I really admire Jason Yi's ability to find beauty in items, objects and images that are often dismissed as ordinary or mundane. Although I couldn't attend his lecture, I read several articles about his work and saw his installation. In an interview with a Lawrentian reporter, Yi stated, "It is important to not overlook the mundane and transform something seemingly inconsequential to have consequence." For his Lawrence installation, Yi has done just that. In using zip ties to represent the sky, the viewers are forced to acknowledge an important fact: the things we interact with and witness on a daily basis hold a lot of beauty, inherently.
In "The Medium is the Massage," McLuhan forces the reader to do the same thing that Yi does. A great example of this arrives on pages 49 and 50, where the words "Printing, a ditto device" are pasted all over both pages. We are again forced to look at every detail of a series of words that we might otherwise dismiss.
I agree, I like how he turned ordinary things like folding chairs into a really intriguing and fun piece of art. I kind of want to climb it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for including this quote "It is important to not overlook the mundane and transform something seemingly inconsequential to have consequence." I really liked that idea and I think that's who Yi is as an artist. Personally I didn't connect with his installations, but I really appreciated his big ideas.
ReplyDeleteNot ignoring the mundane seemed to run throughout his work. I liked his quote about how he was trying to "subvert the traffic cone" through one of his pieces. Finding a way to represent the mundane in a beautiful way seems like it's worth the effort.
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