I am planning an exhibition with my good friend Sach. Our works have some visual and conceptual similarities but also many differences. We are both performance and video oriented and our practices share concerns at times about art and life.
His latest work is an attempt to physicalise a visceral reaction to the work of Sol Lewitt. I find this both funny and compelling because of the conceptual nature of Lewitt’s practice. It is strange to me that such a cerebral beginning should provoke a passionate emotional response. Sach’s work is in one way an attempt to reinterpret the dead artist’s work through a personal relationship with the form. But in another way it is an attempt to form a relationship with a dead artist through interaction with his work. How do you talk to a dead man?
I see aspects of these aims in my own practice. My work often reflects ideas that have been imparted to me by my artistic forebears. I have learned about art from watching and imitating my artistic mothers and fathers. Borrowed motifs are often altered or only vaguely alluded to, but I believe there is a sense in which I am attempting to continue their work, the family business.
Tom Isaacs 