Baring ones soul is never an easy thing to do, and i would imagine it's even harder when its on display for the entire art world. Two of favorite female artists have made a career out of doing so, and thats Aurel Schmidt and Tracey Emin. While their mediums couldn't be more different (Aurel does highly detailed drawings while Tracey prefers installation pieces and performance art), their themes are very much the same. They embrace the filth and squalor we often wade through in our day and age, as well as the strange emotions that our culture is capable of creating. Aurel's beautiful but creepy figures look like they are made of regular parts from a distance, but when you get close to see that their mouthes are composed of flies, the eyes are condoms, and their teeth are cigarettes. With Tracey's work, her use of these items is far more confrontational. In her piece 'Bed' (pictured above), she literally put the bed she slept in into a gallery. The only thing is, this bed was covered in blood/urine stains, condoms, cigs, etc. which she accumulated after days of suicidal depression following a break-up. I definitely believe it's important to find beauty in the most disgusting of things, becuase beauty its classical sense is not easy to come by these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment