Morss’ paper. The critique will follow based on this context.

            The critique starts off with Ye Jin Song’s piece featuring Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The Vitruvian Man represents the ideal man (an allusion to the pursuit of the ideal in Art), but Song adds ironic notes, indicating symptoms of disease (Sandoff Syndrome? – can’t remember the specifics). This is a perfect metaphor for the state of aesthetics that the exhibition explores. Aesthetics begins as a pure sensual response, but as philosophical discussions of aesthetics continued, the term became far removed from its original meaning. It began as something ideal, but has been perverted throughout time.

            One key point of discussion during the critique is on the relationship of aesthetics to trauma. Trauma is not actually a direct result of experience, but is the result of analysis of experience. If aesthetics is originally sensory experience itself, then through the long history of analysis of aesthetics, it is now a source of trauma. The meaning of aesthetics has changed from experience to trauma.

            Does aesthetics need to be traumatizing? Perhaps we are in such a state of modern shock that trauma is the only form of sensory experience remaining. Something may not be traumatizing, and yet, we still sense it, but we feel the constant need to evaluate the world around us, and to evaluate our sensations. Does this process of evaluation results in trauma? Buck-Morss claims that we experience trauma when something makes an imprint on our memory.