Archive for June, 2009
Joe Sorren
Posted in Painting, tagged Arizona, Art, Flagstaff, Joe Sorren, Painting on June 22, 2009| 3 Comments »
“Information Is Incidental” Images
Posted in Not Painting, Painting, tagged Art, Art Exhibits, Emily Sall, Geometry In Art, Installation Art, Kansas City, Line, Painting, Paragraph Gallery, Rebecca Ward, Urban Culture Project on June 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Emily Sall/Rebecca Ward “Information Is Incidental”
Posted in Not Painting, Painting, tagged Art, Austin TX, Emily Sall, Installation Art, Kansas City, Painting, Paragraph Gallery, Rebecca S. Ward on June 14, 2009| 16 Comments »
Rebecca Ward, Shiver installation shot
Two reasons I am looking forward to Information Is Incidental, the collaborative exhibition of Kansas City’s Emily Sall and Austin’s Rebecca Ward at Paragraph Gallery in KC :
1. It looks like it’s going to be super visually stimulating— a night of stripes, bands, zig-zags, bends, criss-crossing, depth, flatness. We’re getting individual works from both artists—-paintings by Sall and an installation from Ward—and a collaborative installation by the two artists exploring common ideas of new, old and renewed spaces.
2. This idea of synchronicity is really interesting. The two artists apparently didn’t know each other at all before this process got started. The project was set up by a local curator who saw some affinity between Ward’s and Sall’s work. Both artists agreed lay ego aside and take a risk here.
Rebecca Ward, vector drawings
I asked the two artists how they were preparing for the project.
Rebecca Ward: “In preparing for the show I’ve ordered 183 rolls of tape, made a bunch of vector renderings of the space, emailed back and forth with Emily, played around with isometric graph paper, and rearranged color palettes. I’ve also been drinking lots of tea, wearing my boots, frequenting swimming holes, and I carry my journal with me wherever I go just in case I get any new ideas. That’s pretty much it. I’m super psyched about the show, I can’t wait to meet people in Kansas City and make some art there.”
Robert Colescott RIP
Posted in Painting on June 10, 2009| 2 Comments »
Lipstick Lightening from the Indiana University Art Museum. Robert Colescott’s obituary from the New York Times.
Jaimie Warren: You Are So Beautiful In The Face
Posted in Not Painting, tagged Art, Jaimie Warren, Kansas City MO, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Photography on June 5, 2009| 7 Comments »
Jaimie Warren: You Are So Beautiful In The Face, June 5-October 3, 2009.
There is one sentence from the Kemper’s synopsis of this show that I think is critical: While her portraits and close-ups of food invoke photographers Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, and Nikki S. Lee, among others, Warren’s photographs are uniquely her own in their strategic balance of artifice and authenticity, subtly conjuring all of the inconsistencies, ironies, and hilariously awkward moments that permeate everyday life.
So here’s how I’m reading this, Jaimie Warren works within a received aesthetic, and she takes on the topics and issues of this aesthetic but there is this idiosyncratic re-shuffling of the deck that happens, just because she is her and she is not Cindy Sherman or Nikki Lee. The artwork is worthwhile because Warren is building her own house of cards with someone else’s deck and it’s not built quite the same way—it’s a similar shape and structure, but not identical. Just what is gained or lossed working this way, I wonder?
Admittedly, the lo-fi quality to this work is probably responsible for make the questions of uniqueness and originality so relevant to me. I do recommend reading the essay by James Yood on the first link; he’s able to get to the slightly trashy, sometimes icky fun of these while wrangling with the question of influence.
Joshua Landy and Michael Saler on Entitled Opinions
Posted in Not Painting, tagged Entitled Opinions, Joshua Landy, Michael Saler, Podcast, Stanford University, The Reenchantment of the World on June 2, 2009| 6 Comments »
The Re-enchantment of the World
In the studio lately I’ve been catching up on podcast listening. Here’s one that stood out. This discussion between Stanford University professor Joshua Landy and UC-Davis professor Michael Saler aired on a recent Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature) with Robert Harrison on KZSU-Stanford. (Harrison is out of the studio for this one.) It’s thoughtful, devoid of cliche, and touches on a lot of themes that come up in discussions here: Rationalism, Romanticism, spirituality, Pragmatism, Romantic Irony vs. Slacker Irony, villiany, scientific discovery as a form of Wonder, and Star Trek. It’s an absolute must-listen.