Bibi Tanga.
Read more "Cheerup..."
Monday, September 7, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Far Away So Close
The San Francisco LAB just closed their 25th-year-anniversary exhibition called PastForward, where they made an open call to young artists to respond to works of the established ones who came out of The LAB. The result seems to have been quite exciting - you can take a look at some pictures at this site (with some great jazz playing on the site - which unfortunately can't be turned off...).
My favorite work, especially given the distant perspective (I'm in Warsaw now) is the Viewing Platform by Ellen Babcock:
Perfect for any vernissage! (And after all, what would contemporary art be without the vernissages!) It plays with an essential trait of contemporary art: centrality. You are taller, you see further, and as if by chance you are hence appreciated. You become the spectacle. Very tiring indeed. And fun, if you forget the impossibility of an intimate contact with the remaining works. I know, the people become the work, and still...
I would love to create a portable version of this. Like a small podium with railings that you could carry around the opening (wheels?), or rent, or receive if you are a VIP guest. Or just have one of my own, though the most enjoyable part might be having several people on this higher level, among the crowds. And believe you me, at the exhibition openings of the main Warsaw art centers, it would come in handy.
--
Here is what the curatorial note says:
My favorite work, especially given the distant perspective (I'm in Warsaw now) is the Viewing Platform by Ellen Babcock:
Perfect for any vernissage! (And after all, what would contemporary art be without the vernissages!) It plays with an essential trait of contemporary art: centrality. You are taller, you see further, and as if by chance you are hence appreciated. You become the spectacle. Very tiring indeed. And fun, if you forget the impossibility of an intimate contact with the remaining works. I know, the people become the work, and still...
I would love to create a portable version of this. Like a small podium with railings that you could carry around the opening (wheels?), or rent, or receive if you are a VIP guest. Or just have one of my own, though the most enjoyable part might be having several people on this higher level, among the crowds. And believe you me, at the exhibition openings of the main Warsaw art centers, it would come in handy.
--
Here is what the curatorial note says:
Ellen Babcock responds to Lauren Davies with a sculptural installationRead more "Far Away So Close..."
that addresses Davies’ engagement with representations of the natural world. Based upon Babcock’s visit to a tiny museum in Twillingate, Newfoundland – a visit Davies herself had made prior to Babcock – the sculpture teases out the differences between the two artists’ approaches to the tropes of natural history display. Encountering a stuffed polar bear in the museum, Davies responded with a gently mocking mixture of humor and pathos meant to remind us of the absurdity of the way taxonomies simplify and freeze the fluid mysteries of life. Babcock, on the other hand, found the quasi-encounter visceral and beautiful. While she sees Davies as opening up a space for the Real in an iconoclastic rejection of the traditions of natural display, Babcock looks for vestiges of the Real in the moment of encounter when disbelief is suspended.
Quote of the day
To me it seems as though a lot of this... this work is people who are scared to live a life in the first place. Incredibly unradical people who play a game of a radical life within very safe confines of some Kunsthalle or other museum in Germany or France.
- Gavin Brown, gallerist, The Gavin Brown enterprise, about artists related to "relational aesthetics".
The quote comes from a film by Ben Lewis called "Relational Art: Is It an Ism?" (2004).
What I like about the film is that it's (sometimes) funny and doesn't fuss around.
What irritated me though was that beyond the humor I kept feeling a bitterness I despise. So when we discover in the film that Ben Lewis used to make art (with vegetables) and then decided he wasn't good at it and stopped, Lewis' slightly too aggressive attempts to ridicule the artists he talks about become, well, put into context. I would love to see the rest of the Art Safari series to see if it's juat the case of this episode, or is this the "intelligent irony" we should expect in every episode. (correction: I just realized I had seen an episode with Sophie Calle. And it's pretty much the same thing).
But then... I found this famous article of his about the art world - "Who Put the Con in Contemporary Art?" which basically claims it's all an evil world, a clique that only wants profits. And although I agree with some of the statements he is making, it's the tone that really discredits him. (The joker became the prophet!) Especially given he is publishing on the site of... the Saatchi Gallery!
The paintings, (which in my humble opinion are rather unrelated to the topic of relational aesthetics), are by Peter Doig, at the Gavin Brown enterprise. (They are here because of solitude, reflection, one's place in the world as an artist and a person. And skiing.)
