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alleverythingthatisyou

‘Alleverythingthatisyou’ by Mike and Doug Starn was created with the use of the microscope. As with ‘Structure of Thought’ and ‘Black Pulse’, an earlier series created by the artists, the subject of the work is rooted in the world of nature.⁠

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Wilson Bentley made the first known images of snowflakes in 1885. His photographs depict snowflakes as geometrically perfect. Although these works and their regular shape were proven to be the result of Bentley's manipulation of the images, it is still generally believed that snowflakes are symmetrical.⁠ Bentley called snowflakes little “masterpieces,” “tiny miracles of beauty,” and he had a particular obsession with “perfect” snowflakes. The Starn’s embrace the imperfection of the snow crystals, emphasising their ragged edges and missing parts. Uprooted from their utilitarian and scientific context, the photographs are not seeking to document but providing the viewer with the poetic investigation of this natural phenomenon.

alleverything_install

Installation at HackelBury Fine Art

Attracted to Light

‘Attracted to light’ explores the theme of light - its role in the process of seeing and photographing but also more metaphorically as a symbol of power and knowledge.

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⁠According to essayist Demetrio Paparoni, “For the Starns, light is more than enlightenment; it is the gravity of all our past experiences and our future, the conscious and unconscious, the external and internal factors that drive our lives. … They reveal, the pathetic but real and gentle strength of the moth in its inexorable struggle to reach the light… The enlarged scale of the insect isn’t purely for our lepidopterical study of the moth in its habitat; in addition, it is to allow us, bound in gravitational fields of our own making, to see ourselves existing in their scale.”⁠⠀
installation image from HackelBury Fine Art, 2018

installation image from HackelBury Fine Art, 2018

Big Bambú

Big Bambú structures, built from “random chaos” with thousands of bamboo poles lashed together with miles of rope, reveal the invisible architecture of life weaving into a habitable sculpture. Installations of Big Bambú include the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the 54th Venice Biennial; the Teshima Triennial; and the MACRO Museum, Rome.

DMS_Bambu

Black Pulse

“Black Carbon, pulsing and steaming through the veins, is the absorption of light and is the light that controls me. Our veins are filled with the light, the light is us.”

- Mike & Doug Starn. ‘Gravity of Light Light’. Skira Rizzoli. New York. 2012.

Blot Out the Sun

‘Light is power, knowledge, it is what we want, it is what we need… black is not only the lack of light, black is also the complete absorption of light… Black is the void and reservoir of what we want and need, what controls us’

- Mike & Doug Starn. ‘Attracted to Light’. Powerhouse books. New York. 2003.

Carbon Prints

Carbon prints are known for their saturation and incomparable depth, qualities that are further enhanced by the process of layering of the carbon pigments that creates the suggestion of three-dimensionality. The sculpture-like quality of the prints as well as the apparent process of the peeling off of the particular layers, direct the viewers to the theme that is often present in Starn works: the impermanent quality of the world around us. In this context, the print is not only a mere illustration of the concept, but it becomes its embodiment as well. The brothers explain: “We always felt that since, in photography, physical reality was directly and perfectly captured, the real world should be apparent in its realization.”⁠⠀

The No-mind not-thinks no-things

"In the thinking about the act of Not Thinking, and considering the phrase ‘the no mind not thinks no things’ and the puzzle presented: the no mind not thinks no things things  from the perspective of artworks as objects – can be seen simply as things, but if you consider the conundrum of the rest of the phrase in the positive it can imply that the noun No Mind in the act of Not Thinking of No Things brings into being these Things that must not be thought about because they are no thing things.” – Doug & Mike Starn

CT_Starn_The Mind mikdok crop

Installation image - The No Mind Not Thinks No Things mikdok

The no mind not thinks no things thing

Commissioned for the 15th anniversary of the gallery, Doug & Mike Starn's ‘The no mind not thinks no things thing’ are made of many layered images, set within sliding panels. The use of translucent materials (Kozo - a Japanese tissue) together with the moving panels, allow and encourage interaction. Repositioning, reordering and rotating the screens to arrive at one of the 15 ‘solutions' - moments where elements of the image are silhouetted through the multiple layers.

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"Connections and rhizomatic fluency fascinate us. The trees' natural hierarchy is collapsed when the trees are silhouetted, creating rhizome-like connections everywhere. It is representative of thought and creativity and the invisible architecture of societies and how we all move through life” Mike and Doug explain. The viewer is invited to participate, as each work can be combined in a variety of sequences, revealing new artworks within. “All our work is about parts coming together and how nothing is really static” they add.⁠

the no mind not thinks no things things

installation image from HackelBury Fine Art, 2013

Seascape

Seaweed

Seaweed

installation image from HackelBury Fine Art at Paris Photo, 2015

Structure of Thought

“The mind is an interpreter of constantly fed information. Your mind decodes and understands information based on a lifetime of constructions, memories, desires, and learning. Vision doesn’t work like a camera; vision is a construction. The structure of thought is a living dendritic mess, a mass of intersections and layers.” – Doug & Mike Starn

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Installation image - Structure of Thought 24

Toshodaiji

‘Toshodaiji’ is a project by Mike and Doug Starn, where artworks include images of the two Buddhist monks – Gyoki and Ganjin. Following our previous post, artworks from this series also focus on the dualities between light & darkness and life & death.⁠⠀
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The ‘Ganjin’ series represent the figure of Ganjin - a Chinese monk living in the 8th century. Invited to Japan to promote Buddhism, he strived to complete the voyage across the East China Sea for eleven years. As a result of the difficulties encountered on the journey, Ganjin lost his eyesight. His life-size statue, created in between 688 – 763 and located in the Toshodaiji Temple in Nara, is considered one of the first examples of Japanese portrait sculpture. The great amount of gold leaf, which was initially covering its surface, has worn off over the centuries, exposing the dark clay underneath. As the gold can now only be seen in the cavities of the sculpture, it gives a figure an appearance of a negative – 'bright where it should be dark, dark where it should be light'. The Starn brothers were invited to document the incredible statue before the commencement of its lengthy restoration process in the early 2000s.
They created images embracing the ambiguous shades of light and dark. "When we photographed this, we didn’t realize all the connections between our personal philosophies and those of Buddha. Ganjin was blind… living in blackness, but he was shotogaku, which means enlightened – he saw the light with the black” - Doug & Mike Starn⁠⠀
Installation image, Ganjin (negative) and Gangin (positive)

Installation image, Ganjin (negative) and Gangin (positive)