Way Off the Beaten Path....from the NY Times

Rather liked this piece, made me want to go see the museum. Something refreshing and genuine here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/arts/design/12fink.html

Piece by Hawkins Bolden

Incremental Spaces 2 Revised

Some more sutures and tightening have lead to quite the stretched canvas. Although not so obvious in the photo there are small veins running all about the piece.

Unica Zurn: Feather mouth

Unica Zurn at The Drawing Center

“Shadows from love’s blood, feathermouth, time
magically fills my bed with fish. Hour
escapes the fog in the cinnamon bath, toward you
living,flowering apart in the bed linen’s dew.”

This poem from Unica Zurn entitled, “The Bed is my Refuge from Life”, is also on display and when read seemed rather directly related to both the imagery found in her drawings as well as the contrasting states of mind she inhabited.
Most of the drawings are done in black ink; they are linear, delicate and simultaneously forthright. For all the fluidity in the line there is an opposing weight to some which keep them grounded. What is impressive as a whole is that the longer one looks, the more that appears. Images, seemingly straightforward, grow like kudzu on a Mississippi phone pole in summer if you give the work the time. Thus, there is a certain fantastic magic to the viewing experience. These amorphic entities composed of faces, eyes, animals and feathery lines morph before you. Other Surrealists also deftly used morphing imagery but what echoes from Zurn is the slow but active pace at which hers “become” right before your eyes, these aren’t “stills”. The sensation is similar to watching ink calmly dispersing in to water, ever changing, lucid and seductive.
The strongest drawings leave some of the looser contours unfilled and emphasize the play between complex&heavy versus the aired&whispering, thus a dance ensues captivating the viewer. One can’t help but consider the psychological aspects of her work. Before even reading of her trials in life the work speaks of something unsettled and unrealized. Most of our brains are fleshy noodles; wound tight and solid in our skulls but Unica Zurn’s brain seemed composed of fissures in glass and contorted faces in a circus’s Hall of Mirrors.
Avoiding her personal history in relation to her work is indeed difficult. Having served as muse to Hans Bellmer and been institutionalized more than once in her life, Ms. Zurn and her work seem to be one and the same.
Had she not thrown herself from the balcony to her death, had she been given giant walls to cover, had she been stable enough to assume the mastery that seemed to be growing in her work year by year, I wonder what she would have produced.
Have you ever seen work that lies just at a place in between worlds? Say in between doodles of emotion from a high school student on their algebra book and a master Japanese calligrapher? Where these two bookends are perhaps universal symbols, or even typical but this person’s sheer honesty and vulnerability takes all that range to another place?
That is Unica Zurn.
Get there to see the show by July 23rd.

Ernie Barnes

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103674706

Just read where he passed in late April.
Liked he and his work.

Hickey and Hopper at Harwood in Taos

If I could I would be there. Quite a night at Harwood in Taos,NM on August 1st.
HHH HHH HHH HHH HHH HHH

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31755

MoMa:Associations (Field Trip #3)

Associations: a mental connection between ideas or things

Today I wore a large black hat from Banana Republic that I bought on sale for $20 a few months a go and a linen dress my mom gave me last year, along with a Dior belt my mother gave me, which she purchased about 40 years ago. This “outfit” has been worn numerous times before but without the hat and the hat has been worn numerous times the past few months without the “outfit”. Today, days after the death of pop icon Michael Jackson numerous people commented to me, “ Nice Michael Jackson hat.” Additionally a few security guards at the MoMa seemed to think my get up was MJ inspired as well and didn’t seem impressed. Why do I bring this up? to show the power of pop culture and the power of “associations”.

Flea Market MoMa?
There is a pleasure in perusing through a market. All the objects! From valuables to trash, from a cup your Grandma had to the trunk you always wanted. By nature we all want to pick up, shuffle through, discover and find at a flea market. So, here you are at the MoMa and there is a neatly arranged room of various objects, none of which you can touch? The contrast in context (market setting made untouchable in an art museum) immediately instigates the questions, WHO? WHAT? WHY?
Song Dong’s piece is rather poetic, I prefer not to reveal its intention or storyline (go see it!) but I will say it further reminded me of how intimate and far reaching our associations can be. It is this act of connecting one thing with another, one thing with a time or place that as humans often brings us together. In a way, it seems all of humankind’s “trash” seems to bring the world together doesn’t it? (Your mom had that luggage too?)