The photo is by Ryan McGinley. Read more "Quote of the day..."
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Looking at Opałka. Can one focus on the focus?
I'm sure you know the work of Roman Opałka: he has been painting the same continuous picture since 1965, consisting only of numbers, from 1 to infinity. The work has had some changes over the years, among them, in 1968, the introduction of self-portraits.
At the very enriching exhibition of a part of the permanent collection of the Center for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw, there is a room with some six of his portraits, from various periods of his life.
Today I discovered a curious detail: in this particular collection of photos, the early ones are slightly out of focus. Or rather, the focus is on the hair in the back of the head. The later we get, the better the focus. The last two pictures, of Opałka past 70, have his eyes perfectly in focus. As if the disappearing of the numbers was accompanied by the appearing of the person. As if he was more himself.
I'm sure this is a coincidence. But why should I care? What's wrong with a little hermeneutics? Can't we accept conceptual art to have a life of its own, one that eludes its original readings? Isn't the fact that Duchamp's Fountain has long disappeared, and was recreated by the artist many decades later (in several copies) because of interest in the work, isn't this a wonderful enrichment of the original work?
It might be considered a useless stretch of the pure concept. Like overdoing something that was meant to be simple. Possibly. I'll have it my way.
Read more "Looking at Opałka. Can one focus on the focus?..."
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Feeling of Landscape
This is what would be nice: for all this splatter, all this hazy spirit pollution, to suddenly (or progressively) make sense, and turn into a landscape.
Okay, I admit it, there is a world which I am pretending to ignore. There are those one loves and others which are close enough to be deeply missed, at times.
I admit, there is a light which remains and manages to outshine any particular chaos, any specific too-lateness. For a while, it remains with the body, or the view of the body, or the afterview, and then it moves away, into the back of the mind's eye, and turns into an excuse to remain hesitating, instead of letting it all go.
But no. All this is happy-tuning oneself, it does not sustain. That is precisely why I miss the feeling of landscape: it sustains. While this? It feels more like posing steps on stones in a stream, where no single stone is certain, yet together they make an unexpectedly serious path. (Maybe not "serious". Maybe "defined". Or "path-like". Or is it that looking for adjectives misses the point: that it's the path that's unexpected, not any quality it might have).
And at the bottom, in the water, remains all this, all that stuff that somehow never unbecame me. And lingers on as if too hazy to be rejected, too ridiculously gone. So if it's gone, what is it, I ask.
The first three paintings are by Andrew Hollis, and the last two - by Gemma Gallagher.
Read more "Feeling of Landscape..."
Okay, I admit it, there is a world which I am pretending to ignore. There are those one loves and others which are close enough to be deeply missed, at times.
I admit, there is a light which remains and manages to outshine any particular chaos, any specific too-lateness. For a while, it remains with the body, or the view of the body, or the afterview, and then it moves away, into the back of the mind's eye, and turns into an excuse to remain hesitating, instead of letting it all go.
But no. All this is happy-tuning oneself, it does not sustain. That is precisely why I miss the feeling of landscape: it sustains. While this? It feels more like posing steps on stones in a stream, where no single stone is certain, yet together they make an unexpectedly serious path. (Maybe not "serious". Maybe "defined". Or "path-like". Or is it that looking for adjectives misses the point: that it's the path that's unexpected, not any quality it might have).
And at the bottom, in the water, remains all this, all that stuff that somehow never unbecame me. And lingers on as if too hazy to be rejected, too ridiculously gone. So if it's gone, what is it, I ask.
The first three paintings are by Andrew Hollis, and the last two - by Gemma Gallagher.
Read more "Feeling of Landscape..."
Saturday, August 29, 2009
FINDING PERSONALITY IN A BRICK
Here is a series of splendid drawings with two things in common:
First, they are all drawings of geometric shapes: buildings comprised of straight lines, flat parallel surfaces and right angles.
Second, despite the fact that each drawing started out as essentially a mechanical drawing, at some key point the artist turned away from the unforgiving laws of perspective, the T square and the triangle, and instead injected the drawing full of character and personality.
The brilliant Bernie Fuchs sketched these buildings in the slums of San Juan. Fuchs seems to have a god-given talent for finding the design in any situation, including this row of squat, ramshackle buildings.
