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.

A Study Hall Notebook From the 12th Dimension

So. Melissa Brown and Mat Brinkman at M+B Gallery. Mat Brinkman is one of my favorites. Definetly my favorite of the fabled Fort Thunder artists from Providence, Rhode Island. He doesn't show that much it seems, and the plethora of drawings he had at this show was more work of his than I've ever seen in one place.

Do yourself a favor and google 'Fort Thunder' if you're not hip to this super-influential group of artists and musicians. Let me put it this way: If Gary Panter was shot in a rocket to a distant moon, and a thousand years later we found his descendants, long since having created a new world and culture out of whole cloth, what they wrought would look something like the output of the Fort. And Brinkman and his otherworldly imagery from a study hall notebook from the 12th dimension is my favorite of the bunch. His only solo published book that I know of is Teratoid Heights, and I forgot to bring it for him to sign, though I did get to meet him. He's from Texas like me. I also got to meet Dan Nadel, mastermind behind Picturebox Inc., who publish much of the Fort Thunder and related books and whatnot, along with many other super amazing things. I can honestly say that Picturebox probably gets more of my money more than any other book publisher. So there.

I first discovered the work of the Fort years ago in Houston, when The Comics Journal did a huge feature on them in one of their issues (Oct 2003 issue). There in my lonely Houston apartment, at the tail end of my undergrad education, the story and work of this group totally took hold of me as something unlike anything I had ever previously encountered. Here was a group of young artists creating as purely as possible, eschewing labels or categories that could pigeon hole whatever is they chose to make, be it posters, prints, comics, sculptures, performances, or music. My first hand encounter with Brinkman was the cover of Kramers Ergot 4, which was another eye-opener to this strange new world.

Their legacy continues -- Ben Jones, Paper Rad, C.F., as well as the original Fort dwellers continue to produce work, much of it published by Nadel and some others. Do yourself a favor and immerse yourself in this rich body of kookiness and spread the love.

Oh yeah, I met and talked with Winona Ryder at the opening. She was very nice.

These are the highlights of what I got, Fort Thunder-wise, if you feel the need to come over and drink some beer and look at some books. I have a clipboard if you need to check something out.

Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to the Present -- This is the catalogue of a show put on by RISD in 2006 celebrating the history of the Fort, its artists, and current artists that continue in the same spirit.

The Comics Journal #256 -- This issue's feature, from October 2003, explains the whole Fort deal, and has interviews with a few of the artists involved, including Brinkman.

Teratoid Heights -- Nice, weird, chunky book by Brinkman that is pretty representative of his output.

Ninja -- Super huge mega-comic by Brian Chippendale that features some more recent stuff intermixed with childhood drawings. Very cool.

Maggotts -- Also by Chippendale. A labrynthine adventure through some of the most obsessive and insane drawing you'll ever see.

Paper Rodeo -- This is the comics newspaper put out by some of the Fort artists that featured work by the above mentioned cats. I have 3 or 4 issues.

Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, and Forcefield -- Three bands featuring Brinkman, Chippendale, and others. I have albums of all three. All noisy, calamitous, kookiness. I think Lightning Bolt is the best.

I have some other related stuff by some other related artists, but I'm about to list the better part of my library here. What's above should get you started. Enjoy.

Hints of Being Free

First things first -- A Wet Rock in Space, 2009, acrylic and oil on canvas:

Aaaaand, Her Second Greatest Hatred, 2009, acrylic and oil on canvas:



Allright, so, ArtLA. About as "not bad" as it has been in past years, I guess. Great polenta with scallops and shrimp at the opening night reception. Maybe it was the hints of fennel, or the hints of being free, but it was especially good. Best thing I saw was a painting by Adrian Ghenie from Nicodim Gallery, from right here in Chinatown. Tim Hawkinson's work at the Ace Gallery booth was dope, as always. He's with Blum and Poe now I hear. (Just heard it, though.) I got stopped by MOCA membership people because I was representin' with my I HEART MOCA pin, and I got to complain to them about how I never get the member opening invites. Saturday my invite to the Dan Graham show was in the mailbox. Anybody want to go to the Dan Graham opening with me? It's on Feb 14th. Romantic.

