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Posted by roberta

wojnarowiczfiremoma
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Just a few images from our trip to MoMA last week. The museum has completely altered the contemporary galleries on 2. They are unrecognizable over the spare, high-ceilinged, cavernous space we saw in February at the building's opening. For starters there are partition walls everywhere. But because there seems to be no coherent game plan for what to see next--no arrows, no chronology that I could see (I'm not complaining, just noting it) the feeling is one of chaos and clutter. People mill around this way and that. On the Friday we were there it seemed congested although there were not really mobs of people. I imagine on a weekend it could get thick.


Anyway, one room seems to have political art as its theme. It's the chamber with the big Dana Schutz "Presentation," a piece that has Ensor by Eakins charm (think crowd of ghostly faces -- painted in tropical colors -- looking at figure being operated on). There's a Warhol hammer and sickle, David Wojnarowicz's "Fire" (shown at the top of this post), a Kara Walker print (in fact the same one PAFA owns and had up in the recent works on paper show). There's Yinka Shonibare's colonial costumes (come to think of it they were at the FWM a few years back in the "Secret Victorians" show). Somewhat oddly enough, this politics room is the one immediately outside the room with Janet Cardiff's elegant and emotional (and completely non-political) beauty "40-part Motet," which I confess I got all teary-eyed in. The acapella all-ages choir sings a magnificent rendition of a 16th century mournful song. All you see are the 40 speakers, encircling you, elevated on poles to about head height. And you see people. I saw people stop in their tracks when the song started as if they'd been hit by lightening. It's so very beautiful to the ear and so emotionally-charged. And really, you have nothing to look at of interest except the other people in the room. Which might be a political statement after all I suppose.

(image is people listening to Cardiff's "40-part motet")

cardiff, janet
wojnarowicz, david

permanent link   roberta 7:46 AM
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Posted by roberta

Libby and I charged up to MoMA last week to set eyes on what Charlie Finch described as the "horrible work" of Elizabeth Murray. (See prior post for preamble about Finch.)

And we saw instead paintings that are indeed wonderful.


It's a show that takes you from her roots in the 1960s and 70s when she's making minimalist- like line pieces up to the present where the pulled- and stretched- multi-piece canvasses are flattened out into jigsaw puzzles that don't quite get together. It's work that's not easy but is from the heart and the gut, and those are a couple places art should come from.

Libby and I talked our way through the show. We enjoyed our conversation; we enjoyed Murray's art and, of course, we really enjoyed the idea that Charlie Finch was dead wrong.

(top, Murray's pthalo green "Wave Painting" 1973 struck us as a rebuttal to Frank Stella's black painting, below -- not in the show but we put a detail of it here for point of comparison)

I've distilled our conversation into what my notes and my memory can provide. We both will claim this intellectual property.



We saw the influence of Jasper Johns in her early works, one in particular, which had a kind of cartoon target in the center with the letters "A MIRROR" underneath. (sorry no image. In fact you couldn't take pictures in the exhibition at all so I have relied on the images I found at artnet, some I scanned from the brochure, and the one image I took inside before the guard just about jumped me yelling "No pictures!")

(image, Frank Stella Black Painting: "Tomlinson Court Park" (second version)1959)



The linear quality of the early work seemed to be talking to minimalism as well as commenting on her life (lines=the prison bars of home -- she had small children at the time).

(image is "Mobius Band, 1974)


"Don't Be Cruel" 1986, seemed to be the first torqued canvas piece and it is a doozy. (image left, it's the red piece on the left).

The jagged blue chasm painted in the middle is nothing compared to the muscular twists of the actual sculpted wood and canvas form which evokes tousled bedsheets and even a kind of undersea skate with a stinger for a tail.



1988 and 1989 were great years for the artist, the works truly vigorous and exotic. "True Air" (right), which struck us as a person with some plumbing problems, is a huge affair and scary with all its references to bodies and buildings and systems maybe not all they should be.

(image right is "True Air" and below is installation shot from artnet showing "Wonderful World" on the left and "True Air" on the right. Look how big they are.)



It's in this part of the show that you want to look close at the making of the pieces because they are truly marvels of twisting wood into undulating shapes and covering the pieces with painted cloth to achieve a kind of trompe l'oeil whole that you accept as whole but know is pieced.

One piece, "Tangled," sorry no image, reminded us of Neyssa Grassi's tangles of rope. Even the color was reminiscent -- green greys and pink greys and dark blues all suggesting innards and inner turmoil.



This work on the right (pictured in close-up detail) -- and I believe its name is "Things to Come" -- was one we looked at closely. It was a pure roller coaster of construction.


Murray is known for her shoe pieces and "Dis Pair" is one of the more familiar. It sat outside the exhibit proper acting as a kind of loopy advertisement for the show.

While I don't have any images of this phase of the show, there was an entire room that had as its theme or undertheme sex and the bedroom. "What is Love," and its peers in the pen-ultimate room were great edgy paintings with angry furniture and lots of things going into and out of other things. Hey, it's sex painted by a woman. We get why some guys wouldn't like that.



The last room in the show includes the bright-colored works from this century. We called the room the Keith Haring room for truly the colors and the cartoon-like agitation evokes the late grafitti artist. These were not our favorite Murrays. They seem to have a faux-happy quality to them and we prefer it when she's not pretending to be thrilled to be here -- which she is for most of the show in works that are just plain great.

(image is "Bop" 2002-3)
murray, elizabeth

permanent link   roberta 2:33 PM
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Posted by roberta

murraycover
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Our New York Correspondent Brent Burket emailed us after having seen the Elizabeth Murray exhibit at MoMA, up to Jan. 9. Among other things he alerted us to the fact that Charlie Finch had written a poison dagger piece at artnet about the retrospective. We read Finch's dropping and thought boy oh boy what a woman-hater! Of course if you've read any Charlie Finch you know he's capable of snide and snippy. But this went so far into hatred that it felt almost personal. It was misogynistic. He was writing for the history books. Kill, kill, kill. Witness these kiss of death phrases:
...every gross shade of yellow ochre
...room full of 1980s abortions
...bloated abomination
...black hole of no talent
...horrible work

and ask youreslf. Would he write like that about a man's art? Never.

murray, elizabeth

permanent link   roberta 12:42 PM
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Posted by libby

The Affordable Art Fair in New York, last weekend, was a less than optimal way to see art. If you think of the booths at your average trade fair, you've got the ambiance and the visual overload factors.

