I really wish it wasn't called 'Disco Skin', it would be a much more poetic artwork if it had another, less literal title, however I really like its form. In my experiments to make spheres I tried using spherical balloons to make a mold. I didn't let the paper mache dry enough so when the balloon caved in on itself when I popped it or tried applying wax... it was a horrible, ugly mess. This work has a similar shape to the collapsed balloon but the graphite surface gives it a delicacy and beauty. I also really like the sections of the mirrored rectangles, which make it more of a structure (and historically, I do love a decayed, deteriorating structure). The disco ball as a symbol means nothing to me, apart from its visual similarity with a planet, floating in space. Regardless, the piece has a melancholic air, of something once present and now dead; the surface is dull compared to the mirrors it once was.
In an essay (found here: http://www.artslant.com/chi/articles/show/41488) I found some insightful quotes baout their practice and way of thinking.
'The ways by which men arrive at knowledge of the celestial things are hardly less wonderful than the nature of these things themselves.' —Johannes Kepler
"concentrating on how those bodies intersect with subjective experience. "
“Each color on the images depicted a different mineral or mineral composition—another way of seeing.” Although the colors they used to paint each surface is based on scientific data, that data is not tied to human sight specifically. Meteors would not, for instance, appear to us in the colors prescribed by the data. Rather, the colors translate data about the mineral content of each stone, rending what is typically invisible to the human eye both visible and identifiable.
The quote below in particular touches on themes within my own practice. In photographing the contact lenses with a macro lens and microscope I am making that which was out of sight, visible. There is also a duality to this idea, as the dirty lenses are now in clear sight, but what was once viewed through them is still left to the imagination. If the lenses were not dirty and old perhaps they would magnify the darkness and make clear what is beyond, but the unknown remains clouded and inaccessible.
“We are extremely interested in filtered seeing,” the artists continued. “It allows us to see things that the human eye cannot see. It is both real and faked/mediated. The enhancement and modification is not done to deceive but rather to show what we cannot see." The Belknaps thus play with the translation of extraterrestrial bodies, bringing them into a human range of perception, whether that means shrinking a meteor so that it is proportionate to my body in a backyard, or blowing up microscopic attributes so that they become visible to my eye.
The quote below in particular touches on themes within my own practice. In photographing the contact lenses with a macro lens and microscope I am making that which was out of sight, visible. There is also a duality to this idea, as the dirty lenses are now in clear sight, but what was once viewed through them is still left to the imagination. If the lenses were not dirty and old perhaps they would magnify the darkness and make clear what is beyond, but the unknown remains clouded and inaccessible.
“We are extremely interested in filtered seeing,” the artists continued. “It allows us to see things that the human eye cannot see. It is both real and faked/mediated. The enhancement and modification is not done to deceive but rather to show what we cannot see." The Belknaps thus play with the translation of extraterrestrial bodies, bringing them into a human range of perception, whether that means shrinking a meteor so that it is proportionate to my body in a backyard, or blowing up microscopic attributes so that they become visible to my eye.
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