Casey Beasley - "Double Vision"

For my visual project I felt the medium that I could best articulate my feelings through would be a mixed media sculpture, however in the fine arts most of the time the description is left up to the viewer themselves because each individual will have a different reaction to the piece based on what makes up their background. Now that being said I will describe my piece entitled “Double Vision” in the traditional way sculpture is critiqued by breaking it down into its separate elements and explaining how each element builds the full picture that I wished to portray to my audience.

The general description of the piece is as follows:

Two faces, both androgynous, blank, and brilliant white gaze at each other longingly through a pane of glass. The glass becomes slightly reflective as bright light illuminates the faces making the viewer wonder just who are they staring at so longingly? Their partner or themselves? The empty positive forms of the masks are self-contrasted with a more matte dark black interior that highlights the understated negative form on the inside. Both sides of the hollow masks are complimented by a matte black and white base which serves as a functional unifying agent of the piece itself. The pane of glass is positioned on the diagonal to better cater to the needs of a more interesting juxtaposition of the piece as a whole. The glass is rimed with a thin frame of matte black to help it better transition into harmony with the base. The black white faces both balance on delicate wrists and expressive hands in a pensive position yet their proximity to each other indicates more. What are they doing? They are lovers, scrutinizing what they both see through and in the glass for as long as they remain frozen there. 

Each material used in this sculpture was picked with a purpose, the paint colors for instant are used to simultaneously contrast and unify giving them the benefit over more vibrant colors which may have had the side effect of distracting from the piece itself. By using two different models for the piece it introduced different bone structure and made the blank faces more interesting by highlighting their similarities through differences. Note that while they are both black and white casted forms with expressive hands one face is slightly smaller indicating a more effeminate form while the other face is more domineering in bone structure perhaps making it more masculine yet the smaller form has a more dramatic hand positioning, seemingly making it more aggressive while the larger form has a nurturing hand opening the face up to more of an exposed expression. While both faces are generally expressionless this was done to escape the cliché act of recreating the theater masks, why over emphasize the expression when it is better left off for interpretation by the audience? By doing so  the piece invites one to partake in a transference of emotion with whoever is viewing it therefore faces that were essentially left blank can now be viewed as contemplative, contemptuous, or just plain bored with their partner.

The theme of our class that has really stuck with me and grown on me through the course of our time together is the idea of questioning what do we really love? What do we see in one another or what do we see in the person who holds our affections unwittingly? This is essentially the reasoning behind the lover/beloved dynamic, in which the beloved is simply an object of ones affections and the lover is chasing after a mirage craving something in the other person that does not exist. What we chase after is really a fulfillment of self which cannot be achieved because we seek this completion of self through another person and what we see in that person that we crave does not even exist. To put this idea into a strange context consider that you have been on a road trip for a while heading to house sit for a friend in a different state but unfortunately you had the poor idea of not bringing any food with you and when you arrive in town everything is already closed for the evening. You pull up to the house, park your car, drag your bags inside, and head straight for the kitchen. Imagine the relief that floods you upon seeing a cozy kitchen with decorated cabinets and softly humming refrigerator, and now imagine the betrayal you feel upon opening the door of the refrigerator to find that it is completely empty as are the cabinets. In this scenario seeing the kitchen gave you a false sense of relief, much like when people fall in love they often feel completed without receiving anything tangible, and when it was realized that the blind trust that was put into the refrigerator would be violated the fall was much harder. The sense of blind hope that people put into one another when it comes to love can be a very dangerous thing however it seemingly can be successful in some cases.