Nonetheless, some of the work we saw reached out to us anyway. By no means did we see everything that was there--maybe 50 percent, 25 with some focus.

But if I was shopping for art, I'd have to go forearmed with some knowledge of what was what and who was who, or I don't think I could cope.

Local angles

But first the local angle. Philadelphia was represented by four local vendors (the trade-fair language here seems just right).













Pentimenti's Christine Pfister, who is long and lean and quite pregnant was hoping the picture wouldn't show her belly. I gave it my best shot--it's so dark, no one will even recognize her. Her booth included some work from Isabel Bigelow (over Pfister's right shoulder), Stephen Baris (he has a show coming up at Pentimenti in the spring and used to show at SchmidtDean), Kevin Finkleas, Richard Bottwins and more.















Pentimenti also was showing work by Kathleen Kucka, an artist I had seen in a group show at Jeffrey Coploff Gallery in New York more than a year ago (see post). Look for more of her work at Pentimenti some time in the future. (My notes say this is Kucka's "Theater of Thinking," but I don't know if it's the piece or the series.)












We also stopped at Bridgette Mayer's booth and got a terrific shot of color as well as her two gallery assistants (I forgot their names; sorry). The show included a selection of work from Tim McFarlane and Neil Anderson, who both had recent shows at Mayer.















Most exciting, we got a swell preview of Rebecca Rutstein's new work from her Hawaii residency. Her exhibit opened a couple of days ago, and judging by what we saw at the AAF, it's not to be missed--glorious color, maps, thoughts about place and the path of life (above image, top, "quiet pandemonium" and bottom, "blue hawaiian").

We also said hello to the gangs at The Print Center's booth an Center for Emerging Visual Artist's booth.

Memories of SCOPE














Another gallery that caught our eye was one we had visited at SCOPE last winter, Miller Block Gallery, which had a lot of works on paper on exhibit. Here's a piece by Jane Masters, who burns paper to make her sampler-like sardonic social commentary (image, "Cheap Labor").















This work by Cranbrook artist-in-residence in sculpture Heather McGillis cut with a laser. The small pieces fall out and get glued on with hinges to make the positive image. The negative images uses the original sheet, with the cut-out spaces backed by contrasting paper. The tiny images are home and farm icons in wild profusion. Wow! (Roberta, excited by the work, was doubly excited when she realized she had met McGill on a visit to Cranbrook).

Another local angle











Amidst all the wonderful things to see at Miller Block was this tiny Randall Sellers, our paradigmatic Philly-boy-makes-good.







At Mixed Greens, we saw a variety of interesting work, including these sweet drawings of electrical outlets and an obsessively hatched envelope by Joan Linder (left, "Plugs," and right, "Business").















We also liked the Mark Mulroney work, including paintings and tiny sculptures with images glued or painted on (shown, on the top shelf a little three-headed doll that I wanted to hold called "Sweet Smoked Natural Style #1," and lots more).















Fresh off seeing Harrison Haynes' cars-and-kudzu paintings in the watercolor show at Gallery Joe, this work by Russell Nachman caught my eye at Mixed Greens. While Haynes' everyday world feels menacing or off kilter, Nachman's beautiful, futuristic imagery set in a similarly scrubby countryside feels magical (image, Nachman's "Power Wagon").

Eye-popping color, indoors and out










At Littlejohn Contemporary's booth, the tiny (about 6 inches high) animal portraits from artist Laurie Hogin popped off the walls. Not only was this work funny, with colors that looked positively irradiated, but it was serious too, with themes of the human comedy, survival and lost species and other threats. I loved these monkeys as peppermint candies! I could hardly pick which ones to show you (above, "Field Guide to North America: Airwaves at Dusk," and at the way top of the post, "Field Guide to North America: Monkey Pairs at Dusk").














Also at Littlejohn, Susan Chrysler White's "Sweet Affliction" beaded curtains gone wild and portraits of the beads floating in front of a modulated pink background stole my decorative heart. The glowing pink background reminded me of the glowing backgrounds behind high school portraits.












And lastly, fibonacci series paintings are a current national phenom. This one was on exhibit at San Francisco's Hang Gallery AAF booth, a reminder that the flat-out application of colors in layers continues to fascinate and hold the art world's attention (image, Jylian Gustlin's "Fibonacci 183," 48 x 48 inches).kucka, kathleenrutstein, rebeccamasters, janemcgill, heathersellers, randalllinder, joanmulroney, marknachman, russellhogin, lauriewhite, susan chryslergustlin, jylian

permanent link   libby 12:19 PM
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Posted by roberta

vangoghfieldpollard
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

I won't add a lot to Libby's great post on the Van Gogh exhibit at the Met, up through Dec. 31.. I do want to say a few things. I love the way he saw things. Libby mentioned Van Ruisdael's landscapes which were apparently an influence on Van Gogh. But where Van Ruisdael was making pictures -- and very pretty ones at that -- Van Gogh was reading the land and imposing his soul on it. His depictions of open fields come along again and again, and time after time the artist is caressing the land with his marks, organizing it with strokes of the pen this way and that and willing himself to be there. There's little distance between himself and what he's drawing.
(image above is "Path through a Field with Pollard Willows" Mid- to late March 1888, Pen and ink, graphite, with touches of reed pen on wove paper 25.8 x 34.7 cm (10-1/8 x 13-5/8 in.))




So that when he's not able to be out in the land that he loved, that is, when he was confined to hospitals for his own safety during his illness his drawings change in response to what he's seeing and how he's "in" it. This image is one of the courtyard at the hospital he was in after his breakdown with his ear mutilation. The mark making is dark and the whole thing is claustrophobic and the nature? It's potted plants and garden landscaping, not the wild rugged farm land he loved.

(above is "The Courtyard of the Hospital in Arles,"First week of May 1889, Reed pen, pen and ink, and graphite on laid paper.)


