Diagram and Five References

PAINTING

‘Throbbing Pulse’ Louise Bourgeois

In her book ‘Drawings and Observations’ Louise Bourgeois describes her drawings of repetitve circles and lines to give a calming effect and to find relief from chronic insomnia.

In particular to this painting she writes, ‘ My work has to do with a defense against fervour , that is completely meaningless. the drawing is a call for meditation... I am an insomniac, so for me the state of being asleep is paradise. It is a paradise I can never reach. But I still try to conquer the insomnia, and to a large extent I have done it, it is conquerable. My drawings are a kind of rocking or stroking and an attempt at finding peace. Peaceful rhythm. Like rocking a baby to sleep.

The painting seems to me to be moving and extending back deeper into the picture. The ways the lines are drawn creates a very three-dimensional image which has a dynamic quality where it feels as it the painting is constantly changing between a state of expanding and contracting. To me, it draws the spectator into the painting to feels as if you are amongst the lines and forms constantly in changing motion. Its transient nature is suggestive to its title, ’Throbbing Pulse’ which suggests it is about blood being pumped through arteries. The rise and fall of the peaks feels as if forms are transforming to a certain rhythm, but also feels  flexible as if the spectator could push and pull and manipulate these forms themselves.


NOVEL

‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ Enid Blyton

This is a children's book, but I have a strong personal connection to these stories as it left a very strong impression on me as a child.

It is essentiallabout a magical tree which three children come across one day in the woods near their new home. When they climb the tree, it soon becomes clear that it is a lot bigger than it first appeared as they discover many different characters compressed together and all living within this tree as the climb higher up. As they reach the topmost branch, by making their way through the clouds they enter into another world. The world is an expandable piece of ever-changing space.

The new worlds they enter are temporary, only attached to the faraway tree for short periods of time in the year and this is dependent on the type of world. And they can only travel back to the tree and these same particular times where the world and tree connect. In the 'roundabout world' described in this passage, it is the first world for the children to have entered from the faraway tree.

BUILDING

‘Prada Store Tokyo’ Herzog and De Meuron

Located in the Aoyama District if Tokyo, Japan. The architecture of this six-floor store has a hard-hitting edge from the sharpness of the design. Futuristic, yet straight to the point, with each curve, its is sure to pull you in to the merchandise and the design genius.

I entered the building through a tunnel set twenty metres frim the rhombus shaped main entrance. I entered the tunnel initially thinking it wasn't part of the building at all, but something entirely separate. But I couldn't help but see where it led to. Down the narrow tunnel and down some narrow steps, I entered into the basement of the store. Clothes and bags are folded and arranged on carbon fibre shelves, which are part of the walls mould or hung on fibrecovered rails which feel aas if they are yet to be replaced.

Moving up white steps led me back up to the ground floor. The space felt luxurious with thick carpets and light flooding in creating shapes of light on the floor and which move across the space as the sun moves. It does not feel like a shop. The merchandise is mainly arranged in the trademark Prada, if not larger-than-life suitcases and trunks. The shelves don't seem like shelves, but feel as if the clothes were put there, because the wall just so happened to be shaped in that convenient way.

There is one particular space, a pod like space which you enter into through a void cut out of a diagonal slanted wall and down some steps into a cosier room. There you can try clothes on in more privacy, but not in a small pokey cubicle, or have a consultation with a personal shopper. The space is flexible. In the store, everything feels temporary, as though it could be packed up and replaced with new merchandise within the hour, with clothes already in trunks. But the shell does not feel cold or stale, rather a blank but luxurious canvas, where merchandise can be shown there temporarily before being transformed to showcase the new relevant seasonal stock.

INSTALLATION

'Dhatu' James Turrell (see James Turrell specific post)

FILM

'Afterwords' Hussein Chalayan (see Hussein Chalayan specific post)