.aesthetic talk
SETH HOWE
*Instruments of Seeing
written + interview Kate Hoag
Seth Howe is a New York-based artist and architect whose multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation—all focused on exploring light, space, and perception.
Howe’s Stackworks series exemplifies these explorations, featuring alternating pieces of metal or wood that form minimalistic layered sculptures. Described by Howe as "instruments for seeing," these pieces invite viewers to move around them and reconsider how they experience the world.
In this conversation with LE MILE Magazine, Howe offers a closer look into his artistic practice, reflecting on his architectural influences, the evolution of his Stackworks series, and his ongoing exploration of perception and the act of seeing.
Seth Howe
Diamond Rotation Series
“My three-dimensional works are meant to act as 'lenses' or 'seeing devices' to look through, not as coded objects to look at.”
Seth Howe speaks with Kate Hoag
for LE MILE .Digital
Seth Howe
The Mechanism of Seeing, in Picturing Light at FIT
Photo courtesy of the artist
Seth Howe
seen by Peter Murdock
Kate Hoag
Your work spans a range of media, from sculpture to video to photography. Do these each act as a different form of expression?
Seth Howe
Everything starts in three dimensions, and my Stack structures are the source inspiration for all of my other work, including works on paper, photography, and video. The main focus of my art concerns perception and the human body in space, and how it is that we can understand and navigate through the material world. My three-dimensional work establishes a physical relationship with the body of the viewer, in real space and time, in an effort to highlight the ordinary experience of seeing. The two-dimensional work acts as an imprint or record of perceived moments over time, either as a sort of snapshot of the physical experience, or as simulations of that experience. I explore perception and the act of seeing in all of the different mediums, toggling back and forth to inform and strengthen my overall conceptual ideas.
You are also an architect. Could you tell us about your personal relationship with architecture versus fine art? Do you feel your architectural training influences the way you approach form and structure in your sculptural work?
My architectural training most definitely informs my artwork. I was trained in the modernist tradition as postmodernism began to infiltrate architectural design and the culture at large. It was an interesting time, as my upbringing and education embraced technological and scientific progress as a way to improve society, but of course underneath this rational worldview things were slowly being dissected and dismantled. I was always hyper-aware of my own physical presence and the relationship of my body to the environment. I think that’s why I was always fascinated with space and architecture. Through my architectural practice I came to question the systems and paradigms that make up the construct of our reality, and I turned to artmaking as a more facile way to investigate these matters. Despite this, I still use modernist materials and strategies in my artwork because those are the forms, materials, and notions of space that are intrinsic to how I see and know the world. They are the tools and materials that I’m comfortable working with, and ultimately the goal of my work in the physical realm is meant to point to a more metaphysical space, one that is not based in the physicality of art or architecture.
You often work in iterations. Could you walk us through your process of revisiting your work?
Everything originates from the Stackworks, using the conceptual notion of constructing a three-dimensional structure in the most efficient way possible, in this case an alternating stacked structure using identical repetitive parts. The original Stack structure was conceived about ten years ago, and it has continued to inform me about perception and the process of seeing. It’s a sort of unfolding that reveals new ideas and sharpens my focus. The work ties in perfectly with things I have been thinking about for a very long time, such as phenomenology and nonduality.
I started fabricating my structures with four sides and have since expanded this to six sides. Part of this came from the requirements of creating stability in larger works, as well as expanding my own presumptions about what the form can do in terms of the perceptual experience. I imagine in the future I might change the number of sides or alter the form, materials, colors, etc., but any iterations will conform to the original stacking concept.
How does each iteration build upon or diverge from the previous?
All iterations emanate from the source structure, a four-sided stacked tower of twenty alternating raw aluminum parts. I was experimenting with scrap material when I first conceived of the work. At the time I wasn’t quite sure of what it was, but I liked the simplicity and elegance of the form, along with the solid/void patterns created by the assembled parts and the shadows that were produced in certain lighting. I played with the shadows initially, shooting light through the structure and photographing the resulting forms. I then moved on to figure/ground works, my Diamond Series prints, which captured and flattened the patterns of solids and voids as if rotating around them. I added color and reflective surfaces to the structures, and played a lot with scale and the number of parts. I placed the works on a turntable, which acted as a stand-in for our movement through space, and started photographing them with long exposures, creating blurry and fragmented images. All of the work is related and references the original theme, one that I will continue to pursue and build upon.
Minimalism has often been considered a hyper-masculine movement, yet your approach feels more inclusive and personal. Do you see your work navigating or perhaps redefining space within Minimalist tradition?
I think all Western movements of art through to the 1990s can be considered to be hyper-masculine, as mainstream culture mainly celebrated the white male artist. There were some female minimalist artists of course (Anne Truitt, Nancy Holt, to name a few whom I admire) so I don’t think the conceptual nature or hard edge materials of minimalism is inherently masculine. I am using materials and methodologies that can certainly be associated with minimalism, and some of my concerns are quite similar. Since I am working in this specific culture and moment in time, I cannot ignore the current cultural climate we’re living in. I use minimalist materials in an effort to address the raw nature of seeing, which I think ultimately goes to the root of so many issues plaguing our society at large: how we see dictates how we act, our values, and our capacity to have empathy and understand one another.
The recent exhibition Picturing Light at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where you exhibited a large-scale installation, questions some of our basic assumptions about how we experience light and illumination. Do you see your work in the exhibition likewise challenging viewers to think about their assumptions regarding light and vision?
My goal is to challenge viewers to have an awareness of the sensation of seeing. I believe it’s not what we see as much as it is that we can see at all. Light brings forth our visual perception of the world, and I use the qualities of light in my work with reflection, color, etc., but I am not interested in light as a subject matter. I’m interested in raw seeing, as if we removed all thinking and feeling, including memories of the past and all projections into the future—what is that pure experience like? Light is one of the ways in which we understand and bring meaning to the material world, but the subject of my work is not light, it is the viewer themselves, seeing in a new and unfamiliar way.
Are there specific reactions you hope to evoke in your work?
I’d like viewers to bring themselves to the work, whomever they might be. I see the work as more universal—the majority of humans are sighted and have the ability to perceive physical matter and to navigate space. I want the viewer to actively participate with the work, not be a passive observer. Although most people rely on prescribed conventions of seeing to understand the world, I think everyone has the capacity to see anew and this can happen in a small way. I will not dictate how or what a viewer sees or thinks, I prefer to nudge them out of their preconditioned state just a little bit, enough to make them aware that they are seeing, to have an awareness of being aware.
Seth Howe
SPIN Series A, No.4 (1_3), 2022
Photograph on cotton rag
51”x41”x3”
Seth Howe
SPIN Series A, No.5 (1_3), 2022
Photograph on cotton rag
51”x41”x3”
“I am interested in raw seeing, as if we removed all thinking and feeling, including memories of the past and all projections into the future—what is that pure experience like?”
Seth Howe speaks with Kate Hoag
for LE MILE .Digital
Many of your pieces have been described as “instruments for seeing.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this and how this intention shapes your creative process?
My three-dimensional works are meant to act as “lenses” or “seeing devices” to look through, not as coded objects to look at. I hesitate to call them sculpture because that implies an object and form that has referential meaning or signifies something else. These works exist in real space and time, no different than a human body, and I would like them to be experienced in that way. That they happen to use industrial materials and take certain geometric forms is less consequential to me, it’s their function that is important. And their function is to convey a new way of understanding the world, not as a fixed conventional reality, but as a reality that is always in flux, everchanging, and malleable.
How do you define “functional art” within the context of your practice? Do you see your works as having a function beyond their aesthetic?
My functional work is conceptually the same as my artwork, but as an architect and a “user” of space I am always drawn to making something functional, such as a table or a seat. I see these works as fine art but something that is a bit more approachable. They are physical things that people can interact with on a daily basis. In this way they are closer to being like the objects we already have around us. It’s really interesting to me to think about the boundary between something that is useful in a physical way and something that exists as an entity for sensory experience…the line can sometimes be a bit blurry.
Who or what continues to inspire you, whether in art, architecture, or other fields?
I am continually inspired by New York City, how one navigates through the streets, as if we are perceptual seeing machines, constantly taking in data and experiencing fragments of architecture, light, color, and reflections. The physical sensation of movement through space is heightened in an urban environment. This will forever be fascinating to me, the moment by moment experience of seeing as if for the first time. The city has taught me how to see, and has encouraged me to step out of my own conventional ways of seeing. I am inspired by work that brings forth some of these same attributes, whether in music, fine art, film, or architecture.
How would you describe your artistic philosophy? Is there a central idea or feeling that guides your approach across different projects?
My main conceptual thesis is about the experiential sensation of seeing, and this has been a developing theme throughout my life. We can only know the world through our senses; everything that exists comes through our sensory experience. I’ve always been drawn to the visual world as my contact point to reality. I read a lot of French existentialism when I was young which opened me up to questioning the nature of society and my existence within it. I then discovered the ideas of phenomenology in the works of Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and others, which expanded my perspective of the different ways of examining reality. I explored the systems of language, linguistic and visual signs, social and power structures, and ultimately the ways in which reality is a type of construction itself, built piece by piece through the development of complex fabricated systems of language and knowledge. I’ve recently been exploring non-duality, which posits that everything in the world emanates from pure awareness, that all of culture, science, thinking, and feeling are subsets of consciousness itself. My work is both a tool for me to use in my exploration, as well as a device to communicate what I see with others. The point is not to create objects that end in some sort of didactic explanation, but to create things in the physical realm that provoke questions and wonder about the world we inhabit.
Looking ahead, are there any new directions or materials you’re excited to explore in your work?
After many years of investigating, thinking, and making art, I have just begun to show my work in public and I am excited about moving into that arena. There are no new directions per se, but I think the act of being in the public realm will certainly influence my work. I do like working on site-specific installations, such as the FIT show, and I am excited about fabricating larger works for exterior spaces out of stainless steel. I also use digital technologies as tools for exploration, including 3D printing for study models, and digital renderings of large works. But my output will always remain in the physical realm, a place where we all reside, in this present moment.
Seth Howe
Diamond Rotation Series A, No 4, 2021
Archival pigment print in wood shadowbox
28.75x21.75x2in (framed 28.75x21.75in)
Seth Howe
Stackwork 6
Aluminum, 12x6x6in
“We can only know the world through our senses; everything that exists comes through our sensory experience.”
Seth Howe speaks with Kate Hoag
for LE MILE .Digital