Saturday and Sunday

DO THIS --

www.artrala.org

Hashbrown Lightning

Hashbrown Lighning, oil on canvas, 48" x 60", 2009

See it and more at Here and Now -- Artra at the T-Lofts Nov 14th and 15th in LA.

Not Out Of The Woods

Phone pics taken by Ashley Poole

So that's how some of the magic happens. Still not out of the woods with this painting yet. So tomorrow you can come by and get up close and personal with it at the RAIDers Art Walk Group Show during the Brewery Art Walk. And while you're at it, check out the other blog I'm the benevolent god of.

I've decided I want to teach more. Know any LA area colleges that could use some more art professorin'? Me neither. No, but seriously....

Not Sh*tting Where You Eat

Minnie Minoso, oil on canvas 2009

So it has occurred to me already that blogging about what I teach for my Introduction to Art Concepts class for Santa Ana College is terribly didactic and, well, kind of boring for the audience I hope is tuning in. And I use the term “audience” pretty much euphemistically, because, well, lets face it, this blog is basically a conversation with myself, isn’t it? I was hoping for some feedback about what and how I teach, but without that I’m just talking about fire, the wheel, and not shitting where you eat in terms of art. Important stuff, no doubt, and there’s some choice stuff I think, but I’ve put out the call to what all you out there in internetland think, and have heard the cyber-equivalent of crickets. In a classroom I can wait this out and have a captive audience, but this internet’s a tougher room. Right now we’re covering formal language and principles of design, as well as terminology like “representational”, “abstract”, and the like. I get a real sense of the excitement level dropping in the students with this stuff; referring to things like line, shape, color, unity, scale, emphasis, etc., can suck the poetry right out of a room.

The next thing we begin to go over is a bit more interesting, the specific mediums of art itself. What does “drawing” really mean? Or “painting”? Or “photography”? Like I said, ground level stuff, but still worth returning too. Not so much categories, as sets of issues; I try to show sculptures with drawings issues, photos with painting issues, paintings with sculpture issues, video art with drawing issues...you get the idea.

Besides all that, the new art season is upon us. Saw some stuff. Best so far? Baker’s Dozen at the Torrance Art Museum. Galleries? Francesca Gabbiani at Patrick Painter. That’s just so far. But you know what event I’m looking forward too? This:

And you're required to attend. This will be on the final.

12 Hours a Month

First things first:

Picture of My Father Modeling Jackets, 2009:

So summer is over, and the new school year has begun, and for 12 hours every month, I have the privilege of teaching Introduction to Art Concepts at Santa Ana College again, for the third time now.

Beings that that is my only official obligation for the time being, I have much time to think about the class and even more time to prepare for it. I have decided to use the blog here to post my thoughts and strategies on how I present the information of the class, in the order I typically give it. Now I understand that for many of you out there (all 4 of you that actually read this) this information is as basic as it gets when thinking, chatting or writing about art. What I’m hoping is for a dialogue to occur that will help me fine tune my approach to the class, or at the very least, my personal thinking about the topics discussed.

So what is this class? To begin with, it is a lecture class, frequently an option for filling a humanities requirement, and is often referred to as “Art Appreciation”. I never took it myself in college, as taking two semesters of art history survey was the preferred option for actual art majors. In some schools it is viewed as “diet art history”, i.e. for non-art majors, though the content as I teach it I could see as very valuable to beginning art students (though the overwhelming majority of my students in this class are not art majors. Not yet, anyways.). In the class we discuss topics such as what art is, why art is made, how art is talked about, what the different mediums of art are, and a brief survey of the history of art all over the world, though from the general point of view of the Western tradition. The meta-structure of the course is basically two tiered, split at the midterm, with the definitions of art and how it is talked about coming first, and a fast forward survey of art history coming second.

