May 2009

On hiatus again, de-toxing from all the high art seriousness and sense of overwhelming purpose.

copied and pasted:

photo-portrait of blond athlete wearing life jacket and holding gold cup
mirror on wooden base with condensation that runs off into water bottle
blurry thumbnail photos document series "based on photos taken from hotels and apartment buildings in Benidorm, Spain"
contract stating that the work in question (the framed contract) will be stolen by the artist, his heirs, or assignees at some point
slick print-style advertisement for watch ostensibly stolen from Silvio Berlusconi
blurry foreshortened wonder woman video-projected onto gallery floor
inverted basketball hoops connected by partially unraveled, elongated, hourglass shaped net
flavin-like fluorescent light fixtures cascade from gallery wall onto floor
oozing-headed mannikins clothed in form fitting printed fabric that is a collage of spider webs, animal heads, logos, etc
video camera on tripod feeds live image of gallery onto adjacent monitor
gestural marks on blue monochrome carpet
white room sculpture levitates on assortment of chairs (photo)
large conduit pipes angle down hillside and terminate at empty swimming pool (photo)
red paint squeegeed onto photo of Concorde jet
monochrome morphs into found photo causing transitional plasticine highlights (video still)
re-enactment of Jack Goldstein re-enactment of Shane (video still)
link to series of six single records collected from special effects sound libraries
installation with oceanic life jackets on 16 monuments throughout the city of São Paulo
"Lecture on Lecture on Lecture with Actress" - three recursive photos
re-creation of building sign with downscale commercial tenants (barber shop, dollar store, two vietnamese restaurants, pizza place, etc)
ink jettish works on paper pushpinned to wall (installation shot for group show)
red plastic death of marat
cartoon priest demonstrates sign of the cross on plasticized "in case of emergency" card

From the wider blog (trying to screw up the courage to just move over there, the page layout is nicer):

Photos taken in my studio by Aron Namenwirth a couple of years ago, plus one of mine.

Installation photo from And/Or gallery, my show with Saskia Jorda. Sadly for Dallas the gallery is closing, although the city's loss will be New York's gain when the director moves here.

Have been working on my "main site" or portal page. Added the photo from LA's Distributed Gallery of one my bitmap animations on a TV monitor in a restaurant hallway. Added the "press clips" link from my sidebar--a million thanks to anyone who took the time to write about what I'm doing. Fixed broken links--it's always interesting to see what has changed and what has disappeared. And slightly updated my "artwork archive" page, to include links to work I've been posting on this blog since July '07. That page, and my art archiving in general is scattered and slightly incoherent. It led at least one editor to tell a writer he couldn't review "isolated instances of work." The concept of a cumulative mass or virtual image cloud is not a ready sell.

Have been using the same artists' statement--about failed computing--since I wrote it around '00. Although it continues to locate me in the "artists using computers" camp, as distinguished from new media, it's basically a dodge. It's always easy for an artist to talk about media or process issues as a way of not talking about the psycho/sexual/narrative/interior issues of what's going on in your work. My archive includes work made before I started using the computer almost exclusively, around '97 or so. Whatever themes carried over are probably what the work is really "about." It's hard to condense to a paragraph.