Gallery Visit: Nick Mauss at the 303 Gallery
I chose this gallery exhibit because I liked it the least of everything I'd been to that day (including a crowded and stinky McDonalds). It's more interesting for me to explain why I dislike something than it is to explain why I like something, so here goes.
Let me quickly describe the gallery. A cage hung suspended from the ceiling. Nearby, a tall and wide canvas stood, a simple geometric shape painted on it in black and white, with a large, physical rip going half-way through it.
Surrounding these two floor pieces were seven paintings hanging on the wall. These were paintings on wood, totally gray, but the paint was put on thick, making the paintings resemble slate.
The only thing I learned in my Contemporary Art courses is that sometimes I'll miss the "depth" of a piece of art until it's explained to me. So I thought about that as I tried to read these paintings that look like pieces of my sidewalk. After a wasted series of thoughts went by, all I could think was "So what?" There's a cage that elicits zero emotion, a half-ripped painting that I'd like to rip completely, and a handful of paintings that remind me of a walkway I trip over every morning. There's nothing to read into or thought about.
Maybe Nick Mauss made this for his own emotional fulfillment. I can see him congratulating himself while gallery visitors try to make themselves sound smart by intellectualizing this shallow work. Enough buzzwords and he may even start to believe it. I disliked this gallery though, and I can't imagine myself being convinced that this is anything other than a pretentious display.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Seven Days In The Art World: Chapter 3
This chapter spends a lot of time on the Art Collectors. They're people who are insanely wealthy, saying things like, "Only a century ago, no one had a car. Now people have two or three." They're not saying that in awe of how far we've come. In the context of the reading, it's said to demonstrate that the automobile isn't all that special to the particular collector.
Collectors seem to make their hobby a profession in itself.
"'When you first start collecting, you're intensely competitive, but eventually you learn two things,' explains Don. 'First, if an artist is only going to make one good work, then there is no sense in fighting over it. Second, a collection is a personal vision. No one can steal your vision.'"
Some very misguided collectors make it a religion.
"I'm an atheist, but I believe in art. I go to galleries like my mother went to church. It helps me understand the way I live."
And others just use it to talk themselves up, believing they're in possession of some sort of supernatural power.
"You have to have an eye - a savantish ability to recognize work that is symptomatic of an artist with real intelligence, originality, and drive."
But the book shows how much pull these people have, out-of-touch or otherwise, and how necessary they are to the art world.
This chapter spends a lot of time on the Art Collectors. They're people who are insanely wealthy, saying things like, "Only a century ago, no one had a car. Now people have two or three." They're not saying that in awe of how far we've come. In the context of the reading, it's said to demonstrate that the automobile isn't all that special to the particular collector.
Collectors seem to make their hobby a profession in itself.
"'When you first start collecting, you're intensely competitive, but eventually you learn two things,' explains Don. 'First, if an artist is only going to make one good work, then there is no sense in fighting over it. Second, a collection is a personal vision. No one can steal your vision.'"
Some very misguided collectors make it a religion.
"I'm an atheist, but I believe in art. I go to galleries like my mother went to church. It helps me understand the way I live."
And others just use it to talk themselves up, believing they're in possession of some sort of supernatural power.
"You have to have an eye - a savantish ability to recognize work that is symptomatic of an artist with real intelligence, originality, and drive."
But the book shows how much pull these people have, out-of-touch or otherwise, and how necessary they are to the art world.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Zimmerli Gallery Visit
Trail Blazers of the 20th Century
This collection's paintings and sculptures are all modern. The paintings seem more conceptual, with amorphous shapes and high-contrast colors, while the sculptures go in a more emotional direction. The piece "Dark Reflections" by Louise Nevelson is made of convex and concave wooden pieces assembled together and then spray painted black and turns out to be a decidedly morose piece.
Favorite Piece:
Blocks of Color
This is a collection of wood-cut printmaking. These artists took inspiration from Japanese art and employed a similar technique. The prints take on a watercolor-like quality and some don't even look like prints, appearing to be made with brush strokes. There are woodcut only prints that appear to be made with the brush, but there are also some pieces that combine both woodcuts and brushwork.
My favorite pieces:
This collection's paintings and sculptures are all modern. The paintings seem more conceptual, with amorphous shapes and high-contrast colors, while the sculptures go in a more emotional direction. The piece "Dark Reflections" by Louise Nevelson is made of convex and concave wooden pieces assembled together and then spray painted black and turns out to be a decidedly morose piece.