I begin by trying to get an idea of what the students think art is in the first place. The inevitable first response when I pose the question is “paintings”, with sculptures and other general disciplines following . I try to show how while music, literature, and theatre are indeed art, it is visual art specifically we deal with. I show them the following series of images, discussing with them on each whether they think it is art or not.

Some of them will catch on and notice that the things that I lean towards being art in the sense that pertains to the class have labels, while the two that aren’t exactly what were talking about (Wolverine and the Aqua Teens) don’t. I use the metaphor of a scale with art being on one end and “not art” being on the other and try to get the students to place the things on the scale. This is all on the first day, and it gives me a good idea of their preconceived notions, and them a good idea of what it is were going to be looking at during the semester. Issues of art verses entertainment comes up, as does art verses illustration, art verses commerce, art verses advertising, art verses function, art as a designation of value and art verses craft. I try to explain that if culture was a corporation, art would be the research and development department. Things that are artful but not vying for the critical discourse of the institutions of fine art (or have been recognized as having a place in it) could be described as the marketed products of the corporation of culture; i.e. having been influenced and heirs, perhaps, of the developed research from art – culture’s R&D department. I also try to stress the point that declaring something as art is not a value judgment. In other words, it’s ok if something isn’t art in the sense that we’re talking about, its value may be judged in some other context. If art was good and “non-art” is bad, then what does the phrase “bad art” mean? Another example I make is of a Venn diagram of sorts where a big “art” circle representing the major painting / sculpture expanded paradigm is overlapped with to varying degrees with other circles such as photography, architecture, film, and others. Everything within the big circle including the overlaps is what we look at during the semester.

Next: Aesthetics, the Western tradition, and what do artists actually do, and the idea of creativity.

Reflections and Generalizations of the Culture at Large

So there is a discussion on the Next Issue! blog where Kevin Mutch has been attempting to impose some of the structures of fine art history on the history of comics. Now, the major trends of art are not specific to just art, and tend to be reflections and generalizations of the culture at large, so this experiment (which is not without precedent, I believe, though specific examples escape me. Anybody?) has some considerable merit.

But something about the discussion just doesn’t feel as productive as it could be. I would offer that those who are as intrigued by the idea of trying to make sense of the overall historical / theoretical narrative of comics (like me), should try to begin to create new language for it. Comics continually come off as an “insecure” medium, forever seeking the validation and attention of the art-world discourse. There are models for mediums that hold their own with their own history, language, and legitimacy, Venn-diagramming into the fine art world to varying degrees (photography, architecture, film). There is no reason why comics couldn’t be one of these, and is to a small degree, but the difference is that those three examples have stopped seeking legitimacy from the art world and its language. When the language of the art world discourse is applied to those fields, it makes sense – it is the language of culture – and the influence of those three mediums is so vast and omnipresent that the study of them has spawned separate scholarship.

It is not unusual to use the language of one medium to talk about another, especially when that medium is new. McLuhan identified this, and you can trace the development and connections of any medium this way. Early photography employed the language of painting (pictorialism) and then asserted itself against it (straight photography); film began by employing a hybrid of photography and theatre language, (and still does) but has established itself as cultural force of nature employing a highly refined cinematic language. (There was an interesting discussion on the Comics Comics blog about the comics equivalent of the words “cinematic” or “literary”). Those involved in comics theorizing seem to be simultaneously asserting its specific nature by denying a cinematic or literary focus, and at the same time trying to fit it into the specific art historical models used for the more general painting / sculpture paradigm found in the Western traditions.

We need to ask ourselves some very difficult questions. And by “we” I mean us comics theorizers. The three examples I cited above – architecture, photography and film – cannot be separated from our culture. In many ways those three things comprise much of our culture, along with what is contained in the Western painting / sculpture paradigm and many other things. The question then becomes, is comics, as we define it, as influential as those disciplines and therefore deserving of the same critical, theoretical, and academic scrutiny? All is not lost if we decide something other than “yes”. I am not falling on the negative side of the fence on this, necessarily, I just think there is an advantage to be gained, artistically, from comics retaining something of its culturally illegitimate status.

