Outer Space

Space Lay

2011-11-17T13:07:00.001-08:00

Niche

This essay is about grappling with extremes of composition with a "more is more" bent. My goal is to discuss this as a fruitful strategy and a generative tool in itself and not only as a default or minor field of making. There is a potential that I am putting forward as a comparable or greater tool in achieving greater human potential than other modes of art making and the avante-garde past and present. Using examples from primitives to present day media, I will introduce modes of non-linear creation that assemble and enhance pieces of the world rather than from the world of art -> outwards. These examples are meant to illustrate the unique possibilities for organization of information which may be at the root of new 'entropic' media in which people can organize visual space in potentially more radical ways than ever before.

Andreas Gursky, Nha Trang, Vietnam, 2004

In that, I will be arguing from the perspective that the reverse: “less is more” is a more arbitrary creation of clarity to stand outside from the “chaos” of the increasingly modernized world. This comes from a point of asserting that even when successful at creating meaninful art, this can be a flawed and creativity-stunting process in terms of creating something outside of what one expects. To elevate that kind of “clarity” as a prerequisite for high art or design at points in history allowed other processes to be dismissed as "intuitive", fringe, mad, or just plain cluttered and this continues to some degree today. Despite a greater leveling of equality to artistic practices and a wider accepted field than possibly at any time in modern history, This philosophy still penetrates - if not which art is valued - the process of which art is often made. Simply put, filling space can be one way to break out of existing boundaries and uses of materials to create something larger than its parts or references.

Muniz, Sisyphus, after Tiziano, 2005

Richard Dadd, Fairy Fellers' Master-Stroke, 1855–64

Layering information to the brink of capacity and beyond can be labeled by art theory as dabbling in "horror vacui". Mario Praz (1896 - 1982) created the label to describe the suffocating atmosphere and clutter of interior design in the Victorian age. The seemingly sensible rationale against “clutter” is the idea that a culture necessitates clarity from distractions when it’s very unfettered excess creates chaos. More modern opulence and excess seemingly requires a respite from an even more entrenched sensory overload. The term interpreted at face value therefore, could be thought to imply a marginalizing of many unique artifacts of human labor whose 'dis-order' may reflect, reveal, or generate new aspects in culture.

Melvin 'Milky' Way, 21st cent.

Thankfully horror vacui - or cenophobia - has been flipped to some degree as a term in current use. Ironically it has become a mere neutral description of what millennia of creators have been participating in, something extra-ordinary. This is an art that is not likely meant to resolve a direct story of the every-day, that is, objects not of worldly clarity. This is not to be confused with chaos.

Heaven is Complex?

The Devonshire hunting tapestries, 1430-1450

The literal translation of that term is "fear of space" but more often is characteristic of a conscious (or otherwise) nullification of as much free space as possible - often through an intense process of labor. To understand through logic alone, one may wonder what the motivation or goal of a less 'direct' or crowded space might be. For traditional peoples it may be argued that they see the world with a different perception, that they organized things on their own terms separate from what would be a 'Western' viewpoint. Going back into history it is speculated that the intention of the indigenous or the Greeks was not necessarily to explain to - or even please - humans, but to appease or produce something extra-terra or godly.

Kuna peoples (Columbia), Pattern mola, 19th century

The Dipylon Amphora Funerary Urn in Geometric-Style from Kerameikos Necropolis, Athens -c-750-bc

Horror Vacui is a tradition that stretches diverse forms and media from tribal cultures to the ‘Geometric Period’ of Ancient Greece at the beginning of civilization to the present day. What seems to be at least partially 'instinctual' as well as intentional propensities of peoples remains today in contemporary culture. The desire of artists and non-professionals alike - to 'just' fill space.

Book of Kells, c. 8th century

More advanced early precedents are seen in the rich formal awkwardness of organization in medieval manuscripts that seem to embellish indiscriminately throughout the picture plane with symbols, text, and imagery. One individual, Hrabanus Maurus, a ninth century monk, invented a ciphering system for encrypted poems that interacted with the imagery that in turn had smaller poems within, making images that were often complex and yet accessible on some level to those who would search for the deeper meaning.

Hrabanus Maurus, 9th cen

A Qashqai (Persian) carpet dated 1920

One could dwell quite a bit on all the ornate space filling of ancient and indigenous peoples, but fast forwarding quite a bit to the early 20th century, there existed some lesser known artists engaged in 'visual spiritualism' or 'mediumistic art'. Despite being not well known enough to have directly impacted the art that followed chronologically, these artists deserve notice for a kind of 'rebirth' of extreme spatial eccentricity in the modern Western world of that period. Being what would later be labeled ’outsider artists’, these were people largely untrained in various concepts like negative-space and academic composition. In spite of this they constructed extremely intricate designs and filled endless amounts of that opened up pictorial space. Doing so in ways that mirrored but moved beyond the more generic (yet beautiful) meanderings of primitive art and early object adornment prior. Sometimes these adopted more sophisticated pictographic imagery within those new volumes created and used expanded sources from surrounding medias. In 1908, one such artist - Adolf Wolfli - began a 25,000 page epic-object defying categorization that featured 1,600 illustrations merged with texts and musical notation that in turn spewed a story of blended autobiography and fantasy. Artists like Wolfli and Augustin Lesage created massive projects in scale and scope that mined their own eccentricities and ran with them outwards like a database of Mad Libs.

Adolf Wolfli, from “Geographic and Algebraic Books", 1912-1916

Augustin Lesage, A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World, 1923

Another example of this information-intensity producing similar 'monuments' of personal vision is found in the work of Achilles G. Rizzoli. Although not exactly 'Horror Vacui' in terms of composition (it remains perspectivaly representational) the spaces are indeed quite detailed and meandering to a beyond baroque level of the eccentric. Possibly the strangest of all 'outsider' American artists, Rizzoli attempted early on to make a living as a writer, and wrote countless books centered around architects trying to achieve utopias, achieving 280 rejections over decades. In his 40's he began his epic series of architectural renderings that symbolically represent individuals as monumental buildings, many to indicate or illustrate a post-human afterlife as these grand permanent structures. This is similar to how some peoples have attributed an afterlife in trees and rocks and things. Rizolli pictured them as fantastic classical structures in heaven. Later in life he attempted to write what would be the third testament to the bible which features a female compliment to Jesus named 'Miss Architecture Made To Entertain'.

