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Absurdist animals is a costume heavy performance art piece influenced by dada and surrealism. The costumes reflect different animals found in nature distorted to fit a human frame and serve as functional paintbrushes. These videos are inspired by the idea of surrealist automatism; removing the conscious part of the artistic process to reveal animalistic base desires/ the subconscious. It is also influenced by the dada idea of chance, as interactions in nature are all a chance of whether you live/die; you hunt your prey or you are hunted. Through the marriage of chance and subconscious movement I aim to imitate wild animal behavior.
The main concept behind the bird is the complicated rituals and movements they engage in when finding a mate. The brush aims to keep track of intricate footwork present in a dance.
The strong suits of the final painting are line, texture, and color.The painting successfully evokes a sense of frantic repetitive movements through the overlapping lines and shapes created by the feet pattern. The colors chosen (red, blue, purple, black) bring forth the image of tortured romantic pursuit.
The cat concept involves the act of grooming. The brush replicates a cat tongue while the canvas being clothes on my body helps me imitate the functions of a cat. For the painting I wanted to inspire comfort and childlike innocence due to the fact that cats groom themselves and really show their personalities when they feel safe. For this I chose to use primary colors only. The watercolor effect of the paint on the fabric also helps contribute to this idea. The canvas evokes the image of a child’s first painting at primary school.
The centipede is probably the most intensive of the costumes. It covers my entire body and seriously limits my mobility as I crawl around on the ground. Making 70 individual brush legs was also incredibly time consuming. The 70 individual paintbrushes making lines created something with a lot of texture and randomness. I wanted to keep the colors limited to not distract from the brush marks and create a sense of pattern and futility. The floor also became an interesting part of the whole composition with the trail I left.
The scorpion concept is meant to imitate the injection of venom into its prey. The paint comes out of a tube at the end of the stinger, because of the chamber the paint needs to be watered down quite a bit which results in the paint dripping down the canvas. This echos how venom would move through its victim’s veins. The painting did not turn out exactly as I envisioned due to the paint being be too watery but perhaps my favorite part was a complete unseen development which was the pools of paint at the bottom of the paper. The paint also reacted differently to this paper than what I tested it on originally but I think the lines for a majority of the image combined with the organic pools of paint at the bottom create interesting visual contrast.
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