the city

A few quick thoughts after a brief moment of reflection on a recent trip to New York City:

• There are lots of interesting ventures and projects being formulated in the city; interesting work being made, smaller galleries and dealers that are holding artists and patrons at full attention.  Certainly my views on what these things are may not be the same as other artists and patrons, but I was most impressed by the galleries on the lower east side*.  I wasn't, of course, able to see everything, and spent most of my time in Chelsea and LES. 
• I met a number of amazing and kind people in five days.  I had discussions and conversations that I would not have ever expected--the type that both energize me and make me thirst for having more discussions like that here in Des Moines.  Ky Anderson, Jason Rohlf,  and Molly Merson are just a few of the people I got to talk with.  I was able to meet people heavily involved in art in the city as well as talk to artists about the history of New York City.  
• To state the obvious:  there are some amazing museums in New York City.  I still can't believe that I saw as much as I did.  I did not see the Koons exhibition at the Whitney, for reasons that should become clear if you read other posts.    
• The city is a subset of the art world, and its relationship to the greater art world is an interesting thing to think about.  I would have guessed New York to be far ahead of the other cities that I have seen but can't say that I totally understand that to be true; while it is certainly more feasible to be an artist making a living off their work in the city there is still the problem of rampant gentrification, soaring real estate prices, income disparity, and other issues that face parts of the art world in the U.S.  I bought Martha Rosler's Culture Class and hope to learn more about some of these relationships.  
• New York is a rugged place.  We tend to relegate rugged to "nature" and that which is outside of the city, but one only need to go to New York to understand how that term can be used.  Though the terrain is man-made, it is still a difficult, trying, and natural example of an urban center.  It made me realize, once again, that the city has its own ecosystem and I, as much as I am secluded in the woods, am either functioning well in the ecosystem or functioning poorly.  The more difficult it is to function well, the more "rugged" a place is, in my mind. 
• I had a really odd experience eating at Momofuku Noodle Bar.  I have a lot of respect for David Chang, and thought the food was good; but it was strange to have read his book, hearing him talk, and thinking about his place in food (or the business of food) before the actual aesthetic experience.  I will write more in the future about this disconnect, particularly as it relates to the generally exploitative nature of mass media and what it did to my aesthetic experience.   

St. Paul's Churchyard, Manhattan

*This might seem conflicted as I was there, in part, to talk with a gallery in LES about an upcoming exhibition in October of this year.  If this conflict annoys you, take what I'm saying as that I'm incredibly happy and honored to be working with a gallery in LES (rather than other areas with higher grossing galleries).  

Materiality, physicality, and abstraction

Most often I read and hear about abstraction talked about in terms of materiality, but I have been thinking most about physicality (particularly relating to the human body) as of late.  I think the historical texts and analysis of abstraction, particularly abstract painting, have often defaulted to materialism as a means to understand what is going on in a painting--we can't see a subject matter or are told that it is up to multiple interpretations, so we must then talk about the materiality--particularly in gestural and painterly paintings.

I am mostly a materialist, and often find material products that reference non-material ideas (shaker gift drawings, for example) incredibly interesting, but I think there is an aspect of the materials of painting that are important but should not be expected to carry all of the meaning of a work.  Paint is paint, it is itself and nothing more.  

Physicality, however, can reference a broader spectrum of painting's aesthetics.  Paint is physical, but not particularly more or less than other traditional art materials (erasing a charcoal drawing, welding steel, etc).  How a painting--hanging on a wall, either illusionistic or an image in and of itself--interacts with a viewer always has a physical aspect.  Gestural painting can reference movements of limbs, dripping paint can feel like fluids.  Even how the painting enters in to our brain is a physical phenomena as the eyes must interpret, look, and cognitively process a painting with all of these things in mind.

I am not, however, advocating for a reemergence of abstract expressionism as the most important art form.  I often think reflectively about my own work in relationship to this history, and I have a hard time resolving how my work is different or the same as 'ab ex'.  I am, though, attempting to point out something that is overlooked when we start to talk about socially engaged art and public art projects.  Politically and socially engagement is omnipresent in the history of art.  Painting has, for years, engaged viewers and lead non-artists to dialogue, discourse, and theory.  There is plenty of room in this discourse for non-painting, but it seems a bit odd that so many people are abandoning it for quasi-meaningful 'events'.

Below is a recent painting that is three panels stacked on top of one another, hung on the wall but directly on the floor.  The painting, cathedral (bones), is one that I've worked on while also producing a large number of works on paper for an upcoming exhibition in New York.  The painting stands (intentional reference) at 6' tall and 4' wide and has a really interesting scale, even more than I could have predicted--its body size, approximately, and has references to structures within us.  An image of it (and some other works on paper) should be on my website soon.

  

emancipation (after Ranciere).

I've been formulating a new artist statement--I think that this is incredibly important for a number of reasons, but the main motivations now are due to rewatching Painters Painting (available on DVD and much more affordable than it was previously) and reading The Emancipated Spectator by Jaques Ranciere.

Ranciere, in his writing on forms of emancipation, is easy to surmise in some senses; he is certainly talking about broader ideas that extend beyond their subject matter.  In The Ignorant Schoolmaster, it takes the form of a Jacotot teaching students something that he himself has not learned, the stultifying (normative) relationship between teacher-student is that the teacher knows and teaches and the student must learn what the teacher is professing; it is emancipatory to eradicate that as the normative form of education and, instead, think about the teacher and student learning in tandem--reading material for the first time, discussing texts, etc so that the student might know something other than what the teacher teaches.  The student, approaching a text with the teacher, might learn (and subsequently know) something that the teacher would have never thought to teach in the traditional relationship.   Likewise, there is a normative (or stultifying, as Ranciere uses it) relationship between the spectator and any form of art.  I'll save describing this relationship until I finish the book.  What I'm taking from Ranciere, though, is that these normative relationships continue to exist--and, by analyzing them, we can become emancipated from their predictable and unhelpful parameters.  Ranciere is analyzing cultural phenomena as far as I have read, and in that way incredibly beneficial to us involved in contemporary art.

