UnMasterclass 25

Chris Burden once made a piece of work called Pearl Harbour  which was imagined to be a cacophony of 40 wind-up aeroplanes playing above the gallery audiences heads, with searchlights shining up to catch them in the beams. As each plane ran out of energy someone would be on call to collect, wind it back up and launch back up into the crowd of other planes flying around. Possibly the inevitable happened, failure as planes hit into the audience who thought they could run off with them for having had this honour bestowed upon them and numbers soon dwindles down to 2 or 3 planes at a time struggling in the air as those not stolen or broken got stuck in beams and crevices in the walls and ceiling. Burden said of the experience, "I'm sure the organisers of the event were disappointed, but I was quite elated. I'd been so wrong in my expectations. It was a total unsuccess in that sense, because it was a failure in what I'd imagined it to be....You're supposed to have a logical reason for everything. Everything is empirical and since since most of us are a product of years and years of education, the answer that 'oh that feels right' or 'That's the way to go', is basically unacceptable to society. To trust your intuition is exactly the opposite of any sort of formal education." And within these words is much for UnMasterclass to applaud. We of course are all for unlearning to relearn. All the paintings we copy are involved with a process of unsuccess, we are bound to failure by attempting to mimic the past masters' works and more so by doing so with the most pathetic of means. And yet by rejecting all that our education and training tells us to do and relying on intuition then we believe we enter into a new form of (un)learning that leads us to new and interesting places. We are interested in something unacceptable to society whilst also mimicking and revealing the means by which this society seeks to fast-track through to results, often at lesser rather than greater means of rigour. With painting, one must learn from painting itself, from doing it day in and day out, constantly learning and by looking to the paintings of the past and learning from analysis of how others produced what they did and how they did it. To think one can paint from filling a surface with paint and to think one knows a painting by looking at a reproduction is folly of course, and the results of UnMasterclass hopefully prove that. We suggest you view our latest creation, visit a gallery and compare with the great paintings on the wall and then maybe set off a wind-up aeroplane. TO view UnMasterclass 25 please go to here http://vimeo.com/25248817