sidebar to lost language review

In all the excitement yesterday I forgot to contrast the low-key nature of the pieces in Lost Language at Kraak with the kind of idiotic, elephantine art that wins public commissions and gets covered by newspapers.

Tony Trehy has interesting and critical things to say about this giantism in this recent post. For myself I simply don't understand the desire to make art that's really big. It seems to have more to do with bragging than actually exploring an idea.

Despite my talking about simplicity in the original post, I don't think this has anything to do with the relative simplicity or complexity of the work in question. I don't think it has anything to do with how clear the artist is in their own mind about what they want to achieve. I don't think it's even necessarily about size alone. I think the problem is more often to do with a mismatch between the concept and the execution. Instead of finding the form, the materials and scale that best suit the idea, sheer scale overwhelms everything.