Look, See

Zen Arcade 4-23

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade 7-23

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade 10-23

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade 13-23

 

 

Zen Arcade 13-23, 2004, HTML, dimensions varied

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade 16-23

 

 

Zen Arcade 16-23, 2004, HTML, dimensions varied

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade 19-23

 

 

Zen Arcade 19-23, 2004, HTML, dimensions varied

 

 

 

 

Blue/Green 1-6

 

 

Blue/Green 1-6, 2004, acrylic on wood, dimensions varied (approximately 12 x 8 inches), click each for larger view

 

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Chinese Painting Genres: Blue and Green Landscape

The landscapes painting which executed in mineral green and azurite colors was called as Blue and Green Landscape.It divided by Big Blue and Green and Small Blue and Green.On the base of ochre color,Small Blue and Green executed mineral green and azurite colors;on the base of outline,Big Blue and Green executed arranging colors with decorative atmosphere. (Evidence)

 

 

 

 

Zen Arcade 22-23

 

 

Zen Arcade 22-23, 2004, HTML, dimensions varied

 

 

 

 

Byron Kim: At the Threshold of Painting?

 

 

Byron Kim: At the Threshold of Painting?

I have had a hard time beginning to write about Threshold: Byron Kim1990–2004 (at the Berkeley Art Museum from September 15 to December 12[1], 2004, after which it tours Seoul, South Korea, and other museums across the United States). I've looked at the show three times, and I know I have something to say, but I was taught that if you can't say something nice, don't say... actually, I do have a few nice things to say about the work, but I'll get to that by saying a bunch of other things, some of which maybe aren't so nice.

Glen Helfand writes in Artforum, "this lean, effective mid-career retrospective shifts the focus squarely to the artist's identity as a painter, tracking Kim's evolving use of single hues to encapsulate personal memory and his own take on art history[2]." Okay, yeah, I guess. As in the picture to the right, which accompanies all of the exhitions promotional materials, two different blues above or below a horizontal line are sea and sky. For Kim, they're a specific sea and sky, and for me another sea and sky. I can associate sea and sky with the two blues without any help at all, but Kim's' titles make sure I don't make other associations: tell me what it means, and I'll have no reason to look any further. There is one thing that I do like about this image: it shows the artist looking at and being involved with his work. I don't dispute that there is a real involvement here, and I sympathize with Kim's impulses, but I'm not sure the work is really enough about looking.

And the San Francisco Chronicle's Kenneth Baker writes, "A triptych called "1984 Dodge Wagon" similarly commemorates a family car in three abutted, evenly colored panel-mounted canvases that openly pay homage to Brice Marden's early work. Just by how he titled works such as these, Kim inverted the received equation of subjectivity and surface energy in abstraction[3]." Translation: a work comprising three panels indifferently covered in paint is given meaning by its title, because the actual way the painted surface is handled doesn't tell us much of anything at all. How Duchampian, I suppose, and all well and good as long as I keep reading the wall labels.

The fact that this is referred to as a painting show is what bothers me most. Two galleries in the museum are filled with about forty painting-like objects, many quite large. I know that these objects are supposed to be paintings because, a) they're all on canvas, except for one on plywood; b) they all hang on the wall, except for the plywood work, which leans against the wall; c) each "painting" is covered in some pigmented material, formerly liquid, now dried, that is brushed or knifed on the surface with minimal incident and gradation; and d) all the texts associated with this exhibit tell me that these are paintings: the catalog; the wall texts; the promotional materials; the media. But my question is, Is paint on canvas hanging on a wall meeting enough criteria to be called a painting? Is any surface evenly coated with paint a painting? What criteria makes one painted surface a painting and another painted surface merely a painted surface? Is it intention? Is it context? Is it the title? Is a small canvas plainly painted with crisp horizontal stripes really a painting when I need the label to tell me that it is supposed to represent a t-shirt Kim wore as a boy during a time he had a crush on a teacher? Are these the sorts of questions Kim intends me to ask when I consider his work?

It is somewhat sad: resources are allocated to give an artist the opportunity of a traveling retrospective exhibition, yet the show is so thin. The alleged focus on painting is on painting as mostly a conceptual object, not so much, with a few exceptions that I'll discuss later, as a rich visual object worth looking at more than once. The indifference of these paintings, evident in the flat surfaces and, especially in the most recent work, the uniform canvas sizes and tidy clean edges, is appalling. Not only is this not great painting, it is barely on the threshold of painting to begin with.