And to retain that, we have to stop trying to figure out how comics fit into art history. Mutch, in his last post, attempts to identify an initial postmodern moment in comics, using the high / low model of culture. Though he disclaims it, the very recognition of the oppressive, power and class based foundations of that model prevent comics from doing anything but become the authorless source material for the “high” art. This formed some of the basis for Art Spiegleman’s “High Art Lowdown” strip criticizing the Museum of Modern Art’s “High and Low” exhibition in 1990, curated by the late Kirk Varnedoe. We need to figure out what our history is, and see if, how, and when fine art history fits into it.

Inspired Aesthetic Quality

Snippits, brief thoughts, whatnot…

Rogue Wave 2009 at LA Louver – I went because it’s the Rogue Wave show, and because Kaz Oshiro was in it. Turns out someone I sort of know (Tia Pulitzer) was in it. Her work stood out at Superficiality and Superexcrescence at Otis, as it does in this show.

Nice scene, a lot of sculpture, as Sara Simon pointed out. We attempted to formulate a theory about how the economic downturn would usher a new opportunity for sculpture in the art market. Painting has always been the most archetypal of marketable art objects; sculpture has a reputation for being more, well, inconvenient. But much of what was at LA Louver Thursday made it seem worth the effort.

Lawrence Weiner at Regen Projects – I like words. I like poetry. I like typography. I like conceptual art. I like artists with funny last names. I like seeing John Baldessari at openings. I like being able to park. 6 out of 7 ain’t bad.

I’m beginning my initial preparations for teaching again in the fall – Introduction to Art Concepts and Introduction to Digital Media. My respective goals for this semester are to give the students practical tools for writing about art, and to emphasize more ideas about two-dimensional design in the digital class.

My basis for the latter has come from the realization that the students tend to catch on to how to use the software with incredible ease. What escapes them is how to create compositions and images that have an inspired aesthetic quality. A new book I have been studying, and have adapted for the class, Digital Foundations: Intro to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite by xtine burrough (sic) and Michael Mandiberg, provide a possible curriculum with this in mind, and it has become one of my favorite pedagogical materials.

As far as getting students to write about art better, I was wondering what all of you think. What are the essential points of emphasis when trying to get newcomers to art to articulate about it?

The Audacity of Stillness

Two things --

1. Your Bright Future at LACMA – Chance and fate have dictated that I am currently housemates with Korean artist Nakhee Sung at the moment, here at my home, Raid Projects. It's quite serendipitous, then, that LACMA should have an exhibit of contemporary Korean art at the same time. The show is indeed a good time. Christopher Knight has chided it as “90’s festival art”, and though I agree it has some dull spots, overall it made me want to go to Seoul and make video art.

A standout was Choi Jeong-Hwa’s plastic container installation that should have been a few acres bigger, but provided a delightful forest to lose oneself in. It was an interesting contrast to the other “forest” on the LACMA campus – Burden's streetlights – whose permanent status on the grounds served to highlight how disposable Choi’s materials end up being.

Of course, Do Ho Suh’s pieces kicked everyone’s dick in the dirt. His ability to get so much artistic mileage out of the places he has lived as the source for his work is mind bending. His brother’s an architect Nakhee tells me.

Love that Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, wish they would have mounted the monitor in the elevator, to see how they play off of the permanent Krueger installation. My favorite in the whole show, however, was Kimsooja’s unbelievably provocative video installation A Needle Woman. So achingly simple, so hypnotically compelling, so tellingly revealing, she has managed to concisely and articulately show how contrary to conventional wisdom it is to literally take a stand. Kim does nothing in these videos, and yet the audacity of her stillness so quickly instills a similar notion in the viewer. The presentation of multiple videos from all over the world make the universality of her stance (and her stance) visually and poetically apparent. One simple move, or more correctly a lack of moving, and Kim has transformed herself into a force of nature, dictating the direction of the humanity around her, instead of the other way around. An inspiring solution to anyone who has felt caught up in life’s flow.