AG Rizzoli, Mr & Mrs. Harold Healy Symbolically Sketched, 1935

AG Rizzoli, The Shaft of Ascension, 1939

On the subject of his own art Rizzoli was verbose:

"We sincerely believe we have delineated the most remarkable and singular impression ever possible of expressing in terms of decorative architecture unique to extremes hardly possible of visualization unless one has actually experienced the oddly intrinsic throbbing ordeal, thereupon we feel we have produced the most picturesque and precious piece of, or at least essayed the initial move in what may be considered a new movement in the history of art. "

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Other than the tendency towards eccentricity, my belief is that 'horror vacui' is not linked necessarily to that of Surrealism, even though some surrealists works certainly qualify. I believe the differnce - particulary in the modern impulse - is an attempt to BUILD without interference of a set language or pictorial convention, not just to unravel and display the acts of the subconscious. Of course particularly with more free-form and expressionist work, from Henri Michaux and Andre Mason to Jackson Pollock there is an element of both. When examining the strongest examples of this type of art as whole however, I believe this is structurally tied to a more analytic tradition of organization and desire to create something outside oneself than randomness.

Henri Michaux, 1958

Kuba peoples, Congo; Prestige Panel, 19th–20th century

The actual organizing principles of ornamental rugs and the like are largely unknown in significance or meaning or reasons for being.The analytical aspect and tendency to self-organize the object in the modern period (either bouncing off of realistic form or working in abstract language) is a bit more apparent and can be sourced in traditional art history. These ‘Modern’ compositional strategies came from using formal techniques of analytic cubism itself and other avant-garde experimentation in new formats such as material collage. These liberally manifested in what I believe to be the first truly American art works by the artist Marsden Hartley.

Marsden Heartley, Portrait of a German Officer, 1914

In works like Portrait of a German Officer, 1914 and other 'portraits' these defining pieces show a type of painterly design in bricolage that disintegrated and recombined categories of abstract/landscape/portrait/ and still life. Not much later this was picked up by a group of artists labeled the precisionists: Ralston Crawford, Stuart Davis, and Charles Demuth amongst the most notable. These artists used similar methods to create more specific - although not necessarily more radical - relationships between real things of the world, appropriate ways of representation, and their working methods.

Ralston Crawford, New Orleans Cemetery (Wreath Monument), 1973

Ralston Crawford, New Orleans Tomb, 1954

Particularly Ralston Crawford in his proto-pop sensibility, tried to convey the complexity of the observed world into an equally complex visual hierarchy. Contrasting this with the exuberant jazz-like emotive compositions of peer Stuart Davis one can see the difference.

Stuart Davis, The Mellow Pad, 1945-1951

Davis couldn't separate completely from the European model where poetry supersedes reference and specificity (although making great energetic compositions nonetheless). Crawford tended to favor a more industrial layout which avoided artificial balance and rather emphasized imperfection (radical asymmetry) with industrial application. Charles Demuth on the other hand made striking visual compositions that seemed to borrow and string together from every artistic movement at that time (Italian Futurism, Orphism, etc... as well as being obsessed with Duchamp’s ‘Bride’ painting) but created something distilled, defined, and well..’pop’. On a side note, many of his paintings are known to have secret layered subject matter on the level of Duchamp.

Charles Demuth, The Figure 5 in Gold, 1928

In Europe at this time there was another major figure: Kurt Schwitters, a German, who was rejected from the DADA movement in Berlin as a member because of his educational background and ties to modern ‘visual’ movements that were looked on with disdain by intellectual radicals. Indeed after rejection he went on to emphasize radical visual experiments in the field of collage – that was currently being used to more obvious political ends by satirical geniuses like Hannah Hoch and John Heartfield. Schwitters’ approach was to create a more coherent sense out the world using cumulative fragments-turned-stories, rather than using collage to juxtapose or illustrate already set ideas and fleeting politics. In addition to his flat work, Schwitters’ most ambitious projects were in his alterations of physical spaces, most notably the Merzbau, which reflected his formal ingenuities back into real physical spaces.

Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau, 1933

Although the artists in this section perhaps did not always feature the added or missing gene to pump their compositions to the point of horror, they each contribute greatly to the very mutability and playfulness of the picture plane. They lay the foundation for opened up working process of future artists and they themselves figured out ways to work within the artifacts of the world and create their own meaning honest to the materials and context.

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"I consider myself successful only when I do something that resembles the lack of order I sense."

- Robert Rauschenberg

Post-War art is filled with examples of a 'less is more' mentality, informed by Bauhaus severity, minimal/conceptual essentialism, and cutting delivery of prepackaged ideas. This can lead to even more ‘essential’ art of the intentionally banal, or sometimes for the purposes of turning on its head - a mere display of the forms of commerce. This also fits the model already discussed as the respite from the world's complexity via large amounts of 'white space' and desire for limited layers of complexity and simplicity. Despite this, there are examples from minimalism to pop art of artists who bridge the physical and the fantastical through what could be interpreted as filled space. Amongst them are artists as seemingly diverse as Jay Defeo, Lucas Samaras, and Roy Lichtenstein.

Jay Defeo, The Rose, 1958-1966

Out of the Beat Era and process obsessed, Jay Defeo might seem to be the perfect propagator of the 'more is better' axiom. Best known for painting "The Rose", a 11-by-8-foot object weighing 3000 pounds and 11 inches deep in oil paint. Marked by the continuous working through addition and subtraction, building and erasure. These works generally based on templates of basic forms: triangle, spiral, oval etc... Despite that we are clearly dealing with the very basic tenets of horror vacui this mammoth of material seems to aesthetically avoid compositional maximalism or a sense of being overkill. This gives it a unique singularity in what can be seen as an opened field of 'labored' and hand crafted minimal work and separates it quite a bit from what has been discussed so far in terms of a 'complicated' space. Like Crawford, many of her source materials (and thus the sources of empirical form) were gathered through photography and formed into a symbolic language. This ties it to the idea of building meaning through accumulation of little realities instead of forming one step reductions, illustrations or abstractions from the larger world.