Favorite Piece:
- Jacques Lipchitz - The Suppliant (1943)
Blocks of Color
This is a collection of wood-cut printmaking. These artists took inspiration from Japanese art and employed a similar technique. The prints take on a watercolor-like quality and some don't even look like prints, appearing to be made with brush strokes. There are woodcut only prints that appear to be made with the brush, but there are also some pieces that combine both woodcuts and brushwork.
My favorite pieces:
- Berth Lum - Fisherman (1912)
- Sybil Andrews - The New Cable (1931)
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Seven Days in the Art World: Chapter Six
- "While Blum may be a generic leading man, Poe resembles the Dude as played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski."
- "'When people think of artists' studios, they imagine Jackson Pollock dancing around a canvas,' says Poe grumpily from under his beige baseball cap. 'Dealers are editors and conspirators. We help determine what gets shown and how it gets shown, and we help put art in production.' Poe turns around and looks at Blum, then at me. 'At the end of the day, our business is to sell symptoms articulated as objects,' he declares. 'I like to think that I have a more honest relationship with our artists than some other dealers, but I don't want to be anyone's shrink.'"
- " A total of eighty-five canvases were on the way to becoming what Murakami casually calls "big-face flowers" but are officially titled Flowers of Joy. Gagosian Gallery sold the fifty on display in its May 2007 show for $90,000 apiece. (The official price was $100,000, but everyone who's anyone gets a 10 percent discount.)
- "I don't really want to work in a company, but I have big desire for making many pieces."
- "I don'y know how to operate Illustrator, but I will say 'yes, yes, yes, no, no, no' when I check the work"
- "Kanye was a big fan of my big breast sculpture."
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Interview, Sans Pictures...
EB - Do you have a thesis or a mantra behind your work?
GC - Not necessarily. It's more that I do what I'm interested in. So if you want to be technical, that's a theme. My interest is mostly in humans.
EB - That looks like a pencil drawing.
GC - Actually, that's a print. Do you know anything about print making?
EB - Don't you cut into blocks of rubber?
GC - That's for relief. (Greg spends a lengthy time describing the processes of printmaking, going very in-depth about drawing with a grease-crayon on limestone) I don't have any etching plates with me, but I can take you down the hall to the print room and show you the plates I have there. Once I physically show you, this will make much more sense.
[We arrive at the print room]
GC - This is the print room. I'll start off with the press. This is the litho-press here. I'm not going to give you a play-by-play of what to do, but this is the stone here, and I'm not going to touch it because it's 200 lbs and it's probably someone's work, but do you see how there's a drawing on it?
EB - Yeah.
GC - Basically, what you do is you draw on it with a grease pen, and the grease sinks into the rock. The whole concept behind lithography is that oil and water repel each-other, so what you do is you draw with the grease pencil. Then you do a bunch of processes I'm not going to explain --because it's all technical stuff that you don't need to know-- but then you put water down, and the water surrounds everything except for the lines you drew. Then you take rollers with oil-based ink, and you roll it on top of the stone. The ink sticks to where the grease was, and the water repels the ink away from the stone.
EB - I see...
GC - Then you take the stone over to the press, which exerts an extreme amount of pressure. You run the stone through the press and there's a squilgee. The total amount of pressure is probably around 400 lbs, though I may be understating it. That's basically a lithograph.
EB - These 200 pound stones are in compartments. How do you move them around?
GC - There's a hand-truck over there with a hydraulics-based lift. Some stones are around 50 pounds so you won't need it, but most would need the lift.
EB - Interesting...
GC - But stones are hard to work with, so I like to use plates. Photo-plates are interesting. Here's a print I did. I drew the image in a sketchbook, and then scanned it into the computer at 500 dpi, and then enlarged the image and printed it on a large piece of transparent film. Then you align the transparency over the plate and the plate reacts to UV light much like film, and the image I drew becomes preserved in the plate.
EB - So this plate isn't safe to have in any sort of light?
GC - No, because then it starts becoming exposed and it gets messed up. This plate shouldn't be out for too long, but it's been developed and it has a special developing fluid on it, a sort of photo-preserver.
EB - What kind of material is this?
GC - This is aluminum, but back to the initial question... I like drawing human figures. Occasionally I would draw human/animal hybrids, like the greek minotaurs and the egyptian sphinx, but now I focus on humans.
[Greg displays a plate of his]
GC - With this, I was playing with the idea of the picture plane in relation to print making. This is a very technical drawing, as I can get very anal about line work. This was a try at something new. I put the border right around the figures. I arranged the composition to make it look as though these figures were falling from the top of the picture, with plenty of room at the bottom. I wanted to do something with these forms, and play with light and shadow. The great thing about print making is that I have so many copies of everything and I can try new things without worrying whether they are reversible or not. It's like the safety net of the "undo button" on the computer. When it's finished, I can have as many copies as I want.