Painters Painting does an incredible job of placing art in a broader cultural context.  When I originally watched it, I just thought it was amazing to see the artists talking about their work--I pictured myself somewhere between Rauschenberg and Stella, both full of energy and kicking against the negativity (I have always kept Rauschenberg's words on not wanting to waste time being anxious or depressed with me in the studio) that a number of the ab ex painters poetically dealt in.  The whole premise, though, has much more depth to it; including talk about dealers, the market, and issues that we are still dealing with today.  I hope to read the introduction and will plan to post a transcript of parts of it, as I think it has some amazing implications today.

This, all, has spurred continued thought on how painting relates to the cultural fabric of the contemporary and global context.  I think, for myself, a form of the Ranciere-type emancipation has come from not producing a body of work but reveling in unabashed exploration.  This obviously provides problems with cataloging and keeping track of my work, but to be able to approach every surface as an entirely new opportunity is the greatest freedom I've known in art making.  Certainly, things build and form loose connections between one work and another--but, perhaps most importantly--connections form from work made years ago, a cycle and resurfacing that I could not have predicted in a lifetime.

If the normative relationship, then, is for an artist to work in body of works that then communicate a particular subject matter (and help the viewer to understand that work because of the subject matter), I am proposing that stagnation occurs in the structure of the body of work; knowing and learning can become predictable.  Emancipation occurs for me in the unknowing of where a work might lead.

Certainly, there is something akin to "style" that surfaces, even among the numerous and disparate works that I make.  My argument, here, though, is that for me, exploration is a essential part of making art.

Perhaps yet another strike against me in terms of the marketability of my work.  Look for a newer artist statement soon that addresses some of these issues and hopefully better encompasses what is going on in the studio.

Untitled work on paper, 2014
acrylic, tape, ink
15" x 11"

 

call for artists (of a different kind)

Within the last week or so, a few things have led me to deep and critical thought about the art world and the market that is attached.  Steven Zevitas' article in the Huffington Post is one, and Tony Tasset's Artists Memorial at the Whitney Biennial is another.  The artists withdrawing from the Sydney Biennale (and the subsequent resignation of the Biennale chairperson) due to funding from a company called Transfield Holdings and Transfield Services, a company that is contracted for immigrant detention centers in Australia is also on my mind as I work through living and working as a professional artist here and now.

I've heard a number of people mention that if artists in the U.S. started boycotting exhibitions funded by ethically questionable companies, there would be very few art exhibitions and events.  Zevitas' article is much needed to increase the dialogue between artists, curators, collectors, and museums and questions the high price tags of art works as of late.  The most difficult thing in all of this is, though, is that the art market is inflated and large amounts of money are exchanged for artwork, the money is almost certainly coming from less than ideal sources.  Even if we take the money's origin out of the equation, income inequality is a difficult hurdle to overcome when it comes to the amount of money that is being paid for works of art.

I'm not sure that I can solve these problems in this post, but I want to take issue with a part of Zevitas' article, in particular his call to how artists should deal the problems prevalent in the art world:

                To artists I say: Keep making art and make it because you have a deep NEED to, not     
                because you WANT to. Follow your own unique visions and not current consensus. You 
                are the bedrock (Zevitas, "The Things We Think and Do Not Say").

I understand and appreciate Zevitas' sentiment here, but it is incredibly problematic.  It presupposes that artists are actually not working (in the sense that workers get paid for the work that they do) and rather doing what they do purely out of "need", which is a misnomer.  I have, absolutely, said that I NEED to make work in the past but in reality could also, absolutely, sacrifice studio time to help a friend, spend time with family, etc.  I'm not even convinced, on a biological level, that it is a core need of human beings--I do believe some sort of aesthetic output or beautification of objects to be a part of most cultures, but this is far from an individual artists toiling away in the studio (which, I might argue, is a highly privileged and Western view of what art is and can be).  I digress, though--my biggest issue with this call is that the need for artists to make a living off what they do trumps any vague, lyrical claims for an artists to "keep doing what you are doing" (and things will work themselves out the implication).  We cannot keep doing what we are doing unless we get paid to do it, and can make some kind of living off of doing it.  Let us be honest about all of this.

Secondly, I think artists should do what they want to.  Zevitas' statement takes away artists' will, and implies that artists WANT to follow current consensus, but NEED to "Follow our own unique visions".

Thirdly, this statement reinforces the hierarchical nature of the art world and the art market.  Simply replace "bedrock" with proletariat and we are workers supporting a market that Zevitas is rightly calling out.  Bedrock is demeaning, too, as it implies that artists do not know the cultural value of their work--leave that to the other people in the market (that are the subject of Zevitas' critique).

I could go on...there are many things I take issue with in this article.  I am happy that it is being shared on social networking sites and many people are reading it.  The implication of the article title, though, is that no one is talking about these things, and I know a number of artists that have conversations about this frequently, and I've given talks at conferences on this precise topic.  I am an artist that does what I WANT, talking about how screwed up the market of my profession is.  We are all talking about it.  The people that matter are talking about it and have been talking about it for some time.  Artists deal with this every time they sell a work of art, either through a gallery or not.  Any artist that has assessed their career goals has thought about these issues and worked towards developing their own outlook on how to navigate the art world.

Tasset's work at the Whitney Biennial, then, is something of an unintentional answer to Zevitas' article for me.  The Artists Memorial, listing over 390,000 working artists and dead artists names on site of the future Whitney Museum of Art is something of a memorial to what IS the art market--not the bedrock, but the essence.  Without artists everything else just becomes a commodity game of wealthy adults.

There are many other content-related issues to discuss with Tasset's memorial, but for such a great gesture to artists who often feel under appreciated in their field, the memorial is a key into a world that many of us will never see.  This is one great example of artists taking responsibility for other artists and continuing the profession in a way that is sustainable.

