Sundown

Some images and video from our recent group show in Portland. The show was at 18k Gold Tone

Starmaps

A better image of some work I posted a couple months ago.  This triptych was chosen to be in a group show this summer at the NewSpace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon.  More information on the dates of that show later. Each of these images are 16"x20".

new stuff

Some new work.  These are 24"x31" xerox printouts with the yellow area made using a highlighter pen.  Like some of my previous work I'm interested in using very specific materials in a way that is both reflexive of their traditional use as well as ambiguous/cryptic with regard to the subject matter depicted.  These are very much a work in progress.  

Postscript NY

New York was fantastic, really.  I saw more art than I probably will ever see in an eight day period.  To be honest I don't think I could handle seeing that much art that quickly again, but maybe.  Anyway, its been a while since the trip and I'm still getting things out of it.  It has been a long process of unpacking all of that imagery and it has certainly fueled a lot of my own artwork over the past month.  Seeing so much art and such a variety of it really opened my eyes and helped me locate the type of work that I am currently making and the type of work that I would like to make in the future.  My favorite place has to be Dia:Beacon followed closely by Sculpture Center.  Both of these places show considerable, almost religious respect to the artists that they exhibit.  Dia:Beacon is certainly the zen garden of art museums and the train ride up on a late winter morning is a beautiful experience in itself.  Go there!  Lots of other great experiences including fun times with all the kids from the group and a couple of cool french girls too!  

The Armory Show!

Well the Armory show was a hoot!  Such a concentrated view of the contemporary art market is seldom available and it was amazing to see the art-selling machine all greased up and running at full speed.  Gursky, Koons, Hirst, you name they had it and I have to say I liked that.  After running all over the city looking at art it was nice to see a lot of stuff in one place under one roof.  The whole market frenzy side of things didn't really bother me either to be honest.  The booths were well organized and I was able to get a good look at the stuff I liked - which included a solo booth by Martin Creed that was fantastic, a solo booth of Colby Bird and a solo booth of Hans Schabus.  All three of these guys had great stuff that was really interesting and carefully arranged and displayed.  

WACK! at PS1

WACK! is a survey of landmark 60's and 70's feminist art that was recently on view at MOMA's PS1 in Long Island City.  It was a large show made up of many examples artwork that coincided with what is often termed the "first wave" of feminism. The decision to present this work in a large survey format is interesting and there are a number ways to interpret the significance of this decision in light of the developments in feminism over the last four decades.  Personally I think it's important to recognize and acknowledge how revolutionary much of this art was during its time.  Although much of the work seems overly direct compared to feminist art made today - and I am not sure that there are many artists working today that explicitly call themselves "feminist artists" - it forces one to re-examine the idea of art with truly revolutionary goals.  Where is that type of art today?  Have we completely lost the ability to make overtly political works of art?  Certainly many would say yes, or at least that feminist issues are more difficult to identify and combat these days.  Many artists have abandoned the critical-oppositional stance in favor of one that does not pretend to operate outside the systems of oppression that they critique.  Think of the paintings of Lisa Yuskavage, for instance. In any case, it is refreshing to see such direct work today and it reminds me of the importance in acknowledging the powerful political voice that is available to art at certain times in history.

Landscape Pages

Some new stuff I'm trying out.  An exploration into the connection between xeroxed books and the landscape.  Lines, linear, movement, duration...stuff like that.  Very new, very unresolved.

Nine Hundred Foot Drop, Marked

Here's a new piece that I've recently installed in the Laverne Krauss Gallery at the University of Oregon.  This is an in progress shot but the installation looks more or less the same. The images are each 30"x40" and they are positives of black and white photographic contact prints that have been spray painted with orange marking paint.

Tom Burr at Sculpture Center

Along with Dia: Beacon I would have to say that Sculpture Center in Queens was one of the most interesting places to look at art.  Like Dia: Beacon, Sculpture center is committed to giving their artists great freedom in designing and installing their exhibitions which results in what I would call more complete statements.  If a gallery show is a sentence Sculpture Center is a paragraph.  Certainly this is the case with the Tom Burr show currently on view.  Burr's work is informed by a number of influences including literature, fashion, and the history of sculpture.  The central area of the show is devoted to three important figures in modernist art and culture: Chick Austin, Frank O'Hara, and Kurt Weill.  I was impressed by the way Burr is able to use such delicate arrangements and gestures to suggest meaning and history.  Particularly in the use of draped cloth, Burr is able to reference both fashion, theater and the history of drapery in sculpted form.  While his work is highly conceptual and requires a fair amount of unpacking, the elegance of the forms created with materials ranging from a straight jacket, a modernist chaise lounge and magazine clippings, create instant visual interest that allow me to consider the works more closely.  

