Contemporary Art
Acts Of Worship
Cultural Landscapes
Cities, man-made systems and structures in the midst of natural surroundings, often called cultural landscapes, delimit civilization from the wilderness and offer solidity and continuity for mankind apart from the chaos of the natural world. Cultural landscapes represent our cultural evolution and conscious attainment, often organized around gathering places, layered with the remains of other civilizations, strewn with symbols of man's achievements as well as records of man's decline.
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REFLECTION AND DESIRE
Our desire for an object is understood through our reflection on it. By reflecting upon our desire for an object, the object appears in our thoughts for consideration; our consciousness creates a representation of an object, then a reflection upon it, or an “intuition.” Desire is the condition for encountering any and all objects, and it can only be observed in reflection. Objects appeal to our senses; if they hold any meaning, it is in and through their materialness. When we encounter an object it makes a demand upon us and we respond. Reflection distances itself from desire by representing the object; in order to be understood, the representation of a particular object is then placed in a context by the viewer.
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August 1976.
The art history professor at my college at organized a trip to New York City for art department graduates of Metropolitan State College in Denver. New York was a very different place in 1976, with far fewer people in the city than today. We were able to visit the Guggenheim, the Whitney, MOMA, and numerous galleries unimpeded by crowds. Fred Thompsen Gallery was exhibiting paintings and drawings created by the conceptual artist Sushaku Arakawa. The exhibition, “The Mechanism of Meaning,” illustrated how mankind constructs a shared understanding of the world from words, images, symbols, runes, objects, archetypes. I admired the artist’s use of overlapping diagrams to explain the process of creating meaning and how a painting could convey complexity of thought as well as color and composition.
Back in Denver, I began working on a series of paintings informed by the work I had seen in New York, especially the work of Arakawa.
I was interested in how forms in a painting could have a dual nature, operating as a solid object or as a void, as a concrete symbol or as a simple design element. The new paintings featured hard edge overlapping receding planes placed in a color field, much like a jumbled deck of cards. Straight lines tipped with arrows wove between the planes. Later work created in Los Angeles would incorporate cityscapes with runes and symbols, juxtaposing opposite concepts within an artwork: chaos/order; man-made/nature; civilized/uncivilized.
This recent work is an amalgamation of previously explored ideas and interests.
Recent Work by Larry Stone Use contact form for inquiries. Click on thumbnail view for a larger image.
the other
Strange, yet familiar. The image of the Other evokes a strong reaction, one of uncertainty. Alien and unknown, one does not know whether to move toward or away from the stranger. Primitive cultures saw the Other as an enemy, to be destroyed; more cohesive cultures saw the other as an emissary, bringing new ideas or new energy to the group after a ritual purification. The Other assumes the role of a creator and a destroyer, the bringer of change, a mirror to those unknown, foreign parts of ourselves. By integrating the known with the unknown, the Other helps us achieve wholeness.
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Older Work