Daniel Sturgis

Bio: Daniel Sturgis is an academic researcher from University of the Arts London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Painting & Exhibition. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 3 publications receiving 3 citations.

The Indiscipline of Painting

Abstract: "The Indiscipline of Painting", published to accompany an international group exhibition at Tate St Ives, explores how the history and legacy of modernist abstract painting continues to inspire painters and artists working today Through a series of essays by leading critics and curators this beautifully illustrated book demonstrates how the language of abstract painting remains urgent, relevant and critical, tracing its influences on contemporary artists working in Britain, America, France and Germany Featuring a diverse range of work by both twentieth-century and contemporary artists including Jeremy Moon, Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Tomma Abts and Heimo Zobernig this book brings together art from the 1950s to the present In particular, it focuses on abstraction's turn away from its expressionistic roots at the end of the 1950s and its move towards a more geometric, post-minimalist tradition, highlighting the resonances still felt by artists today

Bauhaus: To turn away from normality

Abstract: This paper revisits the history and legacy of the Bauhaus from the vantage point of contemporary art education. It explains how the design school was never a unified project, but rather a collection of disparate voices and opinions, and shows how ideas of community and subjectivity were at its centre. The author asks if these ideas, born out of early 19th century educational reform, and pressurised by the political turbulence of 1920s and 30s Germany may be the most useful influences for the Bauhaus impacting on Art and Design education today. The paper was prepared for the opening of the conference Bauhaus Utopia in Crisis, 24th October 2019, University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts. The conference was part of the week-long OurHaus festival at the University that ran between 21-25th October 2019. The festival included the exhibition Utopia in Crisis, curated by Daniel Sturgis at Camberwell Space Gallery (16 September – 9 November 2019) touring to Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar (2020).

Painting as transcultural dialogue

Abstract: This Special Issue of Journal of Contemporary Painting does not aim to be broadly international in its explorations of transcultural dialogue within modern and contemporary painting. Instead, we focus mostly on China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, with a notable detour down towards the Philippines. The essays comprise a series of ‘snap-shots’ which together give a sense of the richness of the global dialogue in painting. We also take a couple of trips into the deeper past to visit Qing Dynasty landscape painting in China, and to the more recent past to explore of the impact of Zen on western monochrome painters in the 1950s and 1960s.

Gestural minimalism:developing a pictorial model in light of Deleuzoguattarian and enactive theories

Abstract: The purpose of this practice-based research project is to define a dynamic and non- representational model of abstract painting based on Deleuzoguattarian philosophy of becoming and Varela et al.’s enactive model of cognition. The aim was to integrate it to my own pictorial practice, which, before engaging in this research, was only based on geometric abstraction and, which I considered was too static and representational. Consequently, a principal practical outcome of this project is a hybrid pictorial style – between static and dynamic approaches – that I call gestural minimalism. I first discuss antecedents of non-representation in painting by introducing the use of Euclidean geometry in abstract painting during early 20th century. This leads to a discussion about different conceptions of pictorial representation and abstraction from two perspectives: a transcendent (static) and an immanent (dynamic), and further to the argument that paintings based on geometric shapes reflect static models of thought. The dynamic model is developed theoretically, through research and analysis of painting by Lee Ufan, Simon Hantai, Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse and Jane Harris and, practically, through my own practice. I present fractal geometry, a principal referent in gestural minimalism, to introduce a non-exact but relational approach to this science. This model is non-representational because is based on reciprocity. This concept is also a main idea of the enactive framework used in this project. I analyse painting as an enacted practice and a co-emerging assemblage in becoming, where a reciprocity between medium and painter co-functions to shape meaning. Painting is also explored as an artefact for extended cognition and as intensive processes that can grant individuals the access to abstract psychological spaces. The aim is to examine the capacity of the medium to facilitate the actualisation and modification of affective registers, and to aid processes that aim at transforming an individual’s identity. Haptic properties of pictorial surfaces are signalled as primary non-representational elements, whose traces are document of enacted processes of making that can give relevant information about cognitive and psychological features of individuals.

Painting Architecture: Towards a Practice-Led Research Methodology Vol 10 Paper 03

Abstract: The idea of architecture as spatial agency is increasingly explored by architectural practices. I argue that this approach can benefit from an alternative mode of visual representation in order to reflect architecture’s contingent nature rather than the production of buildings. The research project Painting Architecture investigates how the act of painting can visually facilitate the process of spatial thinking. In this paper, I discuss the rationale and significance of the practice-led methodology through a critical reflection on the pilot study. By approaching painting as a process of confrontation, negotiation and collaboration with participants during dialogue sessions, the project explores what painting can do rather than what it is. This approach creates, however, a paradox for the analysis of the practice in which the reason for researching painting based on its medium-specificity is negated by analysing its effect. To resolve this problem, two trajectories are suggested that enable an interpretation of painting as a critical and engaged project. As such, a broader significance of painting is developed which, in turn, contributes to a new way of thinking about architecture.