Date of Award
Spring 5-23-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Art & Art History
First Advisor
Chitra Ganesh
Second Advisor
Carrie Moyer
Academic Program Adviser
Carrie Moyer
Abstract
Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets of Chinese and Korean landscape painting, I explore ideas about intersubjectivity between vision and immersion in the world while using Lorraine O'Grady's "both/and" conceptual framework. Referencing “fetishized” objects from the regions of Central, South and East Asia as well as North Africa as depicted in Dutch Still Life, pictorial languages of power in art historiography and the social are brought to light. Braiding a reimagined narrative of abstraction where the inside and outside are confused, my practice breaks down hierarchical distinctions between fine art and “world arts” (a.k.a. craft).
Recommended Citation
Lee Blocman, Kiwha, "Ambiguity of Vision: Reimagining the Hypervisible Void" (2022). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/909
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, Art Practice Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, Asian Art and Architecture Commons, Cultural History Commons, East Asian Languages and Societies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Painting Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Printmaking Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons