The systematic implications of Steve Ouditt

Plaques at an Optometrist's office..............



Alice Yard in Port of Spain,Trinidad is fairly packed tonight. The guest artist is Steve Ouditt and his installation is the first in a series of six upcoming exhibitions scheduled later this year. The project is part of his doctorate thesis studies at the University of the West Indies.

Titled, Blurs, the installation is an assemblage of framed plaques backed with sentences behind frosted glass. They are visually blurred, and you have to step back to figure out what the phrase may mean. But Mr. Ouditt solves this riddle by placing a label at the side of the frame that spells it out, yet it is a tedious task to filter.


Ouditt's foldout catalogue creole process zone

Where this installation fails is in its purported sophistication, and by its simplistic construction which obfuscates the purpose of the piece. Mr. Ouditt's emphasis towards his visual work is masked by the very opposite, his true calling is the art of language which he can theoretically convolute, deconstruct and formulate to an abstract lexicon understood only by his academic peers. The verbatim spoken by the academicians results in a self gratification with no structural equations in the visual pleasures of art. Steve Ouditt is known for his street graffiti and works on brown paper. His career as an artist, curator and lecturer expands over twenty years.

Above. The installation Abjection Collection, at Alica Yard, Trinidad.

See Postmodern terminology: A-C D-G H-K L-N O-R S-T U-Z

Here is an example of an artspeak term:

AUTOTELIC: Art which has no goal outside of itself, unlike didactic or moralizing work. Audiences incapable of tolerating the portrayal of moral excesses or criminal activities in a work of art have refused to acknowledge the possibility of its autotelic status. Autotelic differs from autonomy in that the latter ideally refers to nothing but itself, whereas the former depicts, say, emotionally trying circumstances, without pretending to be an account of an actual series of events and without having an ulterior motive.