I often feel fortunate to be a professor of art--one of the reasons is that I have the ability to teach about the issues of the artist in the art world (and market).  I have had the opportunity to work with a number of incredibly talented, driven, and interesting students that I hope continue to find ways to make work--but, perhaps most importantly, find ways to contribute to society as artists.  I'm not talking about socially-based art work, but rather being responsible citizens and artists.  I will always be a part of working with younger artists, as I think it is my answer to the commodification of art and the discontent I feel about the market side of my profession.

In the spirit of discussion, I want to formulate my own call to arms for artists, in which I would propose is a better song to sing as we toil in our studios:

       To Artists, I say: make work and fight for acknowledgement of our profession in ways beyond the
       art market, because it will not last as it exists now.  Contribute to intelligent discourse about our
       profession--we are responsible for our ideas and thusly must be able to communicate them in some
       form.  Any person other than ourselves that speaks for us has motives separate from that in which
       the art work was made, and can offer interpretations, which are not the same thing as our ideas and
       intentions.  We are the essence of the art world.

section of Tasset's Artists Memorial, 2014
photo credit: Kendra Paitz

  

abstraction and subject matter

Just a brief introduction to some of my recent thinking, and some texts that I'll be working on for the next year or so in anticipation of an abstract painting exhibition at Anderson Gallery in Fall 2014.

Abstraction is seen as a type of artwork, but not as a possible subject matter of artwork.  I don't think this has anything to do with the more popular digital media, time-based work, and Relational Aesthetics/ Social engagement trends in contemporary art, I think that it has a lot to do with how we see abstraction and the history of art.

This historical relegation, I might argue, stems from an ability to systematically differentiate representation from abstraction and is a method of distinguishing works.  It is understandable as a category, but most artists that work abstractly would offer that abstraction is more than a category.  I'm not referring to some quasi-physical meaning that comes from "the search", I am referring more directly to abstraction and its ability to be meaningful.

I think that we are still dealing with this division (of the categories of representation/abstraction) in contemporary art, as artists, viewers, collectors, and historians.  It is difficult for us to articulate that abstraction is what a painting looks like, but not that it can be (or reference) subject matter.

More to come on these ideas...in the meantime, there is a great interview with Paul Behnke on Painter's Table called "The Ability of Paint" concerning his exhibition Eight Painters at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, it is well worth the read.  

first of things

Happy new year.  Its a bit of a miserable day here in Iowa, but lots of exciting things on the horizon.
This post might be a bit scattered, in part because I haven't posted regularly for awhile, but I thought it wise to at least put something to the page (or screen) before time gets away from me.

1)  Amiri Baraka passed away today.  Baraka was incredibly influential to me as a young person, and his poem Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note is, to this day, one of my favorites:

'Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands'


He's well known for many things, but above everything he was a hell of a writer.

2)  I'm working on a mural for the Des Moines Social Club which should open later this Spring.  The space will have a full restaurant, at least one bar, a large theater, art gallery, and many other venues for various art forms.  It will be the first mural that I've done and I think it is coming at a perfect time.  Once the building is open, it will be open to the public, so please go see it!  Sometime around early summer (well after the opening) I'll post pictures for those of you unable to see it in person.

3)  DUSK.  More to come soon, but another project I'm honored to be a part of, straight out of Brooklyn, NY...

4)  Above and Below, an exhibition with Amy Sacksteder, Nina Rizzo, and Miguel Arzabe and myself, at Wright State University.  Exhibition opens on Sunday, January 19th, at 3:00 pm, and runs through March 2nd.  I'll be at the opening, and I know that Amy Sacksteder will be as well for sure, along with curator Danielle Rante.

5)   A painting was also selected by juror Timothy McDowell for the Young Painters 2014.  The opening reception is at 5:15 on January 31st, with a lecture by McDowell at 4pm on the 31st.  I won't be able to attend the reception, but would be glad to hear how the show looks if anyone can attend!  For anyone who doesn't know about this exhibition, I've submitted for ten years (years alternate figurative and abstraction, so I've only applied to 5 of the abstraction exhibitions) and, at the last possible moment, was accepted (as there is an age restriction of 35 years, and I turn 35 this February!), so I'm happy to be included in this exhibition, too.

And I'll leave you with the first painting of the year.  More images to come!

ascend, don't bend, 2014
acrylic, collage, wood, fabric, cardboard on panel
about 32" x 20"

If first a whisper,

I've redesigned my website: most likely you've navigated here from said website, but thought it best to post here about it, too, in case you are coming in through the virtual back door:

benjaminagardner.com

first snow, 2013  acrylic, tape, ink on paper  15" x 12" 

palinode and paradox

I think technically a palinode is a retracted sentiment, or sentiment that is retracted by the palinode-- I don't want to portray that I am retracting or apologizing for anything in the last post; but, as always and as true as anything gets in the world of thinking, I have continued working with the ideas of permanence, folk life (thug life reference intended, of course), and how we can exist in a culture that takes creative production and turns it into something that is collected, sold, and has monetary and market-based value.  I'm not sure how much I can add to the discussion or how much of this will change what I've already said, but I do think I've come to realize that there is, at one level, a paradox involved in all of this; and on another level, justification for the noncommodification of artwork.

The paradox I discovered is well known, and I think it is extremely obvious; with this idea of folk art I am trying to get to a form of the expression of creativity through making something that is pre-commodification, or at the very least does not rely on commodification for its existence and for the maker to continue making things.  I have thought before that this expression is irrevocably linked to the society and culture that the maker works within (in the sense that anyone living is implicated in society and culture, whether we like it or not).  The paradox, then, becomes what Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons promote as their sole reason for making; the art world is a reflection of Western society inasmuch that it is only fulfilling the commodification of everything else around us.  If folk art is to represent the creative expression and cultural production of an individual irrevocably linked to society, then that individual would live the life of a commodificationist.

Though I do think this paradox exists (and is evident in things like the 80's obsession with graffiti in the gallery, skate board artists, etc) but I think it is too simplistic and assumes that everyone in society believes in commodification.  Though it is omnipresent, even the most average people get pissed in Chicago when someone calls the Sears tower (commodification of architecture and urban space) the Willis tower (a different company commodifying the same architecture and space).  Century Link Field used to be called Qwest Field(2004-2011) and before that was Seahawks Stadium(2002-2004); people are conscious of the stadium being subsidized by a company though they connect it with the football team that plays there.  Wrigley Field, on the other hand, has been named after the chewing gum guru in 1926.  I could go on and on--but this is an obvious link and easy to recognize to most everyone as ways that companies are working their ways into our lives through sponsorship, cost, and value.

