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Call For Submissions: Surface Tension

Type: Calls For Papers [View all]
Posted by: Journal of Art Criticism (JAC), Barnard College of Columbia University
Deadline: Tue, January 23rd, 2018

Journal of Art Criticism

Call for Submissions: Surface Tension

Deadline: January 23, 2018, to journalofartcriticism@gmail.com

For our third edition, the Journal of Art Criticism at Barnard seeks submissions of art and art criticism, particularly work that conceptualizes surfaces—material as surface, skin as material, the tactility of surfaces, bodily sensations evoked through surfaces, and surfaces as screens or as tools for masking. The following prompt may guide submissions, though other topics within contemporary art may also be addressed.

In a sociopolitical context that is fraught with tensions both visible and invisible, surfaces play an important role in evoking (or masking) such frictions. The aesthetics and politics of artists’ chosen materials lend layers of meaning to the works they construct. Materials can recall corporeal containers and bodily experiences, or explore relationships between art and objects, a work’s life cycle, a material’s history and objecthood.

In her 2014 publication, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media, Giuliana Bruno argues that materiality is centered in the relations between substances rather than the materials in isolation. Felix Ensslin and Charlotte Klink’s Aesthetics of the Flesh also posits that skin-like surfaces transcend their material conditions toward more spiritual embodiments. Additionally, Petra Lange-Berndt writes on the ways in which “materials obstruct, disrupt, or interfere with social norms, emerging as impure formations and messy, unstable substances.”

What role do surfaces play in a work of art? What tensions arise when one can or cannot touch a work of art? How might internal identities and lived experiences be embodied externally, through tactile materials? How do abstracted representations express what it is like to live in certain bodies? How do artists reveal things that are hidden by surfaces? What is at stake when artists make things that are (in)tangible, or evoke physical sensations? Why do we need the physical?

To submit an essay or artwork for consideration in this issue of JAC, please see our website journalofartcriticism.com for guidelines, essay links, and examples of previously published work. 

Posted on Thu, November 9th, 2017
Expires on Tue, January 23rd, 2018

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