Plenty of other goofy and great pieces, by other goofy and great artists, an overall paradoxical feeling of a group of artists at different forms of play, yet united by something globally plugged in, but decidedly non-Occidental. A heavy prevalence on video is a badge worn almost patriotically in this show, and a picture of Korea is presented that makes a case for a country whose artistic identity could easily be the meat in an Asian contemporary art sandwich, surrounded by the hearty bread of China and Japan. But only as long as it’s one of those Vietnamese sandwiches. Because those are fucking tasty.

2. I was going to write about Mat Brinkman’s Multi-Force comic book, but Frank Santoro over at the Comics Comics blog has beat me to it. I agree with almost all of his assertions, save for his initial feeling that Brinkman’s most representative output was his “official” art – the drawings, the installations, etc. For me, I’ve always just been waiting around for Brinkman’s work in book form – his comics – and everything else was ancillary to it. At most, I sought to incorporate and connect his other output to what I saw in Paper Rodeo, or Kramers Ergot, or Teratoid Heights. His show at M+B Gallery here in LA a little while back totally confirmed this for me, as it was easy to see those drawings as depicting denizens of Citadel City and the surrounding areas. It seems “cartoonist” is a term that needs re-defining in this new wonderful era of avant-garde comics. The Comics Comics gang seems to be at forefront of articulating this new contextualization, and it is them, frequently, that I turn too when I myself am trying to wrap my brain around the larger picture of what is being produced by fellows like Brinkman. I sort of thought of Brinkman as an artist who has maintained a comics practice, but maybe it’s my problem with the word and not the word’s problem…………

The Perfect Gig

So for the past two semesters, I have taught “Introduction to Art Concepts” at Santa Ana College in Orange County, California. This is a class that is also known at other schools as “Art Appreciation”, among other titles. The SAC catalogue description reads thusly –

“A study of the visual arts in relation to both personal and cultural expressions. Fundamentals of visual organization, color theory, terminology, historical art movements and concepts will be studied.”

It’s a good time. It’s the perfect gig for me. The material is structured in the various textbooks pretty much all the same. Starts with some working definitions or art and why it’s important, its purposes and where it’s found. Next it goes into formal language, visual elements, principles of design, things like that. Then it takes each medium, one by one, and then a fast forward through the history of art. The history half is the standard narrative of the Western tradition with a detour after the 18^th century to cover non-Western art traditions.

It’s a lot of material to cover. 16 weeks to generalize about some 5,000 odd years of human beings doing every visually apparent thing that didn’t fall under the category of “eating” or “fucking”. (Though personally I think all art is about sex and death.) It is up to me what I emphasize, what I leave out, what I include, and what spin I put on everything. Some things I personally try to emphasize are:

-- How to write, speak, and most importantly chat about art intelligently. (As well as how write, speak, and chat well in general.)

-- How you “have to get smart to get art” and how knowledge of it can give one a creative edge in any discipline or walk of life.

-- That the story of art used to be just be the story of white, (seemingly) straight European males, and that contemporary art today cannot be understood without knowledge and reclamation of artists from formerly marginalized groups (females, people of color, queer, “outsider” art) and non-western traditions.

-- The ideas of the avant-garde eventually trickling down to mainstream society; art as the “R&D department” of culture. Specifically how many of the prevalent digital methods of information consumption and production today (like the website you’re reading right now) are products of ideas first put forward in art.

-- Art history as a history of reactions, and the external (non-art) circumstances that dictate particular movements and trends.

-- How formal language, knowledge of relevant contexts, medium-specific associations, and art history can all be used to conclude content and/or meaning from a particular artwork. (The last two is more generally referred to as “critical thinking” to use pedagogical language.)