On the dedicated (obsessive) aspect, Defeo comments: "When the work is final, I have to feel I have pushed it as far as I possibly can (short of self-destructing) and very important, I can't abide a single mark that strikes me as arbitrary."

"the medium does indeed become the message" - Jay Defeo

Agnes Martin, Falling Blue, 1963

On an even more abstract end of the spectrum, if we look to artists like Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin, and Richard Serra, and even John McCracken we can see the propensity of some artists who could be called 'minimalists' to actually be propagating a highly labored and 'filled' space. Being on the far end of the spectrum towards the abstract, these works obviously were not marked by perspectival convention and created new realation to the human gesture, despite being more 'homogeneous' as a finished product than things discussed in this essay.

John McCracken, mid 60's

Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

In regards to other art movements, particularly when seen in Warhol, reductive pop seems to be irreconcilable (even more so than certain kinds of minimal art) with filled space. Although in Warhol you do have works where repetition and working/overworking of the surface takes on new and non-linear modes of production as opposed to being purely simple critiques or reproductions of things. Roy Lichtenstein perhaps is seen as a less important figure in terms of having such an affect on culture and subsequent artists, but in terms of visual space was probably much more interesting if not more radical.

Roy Lichtenstein, Mirror #10, 1970

Lichtenstein picked up on and exploited conventions in comics and other print media that were signifiers or stand-ins representing real life. This was a language essentially built in the modern era not one and the same with those of academic art or modernism. Some earlier works were seemingly direct copies (although never were 100%), but he then absorbed those into his own iconography and built with them. Things like "stink-lines", emotional text, explosions, rays of light, reflections in mirrors were things 20th century 2-d cartoonists had to create new visual formulae to depict reality. For those progenitors There was a certain habituation and style to things that are basically loaded with meaning that they do not intrinsically contain, and thus can be played with. Lichenstein's work is marked by this play of these pictorial signs. This is often criticized unfairly as meaningless themselves - compared to Warhol which is seen as having more underling 'message'. Some of Lichenstein's most intriguing works are the painting/objects like the Mirror works. The basic idea already an invention of Jasper Johns, where you are presented with an object that is itself an illusion and a thing. With the mirrors you have a deeper investigation in terms of what symbols make the form recognizable. Bands and dots do not a mirror make, and yet he was able to make a strange dense object in the real world that speaks to this playful zone of perception. Painted mirrors reflecting nothing and yet composed of those signs which we can read as reflection and solidity.

Lucas Samaras, Untitled Box, 1963

Because of such inventions of post-war art, in the 60's and 70's following pop,minimalism and conceptualism, artists had the luxury of playing with a wider array of tools - both formal and conceptual - that pushed even funkier contradictions even while remaining formally rigorous. Lucas Samaras is an American Greek import whose work is marked by fantastical personally obsessive dialog along with a material fetish to repel and attract. He did postgraduate work specializing in Byzantine art at Columbia University. This was probably a influence in his organization and may have also inspired the variations in scale, medium, and approach to materials as components that are always interchangeable and take on exotic hybrid forms. His objects appear formed through a mysterious fashion often embellishing upon existing objects and taking them into territories of the internal surreal, from sensuous to the sinister...often mutilating forms in the process of 'decorating' them.

S. Clay Wilson, The Psychopathic Southside Blade-Freaks Confront Razor Annie and Her Cocaine Chorus of Cutters... (center spread for Thrilling Murder Comics), 1970

Looking even further outside the art-world similar strategies to that being discussed were adopted and integral to the underground comix movement and psychedelic art. This is seen not only with new gestures of expressing things but new ways of organizing the picture plane. A new multifaceted space divorced from the rules of 'window' conventions but not entirely abstract. In the 70’s and 80’s artists like A.R. Penck and Keith Harring would use their subjective ‘automatic’ embellishment to fill spaces with their own pictographic icons.

Joe McHugh + East Totem West, Gates of Eden, 1969

Keith Harring

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Wallace Berman, Untitled (A7-Mushroom, D4-Cross), 1966

One sort of liminal weirdo was Wallace Berman, an archetypal (or anti-archetypal) beatnik who was also involved in the infamous Ferus gallery in California in the late 50’s. He also disseminated work through his self published journal SEMINA (Latin:seed). His personal work comprised almost entirely of serial images done on a Verifax (copier) with the majority featuring a grid of repeated emblematic images of a hand holding a palm-sized transistor radio. The speaker was replaced by a variety of images –themselves iconic – that were then meant to string together to express various ideas (mostly arbitrary, surreal, groovy) which he added to by hand written notes and painted Kabbalistic Hebrew characters. A pioneer of sorts to what would become a photocopy aesthetic, later propagated in punk rocks flyers, zines etc... These would be informed in the same way by constructivism, an unconscious sensitivity to pop as well as classical compositions, along with basic utility and quickness.

MDC flyer, 1980's

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In a more comprehensive essay, many subtopics could follow focusing on a vast array of contemporary artists carving out their unique niche in 'obsessive' art or lengthy accounts of DIY movements with a maximal aesthetic in Providence (My home town) and those that sprawled elsewhere.

Third Annual Roggabogga, Forcefield, Whitney Biennial, 2002

Brian Chippendale, Save Eagle Square, 2001

Comic artist Henriette Valium

To stick with the basic premise of manipulating a single frame or object in a way that is radically organized and 'filled out' we do have to talk somewhat about computers, particularly games. Similar to dissecting every visual movement from the 80's onwards, talking about a whole history of computer graphics would be impossible here. The changes in perception through media and graphics construction software is huge and similarly amorphous to describe. The movement towards user-controlled 'god-like' freedom in games; however, is a permeating and growing industry that is perhaps easier to pinpoint and more relevant to the conversation so far. To single out a figure or progenitor of such one can point to Will Wright who is responsible for The SIMS, its precursor: Sim City, and the latest mega-success Spore.

Windows XP error, 2009

Wright is the visionary responsible for pushing the limits of user-customization and play and coining the phrase 'possibility space'. He has claimed that his brainstorming for The SIMS came about after his Northern California house burned down (among many in the Berkley/Oakland fires) and after moving into a new home. In putting back together their life he would arrange things in a completely different way and observe the process. The game had been originally dubbed "Home Tactics: The Experimental Domestic Simulator."

Sim City 3000

Way prior to that, in 1986, Wright and Jones had a daughter, Cassidy, and Jones made Wright promise to share the parenting equally so that she [his wife] could continue painting. “He really did stick to that,” she told me. “He spent a lot of time with Cassidy.” While he was at home with his daughter, Wright began to turn over the idea for a new game, a kind of interactive doll house that adults would like as much as children. “I went around my house looking at all my objects, asking myself, ‘What’s the least number of motives or needs that would justify all this crap in my house?’ There should be some reason for everything in my house. What’s the reason?” [ Game Master, The New Yorker, November 6, 2006]

Sim City 3000

So Wright is pulling from the world as subject matter in his games, however he is also using this critically and creativity to actually produce something that examines and questions everyday experience as well as fantastical experience, which one may equate to function as art. Not only that but that ability is then transferred to anyone who uses what he has made.

generic -> specific, a suitable tool for representation

The Sims - mod

This type of platform allows for a polar opposite format to academic or 'schools' of art and thinking where intention drives a linear path to conception and finish.

For Wright, getting people to focus on their environment - albeit virtual - is a trove of sociological study into how our environments affect our habits and conditions and change behavior. It turns out of course that people will exhibit more 'free reign' in the virtual than otherwise out of more conservative necessity in real life. When given a virtual black hole the impulse isn't always to 'fill space' but perhaps like Defeo to aggressively add and subtract over and over in the virtual. To try out multiple pathways or approaches simultaneously, without as much self-consciousness or even training to be 'creative'. This of course is similar with graphics construction, whose 'undo' marks a significant breakthrough.

Wright has since stated his own think-tank for pertetuating the future of user-customization called Stupid Fun Club. "Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms."

Responsible in some degree for the 9-9-9 tax plan, in his new project Hivemind (yet to be released) he writes:

"If we can learn enough about the player, we can create games about their real life. How do we get you more engaged in reality rather than distract you from it?"

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Robert Venturi Eclectic House Series 1977

Minecraft [VG], 2nd decade - 21st cent.

"Less is a bore." - Robert Venturi author of Learning from Las Vegas

"Most Minecraft architecture is merely a reproduction of traditional trends practiced in the real world because designers simply tend to recreate what is familiar to them. However, if the unconventional physics of Minecraft were more often embraced, an entirely different sort of aesthetic would be produced. The Minecraft designer does not actually need to address the laws of gravity or weather that dictate the design of shelter in the real world, and so every use of pitched roofs or support beams and the like is completely unnecessary. An architecture that is specific to the Minecraft world does not need to appear to stand, it should instead appear as if it is floating. Minecraft architecture should appear altogether unique, as there is, with the exception of sand and gravel, no force of gravity for the building materials to resist. A new set to physical laws should produce a new building logic." - from: Manifesto for a New Minecraft Aesthetic

http://mcarchitecture.tumblr.com/post/9022780873/manifesto-for-a-new-minecraft-aesthetic

Lebbeus Woods, Architectural Drawing

Minecraft is an independent open-world or 'free roaming' game that goes above and beyond the terms of freedoms one can create through a built environment and story created by the individual. It was almost single-handedly the creation and distribution of one person: Markus "Notch" Persson. Like other such open-worlds there are many ways to reach an objective but it allows for almost unprecedented free reign in constructing the very environment (at least within a grid of computer mathematics) and independence of game objective.

Despite its popularity and strengths it does seem like the criticisms of the manifesto parallel what might be said of all mediums with a goal maximum creativity. This perhaps is an unfair demand on a game nor is the manifesto written by the creator. Expanding on it however, there does seem to be a pervasive phenomena of redundancy and habit regardless of the medium and regardless of the technology available.

Minecraft [VG], 2nd decade - 21st cent.

Tanzania , Dar es Salaam , Tingatinga painting .

The style takes its name from Eduardo Saidi Tingatinga born in the 1930s

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True creativity involves the ability and space to rebuild things based on one’s own rules within rules. On the flip side, the redundancy of habituation seems to be the default even as media strive intentionally to foster creativity. While getting people simply to be creative is some feat, using that creativity to actually bridge into something new can be somewhat more of a challange.

So fresh and so clean.

Some theorists in art have almost re-defined the art-practice in term of having to refer or comment on cultural phenomena in order to have relevance to the culture. Problem being is that actual products of the culture - indifferent to such a system of thought - generally have greater effect on people’s perceptions. The actual culture produces the more relevant and pervasive engines of insight into humanity and pleasure. It seems this default self-critically and adherence to rules or correctness is a crutch which prevents tapping into true unknowns. These are unknowns that true experimentation and tools pulled from our basic free zones of expression - from art to games - can tap into.

FASA Corp., Shadowrun [RPG], 1990

"Minecraft players do not require the utility of garages, kitchens, or bathrooms. With that, in-game cities should be composed of buildings that are designed to frame views, house art, and represent ideas. It would be most appropriate for monuments, museums, sky bridges and viewing towers to exist where apartments, restaurants, gas stations and office buildings take up most of the space in the real world. " - from: Manifesto for a New Minecraft Aesthetic

http://mcarchitecture.tumblr.com/post/9022780873/manifesto-for-a-new-minecraft-aesthetic

Minecraft [VG], 2nd decade - 21st cent.

