Ympäri, sisällä: Kolmiulotteinen työskentely kuvataiteessa

Through my art-making process, I investigate how a three-dimensional artwork evolves. This dissertation aims at interpreting and analyzing the experiences of my art practice. I structure and conceptualize the practice in which an artwork takes material shape in real space. I examine my experience in the context of traditions, methods and theories within the historical, social and cultural practice of three-dimensional art-making. I phenomenologically examine my art-making experience and the data collected during the research process. In this sense, the research is considered as practice-led, artistic research. The research material has been presented in two exhibitions and in one research presentation. This book forms the forth portion of my thesis, as, in it, I bring together the three-dimensional visual art practice and both the descriptive and academic writing on it. From historical traditions, I draw from two sculptural methods. The first of them Robert Morris calls the a priori. Tony Cragg describes the same method as an artist taking a material and forcing it into a form, which expresses a preformulated notion. The second mean Morris defines as the interaction between one’s actions and the materials of the environment. In this method, thinking and its material and spatial execution are not divided. Cragg, in turn, writes about the dialogue between the material and the artist. In my research, I first demonstrate how these theories can be put into practice. In theorizing the processes of material and spatial art-making, I refer to Tere Vadén’s notions of local thinking and Cragg’s dialogical thinking with materials. I utilize Juha Varto’s and Leena Valkeapää’s artistic thinking and, in considering three-dimensional art-making, I apply the following themes: sensuous awareness, material resistance, opening up to the reciprocal thinking, passive proceeding and cyclicality. They are all examined both in my art practice and artistic research. I begin the thesis with the introduction of three narratives. These are intended to introduce the reader into my art practice and to open the research questions. The narratives also show the way the study proceeds. After this, the thesis consists of three parts: Part one provides context for the three-dimensionality in the visual art practice and a history of three-dimensional art-making. In the first part, the research focus on experience is defined. I also describe the research material and objectives and the methods of the study. The art-making of the first part of the study focuses on attempts to make art by forcing the material into a form, which I have thought beforehand. In the second part of the book, I describe the thinking in the processes of three-dimensional art practice. Through a series of descriptive narratives, I elaborate on how this practice closely connects with Morris’ notion of interaction between one’s actions and the materials of the environment, as well as Cragg’s concept of dialogue between the material and the artist. Part three provides additions and clarifications to the previous parts of the study. It makes clear the characteristics of thinking in three-dimensional art-making. The conclusions of the research are made in the chapters called Experience of Resistance in Artistic Research, Cyclicality and Confrontation. The research indicates that a three-dimensional artwork can evolve by the method, in which Morris’ and Cragg’s first and second definitions combine. If I open up a dialogue of reciprocal thinking with the evolving artwork, the initially defined idea of the artwork will change. After such a change, I continue to make art as a thinking body. In the chiasm12 of sensing and being sensed, I think by molding the material. This is how my research question surfaces more precisely during the research process. I explore how this bodily, material and spatial thinking appears in my three-dimensional visual art practice.