All the recent discussion online on Artspeak's unique linguistic manifestations http://canopycanopycanopy.com/16/international_art_english alerted me to the disconcerting possibility that my current artist statement http://www.neilchowdhury.com/pages/7071-artists-statement is woefully comprehensible by any reasonably literate reader of English. It's no wonder that my work has sometimes been consigned to exhibition in dubiously salubrious contexts, for example, this one in the men's urinal at the Gershwin Hotel, downtown Manhattan:
Obvious Duchampian associations notwithstanding, the thought of my hard won compositional virtuosity being exclusively apprehended by men with micturating phallus in hand brought about a highly ambiguous emotional response. Amongst other points of potential objection, the exclusion of my work to a female audience was never my intention; therefore in order to mitigate charges of an overtly sexist exclusionary stance, I have been motivated, as the first step in a multi-pronged strategy to remedy this unfortunate state of events, to attempt a complete rewrite of artist statement in order to better conform to the professionally accepted dialect of International Art English.
Although a legitimate holder of the requisite MFA degree, I now realize that my adoption of this language schema has perhaps been hampered by the humble state university origins of my credentials, a lack of skill, or perhaps, horror of horrors, even a preantidiluvian misconception that the written word accompanying artistic production should actually be comprehensible to a lay reader. As a relative novice and reluctant late adopter of this sort of linguistic prestidigitation, I therefore invite you, Dear Reader, to add your own revisions and additions to my efforts below in the comment section. Please don't get the idea that I was ignorant of the existence of this sometimes mystifying manifestation of the English Language. My inbox has been just as inundated with eFlux press releases as anyone else's who has attempted to follow the gyrations of Art World happenings and happenstance this last eventful decade. Although I've admittedly been a little ambivalent in my attitude towards the long term reputation of Artspeak's utterances, it would apear, based on the evidence cited in the article above, as if I'd better get on the bandwagon before the party is over, and I'm forever consigned to the historical ash heap of ignored over-earnest artists who just didn't "get it" in the post postmodern realm of irony, mystification, and elitist exotification posing as inclusionary democratization of the redefinition of Art. If that didn't make much sense to you, don't worry, I'm just getting warmed up. So here, at the risk of exposing myself as the Midwestern raised rube, the contemptible neophytic pretender transparently masquerading as the art world insider towards which my middle class aspirational immigrant ambitions compel me to overreach, for the pleasure of your mystification and in mutual acknowledgement of your elite acculturation is my official first stab at International Art English:
Obvious Duchampian associations notwithstanding, the thought of my hard won compositional virtuosity being exclusively apprehended by men with micturating phallus in hand brought about a highly ambiguous emotional response. Amongst other points of potential objection, the exclusion of my work to a female audience was never my intention; therefore in order to mitigate charges of an overtly sexist exclusionary stance, I have been motivated, as the first step in a multi-pronged strategy to remedy this unfortunate state of events, to attempt a complete rewrite of artist statement in order to better conform to the professionally accepted dialect of International Art English.
Although a legitimate holder of the requisite MFA degree, I now realize that my adoption of this language schema has perhaps been hampered by the humble state university origins of my credentials, a lack of skill, or perhaps, horror of horrors, even a preantidiluvian misconception that the written word accompanying artistic production should actually be comprehensible to a lay reader. As a relative novice and reluctant late adopter of this sort of linguistic prestidigitation, I therefore invite you, Dear Reader, to add your own revisions and additions to my efforts below in the comment section. Please don't get the idea that I was ignorant of the existence of this sometimes mystifying manifestation of the English Language. My inbox has been just as inundated with eFlux press releases as anyone else's who has attempted to follow the gyrations of Art World happenings and happenstance this last eventful decade. Although I've admittedly been a little ambivalent in my attitude towards the long term reputation of Artspeak's utterances, it would apear, based on the evidence cited in the article above, as if I'd better get on the bandwagon before the party is over, and I'm forever consigned to the historical ash heap of ignored over-earnest artists who just didn't "get it" in the post postmodern realm of irony, mystification, and elitist exotification posing as inclusionary democratization of the redefinition of Art. If that didn't make much sense to you, don't worry, I'm just getting warmed up. So here, at the risk of exposing myself as the Midwestern raised rube, the contemptible neophytic pretender transparently masquerading as the art world insider towards which my middle class aspirational immigrant ambitions compel me to overreach, for the pleasure of your mystification and in mutual acknowledgement of your elite acculturation is my official first stab at International Art English:
My work solicits interpretive cultural metatextualizations utilizing
a hybridity of emergent optical, chemical and digital imaging strategizations,
generative of a technological proxy metaphorically representational to the ineffably
platonic hyperpersonalized visual space via a matrix of technoderivative photographic
simulacra intuited juxtapositionally via discontinuous synthetic assemblages, nonlinear
sequential narrative deconstructuralizations, and temporal memorialization of
perceived special and temporal singularities, deploying constructed
metasocializations of the assumed real, notwithstanding assumed referentialities
to dialectical exclusionary conceptualizations to examine the
reinterpretability of photographically derived mediation’s perceived indexicality
potentiating communicability’s ambiguatorily auratic poetically reoriented narrational
manifestation that expresses and transcends photographic media’s temporal existential
limitations and interrogates the primacy of the colonial gaze, reacknowledging the
ineffability of psycho-sexual, cultural and economic influential factoriality that
form a subjective visual interpretational field theory systemic to intraendemic
academic ontological structures, while interrogating liminal cultural
artifacts arising within specific historically derived affinities that through ahistorical decontextualization, reconfigure interminably,
suggesting interpretive potentialities in denial of definitive categorization
in relation to extant taxonomic structural matrices normatively proximate to
contemporary epistemological art world schema.
At the risk of redundancy, I'd like to reiterate that if anyone can decipher concrete meaning encoded within the above new and improved artist statement, please let me know and I'll attempt to reambiguate the liminality of my textual exposition. Really, folks. I need all the help I can get here.