I guess it's pretty well known that Van Gogh was a great letter writer. His letters back and forth to his brother Theo have been compiled in books and are apparently great reading. But what I didn't know is that the artist was fluent in English and that he carried on a correspondence in English with an Australian artist, John Russell, whom he met in Paris. The show has a sample of one of the letters and this is a detail of one. (and by the way, all these images are on my flickr site where you can see them larger. And for even more images and information see the Van Gogh Gallery website, which is where I pulled these from). Van Gogh sent Russell many complete drawings in addition to the sketches interwoven in the letters.

(image above is "The Sower," Sketch in a letter to John Russell, ca. June 17, 1888 [501a] Pen and ink on wove paper 20.3 x 26.3 cm (8 x 10-3/8 in.))



The artist made paintings as well as drawings of course. And sometimes he made drawings based on the paintings, like with this work, the famous Zouave. And he made them as documentary evidence of the paintings, kind of like a snapshot of a work you would take and then send to a friend to say "here's what I've done."

(above, "The Zouave" (for John Russell) ca. July 31-August 3, 1888, Reed pen, pen, and ink over graphite on wove paper 31.9 x 24.3 cm (12-1/2 x 9-5/8 in.) Signed, lower left: Vincent)



When the artist moved to Arles he started working with a reed pen which he made himself from tall grasses of the area. It's with the switch to the reed pen that the mark-making gets bolder and more assertive. Of course the tool is crude compared to a crow quill pen and the artist was responding to that but he seems to have found a truly sympatico tool in the object he plucked from the ground around him, whittled into shape and dipped into his ink well.

This image is the last image in the Met exhibit. In the almost abstract work the artist has left off suggesting anything about the land, and here depicts something like the cosmic dust all around. The rhythms of the repeated abstract shapes and lines dance in the air and the whole picture is an internalized thought about connecting with the world.

(image above, "Wild Vegetation," Late June-July 2, 1889 Reed pen, pen, brush, and ink on wove paper, 47.1 x 62.4 cm (18-1/2 x 24-5/8 in.))

The Met show has several examples of Van Gogh's paintings interspersed with the drawings. In a way it does the paintings a disservice. He's such a beautiful draftsman with a fine touch in these drawings. And it makes me think Van Gogh's pen is mightier than his brush.

van gogh, vincent

permanent link   roberta 8:37 AM
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Posted by libby

There's so much going on in photography now from some local practitioners of the craft. Here's some of what's happening:

-- Kate Ware, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's curator of photographs who brought us the wonderful Mavericks of Color show still up at the PMA, is speaking today at 6 at The Print Center on the significance of photography in Philadelphia during 1960s and 1970s. R.S.V.P.

-- E.C. (Ted) Adams' show "Stills from the Cinematic Street," based on Adams' books of B&W photography, "Between Cracks: Philadelphia Photographs" and "Bleak Is Beautiful," is up at Kelly Writer's House until Nov. 22. The show is curated by Peter Schwarz.

-- Susan Fenton has an exhibit, "Fatima," at SchmidtDean Gallery that continues her meditation on bodies and their relationship to objects and clothes and culture. This series also brings up Robert Mapplethorpe and race issues. Up until Nov. 26 (image by Fenton from "Fatima")..

-- Laurence Salzmann has an exhibit, "De Noche - By Night," of his photographs from Argentina at Haverford College's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery from October 28 to November 23, 2005.

-- Paul Cava has an exhibit, "Children of Adam," at the wonderful Gallery 339 to Nov. 27.fenton, susan

permanent link   libby 12:19 PM
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Posted by libby

To have a show featuring Philadelphia realists that rises above genre is what Seraphin Gallery dared to aim for, and partially they succeeded. The "New Philadelpha Realists" includes work from Edgar Jerins and Jas Knight that seems fresh and interesting, all be it directly in the academy tradition (image, Jerins' "Adam Bomb, Claire Darian & Blaze," 60" x 103").

Knight's two portraits, one of a woman dressed with a hat, and one of a young girl, bring to the canvas clear-eyed images of people and how they project themselves (plus the artist sneaks in a little commentary of his own on the side). And then there's the plus of having African Americans as the subject matter of a painting style that has rarely included them, except in commissioned portraits ("Woman with Headdress, 12" x 16", oil on canvas).

The title of "Woman with Headdress" gives Knight away as more than a mere observer. After all, the headdress looks more or less like a pillbox hat that, with the Chanel-style jacket, calls up Jackie O. The painting also calls up memories of Matisse. The subject's hair is as much the issue as the hat. There's a funny tension between propriety and sexual allure that makes this painting interesting.


His other painting, "The Child," which is 78" high (i.e. an enormous painting), shows a young girl in a beautiful, ballerina-style dress, its tulle layers depicted with delicate changeant pinks and blues. Here it's the child's sore, rubbed toes that startle and raise questions about the lies of self-image and beauty (left, "The Child," 78" x 60", oil on canvas).

Neither of these paintings shows someone who is completely comfortable, yet he allows them each their projected persona. As portraits, they seem just right. As art, the also seem just right--a mix of great technique and beauty with some concept to boot.

The two enormous charcoal drawings from Edgar Jerins, who won a 2004 Pollock-Krasner award and recently got a favorable notice from Ken Johnson in the New York Times (see post) feature groups of people who seem completely self-absorbed, symbolized in one by a pregnant woman, hand on belly, thinking internal thoughts and in the other by a girl playing with an electronic device (below, "The Artist's Family (We Have to Move), 60" x 96").

The gritty social milieu and narratives coupled with the ambitious size and classic multiple figures a la "Raft of the Medusa"/"Liberty Guiding the People" grandeur of classic multiple figures make for images I want to see more of. I love the handling of light and dark, and the sheer loopiness of creating a drawing of this scale in charcoal.

The people seem real, the milieus real, the choices of subjects right on target for who we are and what we're really like--we're all about ourselves.

Others in the show are Morgan Craig with architectural spaces devoid of people and Catherine Prescott, with portraits and a nude.

