Throughout
history, artists have often sought out the most visceral, physically engaging
materials and innovative procedures of creation. Process art emphasizes the
“process” of making art itself (rather than any predetermined composition or
plan) and the concepts of change and transience. Here, an artist’s interest in
process and the properties of materials are determining factors. At times, the
final object is the result of process; elsewhere, the process (or act of
creation) is the artwork itself. This wide-ranging, multidisciplinary category
could include art typically defined as sculpture, performance, documentary
photography, and even large-scale interventions in both man-made and natural
environments, such as wrapping architectural landmarks, or sketches and
maquettes related to MOCA Jacksonville’s Project
Atrium series.
The
overlapping lines in Ingrid Calame’s abstract drawings, for example, are the
result from the meticulous process completed at various sites
that capture unique groundscapes of different locations. Often described as an
“archeologist of everyday life,” she traces the marks she finds on public and
private streets and translates them onto Mylar sheets as in #320
Drawing (Tracings from Buffalo, NY.) and #330
Drawing (Tracings from the L.A. River & Arcelor Mittal Steel). After
tracing the stains, marks, and cracks from a site, she cleans the original
traces, layers them, and applies color with each layer, peeling them away to
reveal abstract depictions. Calame’s process is inter-disciplinary by nature as
her work engages not only abstract aesthetics but also archaeology and
cartography.
Other
artists in Process and Object
Relationship include John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Joelle Dietrick, Robert
“Dickie” Landry, Jenny Morgan, Arnaldo Pomodoro, and Joel Shapiro, among
others.