Contemporary Art & Artists: ARTS 1001 Blog

Mel's Group

Artist John Neff

John Neff is currently based in Chicago, IL, were he both works and lives. Neff works a lot with photography and images that he has made himself or that he has found that work with the idea of his project. Many of his images are pantographs, which were used by “mechanical draftsmen and now being supplanted by digital technologies, are tools used to copy, reduce and enlarge building plans, production diagrams and other two-dimensional images� (Western Exhibition Press Release). In Neff’s more recent work he uses a variety of photographic images that he prints as acetate negatives, which are sometimes the size of a piece of paper or are the actual size of the person being represented in the image. The negatives are then contact printed by using cyanotype printing, which creates, literally, a blueprint of the negatives. This new technique that he uses is similar in a way to how he represented building plans that he collaged with other images, some of which were of the human body or a sculpture of. He also makes sculptures with plaster life casts of figures that go along with his main focus of the human body. Neff seems to play with an overall theme of structure and what it means both in the context of an actual building and how that relates to the human body or in the context of the body its self.


Neff seems to address the idea that “the photographic negative has traditionally been seen as a locus of photographic truth –as original in every sense� (NY Art Magazine). It seems like Neff’s work is meant to inform the viewer as to what and how the image of the body is seen and discussed. We tend to think that we are unique to one another, but we all have an underlying common thread that is the general structure of our body. For the most part we all have the same structure underneath all the flesh and blood. We become less unique when some things are striped away, but instead of presenting photographs of skeletons John Neff presents us with the body as a whole and alters it slightly. Our bodies are more like pieces that can be put together to create and form the whole structure. The pieces may be the same for everyone, but when are put together that is when they can become different from one another. Neff describes his work as “ongoing efforts to arrive at a figuration- an idea of the human- through which I might imagine the existence of integrated, singular subjects whose identities are not contingent on toxic and untenable conceptions of authenticity� (NY Art Magazine).
I would compare John Neff to artists like Chris Larson and Suzanne Opton. John Neff’s work in relation to the idea or theme of structure is kind of like the ideas of Chris Larson. Larson’s work is more 3-D and interacts with the actors controlling them. But both Larson and Neff seem to have an idea that the structure of the subject is what makes the art in their works, the structure is the backbone, and is what the rest of the piece is contingent on. Suzanne Opton and John Neff both work with same subjects, people, and photograph them to convey what they are trying to express. Opton puts her photos of soldiers on billboards making them larger than life, forcing you to have to confront the people that are being presented. She is essentially giving these soldiers a face, instead of being just a number that we see go by on the news in the form of dead trolls. Where as Neff creates prints, although they are sometimes life size, that are either of the body in what seems like a contorted pose or either collaged with building blueprints.
I would recommend John Neff to friends. I think that his work makes you look at the subject of the human body and what it means in the different contexts he puts them in and why he choose to do so. If anything, his process or technique is enough for me to want to check out his work or recommend to some one else to check out.

Resources:

Western Exhibitions
http://blog.lib.umn.edu

NY Art Magazine
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=327573&Itemid=753

Mel’s Group
Gallery Visit- Hindsight is Always 20/20
I visited the exhibition; Hindsight is Always 20/20 by R. Luke DuBois at the Weisman Art Museum. I really enjoyed this exhibition. It was comprised of 41 prints for each one of the 41 presidents that delivered a State of The Union Address. Each print had 66 word lists that came from the address itself and the words that were on the chart represented the frequency of the word’s use. The prints were done like a regular eye chart would be, except he used words instead of individual letters. The exhibition was arranged so that you would start with the first president, to the most current. At the same time you were moving through history, you were also weaving through and around the gallery space. As if you were following a time line. It was interesting to see how the words that were the used, almost clearly defined the situations of the time and it was like reading short summaries of the different events that have taken place through out our country’s history. It’s amazing how a few words can trigger curtain thoughts or pictures of past events to come to mind. In a few cases, there were some words that made me wonder in what context they were used and the events that they were describing or even just why they were used so much on the speech. For a few of the prints I had a preconceived notion of what the President was like based in what I have learned or read, but I was surprised when some of the words didn’t match what I have come to know, such was the case with Nixon.
The exhibition both reinforced preconceived ideas about the different administrations, as well as brought light to some of the things we seemed to have missed along the way or things that have been left out of the history books. I think that for the viewer, the gallery takes on different means, depending on what we already know about curtain presidents or even just as simple as when we were born, did we live through curtain historical events or have we just read about them in some history class. I think the exhibition was designed to show off the prints them selves but not really the artist other than his was of representing the material. None of the words that were used in the prints were based on DuBois ideas of the different administrations, all of the words came from each president. I do think that his way of representing the words as a whole was very successful, especially when paired with the title of the exhibition. We can all relate to wishing we would have done some things differently had we known what we now know. Although at the same time, I will be cliché and say, that history has a way of repeating it’s self. We never seem to learn, when the time comes to go to war or whatever the case may be, we say we will do things differently and that we have learned from our mistakes. But have we really? DuBois creates a visual narrative that takes you through our country’s history through the words of our presidents. The individual words in each print come to together to form the dialogue for each president.
One print that really stood out to me was the one representing James Madison, with the largest, boldest word being ENEMY. I will admit that I really am not a history buff and don’t really remember a lot about Madison other than that he was one of the founding fathers of this country, but the word enemy being the most frequent word in his address really surprised me. It made me curious at to what context the word enemy was used or to who he was talking about.
I would tell a friend about this exhibition, in fact I brought a friend along with me when I went. We both really enjoyed the exhibition. I thought that it was thought provoking and made you think about the words that were used. I also thought that it was neat that they had a computer set up in the gallery space, which visitors could write in words that they thought represented the future administration. Allowing people to interact with the work the DuBois was doing, in away.