In the back at Seraphin, some gouache landscapes by Elizabeth Wilson squeeze lots of sky and land into 4.5 x 4.5 inches, suggesting snapshots of my trip abroad--classic Philadelphia school paintings.jerins, edgar/na>knight, jas

permanent link   libby 10:38 PM
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Posted by roberta

This week's Weekly includes my short review of Ben Woodward's solo at Spector and a short Q&A with Melissa Kramer of the Bookmobile/Mobilivre, the Space 1026 affiliate, now celebrating its fifth year of travelling the world instructing people about alternative book making. Here's the link to the art page and below is the copy with some added photos.

Custom Woodward



It's no secret that I'm a fan of Ben Woodward's art, now on view at Spector.

I was hooked in 1999 when I saw the then-25-year-old artist's four-color screen-printed posters of imaginary lost dogs and cats on boarded-up buildings and walls all over the city. Woodward's wheatpasted urban-beautification project was wild, cheery and wonderful, and I've been writing about his work ever since.

[Ed. note: Woodward is one of the founders of Space 1026. For a great picture of the Space family, now celebrating its 8th year, check this. I don't know who took the pic, maybe Space photographer Adam Wallacavage?]

The artist no longer plasters his art on the street, and his gallery work-printmaking and gouache-painting cartoons in the manner of Indian miniatures-has been getting stronger and bolder. In his third solo with Spector the artist bursts through to a new level of maturity, delicacy and clarity of vision.

(top image is "Now You Do Me" detail)

Woodward's craftsmanship is superb. He paints on wood panels (cigar boxes, found wood and hollow doors that he saws into smaller pieces). His "every blade of grass must show" depiction coupled with the stylized body gestures and a new bright palette evokes pages from an exotic children's storybook, one with sad-sack characters and a message about love and loss. Think Snuffy without his mom or Big Bird with a hangover. Some artists flee from putting too much of themselves in their work. Woodward, now a dad, nails his heart right up there on the wall in works that are achingly lovely.



The artist's trademark animal-human hybrids have furry skin that unzips like clothing and tops that come off and can be traded in what looks like a game of musical heads. The crew strikes iconic poses, some of them religious, as in A Time to Share, which evokes the Pieta. As with the stylized Indian miniature paintings the artist so loves, the characters interact with each other with a delicacy of touch that's not of this world. (image is "Wouldn't it be Awesome" detail)



In fact, everybody seems to live on a mountaintop so bare that there's nothing but these creatures and their bird friends. The message is clear: Focus on your family, focus on yourself, get your head straight, work on your heart and be with each other.
(image is "Time to Share" detail)

It's a message both very close to Sesame Street and, with its undertow of sorrow, as far away as Hades.

[Ed note: the following sentence didn't make it into the paper but I'm inserting it back in here.]

Laura Ledbetter's debut landscape paintings with tiny 3-D outcroppings in the back gallery are fine.

"Ben Woodward: LMNOP"
Through Nov. 11. Spector Gallery, 510 Bainbridge St. 215.238.0840.



sketches
[Ed note: The little airstream is going on one year hiatus after this -- a long overdue vacation for it and for the collective who love it and take care of it. They invite you to their 5-year anniversary celebration at the Hazel House, 4634 Hazel Ave. in West Philadelphia. "Dance Party. No cover. Bookmobile open 9-11pm. Cake at 11!"]


Bookmobile/Mobilivre, a library of handmade books and zines in an Airstream trailer, has logged more than 65,000 miles and visited more than 150 cities in its five years of existence. It'll be parked outside Space 1026 (its Philadelphia home) this Friday. From an email conversation with Bookmobile collective member Melissa Kramer:

How long were you on the road with the Bookmobile? Were there any surprises along the way?



"I toured for two weeks this year. Everyone always wants to know what we're selling. It's harder than you might think to convince people our main goal isn't to make money off of them. Touring with the Bookmobile debunks assumptions about a 'typical' audience. I've seen the trailer go almost completely unnoticed parked outside of an infoshop or independent bookstore, only to be swarmed on a rural college campus where their art building could fit inside their stadium 100 times over."
(image is Kramer (left) and Jen Corace outside the Bookmobile somewhere in Arkansas. Photo by Rick Valenzuela)

Do you make books?

"I tend to make books with a specific purpose in mind. I made a day planner for a friend that I'm really happy with, and I'm about to start work on a cookbook project."

What's your feeling on the scrapbooking movement?

"I think people are frightened by the level of separation that digitization puts between themselves and their ephemera, their memories, their written words. Scrapbooks, handmade books, zines, etc., can fulfill a visceral need for tangible ideas and tactile sensations in a way that digital media often doesn't."
kramer, melissa
woodward, ben
valenzuela, rick

permanent link   roberta 9:02 AM
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Posted by roberta

Cecilia Paredes emailed me at the Weekly not too long ago. The Peruvian-born artist, now living in Philadelphia, wanted to tell me about her pieces included in the Venice Biennale. Local artist in the Venice Biennale? How's that?

One of the images Paredes sent along was an installation shot of one of the Venice pieces. It was of a large photo printed on acetate and installed in a window of what looked like a church. The photo depicts an enormous human-headed gargoyle as if ready to spring forward, a rather disturbing image both pagan and somehow holy. I suggested we have coffee so I could learn more.



The artist is a new arrival in Philadelphia, having moved here after her marriage a year and a half ago to Jay Reise, a composer based at the University of Pennsylvania (he's president of Orchestra 2001 and Paredes told me he just won a prestigious Aaron Copeland Fund for Music grant.)

She explained that her art is performance-based and that the gargoyle was a photo of her, made up in grey face and with sculpted hair. The idea behind the work relates to the idea of mystical metamorphosis -- the union of humans and animals in a dream consciousness we all share. I am reminded of the magical realism of Frida Kahlo and others which have an internal logic based on poetry and the senses and not so much on the hard knocks of day to day existence.

Paredes poses for the camera using costumes and props and makeup that transform her. The work is seen only in photographs not in the "real" world. She told me that her transformation often delivers her to the point of tears as she poses in crouches that twist and turn her body. But the tears come not just from body fatigue -- how long can you hold some of these poses before cramping up, ask yourself -- but from the attempt to immerse herself into the other being she's conjuring for the camera. Empathy for the world's lesser creatures might seem to us in the west like misplaced empathy but for someone on a journey into the dream world which is beyond ego, all creatures are worthy, and without empathy there is nothing. (You can see more of her works on her website.)



