4-11-10 Artist Blog, Christopher Reiger

Christopher Reiger

"My work is principally concerned with contemporary man's mutable conception of Nature." As a child, "I anthropomorphized animals and cast them as key players in an epic production of which I was a part... As I matured, however, my childhood love of nature evolved into a fascination with biology and ethology, an intellectual ontogenesis like that impelled by the European Enlightenment."

"Incidentally, we've realized that the divide between the imagination and reason is unnatural: We learn an increasing number of facts about Nature, we understand ourselves to be apart from it, and our experience of it is therefore less complete."

"My artwork is born of this apparent opposition. The paintings are celebratory hybrids of myth, natural history, and science; the world they picture stretches between the tidy "truth" and the messy question. They depict a world in flux, a Nature imploding and dissolving. But this dissolution is also an opening of the senses, the seepage of magic and mystery into the picture. The drawings are poetic vignettes that explore the same ideas and questions."

The above are the highlights of Christopher Reiger's artist statement. http://www.christopherreiger.com/statement.html


Synesthesia #1, 2008

This was the first piece of Reiger's that I first stumbled upon at http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/seeing_antlers_feeling_dendrites/. The article explains the fascinating condition of Synesthesia and how art can give the masses a glance into its world of meaning.


Didelphis Virginiana (Virginia's Double Womb), 2006


Canis Lupis (Dog wolf), 2006

In his 2006 work, Reiger combines drawing, scientific classification, and words in his drawings.

4-7-10 Idea Post

Biology

-A natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.

-The term was introduced independently by Karl Friedrich Burdach, Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck between 1800 and 1802 AD. It is inspired by the Greek word bios (life) and the suffix logia (study of).

Above is a diagram created by Ernst Haeckel called The Tree of Life
wikipedia.com

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Recently I have been thinking more about my collections of animal assortments (if you will), inspired by the work on the very top floor of the Anderson Gallery. I was jealous of the bug collection(s) and wonder if the person/people collected or ordered the bugs. The preservation and presentation wasn't top notch, but was impressive overall.

Collections (particularly of animals) and their presentation are art within themselves, but they are not appreciated in the same way 'art labeled' works are- they're given museum quality appreciation. I'm not sure why I have such an interest in this quality, but I can guess.

The Naturalist Center (Leesburg, VA) is only down the street from where I grew up in Northern Virginia. It is the biggest interactive collection of natural history objects I have ever encountered. They have over 36,000 hands-on collection objects including skeletons, furs, animal preservations, bugs, shells, etc. They are a branch of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

One day I aspire to have a fraction of this type of collection and display within my own house.



^^The Naturalist Center in Leesburg, Va^^

4-5-10 Artist Post, ROA

ROA

ROA is a street artist also known as the Gent Zoo Keeper and the King of Doel Jungle who hand paints large black and white murals of animals: rats, pigs, rabbits, and cows (from what I can find). He often targets decaying urban areas, which began with the outlying abandoned buildings and warehouses in the outskirts of Ghent, Belgium (home town). He replicates animals found in the area and seeks to embody their amazing ability to adapt to urban environments and become scavengers in order to survive.

ROA's artwork went global when he ventured to urban New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris to paint his often depicted cross-sectioned animals and city scavengers.

A majority of ROA's work shows a transformation, whether it be through his painting of the animal or emphasized in the environment.

A piece that hung in the Gallerie Itinerrance in Paris earlier this year

[From the same gallery as above] The metal pieces in this artwork are on hinges that allow the viewer to alter the work seeing two sides of the animal (interior neuro-structure vs epidermal layer).

Unlabeled location

Unlabeled location

Unlabeled location: In this piece, the yellow door flips open to show a complete rabbit (instead of a skeletal head) as well

ROA's website has very little information and I'm not sure whether the photographs are taken by himself or by fans. Understandably, he wishes to remain anonymous.

http://www.roaweb.org/

4-1-10 Idea Post

More thoughts on the domestication of animals:

At what point during anthropomorphism or domestication do animals lost their identity? When (if) do they stop being animals and become humanized beings or objects?

What IS an animal? How does our culture define animalia?

Animals are a major group of mostly multicellular eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently. All animals are also heterotrophs, meaning they must ingest other organisms for sustenance.

The word "animal" comes from the Latine word animal meaning 'with soul.' In everyday colloquial usage, the word usually refers to non-human animals. Frequently only closer relatives of humans such as vertebrates or mammals are meant in colloquial use. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the Kingdom Animalia including humans.

wikipedia.org

I would suspect most people think of wild animals when they hear the word 'animal.' We use 'animal' as an adjective pertaining to the physical, sensual, or carnal nature of humans rather than our spiritual or intellectual nature. At one point, all animals were 'wild' or undomesticated. At what point do we stop referring to an animal as 'wild'? Is a caged lion or tiger still wild?
Remember: Domestication is a process of selection in which animals or plants become accustomed to human provision/control.

In conclusion:

At what point did the goose cease being a migratory majestic that signaled the change of seasons and begin to play the role of community pond accessory whose fecal matter covers grass to the point of non-enjoyment?

Human ignorance sound familiar?

Anderson Gallery

I entered three pieces to the Anderson Gallery Student show, two of which got in. =) Stoked!


Both are images from the fall semester of senior portfolio (2009).