Marina Abramovic - The Artist Is Present
Since the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has been pushing past perceived limits of the body and mind, and exploring the complex relationship between artist and audience, through performances that challenge both herself and, in many instances, participants emotionally, intellectually, and physically. The concepts inspiring her works are key, as is the use of her own body to convey her ideas. She has been making art since childhood, and realized early on that it did not have to be produced in a studio, or even take a concrete form. “I understood that…I could make art with everything…and the most important [thing] is the concept,” she relates. “And this was the beginning of my performance art. And the first time I put my body in front of [an] audience, I understood: this is my media.” In 2010 at MoMA, Abramović engaged in an extended performance called, The Artist Is Present. The work was inspired by her belief that stretching the length of a performance beyond expectations serves to alter our perception of time and foster a deeper engagement in the experience. Seated silently at a wooden table across from an empty chair, she waited as people took turns sitting in the chair and locking eyes with her. Over the course of nearly three months, for eight hours a day, she met the gaze of 1,000 strangers, many of whom were moved to tears. “Nobody could imagine…that anybody would take time to sit and just engage in mutual gaze with me,” Abramović explained. In fact, the chair was always occupied, and there were continuous lines of people waiting to sit in it. “It was [a] complete surprise…this enormous need of humans to actually have contact.” For more info see contxpression.wordpress.com/ Our objective is to redefine the political economy of modern/contemporary art practice away from its current dominance of narrative definition and return to a a practice where it is defined by its visual presence. The dominance of of the narrative over the visual presence in contemporary/modern art practice is a result of the commodification of modern/contemporary art practice caused by domination of private art galleries and government funded insinstitutions. We aim to democratise contemporay/modern art practice by returning the control of its political economy to the hands of the practitioners and have it defined by its visual presence and not by its narrative interpretation. Our aim is to have every household in every country of the world not only as owners of modern/contemporary art pieces but also as their narrative interpreters and to be share the practice of creating, critiquing and interpreting modern/contemporary art through social media as opposed to the current practice where private galleries, government institutions and elite collectors define and interpret narratively the meaning of visual representations.Contact Saatchi Art and ask for some free samples of my work and contact me in regard to free art for charities or for anything else.
