Jingdezhen International Studio is very pleased to invite the director of Taoxichuan CHINA ARTS & SCIENCES projects, Thomas Eller, the presenter of this week artist lecture titled: "'Materials' and 'Materiality' in Art”. The lecture will be held on Wednesday, June 19th, at Ceramic Art Avenue Flagship Store 2nd-floor lecture hall at 19:30. He would like to share and discuss the transformation process of "material" and "art" from the Renaissance to the present, the core value of the Taoxichuan CHINA ARTS & SCIENCES project.
Thomas Eller's work focuses on the shift between dimensions of things. His image installation usually takes aluminum plate as the background, prints the cut image, hangs in the different space, the wall, the floor and the negative space created by the frame combination. All of these are all used to be the position where he presents his work.
In the concept of Thomas's works, the concept of time is materialized. He believed that by cutting the image of the photographed object, what is removed is not the spatial background in the image, but the time frame of the photographed object. The viewer's observation of the object is determined at the moment of the shutter release.
" Image are windows to the past. "
--Roland Barthes
In 2004 he returned to Germany to set up an online art magazine at Artnet. As the director at the time, he developed the China business team and worked with major art platforms, including the Basel Art Fair and the German Federal Gallery Association. In 2008, he became the artistic director of TemporarekunsthalleBerlin.
By cutting the image, Thomas resets it to the "new" background frame, while the original time background is erased in the process.
When shoting the photo, the image also shows the sense of space in the scene being photographed. For example, when a photograph is taken from a top view, the spatial perspective of the subject can be shown in the image.
If we place the photo taken from a top view in the upper part of viewers, the viewer viewing angle is to look up. However, the physical dimension and picture of instant space form "contradiction". Then images become a connection between different dimensions of medium, like a ghost phantom exists in the space disorder.
Thomas studied at the Free University of Berlin with a background in religion, philosophy, art history and science. He also serves as a scientific assistant in the Department of Social Investigation at the Science Center Berlin for Social Research. This background also explains the rigorous theoretical views that permeate his work.
In the vigorous development of modern art, a large number of materials are involved. Art can be made of any kind of material. Marcel Duchamp opened an experimental door to the development of Western modern art by involving ready-made materials in the selection of works of art. The process is much more complicated than we think. Art forms are always changing.
Some materials are used to show works of art, while others are used to show the material itself through the form of art.
From sculpture in the Renaissance to immaterial thought across classical ideas and modern artists' use of biotechnology to create new life concepts, materiality has always been a core part of the construction of structures in the process of artistic iteration.