August 31, 2006
Congrats to Don Relyea
Don Relyea, artist, composer, and maker of The Reductionizer (which I've been using during August to make HTML images) and other things, and his family welcome kid #3, a son, Aiden Aldon
Relyea, born August 29. Congrats to everyone.
Joanne Mattera: Heat of the Moment
Joanne Mattera: Uttar 294, 2006, encaustic on panel, 36 x 36"
JOANNE MATTERA
"Heat of the Moment: New Paintings in Encaustic"
Arden Gallery, Boston, September 5~30, 2006
Reception: Friday, September 8, 5-7 pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, September 9, 1pm
August 30, 2006
Eva Lake
I have been wanting to feature Eva Lake here for sometime. Now is the time.
EVA LAKE: CRIMSON, 2006 oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches
Eva Lake is a Portland artist whose show at Augen Gallery is just about to close. She's hardworking, and her paintings are intense, beautiful, and very visual.
Although the forms in her current work might be called geometric or grid-based, and some might even toss out the "Op" word, her work is firmly rooted in the natural world, in color and atmosphere and times of day, and has to do with the way we see our world as both the thing it is and then abstract from that to sensation, periphery, memory and the iterative circle of translation or conversion from the visual to emotion to intellectual, and back and forth again. (There is a kinship between Eva's work and Mel Prest's, who I wrote about in June.)
Eva's work is about how we see and experience nature, and provides and frames the experience of how we are able to take in only so much at a time, how we scan and take things in it bits and pieces, and how the actual act of seeing nature isn't necessarily about seeing a whole.
Seeing nature as a whole isn't possible, because nature, what is before our two eyes and in our periphery, is too overwhelming. Our two eyes aligned horizontally provide a relatively narrow field of vision. But if while we look at nature we also feel ourselves in nature, as part of nature, there is the possiblity of a feeling of wholeness. A painting is a finite area of certain dimensions with edges, and so the painting has to have a kind of composition and resolution and containment. It has to be a whole, integrated and complete. I think Eva achieves this.
Eva's work helps us see and feel part of nature, but in a way that does not tie us to place, allows a kind of focus, and makes this kind of seeing and feeling rooted in the material and the handmade. This kind of consciousness of nature, made with materials and with a human touch, is a unique aspect of nature, is evidence of our place in nature, is a way of talking to and sharing with each other.
Additionally, Eva makes excellent photomontages, keeps an excellent running diary that's well worth following, interviews folks for Artstar Radio (many archived and downloadable, and excellent), and runs Chambers, a Portland Gallery, to which I've never been, but I'm assuming since Eva is running it, it's also excellent. And I don't throw the word "excellent" around all that much. But whoo! If I even thought to aspire to all of those activities, well, I'd just need a nap right now.
Joseph Hughes
SF painter Joseph Hughes has a new website and a show opening Sept. 7 in SF at Takada Gallery.
Ernie Kwiat
Ernie Kwiat has an August run of digital drawings- they're great. See 08 Green Fuzz or 05 Hay Fever. Check out the sketch made in Painter. Ernie tells me that it is his intention to draw a monster a day until Halloween, which I happen to know is his favorite holiday. That's gonna be like close to a hundred drawings.
11 Summer of Love, digital, Ernie Kwiat
August 29, 2006
Candlestick (19660829)
Candlestick (19660829), HTML, 348 x 494 pixels
August 28, 2006
August 27, 2006
Meds (Gravenstein)
Meds (Gravenstein), 20060827, HTML, 300 x 470 pixels
August 26, 2006
August 25, 2006
August 24, 2006
Delacroix: The Sea and Cliffs near Dieppe
Eugene Delacroix: The Sea and Cliffs near Dieppe, 1851, (La mer et les falaises près de Dieppe, avec reprise de la mer se brisant contre la paroi à droite), Watercolor and pencil on paper, 10¼” × 15½”, Dated lower right; stamped lower left: Lugt 838a; $75,000.
James Harris Gallery and Jill Newhouse, New York Present Junctions: Selected Drawings from Contemporary Artists and Modern Masters
See a very nice Vuillard drawing. And a Manet watercolor.
August 23, 2006
The thing about Matthew Barney at SFMoMA is that...
The mysterious thing about Matthew Barney is the fact that he has the backing to basically do whatever he wants.