Now, there is very little paint on some of Kim's paintings. Of course, as we know from, for example, third generation Abstract Expressionists, thick paint is no indication of quality. And the realist-conceptual-process (whatever) painter Chuck Close is said to have painted his early black and white gargantuan portraits with literally teaspoons of paint. But Kim's paintings, for the most part smoothly painted monochromes neatly covered from side to side, top to bottom, many in the eight foot range, don't even seem to address the concerns of so-called monochrome painters who are still actively working with surface, color, light, touch, scale, and edge. They're just bland.

It has been said that even a blank canvas is a painting; it just may not be a very good one[4]. And the French painter Maurice Denis (1870-1943), wrote that " a painting is essentially a flat surface covered with colour assembled in a certain order." So this begs the question: is any painted surface--canvas or prepared panel-- a painting? Are Kim's paintings really paintings? By that I mean, are they visually engaging objects, do they go beyond being a painted surface, is their existence actually core to the meaning of Kim's work? This is arguable; I believe that these painted surfaces are in service to the titles, which are more central to the artist's conceptual program than the painted surfaces, and so since these painted surfaces are not the primary point of experience or carrier of Kim's identified meaning they don't qualify as paintings. They instead are backdrops, scenery, stage sets.

This is not to say that Kim's work is absolutely all bad. Much of the work, once you know what it's about, takes on the aura of a kind of gentle tenderness, fond memory, and presence in the moment. His oeuvre includes a number of site-specific works and installations, the inclusion of which might make this an exhibition of a very different kind, but none are included here.

There are a few works that conceptually and visually are interesting as paintings Emmet at Twelve Months (left: 1994, Egg tempera on wood, 25 panels, each 3 x 2 1/2 in.; 17 x 4 1/2 in. overall, Collection of Dolores and Byungseol An) records colors from different areas of Kim's son's body in creamy paint smoothly knifed on small panels. A slightly larger painting, Please Do Not Touch, 1991, is covered in an even dark purple-brown made silvery and tactile by light caught in a scattering of fingerprints across the surface. Through the Night, 1997, a larger canvas, appears to be an all-black painting until after sustained viewing a faint image emerges, Ad Reinhardt-style (an example of which is on the top 6th floor gallery), of a view towards the night sky through tree branches. Oddly, this is the only painting that is guarded by a knee-high railing project out from the wall a couple of feet in front of the painting; the one work that requires the viewer's presence and close looking is put at a distance from the viewer.

Twenty three Sunday Paintings are hung across a single wall. These small panels, paintings of the sky from a larger series made each Sunday, include a short diaristic or observational text handwritten across the bottom. Painted quickly and just well enough to evoke the weather and time of day, these really are, individually, merely Sunday paintings fortunately made more meaningful by the fact that they have accumulated over time into a poignant body of work.

Finally, Kim's masterwork is Synecdoche (right), which I have written about earlier and will repeat here[5]. Synecdoche is a project to describe something very specific: the color of each panel is an attempt to match the skin color of someone who sat for him. Each 8 x 10 panel, in size, shape, and color, is obviously a portrait. Numbering around 300, the painting is a record of social interaction, of a network of people, of an understanding or partnership and consent. Together the paintings, in order alphabetically by first name, are a chart, a record, a graphical plotting of individuals, their colors, their names, a demographic tool to describe a particular milieu. Each panel is a face in a crowd, part of an audience, part of a group of witnesses to the viewer. Synecdoche is a reification of de Kooning's comment that, "flesh was the reason oil paint was invented."

Is this really a retrospective? Are we really getting a full view of Kim's project and accomplishment? Two thoughts: this exhibition doesn't advance painting, and it doesn't serve the artist's best interests.

[1] http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/byronkim/index.html
[2] http://artforum.com/picks/place=Berkeley%2C%20CA#
[3] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/09/DDGRS95I5P1.DTL
[4] I have seen this quote many times, but the name of the person who said this is stuck somewhere deep in my brain and I cannot find the source. If you're reading this footnote and can provide attribution please email me.
[5] http://www.chrisashley.net/weblog/archives/week_2004_09_26.html#000462

 

 

 

 

Blue & Green 7-9

 

 

Blue & Green 7-9, 2004, pastel and water on paper, 12 x 9" each (scanned)
1-3 in this series posted 20041121
4-6 in this series posted 20041121