I am as you will be

The real and somber exhibition "I Am As You Will Be" at Cheim & Read is amazing. I use the word "real" in this context to describe something substantial, examined and profound. I applaud Cheim & Read for cultivating a show of tremendous visual exploration across extremely personal and philisophical ground.

The show explores artist's treatment of mortality; the skull being of course both metaphor and actuality. (We each have a skull inside of us, it is too delicate for us to think about. It is it's own time-bomb ticking, waiting to become all that we are. ) The work is in almost all cases intimate and personal. There is no way to consider death without an (unexpected) intimacy.

Exhibition up September 20 - November 3, 2007. Works at top are, in order: Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Adam Fuss.

Nasty Nice

The work of Melissa Ichiuji has been garnering a lot of attention these days, deservedly. Her strange cloth sculptures are somewhere between "Cirque de Soleil" and "the Brood": strange girlish creatures who are in turns sweet and predictable, and then, suddenly disturbingly destructive or sexual. The above image, "Caught," is one of the more frightening sculptures I have come across probably ever-- how many truly physically frightening sculptures are there (as opposed to those that are metaphysically disturbing)?

I applaud Ichiuji for making work that is both accessible and charming, and then, once having lulled you, unrestrainedly violent. Her details are unsparing: strange ovular tubes descending from young girls (or animals), strange lumps...she has honed in on our inherent fear of our flesh and innards, and our fear of the loss of innocence these girls represent.

Her work was exhibited at Irvine Contemporary in Washington DC this past spring.

Jules de Balincourt and the meaning of kitsch

Jules de Balincourt's new work is up at Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL) Sept 6-oct 13 2007. The painting above is my favorite from this show. I love the kitsch, ski-lodge meets sci-fi feel of the work. I have noticed more and more kitsch painting in the last years. In terms of language exploration, we could characterize kitsch as the serious and earnest painting (language) of a narrative scene that we appears to be in discord with outside context. To be certain something is kitsch, the narrative scene depicted and the outside information the audience has about the artist's intention or personal are in contrast. The narrative scene is a joke. But you can only know it is one is you have prior, outside information that contradicts what the artist is saying in particular work.

Think about this. You go to a flea market, and find a painted scene of a waterfall, in feathery, airbrushed language. The artist (unknown to you) may have painted that painting as a joke (the rest of the artist's work may be hard edged minimalist). It is kitsch to the artist. You may sincerely love feathery waterfall paintings: it is not kitsch to you. Or, you may love it because it goes against your aesthetic principles (you are a hard edge minimalist). Then it is kitsch to you. It is in its relation to its surroundings that kitsch is inferred; nothing is kitsch in the absolute.

Within that in mind, what do we think about kitsch in painting. Is it fun, funny, a conundrum, or an escape? Jules de Balincourt's work is refered to as "outsider" and "democratic". The fun of his work - and there is always a lighthearted tone of uncertain purpose-- is welcoming as it confounding. It is may be kitsch, be we really need more information.

Jim Houser at Jonathan Levine, Sept 6- Oct 6.

Jim Houser (and Jeff Soto) at Jonathan Levine Gallery Sept 6-Oct 6. More thoughts after I go check it out... here is another blog while you wait.

Gallery info: 529 West 20th Street, 9E New York, NY 10011 ph:212-243-3822. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

Eggebrecht

Echo Eggebrecht paints smartly. Her focus is on content and narrative, as opposed to language, and within that context she enters a world of double-meaning and ironic presenations. The above painting "Nick in Time" (2004) refers to the carvings on trees, made permanent even as the lovers have come and gone, and then gone for good. Also, with the throw-back to realism and landscape painting, perhaps that too was a 'nick in time'? Thirdly, there is a remix quality here, an old thing editted and presented again, and the old and new meanings form a third meaning: human alteration of the natural world.