Phoebe Washburn Nunderwater Nort Lab (detail), 2011

I think this gets down to the 'message' of the filled up jug or rug or whatever one can imagine and then embellish. The actual creation and its detail is not always a matter of showing things as they are, but creating terms of which to describe new or otherwise indescribable phenomena. This, taken to its limit will likely bring the most fruitful discussion and shape the culture more than a discussion based on the same already preconceived ideas. In addition to the “horror vacui” of the page or vessel, these user filled spaces of 'dis-order' of the present - whether material or technologically - may be the tools (or models for those tools) that will ultimately generate the next wave of non-mainstream thought and wonder.

Nikola Tesla sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs in December 1899

Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International, 1919

Abstraction: "The New Casualists"

2011-06-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

BE WARNED. In a sense below is a breakdown of the "critical (or non-) thought" surrounding some current art movements articulated within a article published recently in The Brooklyn Rail. It is not a dismissal of any particular show or artist as some of such things included in such beg for more first-hand viewing and discussion.

http://brooklynrail.org/2011/06/artseen/abstract-painting-the-new-casualists

It has been said that ALL art writing does to some degree overly praise and repackage what the artist is doing. Although I get into this below, on top of the words given after the fact there are the underlying theories fueling the currents of what thinking and processes and such are validated and distributed which then forms criticism which is then distributed and validating.

The problem I have with this as a stylistic grouping in "The New Casualists" - which I think is artificial in itself in labeling a range of talents and activities - is that just like October theories or whatever post-theory theory this article lists a number of activities and approaches the artist is supposedly invoking that if actually present in the art I would vibe with but that I think remain overtly bombastic praises of what is actually going on in much of the work.

In other words if someone doesn't know that it is cool to "circumvent" certain painting strategies, to "go against didactic thinking" "rally against macho posturing" and to make crappy looking paintings to tentatively oppose rigid Peter Halley-like conventions that are "TOO ART WORLD"...then to me and to the larger world they exist mostly as crappy paintings or at the very least..disingenuous tactics on the part of critics to wave such 'critical' flags as meaningful and should be praised largely for their "insouciance" and whatever formal successes.

"Insouciant abandon" as the fiery claim states - might indeed translate sometimes as meaningful art as there is plenty room for abject, deconstructivist, junky and/or crappy looking things in my book, but the work still has to transcend something or engage me in its world if it wants me to consider it in any serious way. "Synthesis and Recombination" arn't inherent values in art or ideas. They just arn't.

We have to unfortunately accept some superflous writing but in this case of this article it is indeed describing a movement than a single work or show. The art like the writing In its attempts to describe whatever mini-zeitgeist that postures as being anti-philosophy and anti-critical - rides on those same tropes to have some higher significance over 'lower arts' that it robs.

These being trends going far back into previous decades. and many artists of past generations are referenced which could lend to its own discussion.

But the issue here that ties both the criticism of the writing and work together is a 'lets pretend' on part of the artists and critcs that there is no strategy and therefore more genuine form of artmaking over other things. This begs to be discovered on my end in the works themselves. Often once something is removed of these critical trappings that are being proposed as non-existent and exposed ultimately as basically insider-critiques of art-making, its up to the work to prove itself on whatever formal and experimental merits it has. If its presenting itself as anti-innovative as an idea, I'd much rather look at a Kupka painting personally than something that meta stumbles over such.

Less than half a decade there was (in my mind) a more interesting dialogue of new 'formalism' or abstraction. A "drunk" Vs. "stoned" thing that had various alchemical and often anti-intellectual (although not necessarily as a goal - just less mind generally) approaches to art making. The problem for me here is a pretense of purity or depth that is like one inch thick. I'm all about the unknown but at least give me some real spark of originality or serious investigation with something. Are we seeing the results of some serious investigation of something so personally odd or are we praising some half-baked window with promises of suspended disbelief? A disbelief that is then being given value for being a half-baked window that says "trying" or 'grand narrative' is lame and little else.

You can see these underlying 'anti-theories' everywhere in this article. Do I believe it is also driving at least some of the works' self-importance in some way? yeah.

The articles efforts to stir up alot of quasi-math type validations like "fuzzy logic" and such things becomes fairly similar to what Clement Greenberg and co. would stir up I think. What in the recent past would them be funneled through some feminist critique and rebuilt in felt 5 years ago is now appearing as pure negating Orphism removed of much passion or skill.

To "accommodate a world in which there is often no clear truth or falseness." can be said for pretty much anything and simply to "experiment with unusual ways of applying paint." is not intrinsically on the level of complex physics, philosophy, or math...sorry. Malevich, Al Held, Jay DeFeo, Ryman, Lynda Benglis etc...are in my opinion and this kind of dedication is lost amongst many of these artists. If we find more mystery and intrigue and less academic stodgily in recent unravellings of hard sciences than in contemporary art then this presents a problem for understanding what is truly tweaking reality and perception and which is merely passing jargon.

If someone wants to see their personal investigation and long term goal of pursuing something in their weird space as the sole reason for making things...that is somewhat different than relying on ideas like "closure to abstraction" or "Meta" and so forth to validate what is altogether not very weird or experimental. Show me the really freaky thing and I will stop seeking 'answers'.

Recently on the Jerry Saltz page it was posted: Chuck Close said to me in 1985: "If it comes out looking like art, it must look like someone else’s art."

My opinion is that with Close's comment its a double step beyond the "Make it new" kind of logic.

Its not about how making something that appears old and contrived is necessarily bad, something new and slick necessarily good, rehashed and screen-printed black-and-white necessarily 'smart', or childlike - meaningful, and clearly 'regressive' is not anti-capital or non marketable.

To me I'm usually sizing up whether a process or mindset comes from something that is charted rather than what it looks like new. If we are seeing a real dialog with 'abstraction' in its myriad forms, ultimately for me it is not about 'new' but 'huh?' which is worth seeking out. Close shows you can use conventional subject matter and inhabit it with something else. Most of these artists to me seem to be showing what actually amounts to conventions disguised as a blessed 'huh?' informed through some critical trope and then being labeled by those critics as something far beyond what probably many of the artists could care less about.

