Malcolm Koch

Name: ARTMAJEUR
Brand: ARTMAJEUR
Rating: 4.9 (9218 reviews)

Stepney, South Australia, Australia •

Artist (Painting) •

Born 1968 •

Unravelling the patterns of the universe

Membrane Art: An evolving expression.

In 2004, I had the thought that I could open up surfaces and spaces to far more countless perceptual possibilities by painting on a curve rather than on a flat 2D plane. The events created on the curved surface would re-enact the ‘completeness’ of our natural world (containing multidimensional values) and when the results are unraveled and revealed on the 2D picture plane, the compression of depth would generate the human visual experience, thus being a metaphor for how we observe.

Since the discovery of this aesthetic thought, trying to put it into a working practice has been challenging. I’ve experimented with numerous ways of curving the surfaces that I’m working on. I’ve also realised that besides paint pourings and the effects of gravity, I can apply alternative methods to create events that couldn’t eventuate on a flat 2D plane if one tried. Thereby the actual membrane itself underpins the aesthetics of each piece, and the degree of simplicity or complexity can be regulated and enhanced by it.

Painting this way stems directly from our current understandings of nature and how we (might) observe it, particularly in quantum mechanics — where we are to believe that nature is probabilistic and far more complex and stranger than the Newtonian one we intuitively know. So by liberating the membrane surface it allows me to engage with the ‘completeness’ of space and surface. Even though events created on the surface may be partly, or completely, obscured from view, it conditions me to use gained knowledge and a sense of feel rather than solely relying on my sight — all this develops different thought processes and challenges my assumptions as I embrace the incidents that arise.

The impact of this work from the viewers experience is quite different. They will, like me, observe the results of the work on a 2D picture plane. The aesthetic appreciation comes through the contemplation of each piece and/or through the realisation that it couldn’t have eventuated without some kind of curve involved. Similar to the way that things may appear in nature at the atomic level — we may not fully comprehend the methods and sequences that allow it to be the way it is but it seems to form part of our inherited reality.

As an aesthetic thought, allowing the surface geometry to play a part in the conceptual development of artistic expression, I believe, has been largely overlooked. Particularly when you realise that the spacial transformation of the events onto a 2D picture plane happens directly and without distortions (unlike that from a camera lens) is a fundamental principal of it. Nevertheless, this notion has enabled me to evolve and develop a body of work that I call ‘Membrane Art’. Whatever its ultimate value, it is without doubt the key influence and structural basis of my art practice. Something that I’m continuing to evolve.