Work of Art - Erik leaves - Both Teams submit crap and Miles is an Art Pussy

Pin It

Good Reality TV but Bad Art on this weeks "Work of Art" featuring Public Art

I was very disappointed by this weeks episode of "Work of Art", obviously the producers of the show feel they need to make the show more accessable to the rather dumb mean intelligence of the american viewing audience. Reality shows have always focused on the base elements of humanity and culture even if they are pretending to focus on a high art concept.

Team Challenge = Fail

The entire concept of a team challenge in a contest of art and creativity is foolish and counterproductive. As a viewer and an artist I dont want to witness the whitewash mediocre mean vision of 4 artists. The skills required for team production and interaction should not be confused and intermingled with the creative process. Foolish, Wrong, Fail from the very beginning.

The Public Art was uninspired

Both teams failed in this challenge. The winning team, Team A (RED) created some very ugly park benches. Their lifetime in a public arena would be very limited. Ive seen more beautiful skate parks. The judges comments about hideous 60's minimalist art were right on point and I could imagine the entire project being carried away and spray painted.

Team B was stronger. Their submission had substance and a true interactiveness, but on the downside the base structure lacked any aesthetic beauty, it look like a scaffold that should be soon removed. The hodge podge of crap that was tacked on on site had no attractive aspects either. Erik was right, a solid piece of sheet metal or a clean coat of spray paint would have been more intelligent decisions.

These artists were on the spot, hurried and had to work in a team environment so I make no judgments on any of their individual talents.

My thought process - nature in the city, permanent materials, a land of tall concrete bright animated sunflowers allowing the individual artist to put their touch on each...this changed to a large scale rendition of the iconic Super Mario flower inside of the pipe, bright colors, solid construction, interactive pipe if time allowed. I wonder how that would have played out.

Erik and Miles

Erik Johnson had me in stitches when he rightfully flipped out on his group referring to Miles as an "Art Pussy" who had built another "homeless shelter" It was obvious even in the final edited product that Miles is easily controlling his teammates to his vision and Erik wasnt having it!

If the concept had gone more towards the tree house/clubhouse aspect originally discussed combined with the organic vine elements they would have had an interesting creation, unfortunately they allowed for the input of the artist with wacky clothes ( I dont remember her name and have trouble believing in the eye of an artist who cant dress herself) and this vision changed.

As a very male artist familiar with the cliches of art school and the "art pussy" aspect of the art crowd, Im very much in support of Eriks complaints. Luckily, my Art school experience had me more in the role of a Miles..so I had no resentment about the weakness and closeminded self referential nature of my peers. But I certainly did not respect it. Miles has shown great ability with materials, showmanship and creating a complete and often complex final product. His works seems finished but so so boring, dreary and self referential, Miles definitely gets the points for being a "professional" and probably is a very smooth operator. Erik was more likely to create something truly great and inspired. A complete series of Miles work to date could do no more than help me sleep at night - perhaps thats his mission but its not one that I support.

To give Miles one Kudo - the apparently uncontrollable bleet where he put down Trongs(?) piece was also a gut splitter - another example of self referential, in joke art history inspired crap that has little to endear itself with a "normal" viewer.

I hope Erik is off to big things.

You can see Eriks works and follow his future endeavors on his Facebook fan page:
The Art of Erik Johnson
Eriks Newest project - Residual Scars