A word on statements
28 Feb
In the process of making every mistake known to man as I step through the beginnings of my career, I have one observation about artist statements.
I remember discussions about how important statements were as a way of dictating the direction of discussion about your work, to prevent others from saying random unwanted things about it, but I think that it’s more accurate to say that if you don’t have a somewhat lengthy and significant sounding statement, you will not get as much press.
Most writers covering art will not have the necessary background in your field to understand the historical or aesthetic context of your work, nor do they have the time to think on it too much, so they will write their articles drawing heavily from the artist statements. If you make the mistake of putting out a statement that is short almost to the point of irreverence, then they will simply conflate your lack of verbiage with a lack of meaning in the work itself. Most people will not know what to say, so they simply will not say anything at all. It’s not so much that they will misinterpret your work as that they will simply ignore it or treat it as nothing more than visual candy.
Or maybe my work just isn’t there yet. Take it as you may.
Good analysis. I think your take is spot on, but I don’t really the situation as a problem. If someone doesn’t have the background to understand the work, or doesn’t have time to think about it, or for whatever other reason needs a lengthy artist statement to draw meaning from the work, you just gotta say fuck em and move on. And if they ignore the work that’s their problem not yours. I know it sounds dismissive, and it’s probably a career-killiing attitude. But life is short. Spend time making art, not statements.
Sometimes they’re the same thing though!