Oil on Canvas!
I have to totally make amends with both myself as a viewing professional and Royden Watson. I admit I casually dismissed his piece at the MOCA benefit by assuming it was a quirky artist gesture or some rehashed mash-up of minimalist sculpture and Duchampian mass-produced found item turned art object. It was actually hard to get close to it due to the ratio of space to people, not that I didn’t appreciate it or find it somewhat thought-provoking as I mentioned in my MOCA diary entry, but I did just breeze by it, made assumptions and was embarrassed by not doing my due diligence as an art viewer. I certainly judged the book by its cover.
The irony of it all is that my assumptions and the artist intent is the point. Watson mentions in his artist statement that in his own words:
“One of my studio aims has been to create highly representational painted “portraits” of the prosaic objects that we so often overlook”
Right and so I did. He goes on to mention how in a contemporary society where information is consistently readily available and certainly not in short supply that the easy searching of Google and the thousands of sources and viewpoints often both confuse and test the limits of truth by loosing and changing the context of pictures, stories and facts. So here Royden is making incredible lifelike painted “portraits” of mundane objects, in this case a 2×4, and me a man of contemporary society doesn’t think twice about seeing the object from across the room, through a sea of patrons and dismissing because of the nature of the object he chose and all of its mundane utilitarian glory and its history as an art object in sculpture and installation art.
Auerbach
When I sit back and reflect on my humbled experience here as an artist and viewer I am reminded of Tauba Auerbach and how Watson and Auerbach would make a great show. Their works have a good dialogue going about representation and the nature of materials, perception and the flatness of the support vs. the ability painting has to fool us and the eye. I really admire both artists and I am thrilled to have found out about Watson.