I may be reading too much (no such thing as too much)-- but I do so because Eggebrecht brings it on. The ironic ambiguity in her work is between the narrative picture and what we know to be true of the world. She knows this, of course and plays with this ambiguity, pushing it further one way or the other. Sometimes the ambiguity, the punch line, lies in the title, a play of the meaning of a word and its visual equivalent. The painting below is entitled "Stars and Stripes" (2004):



Eggebrecht has had two solo shows in NYC, first at SixtySeven Gallery in 2004 and then last year at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, October 21 - November 25, 2006. Hopefully more to come.

The Big Empty

Dike Blair is a painter I have long enjoyed, for his sparse, quiet paintings, their meanings obliquely closed to me. It seems clear to assume that he works from photos. His imagery is modest, small views easy to walk past. His attention to them is our attention to them. What is he on about-- the essence of life, the modern life, our own impatience with things without clear meaning?

It is this interaction that I have with Dike Blair that brings me back to him. His reticent narrative points me back to the big questions: what does it all mean? Why should I sit and look at this? Isn't there more? Like a koan, DB's only answer is a swimming pool in the snow.

Swain Song

Scottish-based artist Tony Swain invites you into a strange world where all is familiar, yet altered. There is a closeness and intimacy in his work, which is perhaps owing to the materiality, the matte colors and the tactility of the newspaper. But perhaps the intimacy is constructed out of the particulars Swain introduces into each compositions, specifics which feel very routine, even as, in their new configuration, they are quite alien. All in all, there is a fresh, unexpected appeal in Swain's work.

Squares of Brillhart

Jenny Brillhart, a Miami-based artist, explores the abstract structural values of reality. To achieve the cool purity of abstraction, her real-scapes must be devoid of particulars, and people. Her interest in shapes against each other, nuanced color, thin lines across the page recall artists like Rackstraw Downes and other pared-down realists (whose names are escaping me momentarily...). However, Brillhart and Downes appear to be after a different set of aesthetics: he, enquiry into space and structure; she, enquiry into two-dimensional composition.

I see Brillhart's interest lying in the achievement of an actived rectangle, read on the same two-dimensional plane. Compositionally speaking, one can conjure Piet Mondrian, arrangement of squares. That the squares stand for theosophical functions adds the second-layer of meaning to Mondrians work. Brillhart's second meaning maybe a statement on the cold, bleached world of Miami. Or, maybe at the moment it's just squares.

JIM rocks the HOUSE...R

To experience Jim Houser's work is manifold.

1. It is in the vein a graphic, "skater" style along the lines of Barry McGee, Phil Frost and Shepard Fairey. But it departs from these harder works into something more intimate, sweet and uncertain.

2. The honesty and candor in Houser's works is almost unsettling: completely unfussy, with strange simple language.

3. The medium is the message. In Houser's work, one comes to understand that the way of making and what is made are one and the same. The work is about life and life is about work in a manner more seamless and clear than with other artists. Houser's work is his own way of talking; constantly, restlessly, honestly, without theory or facade. There is no "other", the art and self are one...More of Houser's work HERE. and HERE.

In speaking about Jim Houser and the fusion of his interaction with life, and the art that records that interface, he asks us to know him. Some of you may already know Jim Houser and his work, and you may know that a huge part of his life has been his wife Rebecca Westcott, whose death in 2004 was a truly terrible tragedy. More on Rebecca Westcott HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

From the Jonathan Levine Gallery, NYC: "Jim Houser's paintings are the system by which he actively catalogs the images and noises which command his attention. His installations act to create a map of the contents of his head over the course of a particular period in time. His interests include: listening to the cadence of speech. science and science fiction. sickness and disease. plants and animals. sport. time travel. ghosts. the art of children. secrets. radio. codes and code breaking. words that sound beautiful and mean something terrible, words that sound horrible but mean something wonderful. codes and code breaking.