EB - Aren't the original copies the best, and the later copies lose fidelity and value?
GC - No, not with print making. I know with casting the first mold is the finest, with the later ones being worse... I'm pretty sure the more you cast something, the smaller it gets.
Anyway, I'm working with print making to find out why I'm working with print making. So, if I'm in it for the duplicates, I might as well be doing digital art. I want to see what I can do that is intrinsically print related. I can draw in illustrator, I can put a brushstroke on it, I can print it and make a collage. But there's no fear of messing anything up. So I'm trying to isolate what makes print making unique. I'm going to experiment with the UV light exposure, making a sculpture, and using the shadow of the sculpture to create a print. I'd want the sculpture and the print to both be displayed together. I have a pretty formulated idea of what I want my thesis to be.
I do design and I do print making, and while I love both, I've chosen print making even though I'm proficient with computers. So I bring the two together for my image making.
Note: Pictures aren't uploading. I'm going to try a post with just the images.
GC - Not necessarily. It's more that I do what I'm interested in. So if you want to be technical, that's a theme. My interest is mostly in humans.
EB - That looks like a pencil drawing.
GC - Actually, that's a print. Do you know anything about print making?
EB - Don't you cut into blocks of rubber?
GC - That's for relief. (Greg spends a lengthy time describing the processes of printmaking, going very in-depth about drawing with a grease-crayon on limestone) I don't have any etching plates with me, but I can take you down the hall to the print room and show you the plates I have there. Once I physically show you, this will make much more sense.
[We arrive at the print room]
GC - This is the print room. I'll start off with the press. This is the litho-press here. I'm not going to give you a play-by-play of what to do, but this is the stone here, and I'm not going to touch it because it's 200 lbs and it's probably someone's work, but do you see how there's a drawing on it?
EB - Yeah.
GC - Basically, what you do is you draw on it with a grease pen, and the grease sinks into the rock. The whole concept behind lithography is that oil and water repel each-other, so what you do is you draw with the grease pencil. Then you do a bunch of processes I'm not going to explain --because it's all technical stuff that you don't need to know-- but then you put water down, and the water surrounds everything except for the lines you drew. Then you take rollers with oil-based ink, and you roll it on top of the stone. The ink sticks to where the grease was, and the water repels the ink away from the stone.
EB - I see...
GC - Then you take the stone over to the press, which exerts an extreme amount of pressure. You run the stone through the press and there's a squilgee. The total amount of pressure is probably around 400 lbs, though I may be understating it. That's basically a lithograph.
EB - These 200 pound stones are in compartments. How do you move them around?
GC - There's a hand-truck over there with a hydraulics-based lift. Some stones are around 50 pounds so you won't need it, but most would need the lift.
EB - Interesting...
GC - But stones are hard to work with, so I like to use plates. Photo-plates are interesting. Here's a print I did. I drew the image in a sketchbook, and then scanned it into the computer at 500 dpi, and then enlarged the image and printed it on a large piece of transparent film. Then you align the transparency over the plate and the plate reacts to UV light much like film, and the image I drew becomes preserved in the plate.
EB - So this plate isn't safe to have in any sort of light?
GC - No, because then it starts becoming exposed and it gets messed up. This plate shouldn't be out for too long, but it's been developed and it has a special developing fluid on it, a sort of photo-preserver.
EB - What kind of material is this?
GC - This is aluminum, but back to the initial question... I like drawing human figures. Occasionally I would draw human/animal hybrids, like the greek minotaurs and the egyptian sphinx, but now I focus on humans.
[Greg displays a plate of his]
GC - With this, I was playing with the idea of the picture plane in relation to print making. This is a very technical drawing, as I can get very anal about line work. This was a try at something new. I put the border right around the figures. I arranged the composition to make it look as though these figures were falling from the top of the picture, with plenty of room at the bottom. I wanted to do something with these forms, and play with light and shadow. The great thing about print making is that I have so many copies of everything and I can try new things without worrying whether they are reversible or not. It's like the safety net of the "undo button" on the computer. When it's finished, I can have as many copies as I want.
EB - Aren't the original copies the best, and the later copies lose fidelity and value?
GC - No, not with print making. I know with casting the first mold is the finest, with the later ones being worse... I'm pretty sure the more you cast something, the smaller it gets.
Anyway, I'm working with print making to find out why I'm working with print making. So, if I'm in it for the duplicates, I might as well be doing digital art. I want to see what I can do that is intrinsically print related. I can draw in illustrator, I can put a brushstroke on it, I can print it and make a collage. But there's no fear of messing anything up. So I'm trying to isolate what makes print making unique. I'm going to experiment with the UV light exposure, making a sculpture, and using the shadow of the sculpture to create a print. I'd want the sculpture and the print to both be displayed together. I have a pretty formulated idea of what I want my thesis to be.
