800 Page Dick Joke

It' s been a little while. Art season started last weekend, saw some shows. Nothing blew me away....with the possible exception of...

Chinatown. It looked good. Sort of in general. Which makes me happy, because I live downtown. I want downtown to have art I like. Looking back on what everyone had, Michael Lazarus at Sister Gallery wasn't bad. I remember liking Eric Sall's paintings at Acuna-Hansen.

Mark Moore Gallery's 3rd annual Ultrasonic International was up and running. Roberts and Tilton's new space in Culver City opened, but I guess I forgot to walk inside. I was in a mood.

The new show at the Geffen Center is good for some laughs. Good follow up to the Lawrence Weiner show.

If I seem a little bereft of opinions, its probably because I've started teaching again, specifically an Introduction to Art Concepts class (some schools call it 'Art Appreciation), and my mind has been occupied with explaining the basics of what art 'is' to people who have little or no experience with it. This is the kind of fine challenge I relish sinking my teeth into, and, like much of my teaching have taken on the seriousness of it to the point of emotional exhaustion. I love it.

The young people in my class seem to have an aversion to non-representational painting, which interests me deeply, being a painter who loves and appreciates painting of that 'genre'. When I taught 2D Design, by the end, I had most of the students making super-tight Ellsworth Kelley / Theo van Doesburg / Barnett Newman-esque mini-paintings, and they could talk about them. Hmm.....

Besides all that, I finished reading Gravity's Rainbow. I have been making dents in this sprawling tome since December, along with a readers guide that was indispensable. After all of it, I think I can say that I know exactly what Pynchon was doing with GR, and what it is, as whole, and it is this:

Its an 800-page dick joke.

I realized this about 30 pages from the end, and that explanation somehow satisfies a lot of my instincts about the novel, and its overall concerns. Layered, researched, and complicated, yet also juvenile, self-indulgent, and scatological. So I've pretty much committed to reading all of Pynchon's output now, but I must have some lighter reading for the immediate time-being. I began many flings and affairs with other books while I was with GR, and now they will get my full attention. And I've got Daybreak 2250 AD, apparently the first modern post-apocalyptic novel, penned by one Ms. Andre Norton.

Two shows of interest coming up -- Friday, Sept. 19th, my friend Amanda Browder is throwing a show entitled "Um...My Gallery", which I will be taking part in, right here at Raid Projects (602 Moulton Ave, LA 90031). I imagine things will start around 6-ish, hm? Do come.

And, on Saturday, Sept 27th, "Neosapian" at the Cal State LA Fine Art Gallery opens, curated by M-L Flemington. And you are required to attend that as well.

























ps
Be sure to check out Bad at Sports, a super art world podcasting destination, for your listening pleasure.

Donkeybutter

Hey kids. Well, Follow the Hawk is live. If you didn't get a copy at the EVER EXPANDING PIZZA BIG BANG, then shoot me a line and I'll give you one. The next one I make will cost you though. Behold the latest donkeybutter:

Here's a link to a dude hating on Gary Panter. COMEDY!!

So the video below was something I used to catch on public access in San Antonio, where I was raised and reared. It was one the first videos I ever downloaded over the internet. And its back. It was so funny that I would stay up late with my old friend Tina Bloom and watch genuine broadcasts of Robert Titlton preaching and just add our own fart noises at appropriate times. Good times.


Adbusters article about hipsters. Heh. So what's hipper than adbusters writing an article shitting on hipsters? Its like a snake eating its own tail, man.

PHILIP GUSTON IS GOD. No link, just, it's true.

So, Afterall magazine hosts free underground sci-fi movies on the roof of a hotel downtown? One flick is aparently directed by Joan Jonas? Who wants in on that?

Have you been reading Seki City LA?

And for you're amusement, some pics of Where The Magic Happens™:

Read my pals's blog

My misanthropic best friend, who shall remain anonymous, has started a new uplifting feel good kind of blog at http://www.sekicityla.blogspot.com/, ostensibly because he looks up to me as a role model and what not. Give it a read, and let him know.

The, uh, "Ever-Expanding Pizza Big Bang"

Had a little thing at my new home, Raid Projects, over there at the Brewery. There was beer, table tennis, drawings, free comics, and JJ. And of course, I took photos of people standing with my art, because I'm self-promoting jackass. Enjoy -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/26181240@N08/

Linguistic dilemmas of narrative

Latest artist's statement. For an upcoming group show in September:

The work begins as excuse to gain an intimacy with imagery I am attracted to – geared up, strapped on, hypersexualized, post-human, transitional bodies engaged in narratives of mythic conflict – and becomes a formal, conceptual, biographical, and linguistic psychoanalyzation of several issues:

The western conventions of representation, abstraction, figuration, masculinity, and mark-making.

