Advanced Sculpture, 2014

Project 1: Process
ANALYSIS

Taking its roots shortly after the Minimal Art Movement with artists like Jackson Pollock forerunning its movement, Process Art emphasizes the act of making, the hand of the artist embodied within the work, and the physical. In short, process art can be thought of as the verb that creates the noun—object-orientated art. The end product is not the focus but rather the evidence of actions, occurrences, and performances. What is the focus is how the artist made the product, the parameters in which they decided to work, and the materials they used. All of these elements combined give light to the meaning behind their work and the issues at hand that the artists is either questioning or presenting for the viewer. Within Process Art, the “process” element of this movement in essence, refers to the act of making or actions or occurrences happening but this conceptual idea has manifested itself in many ways and has taken on various forms for different process artists. The idea and execution of process to one artist may be completely different for another artist. In fact this idea of process continues to take on many forms to this day and further stretches this fundamental idea on the emphasis of physical action and making. Process can manifest in the form of human or communal labor for mass production just as Ai Wei Wei had expressed in his work Sunflower Seeds where he and hundreds of workers created 8 million sunflower seed replications made from porcelain. Process can be repetitive activities or the replication of objects just Tara Donovan does in her works like Haze where she stacks and attaches together 600,000 plastic cups. Process art can even manifest itself in the form of performance and the use of the body as a tool just as Janine Antoni has done in works such as Gnaw.

For artists like Ai Wei Wei, process can take the form of human labor for mass production. Wei Wei examines the realm of politics and his work produces social commentary specifically on the issues of the Chinese government in relation to its people. Through his work, like that of Sunflower Seeds, he commissions civilians, sometimes even hundreds of workers to create documented performances, large scale installations, and mass quantity sculptures. Yet it is not the outcome that tells of the meaning of the work. It is the fact that it is not just him creating this work—it is a body of people with him to produce an outcome. Wei Wei thus can reinforce this issue of social inequalities and the suppressive rule by the government of China because he is using its people to perform labor-intensive, time consuming works that lead to mass production and media attention and circulation—something that the government tries to suppress and regulate.

For Tara Donovan, the process lies in the area of repetition of materials and repeated acts to produce the outcome. Donovan’s work seeks to explore the realm of the organic and mirco-science on a macro-scale. Using trivial, day-to-day objects like straws, pencils, paper, or plastic cups like in her work Haze, she performs repeated activities of stacking, gluing, and hanging mass quantities of the same object over and over again in patterned designs to recreate a kind of organic structure that reflects an image of a microorganism or cells but that can be viewed on a large scale. The act of repeated actions and materials also bring to mind a similar process that happens in science and in our own bodies which is that of cellular reproduction and formation of organs, organ systems, ecosystems, and thus life itself.

For artists like Janine Antoni, the process lies in the body and performances and actions done by the body. Antoni seeks to emphasize this connection to classical sculpture as well as the connection between the body and the material by using her body as the tool. In Process Art, the act of making and the hand of the artist are focused upon and so Antoni takes this further by performing actions of her body onto the material whether by chewing, biting, gnawing, licking or even bathing. She refers back to classical art by presenting this image of a sculptor sculpting away at a block of marble or stone in order to reach a new form—the product. In Gnaw, rather than using sculpting tools like traditional sculptors, Antoni uses her mouth and bites and gnaws away at two 600-pound blocks of chocolate and lard in effort to reshape their forms and produce a product. Her bite marks shape the new product. The type of materials Antoni uses also relate to the issue at hand which usually focuses on feminism and societal ideals that women struggle with but can also overcome. For example, chocolate and lard are two fats—one that is desirable and one that is feared but both affect the image and shape of a woman. Antoni tackles this beauty ideal and fear by physically biting at both of them and the issue they present.

To me, process art is not limited to just this idea of making but rather the “how” that leads to the “why”. When I examine process in my own works and the works of artists, I am looking at first how the work is made. What led to this outcome? Was it accomplished through the use of the mouth, feet, body, or other people. How did I or someone else take a verb and repeated performed that verb on a material? This then leads me to see what in this action explains the issue at hand. The fact that I or Janine Antoni used our bodies as a tool versus just using sculpting tools may brings up the issue of relationships between the material and the body or redefining classical sculpture. Though process differs for many artists, including myself, the one thing to take away is the focus on not object-orientated art or product but the actions or occurrences behind it.