6th Annual Judith Ramaley Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship
|
Oral Presentation #E6 The Unexpected Heads Kevin Ihrke Faculty Mentor: Vittorio Colaizzi The Unexpected Heads project is a conceptual series that I’m working on: hiding and photographing small ceramic heads around the Winona State campus. My art, in general, converses with a loose symbolism that is not directly referential in meaning. I like the ambiguity of a message; it gives the audience a cognitive freedom while viewing the piece. The series is a breach of routine. Not only a breach in my artistic practice, to conduct a more conceptually driven work than I have ever taken on as an artist, but also hopefully in its effect on the viewer. I hope that finding an Unexpected Head would be a rupture of into an otherwise mundane day; A tumultuous experience of not knowing how long the finder took to notice a hidden sculpture in a place they may frequently walk past. I'd like people to notice more about their environment. However there is still an aesthetic, I’d like people to pick up one of these heads off the ground and take it home after having a sort of encounter with this little face, or maybe even leave it for another to find, possibly even re-hide the face themselves. But most of all to have a cognitive experience because of it. An alienated object when installed; and so removed from any kind of art context , an encounter with an Unexpected Head should be one that stirs the mind. |
|