What I want to know is what else should be included? Or more correctly, what shouldn’t be excluded? During the history phase of the class, it’s a pretty fast rundown of the greatest hits of art, and many artists fall through the cracks to present a more generalized story. What are the most important art concepts that should be taught in “Introduction to Art Concepts”? If you could teach anyone without an art education only a handful of things, what would you show them?

Untitled Avant-Garde Comic #1

Bas Jan Ader Was an Exception to Lots of Things

So as an artist and teacher, it occurs to me often the larger question of ‘Why is art important?’ I imagine it is obvious to many who would even be reading this, but I feel that articulating it is another matter entirely. Then I imagine there are those that feel art is not important, but that’s why it is important, that sort of thing. As a community college instructor, the obligation falls upon me regularly to explain why an art education can be beneficial to several different walks of life and disciplines. And I honestly do believe it is. Much of the conventional wisdom around this is centered around the idea of creativity, and indeed I spend some time going into what that is and means with my “Introduction to Art Concepts” students early in the semester, as do the texts associated with that course.

I fancy it a sublimation of the survival instinct; if your life depends on it, you will get real creative, real fast. Artists are people who attempt to engage in creative processes without (usually) being in unforeseen life-threatening situations. I know what you’re about to say, but Bas Jan Ader was an exception to lots of things. But perhaps it is an instinct that needs expression in order to be a healthy, happy person….maybe.

One of my other sales pitches for the importance of art is referring to it as the “R&D department of culture”. Sometimes I like using THE MAN’S corporate lingo -- sometimes I even preface it by saying “If culture was a corporation, art would be the…”. Having insight into the strategies behind artworks and artists, with whom creativity is their business, can give one an edge in any discipline, over those who are not art educated. For many of us this is painfully obvious. The avant-garde does indeed trickle down to the mainstream, where it creates totally boring things like jobs, capital, supply, demand, products, etc. Don’t believe me? Reality TV? 70’S PERFORMANCE ART. Ikea furniture? MINIMALIST SCULPTURE. Photoshop? RAUSCHENBERG. Hipsters? WARHOL. I actually think that’s the litmus test for the avant-garde to cross over into “history”, but that’s another topic altogether.

We currently are all feeling the burden of those boring things I spoke of earlier, and there is a scramble for solutions towards relieving that burden. In many ways creativity is at a premium right now. However it gets solved, it will be a solution that has existed before, in some way; as any artist will tell you, originality is just a myth.

Artsy-Fartsy

So I’ve seen this, that, and whatnot lately. But really, I just have had blogger’s block lately, and don’t feel like anything needs to be expressed of late, at least through words. Just been in the studio, or at least in the studio in my head, and maybe my radar is just receiving and not broadcasting right now. I will go into this, though: A viewer of one of my paintings began to ask me about how I know when a painting is ‘finished’? I know for some artists there are obvious answers, depending on the project, but me, and some others, have at least some part of the process that has no set parameters for when it is over.

Let’s all stop and take a deep breath now – things almost got really artsy-fartsy there, and I really do think it’s an interesting, productive question. I’m aware of responses that read like the goofiest new age metaphysical malarkey / boloney / hokum you could only hope to come across in one of those magazines that only head shops sell. My response to the original question was something along the lines of when ever I notice I haven’t worked on it in a while. That usually means, for me, the painting’s done. That’s sort of the definition of “done” actually. Maybe that’s why I like that method.

Anywho, this is what I’ve been fiddling around with lately:

And this:

I Made These Marks When I Knew You 2009

Where The Magic Happens™

Latest and greatest --



That is Unquantifiable --


Twice as Beautiful Are the Rings of Saturn --


A Thunder Between Us (IN PROGRESS)

The Comedian is Dead

Allright, so, the Watchmen movie.

Let me begin by saying, “Relax. Calm down. Breathe.” Many of you, like me, have been engaged in a protracted effort to eliminate one’s expectations for the event in question, and I think I succeeded. I feel I went in to Zack Snyder’s film last night as impartial as one such as myself could be, at least on a conscious level.