Paredes works in what she considers a collaboration with her photographers. She's worked with three photographers in three different locations, Lima, San Jose, Costa Rica, and now in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia she's working now with Alfred Pfaff, semi-retired, age 70. She's thrilled Pfaff agreed to work with her. "He listens. He's not in a hurry. And he made it affordable for me," she said about the respected Philadelphia-area photographer. She's working now on a new series. Not demons, she said, although fierce they will be: Medusa, Hydra and Pandora. (image is "Papagallo," a piece also shown at the Venice Biennale. The feathers are parrot feathers from a bird sanctuary in Costa Rica. The sanctuary harvested the dropped feathers from the grounds of the complex. )

Paredes, who shows her work with Miami's Diana Lowenstein Gallery, recently returned from Miami where she was preparing for the gallery's booth in Art Basel Miami opening Dec. 4.



I asked her about her roots as an art maker. Did she come from the theater? The work is highly theatrical and even though the performance is private (between her, the photographer and the camera) it is indeed a performance requiring her to get into character and transform her body into something other than what it naturally is.

"I was formed as an artist in the traditional way. So I know all the disciplines. I have done some painting. I consider myself a drawer, a sculptor. And now I transform myself into animals -- fantastic animals.

(image is "Curious little fox")

Right now in fact she's studying filmmaking, enrolled in a course at Penn taught by Paul Buck. "It involves a lot of computers" she said, clearly smitten with the possibilities for her art. She was propelled into the world of video by seeing several pieces in Venice, one by Panamanian filmmaker Brooke Alfaro, "Aria" and another by Donna Conlon -- "Coexistencia," that one involving an army of leaf carrier ants who have been outfitted to parade in line in ant fashion with the flags of the world on their backs instead of leaves. It was videotaped at close range and with sound (crunching twigs etc).



I asked Paredes about doing her body-shifting photos. She says she gets herself into the spirit of the animal. It's difficult and requires an enormous amount of focus. For the armadillo piece she used 3 armadillo skins and then she Photoshopped the pattern on the rest of her body. (image is the armadillo piece)

She thought one time she would like to be a snake to exorcise her fear of them. "Snakes go under sand so I bought 300 lbs of sand and buried myself under the sand.'



The oddest photo in her ouervre is one that involves not an animal but a flower -- the aristolochea which she said, is "a perfect hermaphrodite, and that's my focus -- transgression." (image is the flower piece. She told me the flower is a fly trap but not carnivorous. It traps the insect for pollination purposes then expels it once the pollination is done.)





Paredes handed me a catalog of her work and we went through the pages looking at the various animals.

Of the deer, she said. "That's from being in Canada. There was no Photoshop to do the eyes. The eyes pop just from the skin being so dark." (image left)



About the shrimp image (right) : "It's with lotus leaves from Vietnam. I collect things from my travels and re-use them."

I asked her about her connection with animals and she explained that she grew up in Lima and each year they spent three months at the shore. "I spent summers looking at little shells. I wanted to be a fish. Now I'm trying to be the fish I once was," she said.



About the heart (left) : "It's a sheep heart. The closest in form and shape to a human being."

"The dragonflies were the first," she said, meaning it was the first time she had applied animal parts (or insect parts) to her body.
(right)



"It was to declare that I am recognizing that I have wings and I can fly. For me these were very important and the beginning of everything."

"My career started in 1996 or 1997. In 1996 I went to the Havana Biennial. It was very important for me. The reason I started so late (she was born in 1950) was because I was a gypsy, living all over the world. When I settled in Costa Rica (some 20 years ago) I settled on a body of work. I am working 10 hours a day as an artist. I've been drawing (all my life) but not until then did I feel "this is it."



Paredes' works are beautiful and eerie. They take you on a little journey into yourself where your real world experience of things like dragonflies, deer and octopi comes up against a dream world that feels true even when not real. Paredes' gestures in her works are selfless, in spite of her use of self as vehicle to express her art. What she's tapped into by merging her ego and body with that of our animal, vegetable and underwater friends is a great collective unconscious desire to merge and be one with the world.

Paredes is a quiet woman with an easy smile and an earnest quality. But her work is full of a kind of fierceness you find in one who knows herself and feels her subject deeply. Welcome to Philadelphia, Cecilia!
(image is Paredes' "Octopus Hands," a photo I think is one of her most beautiful, edgy and evocative.)
paredes, cecilia

permanent link   roberta 7:19 AM
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Posted by roberta

kleinheartswirl
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Ron Klein is installing a solo exhibit at the DCCA in Wilmington which opens Nov. 4 (to Feb. 26). Klein, who shows his work at Pentimenti and has installed some amazing inflatable objects outside in Bird Park is all excited because he'll have a big space to install his very large pieces.

When he sent us these images I sat up and smiled. So simple, so right. We at artblog are huge fans of Klein's art and will be making the trip to Wilmington soon to see the show. I think these wall works, simple icons of love and unity, made with seed pods and little man-made objects collected by the artist on his travels, are tremendous. My flickr site has two more photos he sent us.

klein, ron

permanent link   roberta 9:11 AM
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Posted by libby

We got this correction from Tendai Johnson about his unusual upbringing (see post):

My parents moved to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in 1960 as a married couple, where I was born and raised. My father was an artist/educator and my mother was a medical doctor. I consider myself born in Zimbabwe and not Rhodesia (the latter being a temporarily named country by the colonial white oppressive regime).

My family was involved with Zimbabwe's liberation movement for the country's independence from white colonial rule (similar to South Africa's apartheid system). We were deported by Ian Smith's government in '75. Therefore, we did not "flee with the white folks when the government changed" - in fact, we were in Zambia at the time of independence and were invited back by the new government of Zimbabwe. I came to the US in 1984 (at the age of 20) for college and attended the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia - where I received my MFA.