What I am attempting to illustrate is that though it is the predominant mode of existence in the United States, it is far from the only way of life, and even the most capitalistic of us still have reservations about things being commodified.  This changes the paradox into a art historical notation, in my mind.  There are artists who work with the idea of commodification as a representation of the whole of society, or at least of the United States.  There are also artists, though, that choose not to participate in this as a representation of society.

Another false assumption of this paradox is that Western society is the only society concerned with cultural production, which we all know is false.  Western society might be heavily involved in the commodification of art making (reeling in artists from China, the Middle East, and other world regions now) but artwork is produced and is a phenomenon of human existence.  

Perhaps I see it not as a representation of the United States but as a result of the way that society conducts itself.  I choose not to conduct myself that way; I choose to be as self-sufficient as possible, choose to rationally decide the difference between a need and a want, and to exist within my community (both geographically and professionally).  What, then, becomes the representation of society?  This will undoubtedly continue; I think I'm on a thread that is worthwhile and worth continuing in pursuit by thinking (and, of course, working in the studio).  Thanks for the positive feedback, too, on this line of thought, it is great to hear that there are people that are interested in these ideas as well.



Addendum:  there is a great, relevant article by Evan Kindley in n+1:
Chiquita Banana Jingle

permanence

I was fortunate enough to have two good friends as visiting artists for a few days here in the middle of the great expanse; nights where spent with students in critiques while the day was spent in our own conversation.  We talked quite a bit about permanence and art and the practicalities (or lack thereof) of making work that does not last nor stand the test of time.  As both Bob and Bill both have experience in making things that are less than permanent (and often times heavily involved with the idea of deterioration and being a part of what I'll call the noncommodificationists) I have not stopped reeling in our conversations.  I'd like to try to portray some of my sentiments in this entry, but know that what I am saying is heavily influenced by both Bob and Bill as well as their work and their experiences with art handling and working with and at galleries.

For some time now I've thought about my connection to folk traditions and their antithetical existence to the art market.  Why they can never be compatible, in my mind, is due to the commodification of culture and how it changes the purpose and reasons one (or many) would make something.  The change comes from a number of avenues; something made for the sake of making is innocent of things like the gallerist that sells it and her or his need to make money to keep a space active, the whims of the art market and its fascinations with certain things at certain moments, the managers of private collections, the curators, etc.  All of this, in my mind, influences us in the studio, whether we like to admit it or not.  At times it can be an outright rejection of it and we make work stubbornly that does not consider the market or even the history of art, which is equally as bad.  Certainly, too, I am being fairly liberal in my transition from folk traditions into talking about art; but I think art is a certain facet of the cultural umbrella of folk traditions.  For the sake of this entry, I am going to posit (and revisit later in more detail) that what I am intending to call folk art is an aspect of cultural production that is not sponsored by the state*.

The issue of permanence is incredibly complex and difficult to focus on without bringing up these contextual issues.  I'm having a hard time getting to the point here; so I'll attempt to solidify what I'm wanting to say.  These ideas started in my studio practice in undergrad because I would use house paint as a cheaper alternative to artist's paints, I used Aquanet that could be purchased for $1.00 at a Walgreens instead of spray fix which could be as much as $10 a can.  All of these choices made for the deterioration of the art made at that time.  Impermanence to me, now,  is integral to my art making and the way that I think about things in the studio: my interest and research into ontology is inextricably linked to time and its passing (along with ideas of the beginning and ending).  Ontology's link to folk traditions for me is attempting to capture what is inherently impermenent: a song, a gesture, a creative act like a sign that needed to be made--and the meaning imbedded in the act by its impermanence.  I will undoubtedly have to spend more time writing about this as well, because these thoughts are incomplete at best.  I also know that I find more meaning in the materials that I use--plants and their ephemeral character are used by their meaning and what ideas they represent; Aquanet was used because it could do the same job of holding charcoal to a piece of paper as its more expensive counterpart (though the long term affects, perhaps, where more costly).  

Choosing to make impermanent work, though, is a sort of stance against the art market.  Undoubtedly curators and collectors would not purchase something that will need to be repaired within a year (in my case, a lot of the leaves, flowers, and branches are completely unstable and 'shed' automatically).  What my conversations with Bob and Bill led me to think about most importantly, though, is that the act of making this work is the act of removing art from the realm of commodity.  If I make a work out of simple flour dough, it absolutely will fall apart, even if it is sealed.  Works are crumbling in my house as I type this, and that energy of decay is important to my studio practice.  Without the commodification of art (or it being difficult to sell some pieces as commodities because of their impermanence, or, in Bill Conger's case, they reject commodification because of their existence as commodity already--torn magazine scraps, towel warmers, etc are all ready commodities) our making becomes closer to this ill-refined concept of a folk tradition or at least a meaningful contribution to a culture that does not participate in its emphasis on consumerism, capitalism, monetary gain, and justifies the worth of everything in terms of money.  To be a noncommodificationist, then, is to say that the worth and meaning of art making far exceeds what its commodification can bring, and acknowledges that a work's commodification changes its meaning.  It is an open group and anyone is free to join: make work that cannot be a commodity!

I do firmly believe, however, that there is a way for us, the noncommodificationists, to work within the market.  I am interested in attempting to work within the system and see how an artist can function within the market while still holding these beliefs, because I do believe it can be done.  This is not a stance against galleries, curators, and collectors; it is a stance for a change in the meaning and implications of art making in our society; one that has been embraced before in the history of Arte Povera, Anselm Kiefer, and even in true folk traditions like Tibetan sand mandalas and Navajo medicine wheels.  Meaning is in the work made, not in how much it costs or what it can be sold for.
    

