project proposal

1. Embodiment

For my final project I will paint two large paintings (48’ x 68’, each, my height) exploring how I embody my source. The paintings will each depict a still life of stacked raw meat over a ground of collaged graph paper. The first painting will be in high detail, and will consist of only meat as its figure. The companion painting will be a combination of raw meat and synthetic pill forms.

Each painting begins with the ground. For this, I will make one sheet of graph paper that has been stenciled with circles in each of its square cells. I will then photocopy this original sheet of graph paper making a stock pile of exact copies. I will use the copies to collage the the ground. The ground of collaged, photocopied graph paper symbolizes the controlled, repetitive, mechanized system of the American food industry. I will seal this ground with an acrylic pouring medium. The pouring medium dries into a sheet of even, clear plastic that separates the meat from the background, suspending it on the surface and pushing it closer to the viewer. The meat image is piled high into a gluttonous mound of random flesh and bone described with sensuous, painterly color. I am using meat as a subject to at once describe the role of my physical self (the flesh that I am made of) and also to explore the role of that body as a consumer in the American industrial food system. The paintings are, in a way, self portraits.

The companion painting will be built over the same collaged ground, sealed with the same pouring medium. In this painting however, the meat is replaced by synthetic pill forms. The “pills” look like elongated circles, and are painted with one, solid, fluorescent color over contact paper. The shapes are then cut out and applied to the surface, like stickers. These shapes resemble additives or pills. They are controlled, idealized forms that are perfected in factories and labs and implemented for the sake of “improvement.” Their application echoes the importance of surface to the industrial food system and its consumers.

I want the audience to be confronted with two paintings that are at once, attractive and repelling, both visually and conceptually. I want the viewer to see the meat pile and think about where it comes from and what it will soon be. How is this flesh processed? I want the viewer to understand that this meat was once a living creature and has now become part of a larger, very complex industry of mass production. I want the audience to think about how our bodies are part of this mass production. How do the choices we make influence this industry and how does this industry influence our lives?

Time is expressed as the viewer reads the paintings from left to right and experiences the change or development or improvement from natural to synthetic/idealized. The paintings change from a slow read to a fast read. Time is also expressed as the paintings are read from background to foreground, from the system (the graph paper) to the systems end-product (the meat or pill forms).

Timeline:

Week 1 – attain all materials, build canvases

Week 2 – collage background, set pouring medium

Week 3 – paint,

Week 4 – finish paintings