How Dazzling Duchamp 2

How Dazzling

 

When I wrote "What's Up", I started to stop writing poems for a theme as I used to. I found that I started to feel no pleasure in the way I had written before. I didn't like to expose emotions, states, events in the poems, and I even felt that way of writing was like revealing privacy. I think I must have passed a certain stage where I started writing poems like the way I wrote "What's Up", which is to never get to the theme that seems to be concerned until the poem is complete. I've come to like this kind of poems that has no beginning and no end (like an iPod), no theme and no blank lines, I want to write poems with all the obstacles removed, the themes, words, rhetoric, metaphors, rankings, word-by-word judging, or bypass them and even just write a poem for a word, a sentence. For instance, I like "in", "was", "when". I like "so", "then", "maybe". I like "few", "some", "or", "I think". I like the name of a certain place, a certain person. I also like some punctuation marks, and I like to mark dates in Arabic numerals. I use them over and over again, and as a result, I feel like I'm writing a program, sort of automated, and so fast in one go that I often wonder if it's poetry at all. But it makes me pleased, and makes me want to keep writing. If back to the way it was before, I don't think I'll write anymore.

 

When I took photos with overexposure, I found the results to be so surprising, absurd, uncertain and indescribable. I started to realize that this is a way, a way that I like, or that works for me - that I am no longer anxious about the parameters like ISO or white balance. I think I have bypassed the tool logic that had always been intimidating to me, the obstacles of theme, meaning, technique, art, and could just shoot whatever I wanted. One day, when I found that I could name these overexposed images after a poem I wrote called "How Dazzling", I thought, well, they were no longer overexposed, or no longer badly shot, but a step further, they might be art as I thought. Finally, 15 years later, I decided to make them, and, as a result, I started to have further ideas. I think, these are not disposable anymore, I can tell, they are full of sustainability.

 

I like concepts. I wrote a poem called "Concepts", in which it said, "There are still some concepts that dwell \ they line up \ waiting to be pondered \ with the explorer roaming among them \ all along \ that he tries to convert them into colors and shapes". I think my art - what you have seen so far - is just some colors and shapes of concepts.

 

When I think about my poetry and my art, I find the commonality between them - the indirectness. If you ask me, what is the theme of these works? I'll answer: indirectness, of which, I'm pretty sure, I think.

 

When I wrote "REBRANDING", I brought forward the concept of "Unconscious Touch Points". I wrote that "Unconscious has indirect power that brings effect of massive contrast. It’s a way to make secondary importance prior and make process powerful." Indeed, I like this kind of "secondary" and "sense of process". Or in my case, secondary is the primary and process is the result. I also brought forward the concept of "Mega Touch Points", but I prefer "unconscious" other than "mega".

 

When I provide services for brands, my methodology is centered on "Creating a unique and iconic brand experience". As I see it, good art happens to follow the same logic.

 

When I choose Andy’s works as the material, it means I have already enough indirectness. Or I can say when I shoot Monroe, I am not shooting Monroe, I am shooting Andy’s Monroe, which contains a long journey through time and space, Andy’s camera, processing, silkscreens, errors, printing, the material and traces torn of this Andy’s Collection that I have, and so on. Therefore, I can also say that I am not shooting Andy, I am shooting the time and space journey based on Andy. From this point of view, I can shoot anyone. It’s all because of the theme of mine is indirectness, not Andy.

 

Yet, Andy is good, Andy helped me solve a series of problems, like choosing the target subject, operating the camera, aperture, focus length, lens, composition, prints, forms, tonality… I think he had solved it quite well, then why should I repeat these? If artists exist because of differentiation like brands, then artists must have to create new customers and find their positions in the market segments, and thus obtain their differentiation as well. If there is differentiation, what kind of art can not work? Those on the shelf? Which means can not work? Shooting? Digitalizing? And what kind of rhetoric can not work? Realistic? Symbolistic? - I all do not agree.

 

When I make ppt, I would find some pictures to illustrate a point of view or fact. When I was faced with all these pictures and need to make a choice, I found that they were all good. I gave up what I had thought - "only one is appropriate", which I found was an outdated way of selecting, and decided to put all of them in the ppt. People are always happy to put up several pictures of the same content on social media. I used to think that they were all the same. But now, I think they are each different. This is why you can find many pieces of a same content in "How Dazzling Andy". "There are no two identical leaves in the world", I think, this is probably the philosophical foundation of their existence.

 

When I look for commonalities between things, I find that individuality will always appear when good commonalities appear. When I am about to give up the theme, the theme will always arise in the process. When I hesitate, the hesitation turns out to be the affirmation. When I search for certainty, uncertainty comes as expected. When I pursue necessity, contingency prevails instead. When I insist on "one", I will get "many" in return.

 

Artists can also be divided into platform type and product type. Andy Warhol belongs to the former, and David Hockney goes to the latter. I am thinking, or planning, to create more "How Dazzling", such as "How Dazzling He", "How Dazzling She", "How Dazzling Those", "How Dazzling These", "How Dazzling Dazzling", etc. All you can expect is "how dazzling" they will be. What you can't expect (including myself), is the result of things that are being given - like that sense of fading you might feel in "How Dazzling Andy", while someone else might instead read it as emerging. And when you see all the "How Dazzling" works (so far) - including celebrities and non-celebrities, the extraordinary and the ordinary, the historic and the living - you might read democracy in them. You know, I've always loved works that can stand up to multi-dimensional interpretations. Obviously, I belong to the platform type.

 

McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." Great artists don't create content, they invent a new medium, or a medium method. The readymade is Duchamp's medium, and "repetition" is (I think) Andy's medium. Then how about "How Dazzling"? Of course it’s the medium that I invented. 

 

Remember, they are "How Dazzling", not the white, nor the overexposed.