Kármán Line

Jedd Novatt

Kármán Line

 

Rigidly structured formalist notions of minimalist, non-representational art, and geometric identities sit quietly nestled in the negative / positive spaces within Jedd Novatt’s sculptures, monumental public art installations, as well as the Kármán Line monotype print series.

Novatt is an artist often examined through constraining connotations of chaos theories, equilibriums, discernments of balance, and negative space.

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However, there is much more to explore throughout his signatory linear aesthetic.

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Within the seemingly infinite perceptional tower of upward expansion, spatial relations, and limitless boundaries­ — lies a metaphorically erected inner voice and self-reliant artistic vocabulary that has cemented a very substantial foundation developed and inspired by varied conceptual elements;  ranging  from seemingly Geodesic dome theories of stability and structure, Cycladic Art, Johann Sebastian Bach, and ephemeral transcendence through materiality, to theoretical and academic familiarities with a plethora of scholarly and studious focusses; art or otherwise.

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Novatt is hyperaware of the dynamic of “spatial vibrations” that his artwork disseminates into the cosmic heavens, but pulls back with methodical force to constrain the materiality, and pontificates on “space as form” with a clear discernment for perceived as well as physical balance.  

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“How does the sculpture land” says Novatt as he discusses his comprehension of form cloaked in the invisible attributes of Earth’s gravity and its role on structures and literal space.

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As seen in the Kármán Line monotype print series, form is a tool I use to define space.

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The “form” takes on the role of what we recognize as a “drawing”, where linear principles drive the viewer to follow the premeditated and purposefully arranged composition through calculated routes of intersecting boundaries, edges, configurations and angles.

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Through these drawings, Novatt embarks on the colossal and ostensibly unobtainable occupation of finding, exploring, and incarnating “the space between the notes”. He undeniably believes in his deliverance for those questing for visual anchors of reference to understand physical propinquity.

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In discussing the canon of great artists, Novatt regards many artists, from those of the primitive Cycladic Art era to masters of Minimalism who all have marveled at the definition of space with the artistic realm; a domain where “space becomes solid”.

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Kármán Line monotypes solidify integral conjectures of atmospheric and altitudinal dimensions maneuvering beyond the ocular to a more astomatous reality.

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In the verisimilitude of our everyday, the real definition of the demarcated Kármán Line does not unexpectedly conclude at any given elevation within Earth’s atmosphere, but the air does become progressively thinner within a definitive environmental apex, making it an arbitrary definition in man’s rudimentary scientific exploration.

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Novatt sees his towering physical presence of his installations, and monotypes as exploring various concepts of scale. This scale, an undefined integrity that resonates absolutes, reaches toward the infinite through systematic arrangements of artistic drawings, heavily weighted by steel or conceptual in their existence of the undefined metaphysical.

 

-Lisa Burgess