Cheap Scotches and Moody Lighting

Wow so it’s been over a month. I sit here listening to History: America’s Greatest Hits ( the band, not the country) on my fathers old turntable, an Akai AP-A1. Finally got the right cartridge and stylus for it, and a box full of records scoured from Pop’s collection, and all is right in the world. Not really, but let’s roll with the feeling of the moment shall we? POINTLESS TRIVIA: The album cover art for America’s Greatest Hits was illustrated by late great SNL cast member, Paul Rubens collaborator, and Simpsons voice Phil Hartman. No shit. His signature is at the bottom of the picture.

So I’ve been working for Art Fairs, Inc., during the Photo LA show, and have seen more photographs than I ever wanted to. And my conclusion: As soon as sex was invented, they were working on photography next. The only pics I could dial into from the dozens of exhibitors were ones that showed me sex. I mean that in the broadest sense, but arty images of women doing things in various states of undress will always be ‘in’. If I weren’t in such and overworked and underfucked haze at the moment, I would extol a whole brilliant theory about how all photography is about sex, the way all art is about death, and politics, and narrative, but that is best left as an impromptu conversation over some cheap scotches and moody lighting.

On the film front, Milk by Gus Van Sant is as good as everyone says it is. Harvey Milk’s story stands alongside that of MLK, Ghandi, and Bobby Sands (who has gotten the film treatment by video artist Steve McQueen last year…where is Hunger playing?). The opera analogy at the end was almost over the top, but ‘over the top’ was perhaps one of themes of the film and the life of the titular character.

Waltz With Bashir by Ari Folman is super great. A visually arresting hybrid animation style graphically delivers what would normally be difficult and politically loaded imagery, resulting in a spectacular metaphor for the films themes of memory, experience, and regret. Folman does not shy away from the absurd and costly effects that what he experienced has had on humanity, though. Saw this with my friend Maxwell, who has had experiences not unlike that seen in the film (at least compared to me) and was glad he and my pal Joe Biel recommended the film, as I now recommend it to you.

Oh, yeah, art. Did the grand tour Saturday night, and liked a lot of what I saw:

Asgar/Gabriel -- Bucolica ObscuraAsgar/Gabriel at Mark Moore Gallery: Big, sexy paintings, that have big, sexy, imagery. Though you could dismiss them as very ‘hip’ paintings, I love em. Though I want to know how the duo deivides up the labor on the paintings, but that's just nerdy painting stuff. If you see the show, don’t forget to look at the new Alison Schulnik painting in the office area…very tasty.

Kaz Oshiro – False Gestures at Rosamund Felsen Gallery: So the title’s a little literal, but Oshiro is a badass. Hyperreal sculptures of, just, you know, stuff, made out of paintings. This is so artist nerdy, so ‘gotta get smart to get art’, so….great. What does it mean? I connect him to the Raushchenberg-ian idea of the combine (combines painting and sculpture) but much more current and slick, and devoid of any expressionist baggage. Some of the works are actually on the wall, which is an unexpected move, and some are completely abstract but still crafted airtight…keep your eyes on this Angeleno.

Robyn O’Neil – A World Disrupted at Roberts and Tilton Gallery: Yeah so she’s one of my dearest friends, (and maybe…relocating…to the City of Angels….???) but her work has always been dopeatronic and an inspiration, and her first LA outing is no different. Using the first physical medium any of us had artistic notions with, Robyn weaves her graphite magic on breathtaking scales, inviting the viewer to feel the chill wind of her ominous environments. Luckily, there are black sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt for all who find themselves within her grey, disconcerting worlds. And John Voight was at the opening, yo!

David E. Stone – Unanticipated Despair at Charlie James Gallery: In a time when lots of galleries are going under, Mr. James has opened his doors in Chinatown with a clear but flexible vision and lots of fresh, new work. This second show is a left turn visually from the first, but reflective of what Charlie tells me of his ideas for the space, and Stone took full advantage. There were lots of thought provoking elements floating about the room, but the show-stealing piece was the pile of broken glass in the middle of the room arranged to look like a Twister mat -- Precarious Twister (State I), which, if I had been drunker, I would have phone pic’d and sent to about a half dozen artists I know who have incurable glass fetishes.

I guess that’s all I remember for now. The new Kramers Ergot is as big as a shield, and so far is the cosmic orgasm of a comic book the previous ones were. Just putting the thing in my lap to look at it feels ritualistic; its too big for my big sexy bookshelves – the thing has its own chair. I got a pile of books for Christmas, and at some point I’ll tell you all about them. But right now, I just want to finish The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Page 274, near the bottom of the page – “They both turned at the same time….” Sexiest. Paragraph. Ever.