Introduction
Mind to Eye represents the collective works of Martin van Velsen.
Multiple disciplines have a home here and find expression in the areas of digital interactive
narrative, digital design, art, performance and science. Common to all these areas is the
influence of narrative and storytelling.
Ephemeral Essentialism
Ironically my version of art, which is an expression of humanity in all it's
forms, usually goes towards a bare and austere representation. Call it
essentialism if you will. Essentialism takes off the trivial and non essential
layers of humanity and reveals its basic forms. As an extension it then allows
the artist to find potential and future grace and explore ways in which to
make otherwise invisible concepts available. An early attempt can be seen
to the right in the top imagine. This represents a mask of a future humanity, a
possible incarnation of rampant evolution in the abstract.
According to Wikipedia:
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of
characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore
all things can be precisely defined or described. In this view, it follows that terms or words
should have a single definition and meaning.
Essentialism garnered a tremendous amount of criticm within philosophy, and rightfully so. However,
using essentialism as a tool knowing its imperfections and shortcomings can be extremely useful.
Within sculpture, breaking down a face into it's unique features and shapes can be the key to
conveying a person's personality. Similarly we can use the key features that define a person's
individuality to design a portrait containing one or more essenses of the subject.
I therefore work in terms of ephemeral essentialism, acknowledging that we only show
and expose our core values, ingredients and individuality on very brief occasions.
Personal History
Essentialism as presented here stems from two distinct influences.
First of all special makeup effects created a predisposition to see
the human face in a layered metaphor. Faces and human emotion are multi-layered
expressions. We are multiple people, multiple experiences and we have multiple
ways of looking at the world. All of this is expressed by changing our features
but we are hard pressed to emote multiple sensations at once. At any point
in time we are animals, intellectuals, students, parents, and many other beings.
While working in special makeup effects a desire to take away layers became
important instead of adding more and more layers of clay on a cast of an actor's
face. It is impossible to create a mask that takes away from an actors face and
we are stuck with distorted features and a poor representation of what the
artist had in mind.
|
Sphinx Mask
Old age sculpture on top of plaster life mask
Current setup for 17th century oil painting
|