Whitney Biennial

The biennial is a lot to wrap your head around and it goes without saying that there's going to be some work you hate and some work you really like.  If it seems like a random assortment of art styles, strategies and media then that simply reflects the reality of artistic production in America today.  Therefore, we are left with a show that is distinctive yet disparate.  I found it a bit exhausting but that may have been due to the fact that I had already been to MoMA earlier in the day.  When in New York never try to go to the Whitney and the MoMA in the same day, its murder.  But we were on a tight schedule and we had to do it.  So I came away from the biennial mostly liking work that I expected to like - Walead Beshty, James Welling, Mungo Thomson, Carol Bove.  There was a considerable amount of installation work - one of my favorites was an installation created by Phoebe Washburn that consisted of an assortment of fish aquariums outfitted with various hoses and pumps that moved Gatorade between the tanks in order to feed and grow flowers.    Mungo Thomson's Coat Check Chimes was wonderful in the way that it "bracketed" my experience of the show - greeting me on entering the museum and as I picked up my coat to leave.  The piece is made up of custom tuned hangers that are placed above the regular coat check conveyor.  As the conveyor is moved to find your coat it causes the hangers above to rattle and clang together like wind chimes.  Like much of Thomson's other work it can be read in part as a statement on emptiness and duration.  Everything that you view in the show between dropping off your coat and picking it up functions as part of the piece.  Your experience of it - how long it takes before you hear it again - is based on how long you decide to spend in the museum looking at the show. 

Color Char at MoMA

The show Color Chart currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibits an array of works that reveal a change that occurred sometime in the early to mid twentieth century during which artists began to look at color differently.  The spiritual and emotional significance was left in favor of its new industrial production and wide availability.  Artists began to deal with color in new more conceptual ways that widened our understanding of the significance of color in art and life in general.  When someone mentions color to me I often think of colors that I see in mass produced products or on T.V. or the Internet.  Many of the colors I see and use on a daily basis are completely artificial and few if any of them could be found in nature.  It seems clear to me then that we have come a long way in our understanding of color.  Just as our lives involve direct experience of nature less and less so to have our understandings of color come to change.  The colors of nature seem bland and boring when you compare them to the intense hues of a Pantone swatch book.  That being said I don't think I would prefer that everything be neon electric color.  Rather, its interesting to see how everyday color in nature looks in comparison to the new colors created for the screen or industrially produced products.  

Marc Swanson at Bellwether

Probably the first thing that one notices on viewing Marc Swanson's new show at Bellwether Gallery in Chelsea is the overwhelming variety of materials in use. From glitter, to t-shirts, to deer antlers and rhinestones, Swanson has a way of combining seemingly disparate elements into into forms that are seductive and metaphorical. The natural and the man-made rub up against one another and at times trade places. This is the case in a number of his pieces where t-shirts and underwear are treated and displayed such that they appear much closer to animal hides than underwear made in a factory. Swanson's use of glimmering rhinestones and glitter alongside unfinished wood and deer antlers again shows one how his formal talents have allowed him to bring together these different materials in a productive way. There is also a sense of some sort of ritualistic quality in the arrangement and composition of some of the pieces. The way that antlers are stacked or the pentagram forms that are repeated seem to hint at Pagan rituals and nature worship while his use of shiny man-made materials in these very pieces simultaneously pulls the viewer away from those Pagan references. I find these various sorts of dichotomies or elements of tension to be the most interesting and productive aspects of Swanson's work. While at first view one may be tempted to write off his work due to what seems like a fashionable attraction to luxurious materials, there is a lot to be gained from a closer inspection of his use of these sensitive and loaded materials.