The only reason why I feel it so important to correct this bio, is that our circumstances were completely contrary to what was written and to the general "white" experience in Zimbabwe. It is embarrassing to imagine readers of this artblog who might be well aware of political circumstances in southern Africa or who might be from this region assuming that I am a white racist "Rhodie," who fled with the "white folks" during that time period.

--Tendai Johnsonjohnson, tendai

permanent link   libby 8:09 PM
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Posted by roberta

Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
[First published in 1845]

(with super excellent full moon photographs by Cate Fallon taken over the city of New York, fall, 2005.)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "Tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,"

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
"Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
fallon, cate

permanent link   roberta 3:52 PM
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Posted by roberta

matthewsridglea
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

artblog pal and contributor Rob Matthews emailed us the news that his triptych drawing "Assumption at Ridglea," the big piece in his solo exhibit at Gallery Joe last year was purchased by PAFA. We are tooooo excited about this!! The piece, graphite on paper, 48 x 54 inches, is a knock-out of draftsmanship and content and I hope the Academy can put the work on display soon so we can all see it again. I love an institution that collects from its local pool of talent. And PAFA's been doing an excellent job: Randall Sellers, the 2004 PPC portfolio, Jim Houser are all part of the institution's collection now. Congratulations, everyone!

matthews, rob

permanent link   roberta 7:55 AM
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Posted by roberta

momamurraylobby
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

As you know from Libby's post on the fabulous Van Gogh drawing exhibit, we snuck up to New York this weekend. In addition to the Met, we went to MoMa for the Elizabeth Murray retrospective. And we stopped by the Affordable Art Fair to check out the emerging talent in that venue. The Murray show was great: the work is formidable, sexy, angry, giddy and always dark. And the AAF was very interesting. We ran into some Philly friends exhibiting there, like Bridgette Mayer and Christine Pfister (Pentimenti) and will have more on all as the week progresses. This is just a Monday morning sneak-peek. (image is Murray's "Dis Pair" 1889-90 in the lobby outside the show)

murray, elizabeth

permanent link   roberta 7:16 AM
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Posted by libby

"And the big news from artblog is, Van Gogh is good," said Steve, making fun of us because we really really liked the Van Gogh show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (yup, we made it to New York, finally) (left, "Harvest in Provence," 1888).

OK, so the excellence of Van Gogh is no surprise.

But the show makes a timely pairing with Martin Scorsese's amazing Bob Dylan movie that aired a few weeks ago on public television. The exhibit and the movie show two remarkable journeys. Each man seems not especially talented to those around him when he starts out, Dylan seemingly an ordinary musician and Van Gogh an ordinary guy who doesn't even know the fundamentals of drawing and doesn't have finesse of touch.

Both of them were autodidacts who plunged themselves full force into the material they wanted to master, looking, copying, listening, doing whatever it took to absorb everything around them (right, "Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer," 1888).

And both of them began producing in a short period of time enormous amounts of work that ultimately went in directions no one could have predicted.


The Van Gogh show lays bare the development of his genius. To me, this is the crux of the story told in 113 works, mostly drawings, which lay bare the mental and mechanical progress from nice landscapes about the vitality of nature to roiling landscapes about the vitality of nature. Van Gogh develops strategies to compensate for his drawing "fist"--short multiple lines to define a large volume and space--and eventually ends up with a varied, inspired variety of turbulent markmaking that brings new ways of drawing to a craft that's been around as along as people (left, "Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum," 1888).

You also see him drawing figures, starting with nice drawings, and ending with iconic shapes that speak to the amazing portraits of Mme. and M. Gachet. You also see some paintings that seem less than amazing and ultimately, the paintings with swirling brush strokes that make him famous.

But the drawings are not just steps to paintings; they are amazing works of art in and of themselves. In the course of his brief career, Van Gogh made more than 1,000 drawings (right, "Cottage Garden," 1888).

The work he created was impossible to predict. It poured out of him in just 10 years; the height of his powers lasted only two years. In that brief time, he pushed the edges of the crafts of painting and drawing. Dylan's most productive period of ground-breaking music follows a similar trajectory.



My one regret is that I didn't see the Jacob van Ruisdael landscapes at the PMA first. Van Ruisdael's metaphoric approach to landscape and its spiritual nature is father to Van Gogh's, and some of the use of space is similar. But Van Gogh's nature is about vitality, van Ruisdael's more about mortality (left, "Cypresses," 1889).

Time and genius are not all that kind to either Van Gogh or Dylan. In the end, Van Gogh breaks down and ultimately commits suicide. And Dylan turns into one strange dude. The problem they both faced--Where's a genius to go next?van gogh, vincent

permanent link   libby 9:26 PM
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Posted by roberta

Texas artist Paul Jones is one of my flickr buddies. I've been watching him put up image after image of his paintings recently each one more interesting and enigmatic. He's great with portraits, his colors are bright and engaging, and his dogs, well they're a tough crowd whispering secrets and having meetings in the forest at night. Spooky, cartoonish and just this side of outsider art, the work intrigued me and I wanted to know more.



So I wrote the artist to ask if he'd answer some questions. He said yes and we did an email Q&A. His answers are smart and interesting and I have to say that while I have not seen these paintings in the real world I hope to see them in person some day. For larger views of Jones' art go to the artist's flickr site. And for more behind the scenes, check out his website which includes a memoir short story called "The Dance" and also has a fun links page where I discovered scribbler an interactive drawing site where you draw a simple picture with your mouse and push a button and the program etch-a-sketches your drawing. It's a site I could easily become addicted to.

RF You are a natural cartoonist and I mean that as a compliment. Have you always made cartoons? Did you make comic books when you were a teen (or pre-teen)? If so did they have stories or were they one-panel cartoons?



PJ I have always drawn cartoons. I used to love Mad Magazine as a kid and was a big fan of Don Martin. I used to try to copy his style and draw all over my folders and the bunks at summer camp. I realized early that people liked my drawings, especially if they were pictures of the teacher or some kid and so I used my skills for evil. I was always drawing caricatures of people and usually they were not very flattering. My first commissions were in junior high when I would sell pictures of Mickey Mouse flipping off the Ayatollah, for a quarter.

