After so many years of making and working with art I know what art is supposed to look like; and I knew the oil filters had that look the first time I saw them coming out of the crushing machine, and before I selected them and made them into the Oil Filters. Their pedigree is palpable, from John Chamberlain and Carl Andre, through abstract expressionism, and especially Philip Guston. There is a period in Guston's painting in the latter part of the 1950s, between the end of his atmospheric pink abstractions and before the start of his cartoonish figuration, when the brushstrokes start to coalesce into clumps and blocks of color that resemble the Oil Filters, particularly those made from the larger truck filters. The Oil Filters have as much to do with painting as they do with sculpture.
As ambivalent as I am about the legacy of Duchamp, the Oil Filters do trade on the assisted ready-made. There is only so much control one has in the combination of filters and their placement in a block when it comes out of the crusher. I will give myself the credit to say that not every one of the filter blocks I see makes good art; and that I do do a good amount of work after crushing to make them look the way they do.
Their placement on bases of recycled paper is both aesthetic and practical. Aesthetically it moves the filters a step away from the ready-made and back towards traditional sculpture on a base. Because they are made from recycled paper (drawings and mat board that I collect, pulp and cast) they are conceptually consistent with the filter blocks above. Practically, the bases act as blotters for any residual oil that leaks out of the filter blocks, and protects against their sharp edges.
There is limitless variation in how the Oil Filters can be grouped, arranged, and related one to the next (an all red show [Rothko]; arrangements based on numerical progressions [Lewitt]; architectural constructions [Giza's pyramids]), all equally good, all equally meaningful. Their hierarchy of value and quality, I believe, will be based not on how they look, but on what other art they remind the particular view of. I would like to see an all white or predominantly white show. The differences in Oil Filters would become so subtle over a large number of them that it would start to be reminiscent of Ryman.
Do the Oil Filters say what I think needs to be said by art? Probably in certain respects. The part of the Oil Filters I most want to address is having more to do with their making because I think we have to go beyond "choosing" as a method of making art. Nevertheless I brought five more blocks of filters to the studio yesterday.
As ambivalent as I am about the legacy of Duchamp, the Oil Filters do trade on the assisted ready-made. There is only so much control one has in the combination of filters and their placement in a block when it comes out of the crusher. I will give myself the credit to say that not every one of the filter blocks I see makes good art; and that I do do a good amount of work after crushing to make them look the way they do.
Their placement on bases of recycled paper is both aesthetic and practical. Aesthetically it moves the filters a step away from the ready-made and back towards traditional sculpture on a base. Because they are made from recycled paper (drawings and mat board that I collect, pulp and cast) they are conceptually consistent with the filter blocks above. Practically, the bases act as blotters for any residual oil that leaks out of the filter blocks, and protects against their sharp edges.
There is limitless variation in how the Oil Filters can be grouped, arranged, and related one to the next (an all red show [Rothko]; arrangements based on numerical progressions [Lewitt]; architectural constructions [Giza's pyramids]), all equally good, all equally meaningful. Their hierarchy of value and quality, I believe, will be based not on how they look, but on what other art they remind the particular view of. I would like to see an all white or predominantly white show. The differences in Oil Filters would become so subtle over a large number of them that it would start to be reminiscent of Ryman.
Do the Oil Filters say what I think needs to be said by art? Probably in certain respects. The part of the Oil Filters I most want to address is having more to do with their making because I think we have to go beyond "choosing" as a method of making art. Nevertheless I brought five more blocks of filters to the studio yesterday.