Brian Jungen at Casey Kaplan

Brian Jungen's work deals in part with the aesthetic possibilities of globalized culture in ways that remind one of the ubiquity of western consumer goods throughout the world. Jungen's elaborate creations re-purpose typical western consumables like sneakers, sports jerseys and leather goods into works of art that reference the artistic practices of his native British Columbian Indian ancestry. In Dragonfly, 2008 Jungen has drilled thousands of small holes into the can to create an intricate design based on beading work done by Indigenous Canadian tribes. Here Jungen is referencing the landscape of the remote reservations where these tribes live by using a common part of everyday life - the jerry can. With little gas stations in these areas, the local people must rely on the jerry can to provide fuel and therefore mobility. The irony of this necessity is that the area where these tribes live is rich with oil deposits that have failed to enrich them or even contribute to more filling stations. Jungen's choice to adorn the can with holes, thereby rendering it useless, has an element of protest that is masked by the sheer beauty and intricacy of the drill work. Like much of his other work, including the woven sports jerseys also on view, Jungen is able to bring up the complex and problematic relationships between cultures in a global society while simultaneously pronouncing the possibilities for beauty and wonder.

Marcel Dzama: Even the Ghost of the Past

Currently on view at David Zwirner in Chelsea is Marcel Dzama's Even the Ghost of the Past, a richly metaphorical display of two-dimensional, three-dimensional and video work. Dzama's works are populated by a bizarre cast of characters that resemble illustrated story book characters that have been variously recontextualized and manipulated to depict scenes that are both whimsical and disturbing. In addition to works on paper he also has created a number of diorama scenes where painted ceramic figurines populate stage-like vignettes that bring to mind a narrative of some kind.

Dzama has chosen to directly reference the work of Marcel Duchamp in one of his diorama scenes entitled Even the Ghost of the Past. The piece is constructed almost identically to Duchamp's Etante donnes, 1969 in which a a brick facade and door are installed into the wall of the gallery space. Duchamp's piece is itself full of mystery given it was produced long after he had given up art for chess. Given the fact that Duchamp's piece was and remains an enigma, Dzama's recreation and modification of it can be seen as an attempt to decipher once again this strange work of art. The painstaking process of recreating much of Duchamp's original piece must have given Dzama some insight as to the possible meaning and motivations behind Duchamp's work. Dzama's modifications are limited to placing both a nude male and female in the scene, as opposed to Duchamp's solitary female nude and the inclusion of a fox behind the unconscious couple. This revised scene has a more allegorical or storybook quality that seems to offer an explanation to Duchamps piece. Moreover, Etant Donnes and Dzama's partial reconstruction of it in Even the Ghost of the Past provides a sort of precedent that allows Dzama's other diorama pieces to work within. It establishes a frame work through which to understand the entire show. This is evident in the subtle curved entry way into the darkened room where the diorama and film work can be seen. This arched entry is nearly identical to the doorway in both Etant Donnes and Even the Ghost of the Past. Therefore in proceeding through the exhibition one can imagine themselves going inside the world that had been previously restricted to the view from the peep hole.

Gerhard Richter at Dia: Beacon

First, a little about Dia: Beacon - opened in 2003, Dia: Beacon houses some of the most important works of art by conceptual and minimalist artists of the 60's and 70's. Unlike many traditional museums, Dia created its exhibition spaces, the Riggio Galleries, with particular artists in mind, giving them a large say in the display of their work when possible. Also, each gallery is devoted to a single artist which greatly enhances the experience of work. I think of Dia: Beacon as a Utopia for artists; they are totally committed fulfilling the artist's wishes and they are prepared to fund large scale and unconventional projects.

Gerhard Richter's installation at Dia, entitled Six Gray Mirrors, consists of 6 immense gray mirrors that are mounted to the walls of the gallery with steel supports, each angled downward slightly. This piece, like much of the work in Dia: Beacon appears to be an articulation of the act of looking. While the mirrors reflect the viewer and the surrounding architecture they also have a deadening effect due to their gray color. There is no infinite reflection as one would normally expect; rather, the mirrors more closely resemble large scale photographs or monochromatic painting. The gray has an odd deadening effect in that everything it does reflect seems to be embedded in its surface in a way that is very different from a traditional mirror. This should not be surprising given Richter's long interest in both the photographic image and monochromatic color palettes. By altering the scale, presentation and color of the mirrors Richter is able to comment on what the mirror is able to accomplish and what it means to look.

Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim

Using a car bomb as his point of departure, Cai has created Inopportune: Stage One, 2004, a monumental installation at his retrospective in the Guggenheim Museum. The piece, which is composed of a number of cars suspended in mid-air with colored rods of light protruding out from the car bodies, rises from the first floor up through the open atrium to the 6th floor. The first car is positioned normally at entrance lobby and each successive car rises up the atrium, tumbling in what look like individual frames from a movie clip. The final car is upright and placed on the ramp of the top floor as if nothing had ever happened. The piece is striking, beautiful and somewhat intimidating. Like much of Cai's other work this piece presents itself as spectacle ready to be consumed by the viewer. Cai's choice to make such a colorful and beautiful work about a car bomb is rather compelling. He appears to be challenging our understanding of beauty and violence, perhaps even equating the two in some way. However, despite the fact that the piece is based on a car bomb I do not see much tension in the work. Actually, for me the work is more of a piece of fantastic spectacle and beauty than a commentary on or reinterpretation of our values of beauty and violence. Inopportune: Stage One is so precisely stylized, executed and presented that any potent reference to violence is gone. I find it more entertaining than thought provoking. Although the artist may claim that the use of violence as entertainment is precisely the point, I feel that amongst the carnival like atmosphere of the retrospective there is little opportunity for the piece to be seen as a commentary on our love of beauty and violence. It simply becomes part of that world rather than standing out from it.

Pillow Fight Video

Here's some video from the pillow fight in Union Square last saturday.

Eunuchs, Candy Hats & Cannibals: A Guided Tour of the Met

Yesterday we had a brief but very interesting tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Our tour guide, whose name I cannot remember, discussed some of her favorite works from the collection including Bis Poles of the Asmat people of Irian Jaya, New Guinea. The poles were used as part of the Asmat elaborate death rituals and they were decorated with the heads of enemy tribes collected on "headhunts." I think she mentioned something about cannibalism too. More information about the poles, which are absolutely beautiful can be found here. We also learned how to tell the difference between a king and a eunuch in ancient Assyrian relief sculpture (the eunuchs don't have beards). Finally, during a discussion of Peter Brueghel the Elder's The Harvesters I noticed this strange man with a piece of candy in his hat. Fantastic! I've always wanted to know where to put my half eaten piece of fudge when I'm walking around a museum at 10 am. Now I know: On top of my head! It was Easter Sunday after all so you have to guess that there were a lot of sorry suckers who weren't nearly as clever as this dude. Think of all the hipsters with melty choco-fingers wishing they were as resourceful as this old guy. Oh, and we saw a totally amazing and insanely erotic Bernini sculpture that he executed between 1616-1617 at the age of 18. More information on that here.

Jasper Johns: Gray

While the color gray may seem like an unusual theme for a painting exhibition, the latest show of Jasper Johns work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows how a single color can be pushed beyond its traditional use in studies or sketches. Johns' use of the color gray has spanned his entire career, from the 1950's until the present. I found the two works, False Start, 1959 and Jubilee, 1959 to be the most interesting for their similarity and dramatic difference. While False Start is extremely bright and colorful, Jubilee is mute, done in monochromatic gray. Were it not for the slight differences in composition and the visible brush work Jubilee could be mistaken for a black and white photographic reproduction of False Start. However, the photograph and its properties seem to be implicated in the arrangement of these two pieces in the exhibit - they are right next to each other. What can be gained from this reference to photography? I first think of the reductive quality of the photograph as well as the opportunity it affords for meticulous study. John's gray paintings have the feeling of studies, although not in an incomplete or sketch-like sense. Rather, they are works of art that directly study and address their media - paint, ink, canvas, wood - and their physical presence before the artist. Therefore, John's use of Gray is a profound formal choice that allows him to experiment with the physical and material qualities of the work of art without letting color distract him or the viewer from the consideration of the importance of the physical attributes of his chosen media.

Pillow Fight!

This afternoon in Union Square there was a massive pillow fight. Apparently it had something to do with an anti-war protest but no one seemed to care about that. It was nuts. I ended up with feathers all over me and my clothes. Not a good day to wear black. I'll try to post some video later.

Panorammaaaaa!

So here's the view from Loftstel in Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn. Pretty sweet.

New York is Here

Arrived last night. Yee Haww!

Plans

New series. More soon.

Interiors, Exteriors

Ongoing series. Observations from inside and outside.

Interiors, Exteriors

Ongoing series. Observations from inside and outside.

Interiors, Exteriors

Ongoing series. Observations from inside and outside.

Interiors, Exteriors

Ongoing series. Observations from inside and outside.

