Comme des Garçons or The Art of Inbetween, for me, is all about finding art in places which you would not expect it to be. As I create art I grow inspired to discover new methods and techniques to enjoy art and to further develop my creativity. This is how I came up with my exhibition theme. The desire to identify new techniques in art is what inspired me to explore the theme. Many of my pieces are due to experimentation. This is seen through the multitude of mediums I explored such as watercolor, acrylic painting, oil pastels, clay, Copic markers, photography, printmaking, and even upcycling. When making the work for my exhibition, I had the theme in my mind constantly, particularly with the pieces Venus Fly, The Art of Inbetween, and Vase of Flowers.
These pieces are the three which represent my theme to the fullest and demonstrate the thought process I had in terms of exploring different ways to enjoy art. As I made these pieces along with the entire exhibition, I learned new styles which have demonstrated to me why I chose this topic and have improved my art-making skills to a greater extent than when I was not working on the exhibition.
Within my exhibition, there are many common motifs throughout. For example, flowers are common and continuously pop out in many of my pieces, specifically, roses. Roses are traditionally beautiful but what makes my exhibition so unique is the challenge of beauty and the ability to see traditional beauty from different standpoints. My works work against the concept of beauty as I demonstrate roses through traditional beauty, varying beauty, and even ugly beauty when I create a vase of flowers with recyclable materials, which is not normally appealing. A recurring theme in my exhibition is nature. Many of my pieces contain elements of nature in a different way. That is because twisting nature into art is a primary aspect of my exhibition. The natural elements demonstrate how art can be found in even the most uncommon places.
The social commentary regarding the importance of recycling and pollution is an underlying theme within artworks such as Four Roses, Dolphin, and Vase of Flowers. In these pieces, I demonstrate the importance through the utilization of recyclable materials, however, in Dolphin, I do not demonstrate the importance in a literal way, but figuratively. This commentary explores my theme, Comme des Garçons, as it shows how art is not only something that can be found in traditional paintings or drawings but in materials one would not think of. An important part of my theme is letting the art I created speak for itself. Many of my pieces contain elements that are meant to be looked at more than once to relay the meaning of my work. Art is not meant to be looked at once and then given the title of ‘beautiful’, it is meant to be examined and broken down to understand the meaning behind it. Because of this, my exploration of this theme encompasses many new things I have tried to convey meaning. No one should be told what the definition of art should be and not even the artist should tell what they want their audience to feel, it should be subjective for the viewer. That is why with simplistic pieces such as Pear or Dragon, my intention is for the viewer to re-evaluate the reasoning for their placement within the story I create with the pieces I have created. My exhibition has been something I have researched very hard for. I intended for my pieces to be open to interpretation while still having particular meanings for me. My research led me to choose the topic of Comme des Garçons and has helped me explore art in ways I would never imagine due to my ability to now read in between the lines and create work that is unique and speaks for itself.
