Kate Gilmore

                                        

One of my favorite artists is Kate Gilmore, because I can see the sense of humor and the clear picture what she tries to express to us through her performance piece. Also, I like the simplicity of her performance pieces. She is a performance artist and sculptor. I saw her performance art titled "Standing Here 2010" in the Whitney biennial at Whitney Museum. When I was walking through the section, her performance took my attention what is happening on the screen. Dressed up lady is destroying the wall around her. Later on, I realize that she may purposefully wear obvious feminine outfit and destroy the wall around her with over action for helping us to get a sense of her message through her performance. After seeing her performance, I read description about her performance piece on the wall at the entrance space. Immediately, I agree upon the description on her art piece. I tangibly get her main idea, subject matter, and feeling through her performance piece. Moreover, she is like a spokesman for women how is feeling in challenging on tasks and facing many difficulty at surrounding society, so I easy to understand why I compelled her performance. At same time, the main theme is not only issue for woman, but also it could be subject matter for men; what femininity as women and what masculinity as men is at our role respectively on our society. Also, her performance art seem to illustrate of conflicting with femininity and masculinity side as a woman artist. The subject matter is universal when women attempt to find identity who we are, and we all face some difficulty to find out our identity.  

As contrast, Joseph Beuys' work is hard to get the idea of his work. He is also sculptor, performance artist, teacher, and political activist. His works are not recognizable of the idea compare to Kate Gilmore's works. Their works are categorized contemporary art. There is a question coming up in mind their works are art? It could be an answer on his state, " Every man is an artist. Make the secrets productive." He attempted to repeal all difference between art and non-art. There are many aspects to evaluate quality on art works, which is craftsmanship, conception, and balance of composition; still anything could be an art. Art has variation on category, such as different kinds of medias, execution, and quality. On contemporary art, artists are trying to find out new approach to express their point of view, and then viewer touched and linked the feeling when the viewers have same taste and inspiration. This seems to be similar to music. Musicians express their feeling by creating music. Music also has different kind of genre, such as classic, pop, jazz, and rock; we pick the song to listen and could refresh, encourage, and relax same as visual art. Kate Gilmore's performance art piece gave me a power and encouragement to tackle new challenge.