quadrum

I've started looking at compiling my "imaginary show" based on squares...I've read that Quadrum means "Square" or "frame" in Greek...very handy!

I've been reading today of many foundations to suprematism (Malevitch) and de stijl (mondrian). I've been learning of the influences of the Russian constructivists (Malevitch, Khlebnikov, Kruchenikh, Rozanova), from Ferdinand de Saussure and his ideas on language as "Signs" to Heinrich Wölfflin's ideas on painterly vs linear.

After finishing the "art since 1900" book (when I say "finish", I mean flipping through every page to find art that is based on squares, and reading those pages) I have compiled a great list of selected works, I skateboard up to the shops to have a good solid focused think on what I am doing, and I realise that a show based only on "art with squares" is missing the point (well, in respect to my work). I need to curate a show that includes any use of squares, that is, the everyday, mathematics, architecture, computer games etc.

Chloe comes round to say goodbye (she's heading off to Europe again, to travel, and experience the world...) So I run my ideas past her. She points out that "good curation is simplicity", that is; A simple approach to a subject can not fail. She also talks of hard nosed editing (or "selection"). Each item in a show must convey something important to the subject matter, or context of the show. I can't "just" have a room filled with paintings, sculptures and architectural models, if I want this "show" to be something more than "just" an art exhibition. I feel I could run into the trap of making an "educatory" experience, not a bad thing in itself, but I would like to curate something that still had artistic merit, but also does open a world of high art and everyday "culture" to people.

I love the idea of the square as a basic building block, a construct for modern life. There is something infinitely elegant about the square, its simplicity, its functionality and rationality when combination is required. There is also something cold and impenetrable about the square, "unnatural" if you will (although the simple Sodium Chloride or Pyrite crystal would disagree!). It is a futuristic shape, something inorganic, which fascinates and yet scares us. The Pixel is a perfect exemplar of this situation, the future of communication, binary flickers of true and false, on and off creating language that is conveyed via an array of square pixels on computer screens and digital projections, be that written or visual, even sound is represented to us as a flow of flickering pixels when we turn on iTunes or Windows Media Player...

anyway, enough of all this chat...I need to write an essay, in the form of a welcoming text to an imaginary show called "Quadrum" - and an imaginary review (by me) of said show...am I biting off more than I can chew? You never know till you try. Failure is a good learning process, you can only learn from your mistakes, and this is the lesson we are being taught in the Masters, it's not always about things going right, experience in life is based on good and bad experiences, and knowing what is good, and what is bad can only lead to a fuller knowledge and educated stance in this world.

listening to : various - 1993-1999 Mainstreet Records : godflesh - streetcleaner