When I had meeting with Brendan last Friday (Nov.10), the work assigned for me was sanding wooden support structures. Different from sanding the whole uncut lumber in the previous week, this time I focused more on the joints of the support structure as Brendan wanted each piece to be connected with each other smoothly. I think the idea of having the structure’s joints smooth is more than just a decision on the artwork’s formal quality. Reason being visuals rendered through computing programs seem to have a stereotyped way of appearing in people’s unconscious mind that they are always perfectly executed and look so advanced. Particularly, for people who have no experience working with computing programs, artworks produced via software are more likely to be regarded as on a more advanced, modernized, or up-to-date level than a material based work. Having smooth joints may lead viewers wonder about how the structure is built as if it is naturally like this since there is no visible evidence indicating it being made by numerous wood pieces jointed together. Therefore, I consider trying to render a material based work perfectly is a way of blurring the boundary between virtual reality and reality, which is one major theme of the show.

As I usually meet with Brendan in the BAF gallery, I also get to see the show they are curating at this moment: You, Only Better, by artist Kim Kennedy Austin. In this exhibition, Austin has made drawings in dark indigo blue flocking, which is similar with the velvet or suede material often seen in car interiors and jewelry boxes. Austin has appropriated figures contained in advertisements from magazines which the main target audience were often people who live in affluent communities. Basically there were various kinds of approach or recipe for self-betterment in those ads, plastic surgeons and personal fitness trainers, for example. Looking at Austin’s cartoony drawings, I start to see the invisible controlling of people by societal conventions that people have to follow certain routines in order to achieve self-betterment which is accepted by others. Also, self-betterment seems to be an achievement made for other people but not the person himself/herself, as the change need to be acknowledged otherwise it means nothing. Interestingly, I noticed that although some drawings of figures are headless, which means anonymous, but I am still able to tell the gender of those figures from their poses or actions. This may reinforce on the differentiation or division of gender, or the appropriate behavior to perform a gender that people are taught by societal conventions.