Jim resides in Philadelphia, with his best friend Brian, his dogs Stuckley and Ella, and his cat Birdy. He is a founding member of Space 1026, a Philadelphia-based artist colelctive. First organized in 1997, the artist-run collective focuses in silk-screening, printmaking, painting, audio/video production, graphic design and schedules month rating exhibitions. He has done graphic design work for toy machine, Designarium, and Nike. A book cataloging his life in the arts, called BABEL, was published in 2005 by Gingko Press. "

Ma Yanhong

Ma Yanhong is a Chinese artist who just graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 2002. While she has studied with two of China's forerunning "Realist" painters --- Yu Hong and Liu Xiaodong-- she nevertheless departs from their social realism into the world of tongue-in-cheek social commentary. Ma Yanhong's sexy portraits of her female friends mock the modernisn messaging that confronts the idea of the 'good woman' in Chinese society, sending traditional roles and expectations amuck. At the same time, Yanhong is sympathetic with her subjects: the freedoms of the new era in China are full of conflict, and the young women negotiating them, Ma Yanhong implies, are equally empowered and undone. More of her work HERE and HERE.

The Wrath of Everyman

David Rathman's current work is on view at Mary Goldman Gallery (LA) until Oct 13 2007. His new work features rock bands and the adolescent dream. In the years preceding, his work has featured football players, stock cars and boxers, and before that were the cowboys for which he became best known. Each world is depicted simply, with the sparse, unimpressed recording of a document. While the worlds appear very different at first consideration, they share an integral commonality: at once the archetype of the American fantasy of life at its best and most free, and at the same time, a barren collection of empty gestures.

Rathman's original cowboy work (2004) was the beginning of the exploration of the unconscious American archetype of freedom and virility. The emptiness to which our 'everyman' --whether a cowboy, teenage rocker, boxer or football player-- is condemned is clearly palpable. The clear graphic narrative, and cryptic, dark text work together, painting overlapping images of sad futility and confused, wasted efforts. That the cowboys stands as much for our national identity (in the US) as it does the individual heroic ideal of decades past is not coincidence. In subsequent generations, our national heroes did become sportsman, and rock stars. The very meaning of the American everyman lies both in its possibility and impossibility: that you could grow up to be this, but that you never will. The graphic novel quality of Rathman's work speaks to the children of past decades, whose belief in the good world that would come to pass has dried up in the silent, desert expanse of dreams deferred.

Sato Sato Sato Sato Sato Sato

The photography of Tokihiro Sato sits at the intersection of spirituality, science, and aesthetics. Not a bad view from there. Using a large-format camera with a neutral-density filter that permits long exposures on even the brightest days, he photographs himself moving through space, periodically flashing a tiny hand held mirror or penlight. He himself is not in one place long enough to register on film, but the light marks his journey. In the buddism tradition, his absence and presence are one.

That his presence/absence would be recorded as spots of light would have pleased Einstein. Without straying too far from our aesthetic ground, we can safely remark that contemporary physics is finding that, underneath it all, we are little bundles of light-emitting energy, blinking in the night. (In this regard, were there fewer of us, we could look to the rest of the galaxy the way stars look to us-- dots of light traveling for eons, a record of position once held, by a being who has since moved on.) That Sato has utilized a seemingly simple or low-tech way to explore this intersection of old-and-new beliefs is to his credit.

There is a refined qualilty to the aesthetic of Sato's images which seems distinctly Japanese. The concept of transience, embodied in wabi-sabi as in other Japanese aethetic practices, is much alive in Sato's work. The changes of time and position, and the indifference of nature to our plight, is the at the core of the exploration into our transient and metaphysical existence. Tokihiro Sato elegantly depicts with great tenderness our fragil, beating energy, fleeting against the backdrop of nature and our won onward-rolling civilization.

David Lynch on vacation

I can't get enough of Gina Magid's work right now. It is so Santa Cruz meets David Lynch. Very free and strange. The language and color are so delightful; and then as you get into the painting you find that the content is unsettling, and you realize you have been ambushed by the classic juxtaposition of language and narrative. More of her work HERE.

Kneel

The synthesis of paint and idea is freshly at work in the paintings of Elizabeth Neel (yes, we all know by now, she's the granddaughter of Alice). The paint becomes decay, violence, nature; instead of describing, it simply IS. The oneness is appealing. Equally appealing is the content-- exploration into our own violence, contamination of nature, decay and death. Deep, layered meaning, and the unselfconscious uniting of language and idea. More of her work HERE.

