Thunderstorm Gryfaun Room Guardian Available in my site shop Monday January 13th at 12pm EST.
The Thunderstorm Gryfaun has a rose quartz crystal heart and its eyes and horns glow in the dark like lightning. It stands about 14 inches tall and it has a coat of high quality faux fur. The head and the hooves are cast in resin for maximum durability. The hands are sculpted out of a flexible clay and the horns are sculpted from thermal plastic that will not snap when bent. The neck and tail have a fully posable plastic ball and socket armature inside that will not wear out over time. The arms have a wire inside that can be bent at the shoulder and elbow.
“Ask yourself: what does your toaster want? How about your dog? Or the bacteria in your gut? What about the pixels on the screen you’re reading off now—how is their day going? In other words, do things, animals, and other non-human entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our own species-centric definition of consciousness? It’s precisely this questions that the nascent philosophical movement known as Object-Oriented Ontology (arising from ὄντος, the Greek word for “being,” and known to the cool kids as OOO) is attempting to answer or at least seriously pose, and they’re setting certain segments of the art world on fire.”
“Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It’s really not about other people’s needs and assumptions. I’m not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful.”
Ian Burn began investigating the act of looking in the mid 1960s. In this work, text across a standard framed mirror quotes from the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. The original quote continues, ‘if we consider these objects in themselves, and never look beyond the ideas which we form of them’.
The viewer is asked to consider this specific work of art without considering his or her accumulated knowledge and assumptions about either ‘mirrors’ or ‘works of art’ (or the person ‘in’ the mirror). The impossibility of isolating any one thing from all others is emphasised in this conceptual artwork by our reflection in the mirror and that of the space in which it hangs and other art nearby.
Ian Burn Two glass/Mirror piece 1968 mirror, glass, wood 93.7 × 63.2 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
