This article discusses the plastic arts' non-dialectical engagement with materiality, by focusing on figures of depth in three recent artworks in mixed media by artists from the Americas: Artur Barrio's coffee-grounds installations (2000–08), Jacques Coursil's avant-garde jazz album Clameurs (2007), and Damián Ortega's action Moby Dick (2004). All three offer aesthetic experiences of depth that propose an approach to the questions of relation and chaos-monde addressed by Édouard Glissant in terms of plasticity and assemblages—unhinged from anthropocentrism and signification.

Issue Section:
Articles
Aesthetic experience, depth, chaosmos, installation art, assemblages, plasticity, relation
This content is only available as a PDF.
© 2014 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2014
You do not currently have access to this content.