For my further artistic practice I would like research the accelerating effect the implementation of digital technology and algorithms has on an individual.
For my further artistic practice I would like research the accelerating effect the implementation of digital technology and algorithms has on an individual.
Artworks and Processes
Artworks and Processes
Artworks and Processes
Artworks and Processes
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Here is a heading
Ich bin ein Textabschnit. Klicke hier, um deinen eigenen Text hinzuzufügen und mich zu bearbeiten. Ich bin ein Textabschnitt. Klicke hier, um deinen eigenen Text hinzuzufügen und mich zu bearbeiten.Ich bin ein Textabschnitt. Klicke hier, um deinen eigenen Text hinzuzufügen und mich zu bearbeiten.Ich bin ein Textabschnitt. Ich bin ein Textabschnitt. Klicke hier, um deinen eigenen Text hinzuzufügen und mich zu bearbeiten. Ich bin ein Textabschnitt. Klicke hier, um deinen eigenen Text hinzuzufügen und mich zu bearbeiten.Ich bin ein Textabschnitt. Klicke hier, um deinen eigenen Text hinzuzufügen und mich zu bearbeiten.Ich bin ein Textabschnitt.
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Julie Mehretu
​Photograph I took at the Venice Biennale 2019
© Julie Mehretu
“As you come close to it the big picture completely shatters and there are these numerous small narratives happening.” – Julie Mehretu
the city
gestural energy transfer
mark making
infinit urban narratives
distance and closeness
individual and society
Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopia artist based in New York City who explores a modern day phenomenology of the social. Her works engage the viewer in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior and the psychogeography of space. Her work is informed by many different sources including politics, literature and music. Most recently she has incorporated photographic images from broadcast media in her paintings which depict conflict, injustice, and social unrest. (Marian Goodman Gallery)
She takes these as compositional points of departure into her highly abstracted gestural works that depict the the city, particularly the accelerated, compressed and densely populated urban environments of the 21st Century. Through her Paintings Mehretu provokes thought and reflection, and expresses the contemporary condition of the individual and society. “The narratives come together to create this overall picture that you see from the distance,” she says. “As you come close to it […] the big picture completely shatters and
there are these numerous small narratives happening.” (Marian Goodman Gallery; White Cube Galley)
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“Her work conveys a layering and compression of time, space and place and a collapse of art historical references, from the dynamism of the Italian Futurists and the geometric abstraction of Malevich to the enveloping scale of Abstract Expressionist colour field painting” (White Cube Galley).
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As stylistic elements she uses an overlay of different architectural features such as columns, façades and porticoes with geographical schema such as charts, building plans and city maps and architectural renderings, seen from multiple perspectives. The White Cube Gallery describe her paintings as a tornado of visual incident where gridded cities become fluid and flattened, like many layers of urban graffiti. Mehretu herself has described her canvases as “story maps of no location” and as entering points into an imagined reality. Her works seem to represent the speed of the modern city. (White Cube Galley)
Video I took at the Venice Biennale 2019,
shimmering color close-up © Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu, A Love Supreme, 2014-2018, Ink and acrylic on canvas, 228.6 x 457.2 cm
© Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Key Takeaways
Why is it relevant to me?
The selections and works by Julie Mehretu that I show in this overview represent just one of the different styles in her work. She also works in black and white or with geometric forms arranged across the canvas in motion of a tornado, but I was particularly drawn to her visually softer works. Her work is very relevant to me because she expresses the dynamism of today in her rapid brushstrokes and the overall movement superior to the individual form. I was particularly fascinated by the energetic expression of her works, which I was able to see at the Venice Biennale in 2019. I had never seen reflective paints used on the canvas before. The viewer could modify the work by moving up and down in front of it, revealing more or less reflective areas on the canvas. I also try to bring the layering and the blurring in the flow of movement into my works and am therefore very fascinated by their complex compositions of color and movement.
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What are my key take aways?
The soft application of paint is broken up by individual streaks of saturated, almost neon-like colors and larger, broken areas of color that have been wiped out. Because she sets her color accents in a targeted manner and separates them from each other, the work does not become too overloaded and the direction of view is ordered by black markings.
In her multicolored works, the application of paint seems almost sprayed and she breaks it up with black brushwork. Despite the large amount of movement, she creates focus areas in which a particularly large number of impulses overlap and allows the density of the lines to taper off towards the edge of the canvas.
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How will I implement it?
Her play with sharpness and blurring is something I haven't tried in my painting before and I think it could help me differentiate relevant from less relevant shapes in my composition while giving more depth to the canvas.
References
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Marian Goodman Gallery, Julie Mehretu. Available at: https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/51-julie-mehretu/ (Accessed: 17 Oct 2021)
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White Cube Gallery, Julie Mehretu. Available at: https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/julie_mehretu/ (Accessed: 17 Oct 2021)