I do design and I do print making, and while I love both, I've chosen print making even though I'm proficient with computers. So I bring the two together for my image making.
Note: Pictures aren't uploading. I'm going to try a post with just the images.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Gallery Visits
Maya Lin at the Pace Wildenstein
Blue Lake Pass - Wooden terrain divided into grids.
Water Line - Wire terrain of an underwater location.
2x4 Landscape - Over 50,000 vertical 2x4 pieces make a picturesque hill.
Josiah McElheny at the Andrea Rosen
There's a tower of different colored hexagonal prisms of glass and some primary-colored shelves with matching vases and jars.
Barthelemy Toguo at the Robert Miller
There's a movie of Barthelemy flipping a column end-over-end through an urban environment while people follow him. There is also some photography, including character-play self-portraits. The majority of the work is what seems to be water-color paintings, the most notable being a mouth enveloping a pack of bananas, some bread and an AK-47.
Enoc Perez at the Mitchel, Innes & Nash
These are mainly textured paintings of architectural subjects. Two of the paintings are focused on people, but his main focus seems to be buildings.
Juergen Teller at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery
These paintings are either of classical sculptures, naked women, or both. All are in a museum setting.
Nature as Artifice at the Apeture
The point of this exhibit is meant to challenge the romantic notion of the Netherlands being a beautiful land by displaying only pictures of it's most man-made locations. The most effective set is Gert Jan Kocken's "Enschede." It's three city-scape pictures taken of the same view over time. The first picture is of a demolished fireworks factory that suffered an accident. The second picture is of that same building now cleared out and ready for new construction. The third shows the houses built in it's place, but most interestingly, a building labeled "Grolish" which was present in the background of the first two pictures is now destroyed itself. I don't know if I should consider that ironic or depressing, but it struck me how temporary even the biggest structures can be.
Blue Lake Pass - Wooden terrain divided into grids.
Water Line - Wire terrain of an underwater location.
2x4 Landscape - Over 50,000 vertical 2x4 pieces make a picturesque hill.
Josiah McElheny at the Andrea Rosen
There's a tower of different colored hexagonal prisms of glass and some primary-colored shelves with matching vases and jars.
Barthelemy Toguo at the Robert Miller
There's a movie of Barthelemy flipping a column end-over-end through an urban environment while people follow him. There is also some photography, including character-play self-portraits. The majority of the work is what seems to be water-color paintings, the most notable being a mouth enveloping a pack of bananas, some bread and an AK-47.
Enoc Perez at the Mitchel, Innes & Nash
These are mainly textured paintings of architectural subjects. Two of the paintings are focused on people, but his main focus seems to be buildings.
Juergen Teller at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery
These paintings are either of classical sculptures, naked women, or both. All are in a museum setting.
Nature as Artifice at the Apeture
The point of this exhibit is meant to challenge the romantic notion of the Netherlands being a beautiful land by displaying only pictures of it's most man-made locations. The most effective set is Gert Jan Kocken's "Enschede." It's three city-scape pictures taken of the same view over time. The first picture is of a demolished fireworks factory that suffered an accident. The second picture is of that same building now cleared out and ready for new construction. The third shows the houses built in it's place, but most interestingly, a building labeled "Grolish" which was present in the background of the first two pictures is now destroyed itself. I don't know if I should consider that ironic or depressing, but it struck me how temporary even the biggest structures can be.
Seven Days in the Art World: Interesting Shreds
- "One of Asher's signature works consisted of removing the gallery wall that divided the office from the exhibition space, thereby focusing attention on the moneymaking business behind "priceless" art."
- Since Asher doesn't give his works a title, he also doesn't give any description to his own work, calling for it from others.
- "Intellectual breakdown is an essential component of CalArts pedagogy. or at least an expected part of the MFA student experience."
- "The work you do as an artist is really play, but it's play in the most serious sense ... Like when a two-year-old discovers how to make a tower of blocks. It's no half-hearted thing. You are materializing--taking something from the inside and putting it out into the world so you can be relieved of it."
- "In a UCLA crit class, a student wearing a dark suit and a red tie stood up in the front of the class, pulled a gun out of his pocket, loaded a silver bullet, spun the chamber, pointed the gun at his own head, cocked it, and pulled the trigger. The gun just clicked. The student fled from the room, and several gunshots were heard outside. When he returned to the classroom without the gun, his classmates were surprised to see him alive, and the crit staggered on with a tearful group discussion."
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