About Headspaces

Headspaces is the solo and collaborative fine art of Zaine Magee [b. 1983], a multimedia artist who began in painting and drawing disciplines at Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, MI. The work explores the intricacies of artistic process, maintaining that art is a sum of the events leading toward what is considered finished, and blurs the definition of artist and audience.

In an increasingly digital existence, an artist has to connect their material manifestations with an audience expecting to be engaged through new media. While an appreciation of static fine art grounded in the tangible remains in the public conscious, those artists proposing and redefining hybrid media forms are inspiring a way of expression that exists in networks outside of galleries. The accessibility of art is changing, and the screen is beginning to become the window that painting and drawing previously dominated.

In the acts of painting, drawing, and sculpture, there is a performance that brings the artist to the final culmination of his work. In the physical moving of tangible elements on canvas, paper, or any surface a sum of all thoughts, considerations, and concepts involved in the execution of a work of art exist when the artist has arrived at their vision of intention. This process that the artist invents is ultimately a performance, and an object that results is a literal record of actions in time. Through video and audio, an artist is able to capture the processes involved in their methods. The internet is becoming a channel in which an audience can participate more directly with art designed in the interactive vein. The role of the artist in this digital society is one of integrating their creations with audience reaction. Art is no longer something to be displayed; instead it is a living, breathing identity to be engaged with. Art must have the ability to adapt and evolve beyond the static elements of the past. There can no longer be finished art forms; they must be born, alive, and continually redefining their reasons for existence.

Through repetition of process, a performance exists in arriving at artwork considered complete. Headspaces brings to light the transitory nature of artwork, and insists that the art is in the act of creating work and the work itself is a recording or fossil remainder of this durational performance. Painting and drawing are always present in some form throughout all of the various installation environments Headspaces develops. These forms of art are the basis of all art, the foundation that digital elements rest upon. Video and animation featured inside these bodies of work is generated entirely by fine art materials being manipulated over time. Each body of work has a physical, tangible element from which the digital arises. In each installation, the various mediums are displayed beside one another, allowing the viewer to gain an encompassed understanding of the series' development, throughout their lifespans.

Although Headspaces is fundamentally a fine art based artist collaboration, the move from gallery to exhibition through less traditional outlets is underway. Art does not have to be contained inside idea systems developed by artists, for artists. Like street art, interactive environments can be developed and exhibited anywhere. This is the new direction of fine art, accessed through the internet, the concert hall, or in public spaces.

The incorporation of interactivity takes these concepts even further, creating a sum of parts greater than either medium could embody on their own. Interactivity is not new, when viewing a painting, drawing, or sculpture, the mind pieces together a understanding of its imagery and grasps for meaning. In this way humans have always interacted with art, however, through custom software and hardware, Headspaces has created potential for interactivity to become actual manipulating of the audience's environment, directly. The audience generates the art as they determine, removing the artist from a hierarchal, condescending, authoritative position. Headspaces seeks to level the hierarchy, removing art from its position as a lust object capable only of self-aggrandizement and making it accessible to those who may have never considered fine art within their interests.