Camouflage Test

This image marks the end of these vegetation studies for the time being. The primary goal of these last three sets of images was an extension of my earlier Lots series where I looked into manipulated forms of nature and its place the urban setting.

Cyprus Grid

Cuttings

Back!

Goodbye Tucson, hello Eugene.  Growing a beard and dreadlocks, wearing lots of hemp and protesting all while getting my MFA in Photography from the University of Oregon. Thats the plan.

Come to My Show!

Next month at the Shane House Gallery I'll be having a small solo show of my recent work.
The opening reception is Saturday January 6th from 7-10pm
218 S. 4th Ave., Tucson, AZ 85701
Located just south of 12th St. on 4th Ave.
All of you in town for the holidays should stop on by or give me a call!
Gallery hours are Saturdays from 12-3pm or by appointment.

Negative Land

Blackout areas represent land within a regulated government boundary- the gray outline - that is not governement owned and therefore not necessarily subject to certain government regulations. These parcels of land fall into a sort of gray area of that often creates a difficult process of land management and decision making.

Raised Earth

One of the simplest forms of land manipulation - the raised earthen berm - can be used to keep things out or in. They are also one of the most enduring signs of landscape alteration, often surviving for hundreds of years in certain climates.

View At Arms Length

This installation is presented conjunction with Tucson Pima Arts Council's Fall Open Studio Tour, Saturday November 11 and Sunday November 12. The work deals with my ongoing interest in spaces that are created and divided up by various forms of urban infrastructure. This work focuses on the powerlines that intersect and obscure the view of my studio/apartment on the second floor of the Shane House. The act of looking and the discovery that comes from simply evaluating everything that lies between the viewer and the ostensible subject of interest-in this case my studio- is my primary concern. Day to day visual perception involves a tremendous amount of filtering and selective attention. I attempt to bring those elements that are filtered out into the foreground, bringing attention to the extremely dense visual field that exists around us.

IFNM BackPack Grid Full Size

Completed image of IFNM Backpacks. Eighty backpacks left in the desert by immigrants traveling north. Immigration is one pervasive element of the area that I have been working in and photographing, the Ironwood Forest National Monument.

IFNM BackPack Grid

This is a work in progress that will eventually contain about 80 backpacks that were used by immigrants and found in the Arizona desert. Part of a large project detailing land use in the area of the Ironwood Forest National Monument.

Lots Part III

Lots series

Lots Part II

Images from Lots series.

Lots Part I

Images from a series called Lots.

It's Up

Ok, so it worked. Crazy. For more info on some of the ideas behind the project see my previous post: Coming to a Billboard Near You

For those of you in the Tucson area: Best viewing is between 1pm and
5pm. For the best results you should be driving in the far
left(north) lane of Broadway Blvd as you approach the intersection of
Broadway and 5th Ave. Drive nice and slow and pay no attention to
those rush hour drivers honking and giving you the finger. It will
only be up until the end of October so you out of town folks really
should book your flight out here soon. Thanks!

So there's this thing called vertical mulching

I'm working on a large-ish project about land-use in an area of the desert known as the Ironwood Forest National Monument. It's northwest of Tucson in the middle of the Sonoran desert. Lots of intersecting issues: immigration/militarization, drug smuggling, ranching, mining, recreation, utility infrastructure, archeology. They all come together in a seemingly blank space. But if you look a little closer things start to get wierd. Case in point, Vertical Mulching. It's used to lessen the visual impact of illegal roads created by smugglers and careless atv'ers. Basically dead tree limbs and brush are planted into the soil to immitate the surrounding vegetation. The result is usually somewhat convincing but altogether strange. Here's an image.

Today's Quote

"I have to admit, the amount of watt-seconds going off with each shot was a major rush!"
-Al Gordon
Pure Genius!!

Coming to a Billboard Near You

I got it! Tucson Pima Arts Council has decided to fund my new project Dis/Appearance. The basis of the project is to recontextualize billboards by sort of making them disappear. Essentially I will be working with Clear Channel Outdoor to install a photo of the exact view that would be seen from the street if the billboard were not there. It's an effort to expand on my photographic work that to date has been concerned with the exploration of urban spaces that often go unnoticed. Confused? Here's a digital mockup to clear things up. Look for the billboard sometime between October and November in the downtown Tucson area.

Power Structure

The following images are a new set of experiments based on the spaces created by our infrastructure. In this case I have broken down images into the areas where power lines intersect to create shapes. More to come.