Monday, January 24, 2011

Up to date!

I've been slacking on my blog. Busy busy life, and more importantly, busy busy art making. I recently completed a project which I'd been teasing on here. I've been loosely referring to them as abstract narratives.  Conceptually it is the result of two basic interests.  The first is an idea I read about in a Zen Buddhist book about intuitive understanding with no intellectual basis.  I became curious how this could be translated to juxtaposition of images.  This interest was compounded by my discovery of the graphic novel.  In particular, juxtaposed, sequential images conveying a narrative.  A central element of the comic is the "gutter" - that space in between panels where, as a reader, we fill in expectations.  In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics he discusses the different types of transitions between panels, one being the non-sequitor.  As one would imagine this involves the juxtaposition of an unexpected panel.  This quickly brings us to the question of whether this can actually exist or not, given that the human mind has a tendency to fill in gaps and force connections.


From these ideas I came up with the concept of abstract narratives.  I chose triptychs as my method of delivery.  Images with loosely related (non-sequitor) imagery are juxtaposed and presented to the viewer as narratives.  I chose to keep the images themselves largely square/rectangular in order to force limits and define parameters which I could experiment within.  I opted to weight images in many instances in order create a sense of hierarchy within the narrative.  Sequence itself is largely inconsequential and my gift to the viewer.


I could talk at length about these but for now I hope everyone is happy I finally posted a few of them. I intend to update my main pages with a small gallery of them soon. Enjoy!


UPDATE: More images up in a gallery on my main page StevenJoshlin.com

2 comments:

  1. I really like the very last one. Smoking sure does something to one's 'air'. And the textures!

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  2. These were a ton of fun to make! I just found out I got two of them in the collegiate show

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