(this image, like most of the images from Jones' flickr site, is untitled)

I tried some story cartoons about a kid in my class I disliked that always ended up with him dying. I would put them in his locker. He would draw some about me as retaliation. I was a complete moron. His were really good.

RF Let's get some technical details: What do you paint with.. I'm guessing acrylics is that right? Your colors are so intense tho I'm wondering if it's gouache or something. Do you paint on canvas or on wood panel? And how big do you typically work. I know I saw a photo with a painting on the floor leaning against a wall. That was big but was that typical?



PJ I do paint with acrylics, and I paint pretty large. Most of my paintings are at least 4’X4’ and some are 6 or 7 feet long or tall. I have a few even larger. I have done some temporary wall murals-one for the Greater Denton Arts Council, one for a jazz festival. I did a backdrop for a jazz festival we had at Jarvis Last year that was about 8’x16’. As far as my normal paintings, some are done on canvas and some on wood or masonite. I use a lot of acrylic house paint I buy at the hardware store that they mixed for someone and they didn’t like. I can get an entire gallon for less than a tiny tube of Liqitex and I can get some weird colors that I normally wouldn‘t think up.

(image is "Girl")

RF Some of the abstract works remind me a little of Philip Guston -- just the shapes and colors although the space you suggest is not a landscape so much as a woven patterned rug or a puzzle. What artists do you like? Living or dead.



PJ Well, thank you. I do like Philip Guston’s work and have been told that before. I really wasn’t too familiar with his work until I saw a show last year at the Fort Worth Modern. I would probably say my biggest influences, or at least the artists who inspire me the most would be Jim Pace and Derrick White. Jim Pace was my professor at UT Tyler and does fabulous work. It is hard to get out of there without seeing his hand on your own work. I went to UT Tyler because I had seen his work at a show at UNT and wanted to meet him. I am not a stalker.

(image is one of the abstract works and below, called "Dead Guy" is a work that looks Mexican day of the Dead influenced))



Derrick is a guy that I have been friends with since forth grade. We grew up together in a Dallas suburb, drew together and decided to major in art at the same time. We took an Art appreciation class at junior college under Randy Brodnax and we both wanted to become him. Derrick teaches art at Tyler Junior College now and lives about a mile away from me. His process has really influenced me. I used to me more of a planner. I would have everything worked out before I ever started painting. Derrick’s spontaneity and improvisational approach has inspired much of my abstract work. We work together frequently.

I also enjoy stuff by Gary Baseman, Rick Catlow, Jeff Soto, David Bates, Jim Nutt, Terry Winters and the face jugs of Carl Block.

RF Tell me about dogs. Do you own one? Grow up with one? They are such characters and they seem to be kind of gangsters up to no good. The "Convening Tree" painting (image below) is such an eerie work. What does "convening tree" mean?



PJ I did grow up with dogs but I do not own one now. My last dog was probably my favorite. Her name was Audry and she was a Chocolate lab. I first got her when I lived out in the woods on some acreage. The woods in East Texas are pretty, but at night they can get a little scary. She had a big black friend and they would run off together every night into the woods. I always wondered what they did out there in the dark. That is where that painting came from. I thought they might have some secret meeting place. Perhaps they performed some arcane dog rituals. She would come home dragging a horse leg, or with a fresh bullet wound or a snake bite. She lived to be about 14. I took her back to the woods to live with my Dad a couple of years ago while we were moving and she took off one night and never came back. Kind of Creepy!



RFYour portraits are very edgy and intense. a lot of them seem to be you I think. They're also a little like religious icons. Does religion play any part in them? Are you reacting against it maybe? I love them all but I am most intrigued by the one of the chef with two black birds on his fingers. Can you tell me a little about that one?

PJ Actually, none of my portraits are me. I am not interesting looking enough to appear in a painting. ( Unless, of course, you find devastatingly handsome interesting).

I am influenced by religious icons- by laminas or retablos, by candles with saints on them at the grocery store, by fundamentalist religious tracs, by doomsday literature, by religious folk art… I like the care people use when painting a devotional object. I like the ritualistic refining process, the polish and contemplation put into them, especially if they are out of proportion or perverted in some way. And yet they still spent all this time on the refinement and devotion, when the whole underlying structure is flawed.

As for my own views on religion… I grew up in a strict religious household where I felt that I was always in jeopardy of accidentally doing something that would land me in Hell.


My senile great, great aunt lived with us and every time my parents left, she would come out of her cave with a Bible and a flyswatter (the kind made with metal screen) and inform my brothers and I, that we were going to Hell. We would cry and then she would slap us a few times with the flyswatter and go back to her room to watch professional basketball. As an adult realized that perhaps, I am not quite as hell-bound as I grew up believing. I now feel more grace.

"The Chef" was a painting I originally did because I thought it would look nice in my kitchen. I didn’t realize that most people don’t find crow very appetizing.


RF I love your colors. Is there a Mexican influence, or folk art influence?



I love Mexican Culture, food, style, etc.. Growing up in South Dallas, you can‘t really help being influenced . I love the culture and the colors. Mexican colors Rock!

PJ I have arranged to install my mandala work in a taqueria I frequent way too often.

I also really like folk art. I like the immediacy and truth and the distortion and the compulsion.

RF Can I get some information on you? Like how old are you? You said you teach art at Jarvis Christian College...what in particular do you teach? painting, design, drawing...all of that? Is there an art major at the college? and are the students making work that's like yours (I imagine not). Not yet. What's your relationship to religion? Were you raised in a religious household?

PJ Well, I’m 38. I’m married. I have a 7 year old son and a month old daughter. Jarvis Christian is an HBCU in Hawkins Texas. It’s about 30 minutes from Tyler, and they offer art as a minor. I am the only art teacher (Assistant professor), and this is my third year to teach painting, drawing, design, art appreciation, art for elementary school teachers and art history. I enjoy the job. I like the students and the faculty and I have noticed a lot of progress in the student’s work and enthusiasm towards art.

RF You told me in an email that you're working on a "series of radially balanced paintings I call A.D.D. mandalas, because of my limited attention span and zero patience." Can you tell me about them a little?



