April 08, 2006
Leaf Eight: Ladder
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Leaf Eight: Ladder, 20060408, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels
Tilden (Berkeley Painting #1)
Tilden (Berkeley Painting #1), 2006, oil and aluminum Rust-oleum on clear acrylic on linen, 23 x 19 in
April 07, 2006
Leaf Seven: Cylinder
Leaf Seven: Cylinder, 20060407, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels
Energy and Abstraction at the Studio Museum in Harlem
Holland Cotter in the NYTimes:
Energy and Abstraction at the Studio Museum in Harlem
HISTORIES get lost. That's how life is. Then, when the time is right, they get found. "Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980" at the Studio Museum in Harlem, is about such a history, which went something like this:During one of the most radical periods in 20th-century American politics, the black power era, a group of African-American artists was working with what was, and still is, one of the most radical forms of 20th-century art, abstraction. Radicalism is relative, though, and in this case politics and culture were on different tracks.
At a time of impassioned gestures and hot visions — raised fists, "the fire next time" — abstract art appeared cool and noncommittal. It had been conceived as a revolutionary language of color, line, shape. But the 1960's revolution was about bodies and beliefs. Also, abstraction raised authenticity issues. It was widely seen as white art, academic art. Whites viewed black practitioners as copycats; blacks dismissed them as sellouts.
So, while a few figures like Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam and Al Loving (1935-2005) gained visibility, abstraction by African-Americans as a phenomenon faded from view, and its invisibility has persisted. The Guggenheim Museum's 1996 survey, "Abstraction in the 20th Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline," included no artists of color.
But now the relationship between aesthetics and politics is changing. Many young artists see racially defined art as limiting; a problem, not a solution. A return to the story of earlier artists who struggled with that same view is in order, and that's what the Studio Museum exhibition does.
William T. Williams's "Trane" (1969)
April 06, 2006
Leaf Six: Minaret
Leaf Six: Minaret, 20060406, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels
Pulse 2006, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA
I will be in a group show titled Pulse 2006 at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA opening May 5. Artists include: Rachel Hayes, Lisa Fletcher Rundstrom, Brad Hampton, Anna Von Mertens, Steve Karlik and myself.
I will be showing a huge wall-sized installation of 365 printed HTML drawings from 2005-2006 and a projection of the same 365 drawings in an HTML slideshow.
Here's the front of the announcement that can also be seen on a weblog for communications about the show:
April 05, 2006
Leaf Five: Showers
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Leaf Five: Showers, 20060405, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels
Will Fair Use Survive?
The Free Expression Policy Project at the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has issued a report titled Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control (PDF).
In NYFA Currents Herb Tam connects this report to the arts, where appropriation or re-use are still going strong:
Given the resurgence of appropriation-based work, it is timely that New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice recently issued its status report on copyright laws in the current cultural climate. Titled Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control, its conclusions, while grimly stated, actually offer some legal elbow room for contemporary artists (not to mention hip-hop producers and documentary filmmakers) whose work depends on appropriation. In a cut ’n paste, information-based culture where sharing is becoming an ideal (think Wikipedia.org) and intellectual ownership is being questioned, what do copyright laws have to say about the practices of those artists mentioned above?
April 04, 2006
Leaf Four: Repose
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Leaf Four: Repose, 20060404, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels
Joanne Mattera catalogue
Revised and reposted on 20060416.
I recently received Joanne Mattera's catalogue Joanne Mattera: Ten Years of Encaustic Painting, published on the occasion of her solo show at Winfisky Gallery, Salem State College, Salem, Mass., March 21 – April 13, 2006. The catalogue is 8.5 x 8.5 inches, and contains 16 pages, fifteen color images, a statement by Joanne, an interview with Julie Karabenick, a selected critical overview and biography, and a short essay by Flavia Rando. Joanne will also be showing at Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, April 20 - May 27, 2006.
Notes on Joanne Mattera
The fact that these paintings are made with wax is a prominent aspect of this work. When I think of encaustic I think of two things: something that has body but is luminescent, and a process that involves heat, speed and layers. I think of these two things literally, but also historically, culturally, and psychologically.
Wax is translucent. It is milky but not clouded. It can be colored, but never quite opaque. Light goes in and comes back out as color. In the depth of that wax light is held, it glows. But it isn't clear light. It's frosted, subdued, quiet. The wax is thick, it might be in layers. In that body, and in that glowing light, seeing is slowed down. We see the surface, and we also see into the wax. On the surface we see texture--brush strokes, scrapes, marks, lumps, etc.-- and then we can go beyond and below the surface. There is a depth that our vision goes into, sees into. We see light and color as a suspended substance, like looking into an ice cube or a crystal, and the act of looking into something is an instance, like when we see our breath on a cold day, or when we look into slowly moving water. The colored wax is both a body that holds the light, and as paint it is also a medium that functions as a depiction of a quality of light. (Right: Joanne Mattera: Silk Road, 2005, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches each)
To paint in encaustic means to engage in labor. It requires melting and mixing, it's hot and time consuming. But when the encaustic is ready the actual act of painting must be conducted quickly. These movements are fast. We see that in the paint's application and the recorded gestures. And here we enter into a recognition of different paces in the paintings. There is the knowledge of a slow preparation, and there is the slowness of our looking into glowing color, and there is also the actual speed of the execution. We see how the execution is actually a frozen moment or, rather, the cold state of something done quickly, in the (pun alert) heat of the moment. This somewhat contradictory state—of contrasting slowness and speed—is something to which the qualities of encaustic seem particularly suited.
