Kitty Blandy: The artist’s thoughts on “(animal) instincts”
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
Susan [the Gallery Director] has asked me to write something about the work in the exhibition “animal (instincts)”.
The common thread throughout all the works (which range from small, flocked drawings to large charcoal ones on canvas and cast polyurethane sculptures) is the physical sympathy that we as humans have with the “animal”. By sympathy, I mean the sharing of a thing’s sensation and condition. Gilles Deleuze touches on this when he expresses the “animal spirit of man: a pig-spirit, a buffalo-spirit, a dog-spirit, a bat-spirit” when describing Francis Bacon’s pursuits “to dismantle the face”. He also goes on to say that “man becomes animal, but not without the animal becoming spirit at the same time […] the man who suffers is a beast, the beast that suffers is a man […] this is the reality of becoming”. Some of the titles in this show make reference to these thoughts.
The materials employed in these works are intentionally meant to make associations with massed produced trinkets and toys. Using high density expanded foam to create forms that look like they are carved in marble, and bright red, flocked plastic instead of bronze, contradicts the conventional aspects of the processes of production. It is important to me that the viewer can engage and really look at the works and that the physical presence of the work is haptic.
View the exhibition: Kitty Blandy - Animal Instincts
Go to Kitty Blandy’s page