The depressing thing about Matthew Barney is how bland his work is.
The smartest career thing about Matthew Barney is that his work appears ambitious because it's big and colorless and uses unusual materials.
The surprising, and not so surprising, thing about Matthew Barney is how derivative his work is.
"DRAWING RESTRAINT is an ongoing performance-based project exploring the notion that form emerges through struggle against resistance[1]." That sounds good. But it doesn't look so good. I'd like to propose a moratorium on artists who explore notions.
The real show at Barney's SFMoMA exhibition (through September 17, 2006- be sure and miss it) is the viewer walking through these massive spaces. 
Video monitors are mounted hanging from the ceiling, everything is white, everyone is walking around looking up. One room is all hanging monitors and vitrines, white and quiet- it feels like fashion, like shopping, like walking through some hip clothing store with music videos playing on monitors. Everybody is trying so hard to figure out what the hell is going on here. They're all being good obedient art lookers.
Everything is so big. It obviously took a lot of work to do all this. The museum put some resources into this event. The museum has tried to celebrate this exhibition. It must be very important. That's the message.
I tried. It didn't work.
Barney's grandiose metaphors and mythology are trite. It's J. R. R. Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda rolled into... no, it's not even that good.
There are many many many Beuys references:
- Sketchy, shaky, faint pencil drawings of body fragments? Check!
- Vitrines? Check!
- Vaseline, the equivalent of Beuys' use of fat? Check!
- A 35mm film can on the floor? Check!
- The artist in costume, adorned, or transformed? Check!
- Industrial material in its natural, "formless" form? Check!
- The artist as a seer or healer? Check!
- Highly metaphorized and oh so grand mythology? Check!
Even the drawing on the wall above the stairs that he did on-site during a performance dressed as General Douglas MacArthur borrows the central cross form from Beuys.
The photo stills aren't anything special. They're just dull and thoughtless fragments. They're all frame and nothing interesting.
The drawings aren't anything special. They're just dull and thoughtless fragments. They're all frame and nothing interesting.
The sculptures are really big. It's kind of cool to see big blocks of cast petroleum jelly falling apart. I don't know why the exhibition doesn't stink up the museum.
The sculptures aren't much, however, without the videos to give them a little context. And the videos are tedious. The lighting and framing and the cuts are ugly. It looks like crappy digital video. Speaking of artists who think they're in the same league as Beuys, I'm sure Barney could get some sound film making advice from Julian Schnabel- it might be a huge improvement.
Aspects of the installation which place the viewer in the place of passive spectator are simply offensive- that one small room with all the video monitors and vitrines is awful because of the position in which it places the viewer. I was struck by what I perceive as Barney's indifference or disregard for the place of the viewer in the work.
One of the most fascinating things to me was seeing the fourth floor south gallery with all the walls removed- I'd never seen that space opened up like that. Three or four years ago the Eva Hesse show was in those very same galleries - that was a great show; I'd put Hesse up against Barney any day.
William Wiley is a really interesting, genuinely imaginative artist who creates characters and situations, invents little worlds, uses language in fun ways, is visually interesting, and deals in important topics. He could be seen as a predecessor to Barney, even more so than someone like Bruce Nauman, Jack Smith, Scott Burton, Ree Morton, Joan Jonas, John Waters, Yoko Ono, Vito Acconci... But Wiley's just a little ol' local boy Northern California senior citizen painter.
The saddest thing about Matthew Barney is that, despite my being open to the work and this exhibit, it's just plain boring. I'm not easily bored. I have a lot of goodwill towards artists, towards people trying to make stuff that has meaning. But this stuff isn't that interesting to look at, much less think too hard about. This is the kind of show that makes me think, now why do I have that museum membership?
Photos by mac-tasitc at Flickr used without permission.
More exhibition photos at Flickr or Fecal Face.
August 22, 2006
August 21, 2006
Travelling Northward (After Tu Fu)
Travelling Northward (After Tu Fu), 2006, oil on canvas, two panels, 20 x 16 inches each (20 x 33.75 inches installed)
Tres Sendas
Tres Sendas, 2006, oil on canvas, four panels, 12 x 9 inches each (12 x 40.5 inches installed)
Strummer
Strummer, 2006, oil on canvas, four panels, 12 x 9 inches each (12 x 40.5 inches installed)