For starters, any movie that has a scene with two superheroes fucking while a Leonard Cohen song plays in the background warrants at least 3 stars out of 5 for that scene alone. However, Watchmen the movie as a whole never really transcends that moment, though it does warrant further analysis. Comparing Snyder’s version with the original comic book, while inevitable, is ultimately counter-productive in judging the merits of the film on its own. While comic-book superhero movies of late generally deal with characters and premises that have seen many different versions and interpretations printed up over the years, Watchmen, as we all know, was a finite 12 issue comic book series with a definite beginning and ending. So this 3 hour movie was more of an adaptation of a novel more than an interpretation of a character or characters that have been interpreted many times. For many of us Watchmen, the book, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, represented a high point in what stood in for punk rock for the sexless and uncool adolescents of yesteryear. Like me. No film adaptation of a conventional novel is ever given this sort of scrutiny; but because the source material here is a comic book, what any other version of it may look and feel like visually is already laid down. Fortunately, Hollywood has quickly established a cinematic language for the genre of comic-book superhero movies, much of it established by a film that wasn’t even originally based on a comic book, the Wachowski bros. film, The Matrix. In Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of Watchmen, he uses this language without reservation; it is indeed, typical of most “comic-book movies.”

And that’s the problem. If Christopher Nolan can generate an artful, deep, hypnotic spectacle like the Dark Knight, then it stands to reason that the artful and deep source material of Watchmen would lend itself to being adapted to a film that rises to such heights. While still an ambitious, enjoyable film, Snyder’s Watchmen has more in common with Favreau’s Iron Man, Raimi’s Spider-Man films, and Singer’s X-Men movies than anything as inviting of serious critical attention like the Dark Knight. I feel comparing Watchmen to other films of the genre is the way to go; Snyder clearly was given the task of making a “comic-book movie” (as his previous film, 300, was) and he did not feel the need to do too much more than that.

Now it is ambitious, in its length (almost 3 hours) and complexity; however the moments I appreciated most is when Snyder chose to take liberty with the source material. His adherence to the plot, imagery, and details of the book felt at many times restraining, an exercise in dork satisfaction. The possible ire of message board comments, I feel, have never been more influential on the making of film before, and it shows. When a different take on one of the novels ideas or scenes came up, it was like a pressure valve being released, and a brief moment of Snyder’s interpretation was witnessed. His streamlining and simplifying of the story made sense, what he left out made sense – you cannot put a book on screen without changes; i.e. the film of a book is about the changes. Part of the production of comic-book movies typically involves internet research into what the fans expect and want. Unfortunately, at this point in Snyder’s career, I don’t think he is capable of crafting a film that invites the criticality that Moore and Gibbon’s book warranted and balance the essentials of why the source material is so revered. (For starters, he could lose his fetish for slow-motion action scenes. How he could film a story that is ostensibly about confronting clichés and un-ironically fill it with them is beyond me.) The book wasn’t a big deal because it was “badass”. It was a big deal because it was art. Art in the most unlikeliest of places: A superhero comic book.

So, 3 stars out of 5. Like I said, its not bad. It’s fun. It’s cool. It’s neat. It’s sexy. Some good performances. Some amazing imagery. Within the genre of comic-book movies, its ambition and scale put it a bit of a notch above some of the above mentioned movies. Did Nolan raise the standard on comic-book movies with the Dark Knight? Maybe. But Moore and Gibbon’s book Watchmen created a new standard back in 1986, and now a fun, cool, neat, sexy movie has been made of it. Go see it for yourself.

Sex and Death

Saw some things –

Dan Graham – Beyond at MOCA – Attended this opening, which had the character of “Disneyland for the overeducated” (I can only take partial credit for that one). The better half of Sonic Youth performed, and made us all feel smart, and I was not infuriated by MOCA’s insistence on having cash bars at their events, for once. Plenty to do at the Graham show, but there was even more to rub your chin about. This is good, because MOCA gets a lot of my time anyways. I have just returned from there, in fact, and begun the process of dialing in to what is presented in the show, and there is a lot.

