Painting A Bowl Of Fruit Will Reveal The True Self (2015)
I was talking about having artistic block with an artist friend of mine and he said to me: “Why not paint a bowl of fruit?” I said, “What? Why?” And he replied, “Painting a bowl of fruit will reveal the true self.” I was amused by this statement and took it on to perform as an action in the studio. I wanted to set up the shot to make it look like a Caravaggio-esque piece, ready to be painted in a serious still life manner. Of course, the statement is taken literally where the fruit itself is painted. The ‘natural beauty’ of the fruit is replaced by murky poster paint colours that make the fruit matte and lifeless. The painter at first seems pleased with his creation, but the ‘true self’ emerges - that of frustration, anger and dissatisfaction of not achieving the artistic ideal.
The sequence is actually 42 images long, and this adds to my interest in using multiple imagery and sequencing. I am starting to think the sequencing constructs the performative statement as if it were a ‘sentence’ that has its own syntax and logical progression. While an ending is dictated, simultaneously the sentence is also never finished and the statement is caught in its own performative loop. It’s also interesting to note that adding images or taking them away lengthens or shortens the performance, but however many images there are there are still always gaps for the spectator to fill in.