*Here I am referring to a division within culture. If Culture is a division of human existence that tends to encompass the imaginative, semiotic, and creative side of experience within a specific context, I might propose that folk, then, is a subdivision of culture that is inextricably linked to an individual or small group of individuals not acting on behalf of the state or government.  Museums, then, are linked to the state in the sense that they are non-profit organizations, which is an affiliation within the state.  Galleries, too, are involved with tax and the market in the context of the state.  This is extremely problematic, and I will need to revisit this (not to mention finish reading Althusser and other theorists, but I'm going to leave it as an incomplete thought for now.  I do realize that I am creating a definition of folk by apophasis which is not productive in the long run.  I do, however, feel that the noncommodificationist label above might more closely represent some of the thinking here.  

eye of mercy, 2012

painting, meaning, and dogma

I re-watched and considered a documentary called Examined Life the other day and, as I was in the studio, I contemplated something that Avital Ronell considers in her segment of the film.  In walking, Ronell talks about our desperate search for meaning and the resulting gravitation towards ideologies as a quick fix to the absence of meaning; which also provides a fast frame of reference for how one should act.  Near the end of her interview she even equates junk food and junk thinking, insinuating that to rely on these quick fixes when it comes to finding meaning is similar to eating a candy bar for dinner--it provides calories, but very little nutritional value in those calories.  I'm asserting my interpretation a bit here, but it lead me to consider (or re-consider, as I feel like I come to this in my studio practice fairly regularly) the idea of meaning in painting, especially in terms of a "search" for meaning.

I think this search for meaning is an integral part of painting (and, ideally, art making in general: though I am a novice photographer I feel that taking photographs can serve the same function as painting does in this regard) as it provides me with a medium to eradicate ideology and dogma.  One could argue, I suppose, that abstraction is its own dogma; but in my own studio abstraction is the path that I often choose (though I do make things, objects, take photographs, etc) without any real reason; none of my paintings necessitate abstraction nor do I have to make abstract paintings (which would signify dogma, I think) in order to use paint.

I've tried a number of times to watch Gerhard Richter Painting and I have to say that it has not happened, for various reasons.  I think there is part of the celebrity of Richter that bums me out a bit.  I have also read parts of The Daily Practice of Painting by Richter, so I thought I would consult the book in terms of these thoughts to see what Richter, who a lot of painters idolize, would have to say.  I have a tremendous amount of respect for Richter, but he has not been someone that I have readily connected with  I found these, at first opening of the book:

"23 July 1989.  However ineptly--desperately ineptly--I set about it, my will, my endeavor, my effort--what drives me--is the quest for enlightenment (apprehension of 'truth', and of the interconnections; coming closer to a meaning; so all my pessimistic, nihilistic actions and assertions have the sole aim of creating or discovering hope).

25 July 1989.  My denunciation of ideology: I lack the means to investigate this.  Without a doubt, ideologies are harmful, and we must therefore take them very seriously: as my behavior, and not for their content (in content, they are all equally false).
Ideology as the rationalization of faith; as the 'material' that credulity puts into words and makes communicable.  Faith, and here I repeat myself, is the awareness of things to come; it therefore equals hope, it equals illusion, and is quintessentially human (I cannot imagine how animals get along without such an awareness); because, without the mental image of 'tomorrow', we are incapable of life. "
Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting

I think Richter is hinting at something in these studio notes that I've been working to refine in my own thinking---painting and art making connect me to a type of thinking that the action of painting is rooted in searching and developing the answer, which is inherently anti-dogmatic.  Every surface, then, becomes a new platform for the search, the pushing of materials, the search for idea and meaning.

Though this can be seen as a throwback mentality, I think that it pertains to a culture of contemporary abstract painting that is favoring process-less work, 'bad' abstract painting, and repetition of a shtick.  Is there value in abstract painting beyond this search?  How do we categorize good or bad abstraction, how does the search become visible to the audience?  My instinct is to say that the process-less and repetitive motif/shtick paintings are direct responses and reactions to the history of abstract painting, but maybe I am unaware of my own ideology.

What I can assure you is that I am committed to the exploration in my studio practice, unhindered (at least to an extent) by what is expected of me or how I need to maintain my body of work in its similarity.  I think that this is, at least to an extent, a luxury of the Academy--I am required to be professionally active but do not rely on selling my work for livelihood.  I am, as much as I'm able, going to continue in working this way.

Some recent studio work and photographs via the Instagram link; I hope to add more to the website and Facebook soon.
Instagram Page

arrangements

"...Diogenes Laertius, author of the hugely influential Lives of Eminent Philosophers from the third century AD, tells a fascinating story of Thales, usually considered to be the first philosopher.

     He held that there was no difference between life and death.  'Why then,' said one, 'do you not die?'

     'Because,' said he, 'there is no difference.'

To be a philosopher, then, is to learn how to die; it is to being to cultivate the appropriate attitude towards death.  As Marcus Aurelius writes, it is one of 'the noblest functions of reason to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not.'  Unknowing and uncertain, the philosopher walks."

Simon Critchley,  The Book of Dead Philosophers

As an artist I am constantly searching for books that encourage my work; this might be in the sense of simply encouraging me to work through an idea in the studio, directly on paper or in 3-D; or it might be something that inspires thinking, processing, and observation of my surroundings in a new way.  Though there are glimpses of this in art writing--and good writing is certainly more prevalent with more access to art writing through blogs and social networking--I am typically left uninspired by art-specific texts.  I feel guilty saying it, but we need more and better writing concerning art and the ideas associated with it--beyond criticism and history, we need more solid and understandable theoretical writings about art that provide a structure for studio artists.

I can vividly recall meeting the painter Derrick Buisch during undergraduate studies and looking for any sort of recommendations in terms of texts.  I worked in the library and had access to copies of texts that my painting professor had on reserve at the library all of the time.  I think I explicitly asked Derrick him what art books he was reading--and he told me that he didn't really read art books.  He preferred books like Italo Calvino's  Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Bachelard's The Poetics of Space.  Since that point in 1999 or so, my outlook on what texts support my studio practice drastically changed.  It had opened up to a daunting range of texts and ideas that was fueled by graduate school.  I am admittedly not a good reader, but I need to have access to books and their ideas and at least have an understanding of what a book could contribute to, and books and texts are at the absolute foundation of my studio practice.  Nothing would get done without them.