The modern expressions of adolescence, puberty, adulthood, loss, paradox, contradiction, power, war, intimacy, and sexuality.

The linguistic dilemmas of narrative, archetypes, bodies, poetry, associations, and love.

The Sea of Poetry

So its been awhile. Working, packing, moving. To the Brewery Art Colony, actually. Raid Projects will be my home and studio starting next week. You must come by. I've been practicing my martini making skills and I need test subjects. Bring your own olives.

Saw some art. Here's the highlights.

Ali Smith -- "We Find Ways" at Mark Moore Gallery. Big. Sexy. Paintings. Super indulgent, celebratory fits of paint collide and sweat on these giant canvases. The marks and globs reach, stretch, and navigate the oceans of space and move in and out as much as they do up and across. The forms in her painting seem like blown up microscope slides of some kind of primordial, multi-celled, bubblegum colored organism, caught in a fit of furious, many hued rapid development. One feels that these paintings would reach out an assimilate the viewer if they stood in front for too long, and be broken down into the elemental lines, shapes, colors, and forms that these wonderful works heroically present.

Marlene Dumas -- "Measuring Your Own Grave" at MOCA Grand Avenue. Though not every one of these paintings grabbed me, there are moments in this show that are moving in the most eloquent and understated way. Simple formal moves by Dumas make it seem that all the typical conventions of painting are in fact metaphors for mortality. The double sided coin of sex and death finds such a haunting delivery system in the paint and in the presentation.

Lawrence Weiner -- "As Far As The Eye Can See" at MOCA Geffen Contemporary. Fantastic. I floated through this show, through the sea of poetry that Weiner presents on the walls (and floor) of the gallery. Typographically designed abstract instructions for possible artworks vinyled to the wall make it seem as if one's thoughts have been given life and hover about simultaneously. My favorite -- "Draw a line from the first evening star to the last morning star." Interspersed are blobs of paint, some interior structural damage, and a wall perforated by buckshot. These seemingly arbitrary records of action are in fact some of Weiner's instructions carried out. The videos and objects emblazoned with his words upstairs offer a nice complement, but to meander around this space and ponder the absurd poetry of Weiner's words is one of the most delightful museum experiences I've ever had.

Other than that, Antonio Ballester Moreno at Peres Projects got some talk from everyone I was running into. My jury's still out, but I think I might come around. My co-worker at the Hammer Museum Nathan Danilowicz had some fucked up results of his Fucked Up Drawing Parties at Bonelli Contemporary which was the best thing I saw in Chinatown last night.

" "

I can't seem to get any of my thoughts past the declarative quip stage.  Perhaps writing more like this will help.  Until then, this is a greatest hits collection of things I know I think I believe (that wasn't non-committal), all in the succinct, poetic style I have been getting drunk and saying too loudly to people over the years...

"Painting is the most legitimate form an image can take."

"Hanging anything on a wall is a painterly act."

"The two most frightening things in life are art and love."

"All art is political."

"All art is narrative."

"All artworks are documentations of a performative activity."

"Painting is undead.  And as we all know, the only way to kill the undead is to kill the brain.  So as long as there are brains in painting, it will never die."

"Video art is people exercising their ability to make their own TV to watch, which is exactly why its not on TV."

"The consequences of being seduced by practicality are just as painful as the consequences of being seduced by poetry."

"Poetry is the only thing that illuminates the night (Godard).  The moon illuminates the night.  Therefore, the moon is made of poetry.  That's why all the bitter hearts say its made of cheese."

"I'M A FORCE OF NATURE!!!" (I have never said this with my indoor voice)

"Its better to go too far, than it is to not go far enough." (I stole this from someone, I know.)

"There is no thinking in painting, because in painting, painting is thinking." (Not me, but Gerhard Richter.  But its the best.  And I swap out the word painting for whatever.)

"Commit to making a mas...." you know.

"You gotta get smart before you get art."

"I'm just trying to live poetry."

I know there's more.  The quotes around them somehow make them seem less serious...interesting. If anyone out there remembers any I've missed, don't hesitate to chime in.  Or if you have something else to add.  These things I say are supposed inspire debate, not end it.