So when it says:

"intrigued by the questions and contradictions in art than by any definitive answers it might provide." or

"They also harbor a broader concern with multiple forms of imperfection: not merely what is unfinished but also the off-kilter, the overtly offhand, the not-quite-right. The idea is to cast aside the neat but rigid fundamentals learned in art school and embrace everything that seems to lend itself to visual intrigue—including failure. "

These are concepts that are important to me and what I do..but then again I don't really appraise what many of these artists are doing as being all too engaged with contradictions that have much relevance to me even as a 'creative person'..never-mind a person who really has no concern of over which painting methods yield which results.

The Working Title, Bronx River Art Center, 2011

Lee Bontecou, untitled, 1998 (contrast)

Scott Grodesky @ SUNDAY

2009-05-19T05:22:00.000-07:00

Scott Grodesky

Table

May 14th - June 14th 2009

SUNDAY

237 Eldridge St.

Lately I have been interested in seeking out art, particularly painting, that gives off alot more energy than it consumes or even speaks of -- or with.

In Scott Grodesky's latest exhibition, we are presented with a dwarf-epic of people in their domain on that very human scale. The pictures, the range of activity and subjects from the commonplace to the obscure here are rendered and analyzed aesthetically -- not intellectually -- by a sophisticated painter.

The artist is known for his intelligent and emotive play on certain conventions and imposed limitations of perspective and palette in creating a whole range of emotions and ideas through those formal 'tricks'. Often the paintings carry the feel of humanism: the family and depiction on an honest life and it's honest-yet-otherworldly-depiction, crafted through some seemingly unsophisticated gaze that is anything but.

Nothing new is the fact that there is quite a bit of faux-naive painting that gets made, and this doesn't qualify. The work is more akin to a Guston-like portrayal of reality where everything is so real and yet accomplished in caricature -- not in style but in emotion -- so that the full range of experience can actually BE seen.

In addition to Guston, consciously or not -- and in spirit or application -- the work fits into (and refers to) a strange lineage of 'questionable' artists with a range of interpretations and criticisms from hard line camps: J.J. Rousseau, Jacob Lawrence, Thomas Hart Benton, Pierre Bonnard, William T. Wiley, the Mexican muralists (Orozco), and the illustrations of Clement Hurd or Roald Dahl.

In the new exhibition, Table, there seems to be not only a progression in painting style but in the furnishing of these paintings. Often in the older works, perspective was placed behind the viewer rather than ahead, projecting us into the past rather than some anxiety of future. In the new paintings -- due to the painterly feng shui -- the future looks that much more bright, but only as seen through the current moment.

This sense of the incoherent led to some level of anxiety in the older works. It is is still present here, although downplayed and more prude, slightly tweaking the picture plane and creating that space of mild anxiety. Now its more a space to reflect on the present than some past or anxious future. A shift from dazed and confused to presence.

The works also depart from the last exhibition held at Zach Feuer in that it seems to have shifted from darker fairy-taled themes illuminated by pastel colors to lighter more close to home ones with: incredibly even-brighter palettes and closer intimate crops. The work really resonates on that level of intimacy in Sunday's more affectionate Lower East Side exhibition space. Here the works almost function in-situ, especially when viewed on a nice Spring day.

In this new work, everything takes the nature not of dreams but of a kind of hazed living-ecstasy seen through a an accomplished lens lathered with mayonnaise. In some ways, the paintings take on that 'soft' quality that Dali was interested in, also Oldenburg comes to mind where the reality seeps in through those softened 'real's.

In the main work, Table, 2008 spanning almost thirteen feet and hung at body height is a scene which encapsulates the vortex of possible activity that is a home. Going from experience from my own family, these surfaces become not the place of meals but the battleground of action figures, patina-ed by hardened residue of construction paste and chewing gum, and periodically the inaugural display place of various science fair projects.

The painting approach here is honed to the parameters of Goldilocks - just right - perspectival weirdness, while other projects such as Street Scene, 2009 and Mirror, 2008. create stoic vignettes onto old themes made anew and closer to home. Its almost impossible for me to describe these things further without reaching into my bag of verbal tricks, of which the artist makes unnecessary.

I left this active space feeling really good about painting and its possibility.

Table

2008
Acrylic & colored pencil on canvas
65x153"

Street Scene

2009
Acrylic & colored pencil on canvas
60x48"

Jaqueline Cedar and Gilad Ratman @ Columbia MFA

2009-05-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

Gilad Ratman

Recently I was listening to a David Lynch lecture. In it he described "more wind" as a directing term which means more mystery.

In Gilad Ratman's work, videos seem to convey notions of poetics over concept. A poetics OF poesis - or the idea of any making in the plastic arts. The mystery transcends any logic of the films construction - very similar to Lynch's debut Eraserhead - and not coincidentally Gilad's video projects seem to transcend the video genre itself and become snippets of the cinematic, yet on his own terms and intentions.

The components and direction here are simple but the results are complex. The direction on the part of Mr. Ratman creates the soundtrack out of the event.

As creatures emerge from a pool of muck and one hears ambient sounds, the screen pans along with the contraption of tubes that he has devised to traverse from actors to instruments (dangling flutes from atop long branches) - a syphon of material.

These placed instruments give the effect of an anime fantasy - Miyazaki sublime - where the entire natural scene becomes alive and magic with bubbling activity and spirit.

Mud is visceral in that it magnifies and disguises forms underneath. The - never knowing what exactly is going on in there... - makes it conducive to the fetish and horror films Gilad discovered when he researched locations for his idea.

He found it via the internet in the deep south. A place that specializes in exactly those things.

Horror and sex films both have the quality of "the human" and the "super human" not just as in incredible or extreme feats and actions..but magnifying and - often consciously by the creators of horror films, but perhaps not picked up consciously by the average viewer - commenting on each aspect of humanity: pleasure, terror, anxiety, the perverse. The mud here gives it that skin, that shell of 'humanoid visceral surrogate" to inhabit whether it is some kind of unknown creature, or a disguised interlocking anonymous body parts.