I still find books outside of the spectrum of art books to be incredibly interesting.  One reason for fewer theoretical/metaphysical books on contemporary art might be because of our reliance, as a profession, on interdisciplinary studies--making it difficult to produce books that are simultaneously narrow in focus and applicable to many different people's studio practice.

My newest book discovery is The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley.  It is a book entirely posed as recounting the deaths of famous philosophers which is oddly humorous, witty, and intelligent. What is perhaps most important about this book to my studio practice are the ideas of how we deal with death, both in society, as an idea, and what is a result of these dealings.  It led me to three simply stated questions that relate to other ideas presented in this blog, translating what I've read so far from the book into an art-based line of questioning:

1)  As an act of contribution to culture, does art making memorialize the artist?

2)  Is art making, then, an act of defying death?  (I'm thinking here of Joyce, who reportedly wanted to write a book so complex it would take many lifetimes for it to be 'solved', giving him a sort of immortality.)

3)  Can this give meaning to art making that transcends the commodification of it?

Certainly all culture and its contributions can be commodified, but I am wondering if its supreme purpose might exceed any meaning given to it because of its commodification.  I.e. is an artwork as a memorial of an artist its most important trait, and commodification (or its value, or its place in museums) purely coincidence?

More to come...stay tuned.

purposes for doing and making

One thing that I have been thinking about for the last couple months is the idea of my work, studio practice, and motivation for doing things being in line with folk music.  I don't mean the folk music of the 60's and 70's, rather music that is produced by a culture for its aesthetic and entertainment purposes (but an entertainment that is without an economic value).  In some ways this might be hard to make completely clear, and it is certainly something that I am still working through as an underpinning to my studio practices.  The best example I can think of are the types of music that Alan Lomax, a musician, ethnomusicologist, and anthropologist collected.  My understanding of Lomax's aim was to collect, preserve, and record music as cultural expressions.  Music, today, is a different sort of beast, at least to the majority of the United States and other 1st world countries, though I imagine it is different for everyone around the world--music is dominated by commodification.  

Another way of approaching what it is that I am trying to get at is by thinking about the end goals of production.   A recording I remember learning about in college--postal workers in Ghana canceling stamps--sticks out as a good example.  The recording is a multi-part song composed of a number of workers whistling to the rhythm of the percussion of their canceling stamps, which is a loud, dull, thud at amazing tempos.  This music was created, I imagine, for the purpose of doing something creative during work, not for commercial purposes.  The track comes from an ethnomusicology textbook called Worlds of Music, so I'm fairly certain the postal workers didn't get paid for the recording, nor did they want or need to: it would have happened regardless. 

Another way this comes up in my daily existence is with food, believe it or not.  There have been a number of times when I have made something for someone and they have said "you should sell this!".  I am confident in my cooking and baking skills, for sure, and it is always a nice comment to hear, in that it means that my food is commercially viable--i.e. it is at least as good as what you can buy in the store.  I think this is thought about more now with the recent boom in local eating and shopping--the market is much more receptive to locally produced goods that it was five years ago.  The importance of this, however, is that I have no interest in selling food products that I make.  I have a passion for learning cooking and baking techniques and wish to reproduce foods that I've had in restaurants or abroad and my motivation is not for the sake of the consumer, it is for the sake of me understanding how something works, knowing how to make it again, and making it for friends and family to enjoy as a part of an aesthetically-inclined food lifestyle.  Any sort of production for commercial gain is against my reasons and purposes for making the food.  It would change the purpose and production, and it is not something that is motivating to me at all.  

How this fits into studio production and making artwork is tricky; the art market and how we as artists fit into it is never a clean relationship.  As I work more and further my career I expect that I'll have more information and honest interpretations of this relationship.  I do not make my work for commercial purposes, as I suspect anyone reading this blog also does not, but I am interested in having a gallery that represents my work and me as an artist.  Printmaking pals always give me a bit of hell for wanting this, saying that it is a painter's dilemma, and I would tend to agree with them.  I do know, for sure, that I will need to have a healthy personal relationship with any gallery that I work with.  I also know that I am not reliant on selling art work to pay my bills, which also puts me in a good place--I could leave any negative relationships with galleries as I need to.  I won't go any further in this line of thinking, as it is all completely hypothetical at the moment--I have had incredible opportunities with galleries that are right-minded, independent, and progressive in the art world (meaning they exist with razor thin budgets and support from an art community and its creative capital), and all of these galleries (Heavy Brow Gallery in Bloomington, Illinois; FLUXX Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa; and others) have been incredibly supportive to me and other artists associated with them.  I imagine, though, as we all make more work, get older and wiser, and get more established in our respective art communities that we will all have tougher decisions to make in regards to how we fit into the art market. 

These thoughts will undoubtedly continue...stay tuned. 

I've got new work up on the website, including new drawings in the Letters of the Weather series, including the piece below: 

the last of things, 2012

acrylic, ink, ammonia, graphite on paper

20" x 30"

song for the white owl 2 // UNC Charlotte

Part two of the ungiven lecture during my recent visit to UNC Charlotte.

II.  Concept of Being

For the last few years I have been consciously working to find ways in which I could more directly live the life that I was thinking about living.  The rural aesthetic felt more like it could be brushed aside as a schtick, as something that was a motif in my work, and I wanted to expand in ways that made being in the studio more meaningful. 

I remember getting a book from the library in undergrad called Rauschenberg: Art and Life and being particularly taken by the title; I found the book at a time when I was struggling a bit in school, not sure how much I wanted to be a part of the art world and not sure how I fit into it--I grew up lower middle class, worked multiple jobs through undergraduate and graduate school, and wasn't attracted to the culture of the art market and the fat cat collectors that I saw when I went to art fairs in Chicago.  The Rauschenberg book, though, helped me to realize that this way of life was possible; that Rauschenberg was clearly (as one of the most prolific artists I've ever seen) able to just make things even though he had a lot of monetary success in his lifetime.  Artists like Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, and Richard Tuttle also were good to hear about as they chose to live outside of NYC and make work away from those constraints.  Now, in our contemporary society, it is great to meet new artists who find themselves outside of metropolitan areas--starting great projects, creating small galleries, and building communities of creative individuals that provide far more than what money does.   

