Time-Based Artist Response Assignment

When I saw Ori Gersht's video of Big Bang (exploding flowers) I was immediately drawn to it. I loved the way he combined violence and beauty. You're so focused on all the different colors of the flowers and how the light catches tiny pieces as they fall. All of his work, though diverse, has themes of beauty, life, violence, and death. Though some of theses themes are hidden in the story behind the image or video, Ori does an amazing job of bringing those contrasting themes together. 

For my project I wanted to take those 4 themes Ori uses, and put my own spin on it. I chose to use the human body as a representation of beauty and life. I applied paint, and scratched/rubbed it off, to represent violence and death. The scratching and rubbing did prove to be quite painful, and after it left behind little pieces of paint on her skin, it reminded me of a decaying body, aka the "death" theme. Originally, I wanted to make a video, but I went back to my roots as a photographer and chose to take pictures during each layer of paint, and after each time I scratched it off, as well as before I even applied the paint to her skin. 

I believe my project relates to Ori's work because it deals with the same 4 themes that he tries to convey in all of his projects, whether they're videos or photographs. When you look at Ori's work, you admire the beauty of it, but once you look at it for an extended amount of time I believe it starts giving off a more sorrowful mood. I think I've accomplished the same effect. When I look at my images I recognize the human body, and how the skin has no blemishes, it's pure and beautiful, but as more and more paint is being put on and taken off the beautiful skin disappears and you're left with "blemishes" and debris left over from the scratching.

Ori Gersht

For the time based artist presentation & response assignment I want to research Ori Gersht. I really love his style, he engages themes of life, death, violence, and beauty. And I really like the contrast of those themes in his work.

I have a few ideas on how I would respond to his work. I want to try to incorporate themes of life, death, violence and beauty in my photographs. I was thinking of photographing a woman with paint and other debris covering her body, the woman would represent life and beauty, and the "dirty" paint would represent decay or death. Time would be represented by the amount of paint increasing. The other idea I had was to buy a bouquet of flowers and photograph them in many different places that you wouldn't normally see flowers; in the street, in a car, in a busy store, the flowers would represent the beauty in life, and seeing the flowers in strange places would be a reminder that everything must die at some point. As time goes on you'll see the flowers start to wilt, get dirty and lose petals.