Gilad seems to use that material in the same way to separate the 'actors' from their contributions to the videos, as if actors, sounds, materials, and landscape are one.

All of this has to do somewhat with the influence of the primordial or birth of creations. that anything can exist within the mud, and is still..well..mud.

When I discovered the writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell) I became drawn to his earliest of works: Swamp Thing

Most people assume that the character has typical Peter-Parker-esq origins: man is working on some kind of secret goo, ends up exploding and blowing him into a swamp...

Well, that might have been the original story, but when Moore took up the task in the 80's he decided that: no...he was not a man that merged with a bunch of microorganisms and swamp algae in some freak accident...'He' was a conglomeration of scum, vegetable matter and microorganisms that collectively had the memory and consciousness of a man whose physical form was destroyed!

Here, literary mastery develops when 'he' realizes this. There is a period of course where 'he' freaks out, gets depressed and all existential and why-me, and then eventually just decides to stop 'breathing' and other human habits and goes about kicking ass as his dematerialized non-bodied accepted self. There is this other part where this villain eats a yam of sorts that falls from Swamp Thing...its all very profound...

It's all in the details, and seeing things as more than their appearances, even if you are seeing uniform lines of lumped clay, it still has its details, or could be a comic book or well..mud... but true poesis will push up against gravity through the syphon.

More Wind.

Jaqueline Cedar

The appearance and function of the detail within the narrative..and what has been labeled by theorists as meta-narratives has been the focus - intentionally or not - of much contemporary art in the past decades. These groupings of meta-narratives becomes cliched or homogenized (although not speaking to the nth degree at this point) in the form of subcultures. Artists often take these groupings not only as their stomping ground but the basis for content AND subject matter for contemporary works. Sometimes it is possible for the work to describe these subjects..and loose integrity in regards to content, as these ideas simply get skimmed over or illustrated or re-presented in some gallery context.

in Jaqueline Cedar's work...there seems to be a discussion of many of these narratives, often intersecting both as the subject of the paintings...and also in their emotive and formal transformations of space.

There is an element of "Permanent Woodstock" here..thankfully without the pompous tropes of utopia strewn about. No shirtless androgenoids running around a fire, or sporting caveman garbs made of old sweaters. The essence of peace and vibrancy and child-like awe here is flowing through the mere formal distortions in the paintings. Similar to a Balthus painting..its HOW these things are painted that carries home the ideas, no separate plaque reading or overt symbolism required.

Often they depict children, in some kind of exploration of learning or raw-experiencing of the world. We seem to be part of their experience. WE see those objects and scenes as larger than life and slightly mannered and magical - as if through new eyes not mired by traditions and education.

If we are to believe in the power of our media or the more popularly oft misused term - memes - in their transformation of our thoughts from a very young age...than we MUST believe in the power for those same media to positively affect the cognitive workings of younger minds. I'm thinking of Harry Potter fans dreaming of 'Wizard School' and looking at their rote arithmetic and Moby Dick with intelligent skepticism. Is life STILL about some big struggle against nature and against oneself? or can it be about creation and the unknown?

Here the individuals always participate in social and even ritualistic activities with conscious and care towards the group, almost with an unconscious goal to transcend that activity into some kind of self-awareness or true learning. There is no theatricality or individual focus, but a group moving towards revelation but somehow kept in limbo or semi-ignorance by powers out of their control.

In pieces such as Planetarium, Petting Zoo, and Trust Walk, we are clearly exploring nature's phenomena in a very innocent way. Planetarium displays not the attraction: the planets, but simply the figures with the projected glows shone upon them. This shifts the perspective and creates patterns of color and light IN them, as they almost appear absorbed in some kind of cosmic scene that becomes borderline religious but rests intentionally in the unfulfilled.

At the opposite spectrum, in Funeral you have a depiction of a ceremony that is comply devoid of death and religiosity, but not of emotion. The scene is some kind of... transition of life with no magnitude.

To point out some formal interests. In Funeral, the trees (or murals of trees?) have some resemblance of Metzinger style cubism, but also have the airy feel of a Morris Louis painting via Alex Katz. In Petting Zoo, the planes appears almost 'stacked' as in a Cezanne..the background flops accordion-like into the vanishing point and into some equally 'toothy' mountains.

In general, the painting application is delicate and the tones somewhat muted with periodic high volume hues that are - generally speaking - fairly accurate to the figurations they describe, making them formally quite distinct from some of the other paintings that were in the same exhibition, and that have been coming out of the program in recent years.

I don't like to say this, but It seems like alot of work (not just @ Columbia) is under the guidance of the 'three wisepersons' of Dana Schutz, Garth Weiser, and David Altmejd. Ideas and forms and loads of Grumbacher paint satellite between those points on the triangle, sometimes combining them, but never breaking orbit or questioning those paths.

Some of the work in the exhibition seemed to be JUST those combinations of frankincense and myrrh and very much IN the triangle.

I think these two artists are in deep space.

[ note: Not speaking for everything, some work I didn't get a chance to spend enough time with or just happened to fall short only in the fervor of the opening ]

Planetarium, 2009

Funeral, 2008

The 588 Project, 2009 (featured) and older works

Stupid Fun Club

2009-04-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

Computer-game visionary Will Wright, responsible for The SIMS and its precursor: Sim City, and the latest mega-success Spore

has released on Thursday that he is exiting EA Entertainment and focusing on his think-tank project Stupid Fun Club

He started Stupid Fun Club in 2001, with the focus is development of NEW forms of entertainment including movies, toys, as well as video games. He will be channeling all his energy here for the future.

Wright: "The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change,"

"Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms."

Personally, as an artist I like to think I participate in a lo-fi discussion/version of what he would call “possibility space” or creativity made available to a “user” by a program which allows for a seemingly infinite - yet clearly contained - set of parameters.

