von Roger L. Roberts / Beckettt, Vienna, Austria, 2015
Part I
The Story of Discovering and Making of Reflection Art, 2005
Beckettt´s Founding of "THE SCHOOL OF REFLECTION ART" and World Premier Exhibition in Vienna 2008
Part II
THE RE-DISCOVERING OF THE FILM "YELLOW SUBMARINE"
PART III
THE BLUE MEANIES EUREKA-WORLD PEACE PROJECT and POPULATION BOOM SOLUTION MANAGEMENT
PART IV
THE 44 BLUE MEANIES + 7 MASKS ART-THEME AND PRODUCTION COSTS BUSINESS PLAN
PART V
THE FOUNDING OF EUREKAS SCHOOL OF REFLECTION ART
Part I
The Story of Discovering and Making of Reflection Art, 2005
Having always been fascinated by all sorts of historical shields from the ancient Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek to the medieval times, decorated with a coat of arms and a verity of various symbols and logos representing a particular clan, empire or kingdom, or the vividly painted colourful shields of the tribal arts of Africa and Oceania with an astounding variety of most aesthetical archaic designs, have always inspired me and been a provocative temptation to design my own body shields to create a new fashion of combining painting with body fashion as hangable carry-around-pictures.
Reflection Art is a discovery I made by pure coincidence, enjoying experimenting with fluorescent acrylic colours; while working on a ballet/art project, in creating a series of body shields (carry around paintings) in a variety of forms and colours for a simple choreographic dance presentation to Ravels Bolero, consisting of transporting 33 shields one by one worn by two NAKED ballet dancers appearing carrying a shield from behind a paravent dancing the shield, through the gallery displaying it to the audience and hanging on the gallery wall and so complete her choreographic ceremonial dancing mission to return to the starting point behind the paravent to collect the next shield and release the other waiting dancer to appear with the next shield from behind the paravent and proceed to follow suit dancing her shield displaying it through the impatient and surprised audience, to its set hanging space, and hang ceremoniously onto the walls and again return to starting the point, setting off the next dancer in procession.
The audience at first is surrounded by empty white walls and not being in on the plot until the event begins to unravel, must be held back in suspense and be distracted from leaving the gallery, by intensive supplying with luxurious little snacks and drinks and told not to leave as something is about to take place. When enough audience has gathered, the music begins and the dancers begin their choreographic odyssey of transporting each shield one by one dancing into and around the standing audience displaying the shield, until having danced the last shield through the crowd ending to the music’s crescendo-finale synchronising with the hanging ceremony of the last shield to which she then declares the exhibition to be open.
So to fulfil this idea and project, I began working on the first of the 33 shields, by mounting cut shells and cut out relief forms attaching them to the front side of the shield and painting the surfaces.
The back side surface where the grip is mounted, I compared to the coloured inner silk lining of a luxurious dinner jacket, blazer or tuxedo, and decided to try out and use orange florescent acryl paints.
(My first confrontation with florescent paints was being fascinated by an erotic lithograph in my Fathers art collection done by Niki De Saint Phalle in the early 70ties where she was using florescent paints, and this set me off also to experiment with florescent colours as long as it would not develop into kitsch.)
Using Florescent Orange acrylic colour to paint the backside of the shield to achieve an extra zip of colour intensity surface in an elegant flashing effect of colour explosion if carried around or danced with, twisting to choreographic body movements, like the flapping of a jacket in the wind exposing its beautiful coloured silk inner lining. The two handle grips I constructed out of two 4 cm wooden cubes of which the lower is connected with a wooden pole serving as a handgrip and the upper armrest connected with an adjustable rope for the upper arm. The Grips I coloured indigo giving it a Japanese aesthetic feeling in contrasting to the bright florescent orange colour.
Having proudly finished my first body shield picture, I hung it onto a white wall to study the outcome. To my amazement I realised that the Florescent Orange colour painted on the hidden backside of the shield was REFLECTING onto the white wall from its sides embedding the shield on the white wall in an orange aura! The florescent colour-reflection is based on the flooding of light from the surrounding sides into the space in-between the two surface-layers held up by 3-4cm wooden pillars.
An intermezzo of light polarising between these two layers radiate an orange aura embedding the relief-cut outs.
The light projected frontally onto the relief cut out forms create an added shadow thrown onto the orange aura also projected onto the white background intermingle, and are in continuous change of space and time adapting to the surrounding changing of light conditions taking place, which mechanically are processing the past, present and future by projection, polarisation and reflection of light.
This processing, further enhances and intensifies the orange aura reflected from underneath, giving the cut out forms a 3rd and 4th dimensional interaction by blending light and colour with form and shadow projection, creating a futuristic prismatic effect. In realising that I had discovered something new altogether that goes much further than just reflecting thrown shadows, here I was colouring the thrown relief shadows with orange from underneath, giving the relief picture an interactive futuristic light projection play into a third and fourth dimension created out of seven basic physical elements.
THE 7 PHYSICAL ELEMENTS:
1. the abstracted form play of the mounted cut outs created to compose the picture (CUT OUT FORM COMPOSITION)
2. the front side colouring of the mounted cut out form (front side COLOURING)
3. the backside colouring of the mounted cut out form (reverse side COLOURING)
4. the compositional intervening of space-tension between the cut out forms (COMPOSITIONAL GRAPHIC SPACING)
5. the frontally projected light throwing shadows of the cut out forms onto the white background
(FRONTAL LIGHTING) >DAYLIGHT OR ARTIFICIAL LIGHTCONTROLLING
6. the space in-between the white background and mounted cut outs onto specifically sized wooden pillars, to enable the lateral light intrusion to set off the colour polarisation generating the florescent colour outwards onto the white background surface and also taking influence upon the shadow projection of the cut outs onto the white background surface (POLARISATION SPACE)
7. the possible additional colouring of the white background surface to blend into the relief composition (BACKGROUNG COLOURING)
Strangely enough by reducing or turning down e.g. an artificial light in the exhibition room, seems to accelerate the polarisation process and so intensifies the reflected florescent colour to become stronger reflecting onto the white background surface.
Additional Link: Exhibition, Vienna, August 2008xhibition, Vienna, August 2008
More infos and Part II - Part V of the Manifesto you get as e-zine
Mag. Roger L Roberts
Theresianumgasse 13 Stiege 4
1040 Wien
Telefon: 01-5047305
Mobil: 0664-73929428