PJ My new work is a series of mandala type images. I have been fascinated by the sand mandalas made by Tibetan monks. I appreciate all of the time, energy, precision, spirituality and ceremony that goes into them. In doing my own mandalas, I have really been made aware or my own impatience, lack of attention, sloth, shallowness and lack of any refinement or skill. It’s been a great uplifting experience!

RF Can you tell me about your process a little. Do you sketch first in a sketchbook and then go to the painting or do you go straight to work on a painting without doing a sketch? How long does it take for you to complete a painting? in terms of hours or days (or weeks or months)

PJ In my figurative work, I used to me more of a planner. I would have everything worked out before I ever started painting. It got kind of boring. I now am much more spontaneous and reactionary. My abstract works are almost like a bunch of performances, that have been revised and edited down until I feel they are finished. I now look at painting like jazz. I love improvisation and rhythm. I still will sketch before some works, but I am more open to surprise.

Some of my paintings have been done in a period of a few hours and some have taken weeks to evolve. There is no magic formula.

RF There are 40 images in your art set on flickr. What time period do they date from?

PJ The pics on flickr are from the mid-nineties to the present. Sort of a greatest hits collection with some of the really good songs missing.

RF On your website paulyworld you've got a short story. Is it yours? And i love all the links, especially the scribbler. Where did you find it?



PJ The story is mine, and it’s true. My friends and I have used personal message boards to communicate for years. Feel free to contribute! A lot of my writing came from weird posts I would make on those. That is where I discovered that I really enjoyed writing humor. One Christmas, a friend had all of the posts bound in a book. It’s still in my bathroom.

I found the Scribbler while looking for art on the web.

RF Anything else you'd like to mention that I didn't touch on?

PJ I really thank you for this opportunity. I hope that you can use some of this stuff. Sometimes I go a little overboard. It was really fun answering the questions. I had never thought about some of the questions before.

(bottom image is a scribbler re-interpretation of a drawing I made earlier today.)
jones, paul

permanent link   roberta 6:17 PM
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Posted by roberta

resnikoffjefferson
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Or is it loving the present, questioning the ghost? Isaac Resnikoff's exhibit "We Run out of Continent" at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery is definitely about love -- for objects, for history, for our weird and wacky country. For that reason and for many others, I love it back. The artist here has made an exhibit both delicious and coherent and, in a city full of patriot-mania, he's produced a kind of anti-gift shop (that's also a gift shop!) -- a visual essay on our American roots and icons -- each one a hero or villain or maybe both -- depending on your point of view.

(image is Resnikoff's relief carving of Thomas Jefferson which about makes the show for me. It's subtle and serio-comical like everything else here)

Libby did such a great essay on the show I will refer you to it (see post) and say I think she got it right. The piece is about consumerism as well as about accomodating ourselves to our history. That's something we should all be thinking about in a culture fueled by hero-worship and consumerism where the motto seems to be "buy now think later." This is a show that looks back but is all about the future.


I don't have a whole lot more to add but will share a few things Gallerist John Ollman told me when I stopped by the show last week.

Namely, that the artist produced this drawing (left) before he put the show together. He had a very clear vision of what he wanted to produce and by George Washington he did it, almost entirely the way he envisioned. That is the kind of straight-ahead thinking that comes when you actually have a vision -- as opposed to a concept or an idea.




I've said before that Resnikoff is a consumate object maker. Here, too, his object-making is heartfelt, straightforward and accomplished. All the works but one -- the whiskey jug (which is clay) are carved or sawed wood objects. They're minimally painted because it's not really about the paint, it's about the idea of wood and the idea of connection between substances old and new, natural and unnatural. And Resnikoff has a great feel for his material. Whether he's carving flip flops out of wood, or a rifle and bullets or a computer mouse pad, the artist seems to be in the great tradition of visionary carvers. (image is "The Congregation, a group of Shaker benches on which sit the beautifully-carved old and new objects)



One of the most ambitious carvings is one you can't even really see -- the Old Patriot Ghost. The life-size figure is covered in a white cloth that is a map of the United States the artist stitched together with black thread. I went up close and looked at the fingers of the hands. The carving is so delicate, the gesture so fine I wanted to lift the veil and study it. I didn't. To me this is the piece that epitomizes the show -- its vision of the past chasing us is both right on target and wonderfully comical. The suggestion of the white wedding gown trail following the ghost adds another level of comic love and displaced passion to the whole thing. (image is the Old Patriot Ghost)




Ollman told me that Resnikoff's original idea for a show was to pay homage to the art and artists represented by the gallery in its 35-year history. But the project transmogrified into its current self instead. I think Resnikoff could do a great project riffing on the Fleisher-Ollman artists and I'd love to see him carve some of Bill Traylor's characters or take a crack at translating Bruce Pollock's trippy works into 3-D emanations. That could be amazing. This exhibit is up to Nov. 12. Don't miss it.

(image is the postcard for the show in which the artist is sawing his way through the continent. I thought the shot nicely echoes the dress-up artist Rodney Graham in his show across town at the ICA.)

Tomo in Exile

In the gallery's wing space out front near the desk, is a side dish of sweet works by Takatomo Tomita. Conceptual sculpture, prints, and drawings that are explorations all over the map, the works are kind of like the Japanese-born artist himself, who, due to passport problems, is now outside the US and hoping for a quiet and uneventful return.

The artist's National Geographic Magazine "carvings" in which he translates the covers of the travel magazine into new musings on the world, are delicate, playful, and -- in the context of the uneasy traveller in the world -- poignant.


(image left is one of the National Geographic pieces)



Tomo's book of drawings on buff stationary is also imbued with the young artist's solitary musings on being and on being alone in the world. I flipped through the pages and loved the elegant doodles and every so often I stopped dead before some image with words that was almost too much to bear.

(image is one of the drawings from the sketchbook. The words say "Where To Go")

The artist's big screenprint, based on a photo of found grafitti and translated into two large prints is also a high point. The piece is elegant and also conveys the artist's longing to figure things out and being just this side of understanding.
resnikoff, isaac
tomita, takatomo

permanent link   roberta 9:19 AM
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