“…One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d…”Ovid, Metamorphosis
“All those guide books are of no use.
You must travel at random, like the first
Mayans, you risk getting lost in the thickets,
but that is the only way to make art.”Robert Smithson
“What is the virtue of reduction either of scale or in the number of properties? It seems to result from a sort of reversal in the process of understanding. To understand a real object in its totality we always tend to work from its parts. The resistance it offers us is overcome by dividing it. Reduction in scale reverses this situation. Being smaller, the object as a whole seems less formidable. By being quantitatively diminished, it seems to us qualitatively simplified. More exactly, this quantitative transposition extends and diversifies our power over a homologue of the thing, and by means of it the latter can be grasped, assessed and apprehended at a glance.
… In other words, the intrinsic value of a small-scale model is that it compensates for the renunciation of sensible dimensions by the acquisition of intelligible dimensions.”
Claude Lévi Strauss, The Savage Mind
“…scale is one of the key issues, in terms of art.”
Robert Smithson
Site/Nonsite
Robert Smithson
“Mirror surfaces cannot be understood by reason and mirrors display a conspiracy of muteness concerning their very existence.”
Robert Smithson
“The mirror is the perfect work of art. It is the only image that always looks different. And just like a picture, it shows something that is not there at all, at least not where we see it.”
Gerhard Richter
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first timeT.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“A mirror looking for it’s reflection but never quite finding it…”
Robert Smithson
My name is Ian Talbot and I am an artist and photographer living in London.
This blog is intended as an insight into the research, thinking and connections that precede the projects I undertake. I will also show new and experimental work. Naturally, not all of the work shown here will eventually make the cut. These are very much 'works in progress'...
You can see a complete collection of my work at my website:
Ian Talbot :: Objectively Speaking