Documentation of "Golem", Matthew Thomson's latest solo show at the Flea Market gallery in St. Catharines, On
Here is the documentation from my solo show at the Flea Market gallery in St. Catharines, Ontario.
The Flea Market gallery is a booth in the
flea market that has been transformed by the Niagara Artists Centre into
an exhibition space, with the intent of bringing contemporary art out
of the art gallery and into wider public spaces.
Statement about Golem
Golem: an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter to serve its creator.
Shown as an installation, Golem is a composite of two projects: Aller et Venir, Part Two and Golem (Variations).
Aller et Venir, Part Two (2010-2011), an installation featuring a print, a video, and a sculpture, was created with the intent of transforming an existing artwork: Aller et Venir, a sculptural mixed media assemblage, produced in 2008, that was primarily composed of found objects. By recycling the work, I wanted to expose the
creative process and generate new themes through this act. The work would therefore function as a vehicle for communicating ideas, relinquishing the preciousness of the original to make it more malleable and mutable. I produced a video documenting the
improvisation of taking apart and reconstructing the piece. In this video, there is a skewed perception of the artistic process: the underlying sounds of vacuums and muffled construction noises isolate the creative act, while small characters move back and forth through non-spaces, i.e. in front of an alleyway door, completely oblivious
to the fact that a giant is creating a golem-like creature made from the debris of their everyday lives. A sculptural piece showing the remnants of this performance is shown with the print of the original (in memoriam) and the video, displaying how this absurd, almost theatrical act has rendered the original object almost obsolete, but
all the more powerful through its extension into other forms.
Golem (Variations) was another instance of performative interplay between creator and created, causing mutations in both the form and the content of the original work. I used a 3D scanner to make a digital representation of the golem-like sculpture from the video. The object was too complex for the scanner to accurately translate into virtual form. After weeks of patching up and repairing the
dysfunctional digital mesh, technical limitations continuously prevented me from completing the project. Inevitably, the computer I was using crashed, erasing most of the work I had done. This brought me to a crossroads; I needed to reconsider my motives behind the entire project. In a twist of perception, I decided to embrace the
futility of what I had already done: rather than use the technology for reproductive purposes, it became a playful method for generating variations in form, based on chance and the limitations of the medium itself. Both the marks of the technology and the marks of my decision-making were left on the digital meshes, eroding and mutating the digital files. The act of reformulating the scanned sculpture- which was already a by-product of having transformed a previous work - would allow the original to gain, once again, new identities and manifestations through the mediums of 3D scanning and
printing. The 3D printed sculptures also respond to a process of deterioration or imperfection which relates to the idea of ‘the found object’ and the marks of usage left on the object.
Statement about Golem
Golem: an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter to serve its creator.
Shown as an installation, Golem is a composite of two projects: Aller et Venir, Part Two and Golem (Variations).
Aller et Venir, Part Two (2010-2011), an installation featuring a print, a video, and a sculpture, was created with the intent of transforming an existing artwork: Aller et Venir, a sculptural mixed media assemblage, produced in 2008, that was primarily composed of found objects. By recycling the work, I wanted to expose the
creative process and generate new themes through this act. The work would therefore function as a vehicle for communicating ideas, relinquishing the preciousness of the original to make it more malleable and mutable. I produced a video documenting the
improvisation of taking apart and reconstructing the piece. In this video, there is a skewed perception of the artistic process: the underlying sounds of vacuums and muffled construction noises isolate the creative act, while small characters move back and forth through non-spaces, i.e. in front of an alleyway door, completely oblivious
to the fact that a giant is creating a golem-like creature made from the debris of their everyday lives. A sculptural piece showing the remnants of this performance is shown with the print of the original (in memoriam) and the video, displaying how this absurd, almost theatrical act has rendered the original object almost obsolete, but
all the more powerful through its extension into other forms.
Golem (Variations) was another instance of performative interplay between creator and created, causing mutations in both the form and the content of the original work. I used a 3D scanner to make a digital representation of the golem-like sculpture from the video. The object was too complex for the scanner to accurately translate into virtual form. After weeks of patching up and repairing the
dysfunctional digital mesh, technical limitations continuously prevented me from completing the project. Inevitably, the computer I was using crashed, erasing most of the work I had done. This brought me to a crossroads; I needed to reconsider my motives behind the entire project. In a twist of perception, I decided to embrace the
futility of what I had already done: rather than use the technology for reproductive purposes, it became a playful method for generating variations in form, based on chance and the limitations of the medium itself. Both the marks of the technology and the marks of my decision-making were left on the digital meshes, eroding and mutating the digital files. The act of reformulating the scanned sculpture- which was already a by-product of having transformed a previous work - would allow the original to gain, once again, new identities and manifestations through the mediums of 3D scanning and
printing. The 3D printed sculptures also respond to a process of deterioration or imperfection which relates to the idea of ‘the found object’ and the marks of usage left on the object.
In the 3D prints, the marks of the virtual are used to ‘age’ or ‘consume’ the original, in a manner recalling natural processes of transformation, like erosion, crystallization, or fermentation. At times they resemble pathways inside an ant hill, while others recall bone structures.
Screenshots were taken of the 3D meshes during the process of working on the 3D scan of Golem. The virtual meshes are represented differently from program to program, showing particular views of the mesh and/or different types of errors. These images were assembled to produce a sculptural book-work resembling a mobile, printed on transparencies, to recall the process of working on the 3D meshes to reach a state where they could be rendered into sculptures by the 3D printer. The mobile book-work recalls a virtual state of transformation, describing the idea of something being produced but not yet tangible.
Through the juxtaposition of these elements within an installation, the nature of the found object and the potential for recycling as theme and artistic strategy is broken down into multiple processes and manifests itself through a variety of mediums. The creator is like a mad scientist. Through the production of the print, the video, and the sculpture, the notion of time in relation to the original- the memory of the original, the time taken to transform the original, and the end result of the transformation, frozen in time- is stretched and broken into different dimensions.
A symbiotic and symbolic relationship between the mediums used has infused meaning into altered and shifting forms. This open process has animated the golems, enabling them to “perform” and serve their creator through their production and by being displayed.