When Rodin drew the massive facade of this building, the shape that interested him the most was not the stone blocks or the massive pillars, but rather the shadow in the doorway. The shadow is insubstantial compared to the weight of the stone structure around it, but it dominates this picture, and enabled Rodin to make a nice, modernistic design.
Cartoonist Jeff MacNelly was a superb draftsman whose understanding of weight, volume and perspective gave his cartoons of buildings and heavy industrial vehicles great credibility. In this typically marvelous example, the geometric shapes of the house have as much humanity as a human face.
In each of these drawings, the artist had to begin with a foundation of traditional knowledge and technical drawing skills, even if those rules were quickly abandoned. Each drawings turned out wonderfully opinionated-- the artists were able to imbue a stone block with character, and portray a brick with personality. But their opinions are far more believable because the artist had mastered how to draw the mechanically correct version.
Read more "FINDING PERSONALITY IN A BRICK..."
First, they are all drawings of geometric shapes: buildings comprised of straight lines, flat parallel surfaces and right angles.
Second, despite the fact that each drawing started out as essentially a mechanical drawing, at some key point the artist turned away from the unforgiving laws of perspective, the T square and the triangle, and instead injected the drawing full of character and personality.
The brilliant Bernie Fuchs sketched these buildings in the slums of San Juan. Fuchs seems to have a god-given talent for finding the design in any situation, including this row of squat, ramshackle buildings.
When Rodin drew the massive facade of this building, the shape that interested him the most was not the stone blocks or the massive pillars, but rather the shadow in the doorway. The shadow is insubstantial compared to the weight of the stone structure around it, but it dominates this picture, and enabled Rodin to make a nice, modernistic design.
Cartoonist Jeff MacNelly was a superb draftsman whose understanding of weight, volume and perspective gave his cartoons of buildings and heavy industrial vehicles great credibility. In this typically marvelous example, the geometric shapes of the house have as much humanity as a human face.
In each of these drawings, the artist had to begin with a foundation of traditional knowledge and technical drawing skills, even if those rules were quickly abandoned. Each drawings turned out wonderfully opinionated-- the artists were able to imbue a stone block with character, and portray a brick with personality. But their opinions are far more believable because the artist had mastered how to draw the mechanically correct version.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Money
How do artists make a living?
Besides the selected few who actually make a living from their work, how can an artist afford to be an artist?
The bottom line is: should art pay for itself? Should it be efficient in an economic sense?
Most practicing artists either have money from their day jobs, or from their families.
The funny thing is: the first group seem heroic, and the second - fakes.
Why? Why is there so much resentment towards people who decide to spend the money they have on doing something they love?
Is it because we, as the public, feel betrayed, as if they stopped playing the game with their audience? After all, if they don't care about (our, or government - which comes out to the same) money, aren't we left aside?
(What's wrong with being left aside? Hm. Of course, this modernist idea can come in handy. But I've been writing about it elsewhere.)
Come think of it - would we feel it wrong for a rich person to buy an expensive car? A big house? So why do we want him to feel guilty for spending the money into something we might actually appreciate? It turns art into a hobby, you say? So what?
Below, completely unrelated (at least not that I know), is the work of Paulo Ventura.
Read more "Money..."
Besides the selected few who actually make a living from their work, how can an artist afford to be an artist?
The bottom line is: should art pay for itself? Should it be efficient in an economic sense?
Most practicing artists either have money from their day jobs, or from their families.
The funny thing is: the first group seem heroic, and the second - fakes.
Why? Why is there so much resentment towards people who decide to spend the money they have on doing something they love?
Is it because we, as the public, feel betrayed, as if they stopped playing the game with their audience? After all, if they don't care about (our, or government - which comes out to the same) money, aren't we left aside?
(What's wrong with being left aside? Hm. Of course, this modernist idea can come in handy. But I've been writing about it elsewhere.)
Come think of it - would we feel it wrong for a rich person to buy an expensive car? A big house? So why do we want him to feel guilty for spending the money into something we might actually appreciate? It turns art into a hobby, you say? So what?
Below, completely unrelated (at least not that I know), is the work of Paulo Ventura.
Read more "Money..."
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