Poetic Cardboard: Social Cardboard (1st project)
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After the group had officially decided on what we were to be making for the 'social cardboard' project, we then searched for some cardboard sculpture figures on-line as a reference for our project.
I began thinking of examples of social figures and characters that have experienced the same decline in power, wealth and social status to point of not being able to return back into their original state just when cardboard is exposed to the elements. Thus the fall of the Roman Empire, Marie-antoinette and The film blue jasmine had been added as a reference and a source of inspiration. I began to notice how different sources and subjects can influence the development of the idea.
Greetingman and mei
As our piece involved using a figure to represent the dominant social class, I had decided to research artists and designers that utilise recognisable figures or even the human shape. I admire the scale of the the greetingman created by Youngho Yoo as it adds dominance and power through. The prints of mei by Andy Warhol allowed me to consider utilising humour through pop and bright colours which distorts and alternates the figure's background and personality. Thus, these inspirations led me to consider height and humour for our piece, maybe through an irregular body composition and symbols such as a crown, birkin bag or a suit.
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The constructivism movement is an artistic and philosophical movement that originated in Russia in 1919. The movements focus was on utilising art for social purposes. What attracted me towards this movement was the limited colours (ideally red and black) which minimalists detail and allows the image to be clearly and boldly presented. Through the influence of the movement, I would like to also use limited colours to add emphasis onto the image and it's symbolism.
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I had discovered Paul Thurlby through the presentation provided on moodle. The way he utilises the letter and merges it with the cartoonish illustrations has a playful and naive quality. This makes the letters more imaginative and creative as it gives it a narrative.
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The letter I had received was a capital H, thus through my sketches and tied bullet point of ideas I became interested in the idea of opposites and duality because the shape of the letter 'H' is mirrored and I wanted to play with that. This led me to research traditional playing cards and other noticeable symbols of duality such as the ting and yang. These sources led to creating contrasting characters or personas for this project.
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The paper cut out artists I have presented interests me through their minimalistic designs and the graphical fonts because it shows me the wide potential of paper. In addition, by manipulating the paper through cutting, folding and ripping which creates different appearances and concepts such as a modern crisp look also inspires me.
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I had also decided to look at artists who cut out shapes to form shapes rather than typography to widen my perspective and gain more ideas. Robert The had inspired me to think in a conceptual and creative fashion towards the shapes I create with the paper in order to transcend and project a particular message to the viewer.