Wright is the visionary responsible for pushing the limits of user-customization and play and coining this phrase. The opposite of the spectrum is of course the academic or 'schools' of art and thinking.

I am speaking of the space opened up between the ideas and intention at conception and the forms that go on to symbolize those ideas. For me it is in increasing that gap which maximizes imaginative power.

Wright has claimed that his brainstorming for The SIMS came about after his Northern California house burned down (among many in the Berkley/Oakland fires) and after moving into a new home. In putting back together their life he would arrange things in a completely different way and observe the process. The game had been originally dubbed "Home Tactics: The Experimental Domestic Simulator."

even prior to that (the fire was in 91') Wright had already been schooling in domesticity.

from the New Yorker:

In 1986, Wright and Jones had a daughter, Cassidy, and Jones made Wright promise to share the parenting equally so that she [his wife] could continue painting. “He really did stick to that,” she told me. “He spent a lot of time with Cassidy.” While he was at home with his daughter, Wright began to turn over the idea for a new game, a kind of interactive doll house that adults would like as much as children. “I went around my house looking at all my objects, asking myself, ‘What’s the least number of motives or needs that would justify all this crap in my house?’ There should be some reason for everything in my house. What’s the reason?”

in another article on the web:

"At some point, I got more interested in architecture. The process that architects go through to design a house was really interesting to me. They start with a functional task description of where you spend your time and what kind of environments you need to support your activities. And that eventually evolves into a house plan. I was trying to figure out a way to turn that into a game about architecture. So I started down that path."

Wright was heavily influenced in his research by A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, an architectural theory book based on function rather than form. For Alexander, common sense rules about architecture were often overlooked/never consider or just treated as 'window dressing', such as "Don't make a balcony more than six feet deep or it won't get used much; and if a roof appears to be supported only by spindly posts, it'll make people nervous. " The results of this ignorance: pompous musing of architects about 'transparency' and Derrida, or conversely some kind of Michael Graves idealization and appropriation without context or content.

In Wright's research, he discovered a curious statistic: Home-design software was a big seller! It couldn't be that ALL these people were remodeling their homes, they probably just wanted to play with architecture.

One of his first projects with Stupid Fun Club was participating with his daughter Cassidy, in Robot Wars with the contender "Kitty Puff Puff", "who fought against its opponents by sticking a roll of gauze onto its armature and circling around them, encapsulating them and denying them movement. The technique, "cocooning", was eventually banned." (from wikipedia)

For Wright, getting people to focus on their environment - albeit virtual - is a trove of sociological study into how our environments affect our habits and conditions and CAN change behaviour.

That was his inspiration, that and spending time away from his office to be at home with his daughter..where he would play with her with her doll houses and watch her mind interact and dream.

Shih Chieh Huang Connected: Eject before disconnecting

2009-04-01T04:56:00.000-07:00

Shih Chieh Huang

Connected: Eject before disconnecting
March 6-October 18, 2009
The RISD Museum
224 Benefit Street
Providence, RI

Fearfully cowering below the battle of the bland faculty show at the RISD museum is a lurking futuristic but sad 4-D super-being. Rendered in electronic appliances, toys, plastic bags and containers in participation with water, air, light motion sensors, computer and electrical parts and video footage this little guy communicates the effect of visiting a distant relative of the old-world on life support from a overburdened late 20th century.

Coming across at random in the dark and knowing nothing about the work or artist it was liberatingly enjoyable to experience the 'being' without any judgment of the idea from the artist or institution (too dark for plaques). It sorta was what it was. For me, the 'promises of technology' concept could have either been inverted or very well championed depending on your position or how well you interacted or were put off by the thing. My guess was it is both.

For those not experiencing it, I'd say it was pretty close to E.T. in cuteness factor. The creature, a casting call cast off from a "Matrix Reloaded" revival - Lower East Side play - circa 2069, contributes great ambiance but little utilitarian purpose. The creature floats at the top of the ceiling like pathetic caricatured balloons at a childrens' party - breathing in and out its own oxygen.

Visiting the space is like ogling any creature at the zoo, or some replication of a futuristic one. quite a feat on behalf of the artist showing in what amounted to a dead space between galleries, as I almost felt empathy for the thing. In fact, it reminded me of George Saunders' short story Pastoralia which featured a "historical reconstruction" theme park where humans are paid to reenact the banal cave life of eating imaginary bugs and drawing figures on walls while suppressing their desire to speak English or complain about their paycheck during work hours.

On further research, the artist's intent IS to showcase the alienating quality of technology in his self-created medium of "interchanging process between people and space." Technology for Huang inevitably separates us in our own little worlds, and not surprisingly in forms we did not anticipate such as existentially emitting from our twitter box and facebook. This is in stark contrast to the past conceptions of future alienation predicted in 20th century Sci-Fi, of which Huang's creation emulates like a drag queen.

The low tech - rather than being just a medium or trope as with much art - really encapsulates our foolish premonitions. think: VR (virtual reality) or hovercraft cars

Huang's achievement is constructing a creature that is far more organic than the master of the medium Nam June Paik. Similar to Brooklyn-based artist Noah Fischer (whose more recent emphasis is on a more sterile objecthood, and the fetish for Judd-esq sublime multifunctionality), this creature becomes the empathetic mascot at the pregnant intersection between waste and the promise of technology.

A being of absolute detritus, breathing in, breathing out, kept on life-support by the museum, but somewhat endearing at the same time. Each object in the piece (the main creature is surrounded by a less impressive entourage of blinking-trash-orbs), metaphors aside - is literally in flux of personality and energy, and since it is not really all that advanced exists as probably the most intriguing transformative DIY art I have seen in recent memory, especially considering the RISD surrounds whose halls I can only imagine have run amok with such tropes.

A creative Gollum, or harbinger for good art in boxed in times.
The title of course, referring to the warning message that flashes on a peripheral (such as an ipod) when it’s connected to another computer via USB. As if we do not have the ability to just walk away from the situations we create, we have to ask permission and sign out slowly.




images @Shih Chieh Huang http://www.messymix.com/