Mumbling Hallway
29th December 2022
Today I re-watched 'Eight and a Half', and once again I was fascinated by Fellini. I suddenly realized that the "limited narrative" I've been looking for in my paintings is actually in this movie, this chaotic, obscure, super dreamy but also extremely realistic movie. It is a little hard to explain, I mean, of course, I also like movies with exquisite structures and strong narratives, but I always feel this kind of movies is far from reality. It is not how I normally feel about how my life is flowing in everyday life. The real reality feels more like fragments, like broken sentences. Only when viewed from a distance, or after the washing of time, can it be slowly blended into a (maybe) poetic whole.
Then here comes the question, how should I present this fragmented and chaotic reality through painting?
22th March 2023. Holding an egg
I read the following interesting conversation between Jo Ann Callis and her teacher Robert Heinecken in her interview article yesterday，
There was one photograph of his that really struck me. I don’t know the name of it, but I saw it recently in his show in New York and thought, “Ah, there it is again. Yes, I know this.” In it, there’s a masked woman looking at the viewer and holding an egg between her fingers. I said to him, “I love this.” The idea behind it, he explained, was inserting an object that you wouldn’t expect to be there. If done in the right way, you can create another meaning. You hold an egg every morning when you’re fixing breakfast, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it. There’s holding an egg, and holding an egg. I remember thinking, “Oh, I get it.”
After starting the MA course, I’ve thought a lot about principles of choosing objects to be placed in my paintings, and gradually developed some kind of informal ones,
Normal objects from everyday life, not surreal
Objects that have the potential to appear in the narrative of the picture but are still subtly unanticipated
Can create new meanings
Seems to coincide somewhat with ‘holding an egg':)