I was originally only familiar with Graham from his performance work, and its video documentation, which I approved of wholeheartedly. The show at MOCA lets you in on all of his conceptual strategies, which at first seem pretty representative of much of the output of conceptual artists of the 1970’s. A deeper investment reveals Graham using these tactics in unexpectedly satisfying ways. A turn off for many about art like this is the ‘lack’ of visual aesthetic that greets viewers upon seeing it. Christopher Knight waxes eloquently about how the shows lack of color is meant literally, and not as a criticism of its variety. I would argue that there is indeed a visual aesthetic to Graham’s work, albeit one that occurs as a byproduct of what is presented as opposed to a conscious factor ahead of time. Any true fan of more conceptual art (myself included) knows enough to know that nothing visual is not designed; only that some designs are in such service to the ideas they are presenting that they call little attention to themselves formally.

Once past that, Graham’s interest in making the viewer more aware of their own viewing and being viewed hits it’s mark in both literal and figurative ways. His glass and mirror structures heighten one’s awareness of the contradictory and arbitrary nature of some basic architectural ideas, while highlighting the self-consciousness of one’s own presence in the presence of others. For example, to be in the self-enclosed spaces of one of Graham’s structures is to be able to see out knowing others can’t see in, while at the same time seeing one’s own reflection, and often seeing reflections of reflections as well as seeing out. Architecture in general is the arbitrary carving out of a chunk of space (and time) to get shit done; a metaphor for the finite in an infinite space. Yet, in contradiction to that, windows offer framed (painterly?) examples of this space, and in an ever spiraling evolution of contradiction, glass windows create barriers that can’t be seen to this space, and then shades and curtains bring us back to completely enclosed spaces. Graham so simply and eloquently relays to viewers our conflicted views of wanting to be in the world and out of it, to see and not be seen, to stand outside and to be within. He uses these same strategies and motifs in his videos, performance pieces, and films to great effect – forcing viewers to be viewed, and vice-versa. This investigation into phenomenological awkwardness is there in almost all the work, expanding into ruminations about suburbia, magazine layouts, and art writing.

I’ve only really chewed on and digested half of what the show offers; several return trips are in order. I haven’t even started to talk about his use of nude performers in works, or some of his writing (Schema for Poems is awesome). Maybe another blog post. Lucky you.

Katherine Gray – It’s a Very Deadly Weapon to Know What You Are Doing – Acuna-Hansen Gallery – 8 foot high shelves packed with glassware surrounded by people drinking. It’s frightening and full of tension; the physical presence of these pieces alone demands your attention. The required reading for the piece turns these literal implications into poetry – a visually sublime statement on the realization that an environment of consumption requires the consumption of the environment. Glass as a medium in a context like this has a reputation for having some emotional baggage. Some artists are in denial about it, but some, like Gray, give their audiences some actual credit for desiring ideas and deliver the goods.

Walter Robinson – Transport – Charlie James Gallery – CJG continues to delightfully surprise me. Robinson has made a wonderfully dense “gotta get smart to get art” statement via some deliciously slick pieces. The faux-Rothko car hoods showcase the reformation of the car cult currently occurring in America while making a broader comment on the art market in general and its present brush with death. (Get it? “Brush” with death?). The works are smart and sexy, and while being another unexpected avenue at CJG, fit in perfectly with the vision I know Charlie has for the space.

I’m struck by how I’ve seen two precarious glass-based pieces in Chinatown in as many months. Gray’s at Acuna-Hansen and the last show at Charlie James (see this previous post). While Gray’s dealt with precariousness of how to use what is left of the world around us, David Scott Stone’s piece gave a nasty visualization to the tension of sex and death. But I think all art is about sex and death. But that’s another blog post.