Miniaturism - ArtRadar: Contemporary Trends in Art
Miniaturism - ArtRadar: Contemporary Trends in Art Using the human form as an art medium has been around since the first sculptures were made. However, the increasingly popular trend of miniaturizing it has reflected artists’ need to address issues of isolation in community, society, and the role of the individual. In the face of our huge buildings, large government, and 7 billion brothers and sisters on the Earth, people have started to feel small. This trend of using miniature people aims to explore society as it grows and how the individual fits into that environment. The role of the individual as either growing smaller or fitting into the community to accomplish things together is explored in the recent trend of Miniaturism. One of the pioneering artists in this trend is Antony Gormley. His entire body of work deals with how the human body interacts with a space, both as a sculpture and as a viewer. His focus on how an individual interacts with his/her environment naturally brought about one of the most famous instances of Miniaturism. His series of works, Field, exhibited during the years 1989-2003 is a prime example of exploring the role of an individual in a collective body. These pieces are all huge rooms filled with hundreds of thousands handmade clay sculptures, given the semblance of people with indented eyes. Each “person” is hand sculpted, yet the entire “collective expression” is only achieved when they are all together. Gormley has said that his works are not about alienation, but about connecting and people “touching their condition in the world.” Miniaturism is about social and personal awareness. It is also about trying to get people to stop and pause for a moment. As we have become such a fast-paced society, works from artists like Slinkachu and Cordal reward those who look for the extraordinary and the small. It is about making sure that people or instances don’t fall through the cracks in the face of the larger picture. This trend can be spotted by looking for little people, realistic or not, unique or not, that are commenting on how the individual fits a community and the alienation of people in a growing world. It usually involves more than one small person, but sometimes that message is expressed through just a solitary “individual” as in some of Cordal’s and Slinkachu’s works. These artists often use very similar or identical “people” to comment on how society has grown increasingly homogenous and each person loses their individuality in the sea of collective sharing. In order to understand the world we live in, we must examine the people living in it. Miniaturism focuses on how people fit together into the puzzle that is the global community.
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Miniaturism - ArtRadar: Contemporary Trends in Art
- 1. miniaturism Exploring the shrinking role of the individual in a growing way
- 6. Cause and Effect Do Ho Suh 2007
- 9. Public Figures Do Ho Suh 2001
- 14. Procession (Exodus) Clinton de Menezes 2008-Present
- 18. The Shit Job Machine Lawrence Epps
- 22. Isaac Cordal
Editor's Notes
- Thelittlepeopleprojectbegan in 2006.
- He beganhisworks in 2009 and has continuedthemuntilthepresent.