Art and Heritage Online Database

Collection: Gray's School of Art Collection
Object Type: Painting
Artist/Maker: Aitken, Alan
Date: 2017
Media/Materials: oil on canvas
Dimensions: overall: 74.5 cm x 115.5 cm
Awards: RGU Drawing and Painting Purchase Award
Classification: Drawing and Painting

Description:

Artist's statement:
An appreciation of a particular type of film is what my work derives from. These films characterise the mundanity of life through bleak storyline and uneventful extended scenes. I translate these scenes into drawings, and from drawings into paintings, where an equivalent mark is attained from one to the other.
My outset and inspiration stems from an interest in object-oriented ontology (OOO), which follows from Heidegger’s idea that objects are either present-at-hand or ready-to-hand. According to ‘OOO’, objects are said to be in a constant state of withdrawal (Entzug), or ready-to-hand, until we interact with them, where they then become present-at-hand.
My work seeks to investigate this idea, where I hope to illustrate a universe containing beings interacting with objects, thus bringing them into existence.

Object Number: ABDRG2017.29