I have always wanted to be self-sufficient and leaned towards homesteading.  the Foxfire books were profoundly impactful to me as I started in college and I've always been interested in finding ways to make something as opposed to buying something.  In the last three years my wife and I have had a successful 500 SF garden in our backyard where we grow a number of vegetables, fruits, herbs and weeds.  As this part of my identity has developed, I have noticed my physical and mental body being more in tune with the progression and cycle of the year; I also started paying attention quite a bit more to what was happening in the night sky.  I started using constellations that where visible in the Northern Hemisphere while I was making the painting and/or drawing as the compositional basis.  I then developed the compositions with gestural marks, push and pull, and spatial geometric abstraction as an acknowledgement to the constellation that helped create this new image.  As I have always been partial to folk traditions and superstitions, the constellations helped me to make work that was connected to the experience of being on earth, living within a complex system of planet and space, and knowing my place and movement as the constellations changed and time moved forward to cycle back. 

I additionally started using the forms of plants, trees, and other forms of being (in that they have life, in some capacity) as the compositional basis for paintings as well.  This is a sort of overarching idea that I still consider and think about in my work, as most artists should--why is it that I am using the elements or symbols that I am using?  What do they mean, and what won't I use in my work?  This last question is particularly interesting to me because though it is worded in a negative way, it helps me establish boundaries and get a better sense of why I use the elements that I do choose to use.  The plants, trees, and leaves have continued to be a major part of my work; even in more recent wall-based installations.  In part these elements are not only interesting in terms of formal qualities--how a tomato vine can be a line, or a leaf can act like paper or an awkward brush mark.  It is also rewarding to me to use materials that I have--a lot of the organic elements in this work are dead plants that would just be composted if I didn't use them; I like using found wood or materials that are easily accessible not only because of my attempts at self-sufficiency but also because I think transcendence becomes all the more important with materials that I see and/or use every day, as a part of my existence. 

    

Drawing for the Backspace Collective fundraiser, which is still accepting drawings that will be sold to benefit the space in Peoria, Illinois.  Please consider donating a piece, drawings are due by Nov. 30, 2012.  All works will be sold for $25.    

http://wearebackspace.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/drawback-2012.pdf

Places, the state of being

I'm busy preparing for a lecture and visiting artist gig at University of North Carolina in Charlotte--I hope to post the lecture notes and powerpoint here after it is finished.

While at UNC Charlotte I will be working with Erik Waterkotte to make some large scale prints based off of digital photos that I've been working with, down below (though these are smaller sketches, without the handwork of the prints).  I am always interested in text and how to fit it into my work; at times it is a bit of a struggle, but I think it works best when I don't over think it and use the text as a) an expressive mark and b) a poetic element.

If you find yourself in Charlotte on Monday, November 12, at 2 pm, swing by for the lecture; or stop in and see what is going on in the print studio.  I'll post the end result when I get back, too.

The images below reference (or react to) the poem by Ted Hughes
'Songs against the white owl'.

Listening to:
Tindersticks, in general, but mostly [II] and Claire Denis Film Scores
Sleep's Dopesmoker
Born Heller's self titled album
Implodes' Black Earth

Postmemory and forgetting

I've recently picked up Joan Gibbons' 2009 book Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance and I am processing some of the concepts of the book.  In the chapter "Postmemory: The Ones Born Afterwards" Gibbons uses Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory to talk about some works by Christian Boltanski and Ansel Kiefer and their relationship to the Holocaust (to put it simply).  Kiefer (b. 1945) is of a generation in Germany known as Nachgeborenen, which translates as "the ones born afterwards."  The heart of the chapter is to work with the ideas of how memory of an event (especially a tragic event like the Holocaust) is remembered by generations that did not experience it, especially artists who are dealing with the remembering (or, rather postmemory) of the event of the Holocaust.  The chapter has been ringing in my head, especially with the broader implications of postmemory in art making, its relationship to nostalgia, and the imperfections of memory and how they translate into a concept like postmemory.

With the discussion of memory comes the discussion of the accuracy of memory.  I think it is a common assumption that the only accurate memory is one that is experienced by an individual (I'm going to leave this on the individual level and tackle how this applies to collective memory at a later date) and that a memory of an event that an individual was not alive for is not memory at all, but rather something more akin to history (as in an individual being told what has happened at a particular time).  An individual can, of course, have a memory of history but most would argue that the individual can never have a direct memory of an event in which they did not experience.

I think postmemory begins to address this in that, in a broad sense, people can have memories of something that they did not directly experience.  Undoubtedly these memories are imperfect (which is in line with most forms of memory!) and suspect to bias, but they are memories that come up just the same.  I think the most obvious example of this for me might be a photo album of my parents' lives before I or my brother was born.  The pictures are filled with people and places that I know and, in some capacity, fill in information of what happened before my own consciousness.  I know what my mother and father looked like, and, because of the photographs, I have a memory of what my mother and father looked like when they first started dating.

I have very little interest in nostalgia, and I think that the concept of postmemory might start to explain a nostalgia-esque feeling that I have had in my experience--looking to what has happened in the past and how it fits into my identity. In particular, I have been thinking about nostalgia, postmemory, and contemporary artists (and pop culture, for that matter) invested in Americana.  It is widespread throughout contemporary music, and is prevalent enough in contemporary art for their to be exhibitions surrounding it (Old, Weird America comes to mind).  I was accused a few times in graduate school of being nostalgic or even ironic when I used symbols of rural american culture; and what could be seen as 'americana' contemporary art is typically approached skeptically and is seen as romantic (almost as an opposite of contemporary art that engages with current social issues).  Can there not be a group of artists who also look towards the past--which they have no direct experience with or memory of--as source material for their work?