Now I had all the intention in the world of just going straight to the Ensor show. However, the Drawing show made up of works from the Rothschild collection began my string of diversions.
This show is a wonderful mix of work, even if some of it is not my cup of tea, it is the diverse representation that demands you question why you love what you do.
Midway through I had the thought, “ Wait, is the MoMa trying to tap in to the New Museum following or what?”
Rather than going into that let me jump right to what struck me hardest.
To start compare Paul McCarthy with Kai Althoff, both artists’ pieces delve into masculinity and stereotypes surrounding our ideas of it.
McCarthy’s “Penis Hat” is HUGE and guess what it’s got? Yep. Penis Penis Vagina Vagina. Yep. All laid out with energetic markings and cut out images collaged in. As a viewer it reads as NOISE, it’s seemingly obvious subjects, it’s LOOK AT ME scale and its graphic imagery of things I’m bored of seeing. It is the sort of thing I tend to glimpse at barely and move on from, safe in my narrow-minded visual world. This time I went back and made myself gaze, if I so abhor such work it seems wise to know why.
Right?
After some gazing I did read the wall plaque. The intention of the piece wasn’t something that immediately came to mind from looking at it but maybe I was lost in the marks and private regions glaring at me. In fact knowing its subject didn’t help convince me of its merit either.
Let me contrast it with the numerous smaller works by Kai Althoff. His work addresses ideas of masculinity as well. Now I wouldn’t have guessed this per say either but I do know I stood there awhile having a look and wondering. In fact, I looked closely enough to feel something besides immediate ACK. In a sense it is safe to say I had a conversation with these pieces. What I wrestled with is why I care for one so much more than the other?
A lot came to mind. Essentially what I have come to is that with all of the Art out there in the world I desire to see some craftsmanship and skill, I would like to be inspired to think, stop and engage. As a viewer some of the work strikes me as a sporadic idea that failed in its execution and expects little more of me than an advertisement would. A lot of humans on the planet have good ideas people, but how you say it is everything!
What engages one person may not engage another, which brings me to another observation. When watching people take pictures of which pieces I felt that the masses shot pictures of recognizable works. Not so much say Picasso’s, but say an abstract piece with an urban edge that looks like something we might see on a t-shirt from Urban Outfitters. Or an obvious image, like a lion, made out of say lollipops. In the modern age we are image overloaded and thus move through things rapidly (think about flipping through images on your iphone). Is this how we have come to look at Art? Is this the type of work we now place in museums so the masses can come, see, associate and move on? Is UNDERSTANDING Art now just a matter of recognizing an image, moving on and then feeling good about ourselves because we knew a name? Is it a world of multiple choice and no essays? Is it regurgitation and no conversation? Can you FEEL or KNOW something REALLY over the course of 3 seconds?

Such thoughts spilled out on to the MoMa floor…

Up I went and quickly made my way through a great grouping of three-dimensional works by the Surrealists, on pink pedestals no less. The show titled, “The Erotic Object”, where we see additional private parts is a good one to compare and note in contrast to some of the more temporal and graphic works included in the drawing exhibition.

Last floor FINALLY!
(stomach growls)

Can a graduate student from Pratt or SVA today paint like James Ensor?
Perhaps. Ensor is utterly convincing in terms of painterly skill and ability to visually communicate. There are some lessons to be learned from Ensor for certain. For example his awareness of light and color leaves one speechless. More profound, is for all his mastery of medium his work is utterly approachable much in part to his brand of satire. Thus, his work doesn’t just speak to other artists, nor just the masses, it isn’t only the religious who can engage or the circus for that matter, anyone can and his work is not compromised by this extensive range. In my book, this is an enormous accomplishment. Messages are visually communicated, mastery of material noted, wit felt and honesty undeniable. After all that there is still enough mystery to make you wonder and enough associations to make it yours.

(images MoMa exhibition and a piece by Kai Althoff)

Land Art NM 09'

Mr. Pressgrove and I will install in September and the piece will remain in ABQ at the Harwood Art Center until the end of November. The installation will be a land art piece made of harvested tumbleweed. Stay tuned for more info!

Here is a blog dedicated to all the Land Art happenings going on this summer and fall in NM. : http://www.smudgestudio.blogspot.com/