I think Mattera intimately knows encaustic as both a material and as contribution to her subject. She recognizes the situation regarding encaustic’s pace and light and body; she allows the medium to be its best by using it directly and by staying out its way. But having said this I certainly don’t mean that she does this passively by simply letting colored wax do what it will do. She has to employ general construction techniques like controlling buildup and exercising finesse with surface. And of course as a painter she also has to do the usual painterly things like pay attention to scale (for example, the relationship between brushstroke and paint density to image and each panel's size), orchestrate color, and work the edges, both the edges of the panels and the edges where different areas of paint meet. I would think that for a painter using encaustic it would be tempting to try to make or let the wax do too much, to let the encaustic take over as something beautiful, dense, and physical. But what I see in Mattera's imagery is that it is reduced to a point where the material becomes an active ingredient in her work’s meaning, but the imagery is also still complex enough to be about much more than wonderful effects of encaustic; they are paintings.
Encaustic makes light physical, almost an object. Light is a major preoccupation throughout western painting’s history. One can go backwards from Rothko to Seurat and the Impressionists to someone like Gerome to… what road do you want to take? Fragonard to Chardin to de La Tour and so on, or from Goya to to Rubens to El Greco or whoever? Eventually you’ll get to Durer and Van Eyck and Holbein or Van der Weyden. Pick your own names— you can easily make your own list. And light is prominent in other arts: think of Limoges Email peints--one sees a luminous surface that is about light; think of the glazes on Islamic tiles and Chinese Sancai figures; think of stained glass. And think of Dan Flavin, or Robert Irwin, or James Turrell, and the importance of not only light but the actual phenomenological experience of light and perception. Light is a major preoccupation because light is how we see, and various qualities of light have different moods, evoke different times and places, and create drama.
The stripe, the dot, and the stroke are a way to make light a clear subject. The light in Joanne Mattera’s paintings is about the present and the just passing present. The light is present in the material— it’s physical, and it interacts with the environment and with current lighting conditions. But if her art has what some might call a contemplative dimension it’s because while the light is a thing that draws us in, it’s the way this light is held in the wax, and the way we look below the surface and into the depth of this light-filled wax, that slows down our looking just a beat to an even more present presence, one that is slow enough for us to see passing. If our looking stayed on the surface our attention might glance off and finish. If our looking goes beyond a surface, even if a only a fraction of an inch into a physical depth and a depicted depth, our seeing is more settled. The physical effect is slower looking. The psychological effect is awareness of self in relation to the phenomenological world.
Notes to add: color, mark, and line.
Revised and reposted on 20060416.
Douglas Witmer Minus Space catalogue
Part of the introduction I wrote to Douglas's interview is printed in the catalogue. Here is the entire introduction:
Douglas Witmer makes paintings with a purpose. I mean this in two ways — he makes paintings purposefully, and his paintings have a purpose. This is not to say in the least that his paintings are predetermined and strictly didactic. Despite their apparently structured appearance they are expressive rather than merely planned and executed, and porous rather than closed in meaning.Witmer’s varied and improvised use of color, surface, form, and material is surprisingly expressive. Anyone who spends time with Mondrian’s signature paintings, for example, knows that they are not rigid repetitions. Similarly, the viewer will find that Witmer’s paintings are individually achieved, and this is part of where his purposefulness lies: geometry is not something always precisely measured; it can be nuanced and emotional, and it often breaks rules or has unlikely sources. My mention of Mondrian of course risks a misunderstanding via an assumed derivation or inheritance, so perhaps a more appropriate and useful reference might be Klee’s sensitive, playful, and inventive qualities.
As for the purpose of Witmer’s paintings, this is always the tricky part — society generally wants to know what a piece of art is about, what it means, and what it is good for. But what does it really mean to understand art? Does it mean to know something with certainty, to explain it definitively, and then to move on? There usually isn’t a single answer to art’s meaning. Most good art is slippery — the meanings we try to catch and hold instead make us return to an art object again and again for confirmation and renewal.
Willem de Kooning’s oft-quoted statement is apt here: “Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny — very tiny, content.” What we get from art may come in fragments, on the periphery and over time, and is often unexpected, indirect, and personal. Not only are Witmer’s paintings open to viewer associations, but they intentionally invite these associations. This, I think, is part of the purpose of Witmer’s art: these beautifully crafted, carefully considered paintings bear graphically clear but ambiguous images that make pictorial and physical spaces for the viewer to see, feel, and think. These spaces, handmade and shared, where nuance and touch are important, and where close-up observation of details matter, are where glimpses occur and meanings arise. These paintings involve the artist and the viewer in an intimate collaboration of looking. In a poem called Telling You All Rilke writes: “Let's invite something new/by unifying our silences;/if, then and there, we advance,/we'll know it soon enough.” Meaning is found in the experience of looking at Witmer’s paintings, not just in explanations, and in that looking a kind of knowing is possible.
— Chris Ashley, December 2005
April 03, 2006
Leaf Three: Shade
Leaf Three: Shade, 20060403, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels
April 02, 2006
Leaf Two: Spring
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Leaf Two: Spring, 20060402, HTML, 365 x 265 pixels