I am feeling myself veer back towards Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History", so a re-read of that is probably in order.  To try to summarize a bit of what I am talking about here, I would like to claim that the past is such a monumental entity in our identity, and we as individuals are aware of the past exceeding our interaction with it, that we can not but help deal with it in our current selves.  Perhaps this means that postmemory is an intrinsic part of identity. More on this to come, for sure.

Other books that I am reading, currently:
Wieland, or, the Transformation by Charles Brockden Brown
The American Soul by Jacob Needleman
A Void by George Perec
"Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission" by Marianne Hirsh (mentioned above) and Leo Spitzer (a great essay from Poetics Today dealing, in part, with miniature books from the Holocaust).

And, of course, some new studio work:
too many gone without a song, 2012
spray paint and weed

Twombly's Photographs

 I have not found much information about Cy Twombly's photographs; some of them, apparently, where taken in the 1950's, others were taken in the artists' later years.  The images are incredibly striking to me and even though they predate Luc Tuyman's paintings significantly, I can't help but relate them to a "reality" version of Tuyman's disinterested, removed, and disenchanted paintings.  Interestingly enough, though, the captured reality of Twombly's photographs read almost oppositely of Tuyman's paintings:  I think of Twombly's photographs as intimate as images and revealing an intimate relationship between the artist and his subject matter.

I'm not sure that it is exactly the same plant/tree, and I've seen a variety of plants with this same flower shape, but the first photograph reminds me of a tree that was prevalent in Peru called the Angel's Trumpet Tree, or brugmansia arborea (our own photo of a tree is at the end of the post).  The interesting thing about the Angel's Trumpet is that it is connected to cultural history that one should plant an Angel's Trumpet immediately if that person wants to kill someone else; if those feelings of anger still exist when the Angel's Trumpet still exist when the tree blooms.  Apparently, the plant take so long to flower that it provides enough time for the anger to subside and the hostile thoughts to pass.
The picture below was taken from a train in Peru, between Cuzco and Machu Picchu this summer.  

 

painting and the concept of mantra

painting and the concept of mantra

I only have a basic understanding of what a mantra is, and what its purpose is; but at least one aspect of it is a phrase, verse, or set of words that are repeated to aid the practitioner seeking transcendence during quite times of focus, meditation, or prayer.  I have recently started considering how this might play out as a concept for contemporary painting (as well as contemporary art in its broadest sense), especially in terms of what we consider to be a series of work.

The concept of a series to me is slightly disturbing, as it leads someone to think that the type, amount, and kind of work created for a series is arbitrary or, even worse, market driven.  I am also someone who makes a large amount of work in many different "series" and often have to justify to myself how one body of work fits or relates to the conceptual framework of another body of work, so any sign of something arbitrary makes me skeptical of my own creative directions.  I have started to think of the concept of mantra to replace the idea of a series or grouping, and I think that it works fairly well to link works together with purpose, justify the natural start and end to a body of work, and create a greater framework of a type of mindfulness in my studio practice that is from a new perspective and prevents me from needing to justify any new direction of work and how it relates to other work that I have made in previous years.

Firstly, my idea of a mantra is a phrase that is repeated in meditation.  In a body of painting, the main idea, concept, or visual source material might be seen as a mantra; recently, in my own work, I have been fascinated with the image of a 16 light window, both as a sign and as a an object with history.  The 16 light window--specifically, just shapes of paint that stand in for the glass that would be in the window--has been in a number of paintings now.  It is not simply this repeated shape that forms the mantra, however--as a symbol, the 16 light window (or any window for that matter) forms a sort of gateway and a translucent barrier between the dichotomy of inside and outside.  Not only does this have psychological implications, but it also affects our state of being; figuring out which situation we are of, and how we relate to its counterpart.  There are implications to a window that is painted in light colors (outside, looking in to a lit house; or inside, looking out to something during the day) and in dark (an empty house, night time).  The 16 light window was also prominently used in Victorian architecture--not for any particular reason that I can see, but it has the strong cultural context to me and the things that I connect to Victorian culture.  Of particular interest in this body of work is the idea of mesmerism that was being discussed and affecting the ways that people who lived during that time acted and behaved.  It is a sort of link to a quasi-natural existence that resulted from shoddy science but was really, at least from what I can discern, more a form of superstition.

[As a side note,  I have recently started reading into the idea of Postmemory, developed by Marianne Hirsch, and I think it provides an interesting lens to look at all of this through.  I think it has great implications in contemporary art and how artists deal with memory.  As I read more, I plan on dedicated at least one blog post to this concept.]

Secondly, the mantra justifies a beginning and an end--I believe I referred to it as a "natural" beginning and end earlier.  I do not know why I need this as a crutch, but when I can relate the idea of a new series starting to a type of chant or phrase that I can only partially understand its purpose, it seems to make the whole body of work function more purposefully.  Through the development of the works I discover more fully the meaning and implications of the mantra that I am working on.  Most series have a purpose.  A series of baseball cards is dictated by a season of baseball, and that season is dictated in part by the weather.  A series of television shows is in part determined by the arc of a narrative (though, we can often come up with a number of television shows that are truly running past their narrative arc and are continuing to be made).   For some reason a series in art making has not connected to anything for me--but this idea of a mantra is a good association that helps me to understand the archetype of a group of works that have started and that will end.  The natural ending I speak of, of course, is when the idea is no longer working with the formal qualities of a work, or I have exhausted the aspect of an idea and need to move on to another image/idea/concept.  Undoubtedly there are some artists who have repeated the same mantra their entire life (Gene Davis comes to mind), but I know that my mantras will have a beginning and an end, and new mantras will come along.  It is related to a much bigger archetype of the cycle in this way, to me, as well--which will undoubtedly come up again in the future.

[Postmemory plays into this idea, too; from what I understand so far is that Postmemory is a memory that is experienced through a generation that did not live through the original act; yet the younger generation still deals with the original act to work through the implications of it.  I think the idea of working through a memory is what has my brain reeling right now, in relation to all of this.]