Power Stockholder

At a lecture recently, the speaker alleged that Jessica Stockholder's work is about power. To the pages of my (still unread) blog, I want to disagree. Stockholder's work, in my opinion, rests on three primary "ideas":

1. the idea of painting in space.

2. the idea that materials have their own associated meanings/resonations in the minds of each of us, and thus incorporating and manipulating materials evokes these mind meanings: and the mind struggling to synthesize these fragementary associations is performing its own art: creating a cubism of the mind.

3. the idea of art as manifest destiny.

I think that one of the myriad roles of art in our culture is that of a manifest destiny, a place to aspire to: Just as there were bible stories on fresco walls and decadent society women in 18th century painting, art has been a projection of our promised land, on an individual level and a societal level. Stockholder's art--large, enveloping, familiar yet strange, playful-- is a 3-dimensional fantasy world of the mind, embedded with the rustic materiality of our human experiences. It is the best possible future we could image for our minds.

For more on Jessica Stockholder and her work click HERE.

The Baker is In.

In addition to his name, I like the work of Baker Overstreet. He strange configurations of color and structure-- tribal, 80's-sci-fi, and Martin Ramirez-esque-- are both facile and surprisingly fresh. His work can feel both "outsider" and "insider" in alternating moments, which invigorates the narrative: enter viewer ambiguity. The true strength in color and scale hold the viewer, questioning, and the resultant experience is seductive and satisfying.

But don't just take my work for it, here's Roberta Smith:

BAKER OVERSTREET: NEW PAINTINGS Like Keegan McHargue and Devendra Banhart, this young artist has a penchant for tribal motifs, which he flattens into symmetrical compositions and renders with an outsider roughness. The works in his debut show evoke the imagery of the space-ship-obsessed, self-taught artist Ionel Talpazan, as well as Alfred Jensen and Forrest Bess. Their notion of the visionary is both self conscious and familiar, but they are painted with energetic dispatch and a sure sense of scale, color and wit that encourages you to stay tuned. Fredericks & Freiser, 536 West 24th Street, (212) 633-6555, through March 17. (Smith)

The Future is Now.

It's funny how our humanity, at least our Western, technology-driven culture, has maintained a dread of the very future we were creating even as we created it. Actually, the relationship is more of a wedge narrowing: Think of 2001 Space Odyssey (1968!) and Bladerunner (1982). Dramatic views of our potential damage to ourselves if we keep messing with these machines. In literature, A Brave New World (1932), 1984 (1949), and The Handmaid's Tale (1985) all focus more on the damage we could do to ourselves. What these great works all have in common is one thing: the future world portrayed seemed reassuringly far from reality.

Now, I think the future is here. Anyone see "Children of Men'? How frightening was in it's resemblance to our current state of affairs? The wedge is narrowing.

In this vein; check out the work of Christoph Morlinghaus HERE. These images are haunting in their beauty and in the real/unreal question: is this a set, a fake future world-- or is this a moment in our real world?...and if so, we are moving frighteningly forward in our prophecy.

how do you say...?

Painting is a language intended to be complex and layered with meaning. I believe that both the meaning and the paint itself act together. Think of this: beautiful form, color, line; in conjunction with meaning, content purpose. I am tired of quick, appearance-only, or content-only art.

Thus I am embarking on my quest to survey what is OUT THERE and note it for the future. I am looking for three criteria:

1. engagement with visual language.
2. exploration of specific and complex content. (Narrative, concept).
3. relation of visual language to content or narrative: reinforcing, contrasting, or expanding the the narrative through the language itself

In example:

Amy Sillman. You know her, you love her. Her work satisfies all the above criteria with freshness and immediacy. Actually, to me the narrative is often unclear-- but there is a specificity in her language which leads me in: I feel there is something in this world, something going on, and I look towards the use of language to unravel the content. And the specificity of her language is the first clue that the language embeds a content.

On the other end of the spectrum, consider the paintings of Emily Noelle Lambert. Her paintings are strongly narrative/ content driven. Some of her works are very powerful, particularly those with also have strong abstract form. Where she loses the internal structure of the painting is where they are weakened. But overall, her strange stories are a dream to be pulled into.