Adam Gilbreath
It’s presently
About
Selected Works
2024
Tucson Section
Once There Was and Once There Wasn’t...
2023
4D
The Garden at the End of Time
White on White #6-8
Untitled #4
2022
Wash Monolith
Contact
Untitled #4
Untitled #4
It’s interesting to me that the mug doesn’t seem to lose its identity as a mug through the process of decay, for this I see two possible reasons. Either, this is due to the mug never losing its function, it always in this depiction can hold some form of liquid, or it is because it is being viewed in relation to its first instance as a full mug before experiencing decay. I don’t know if this piece offers an answer, I would prefer it if the mug is always itself however if the depiction where to show only one of the further right instances I do believe it would be very hard to say “that is a mug”, sure it would still be a vessel that is capable of holding liquid and one obviously in a state of decay but it would be hard to say “that is a mug”.
I wonder if there is a separate aesthetic effect that is only present through time. Or at least tensions that are only present in an object’s relationship with it. To some extent at least all of our perception of aesthetics rely on nostalgia and memory. We are constantly forming a memory of the object before us as time moves. In the present we only have access to the very specific sensual qualities that are attributed to our current view of the object. We never see the back side of the mug. Even if we could rotate the mug we could never hold the entirety of the object’s qualities in the present; some of the qualities we know the mug to have will only be present within memory. Memory, nostalgia, and time then must play an active role in our perception of aesthetic qualities. The tension between qualities of an object only come into existence when played out across time, held within our memory.