Big Bang, Small Bucks at Dean Jensen Gallery

I am participating in a show in Milwaukee this month at Dean Jensen Gallery:

Big, Big Bangs / Small, Small Bucks: An Exhibition for the Post-Bust Economy
December 5, 2008 - January 24, 2009
exhibition photos

Opening Reception: Friday, December 5 from 6pm - ?

Here is some of the work in the show:

Press!

Following is a review of my Iraqi Casualty Series which is currently in Art of Democracy at the Meridian. Also reviewed are Enrique Chagoya and Fernando Botero. I found it on the KQED website: http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=23522

Art Review

Art of Democracy: War and Empire

By Jennine Scarboro | Oct 12, 2008

Politics are not subtle, political communication is necessarily fast, strident, and goal oriented. The best art on the other hand has a subtlety and an ambiguity that inspires contemplation and allows for multiple interpretations. I am very interested in the possibilities offered by the intersection of politics and art but, because the two practices are best formally presented in contradictory ways, it requires immense skill to balance the demands that each bring to a work. Art of Democracy: War and Empire at the Meridian Gallery had plenty of pieces that did not succeed, but among these I discovered works that did. As I looked I became aware that the work that most impressed me put art first and politics second.

The best pieces in the show are Fernando Botero's painting Abu Ghraib #54 and Enrique Chagoya's litho and Chine-colle codex The Ghost of Liberty. Both of these works exhibit the inspired formal mastery of their makers.

Botero's piece could at first seem to be an obvious illustration of the Abu Ghraib torture that horrified many in the US, and the world, in 2004. His painting however imbues the depiction with a sorrow and a livingness that invokes a powerful and different emotion from the one the photos evoked. As Kimmelman points out, "The photos of Abu Ghraib imply no outrage about what's happening. In fact, the intent of the pictures is precisely to compound the humiliation." These photographs of atrocities were taken by the instigators of the atrocities, and as a result our contemplation is focused on the barbarity of a viewer who will witness and record horrible acts without considering the humanity of his subjects.

In opposition to this, Botero's work forces one to consider the humanity of this narrative's subjects. His figures are fleshy. The tender squishiness of their flesh emphasizes the brutality by which this flesh has been damaged making us feel them as fellow humans that suffer. I feel empathy for the sorrow of their pierced flesh, for their forced blindness, for the bindings that cut into their soft bodies. In Abu Grhaib #54, two figures are bound together in a dark barred cell. The cell that contains them has a strange slanting perspective. The way this warped perspective slides us down and out of the picture destabilizes the space emphasizing a strangeness and horror that adds to the painting's power. The figures are sympathetic, the space, the situation in which they exist, wrong. There is something about hope here too, a distant hope implied by narrow strip of light glowing in the oppressive darkness beyond double sets of cell bars. The omnipresence of hope is necessary for survival of dire and mundane trauma, and this slender strip speaks to me of the resonance of hope in human experience.

Enrique Chagoya's The Ghost of Liberty differs in its approach both to content and to formal investigation. Rather than focusing on a specific event, Chagoya's piece is thematic. He creates a magical pastiche of oppression by giving us a sampling of "imperialist intervention" and "arbitrary exercise of violent power" as they occur in different places and at different times.

While Botero utilizes the compositional manipulation of space and a sensitive rendering of the figures that instills them with symbolic meaning, rhythm, scale, color, and image complexity are the formally compelling aspects of Chagoya's work. Jesus-headed dinosaurs, Chinese-baby astronauts, Mayan gods, and Buddha heads, are printed in brilliant hues and collaged into a landscape of changing conflict. His hybrid forms are as inventive and delightful as his subject, the omnipresence of cultural violations, war, and political violence. The tension that holds these opposites together results in a very exciting piece.

While I am most insistently drawn to work in which the formal qualities are most developed, occasionally a more conceptually focused piece will compel me. In The Past as Future, Habermas discusses what has happened, in the media, to depictions of war. He presents the idea that public opinion was affected by media images during Vietnam in a way that created difficulties for US politicians, and that as a result images of subsequent conflicts have been edited to reduce negative public opinion. Several more conceptually focused artworks intersected with these ideas in intriguing ways.

Francesca Pastine's pieces from her series Iraqi Casualty Series were the most interesting of these. Three pages from the New York Times had all the text blacked out with graphite, leaving only barely recognizable images of covered bodies, coffins with a sprinkling of dirt, and a stack of diamond rings. Again the formal qualities are important to the success of the work although the emphasis here is on how they are used to present a criticality interesting idea.

The density of the graphite darkness obliterates meaning, transforming information into unreadable black columns; censorship is an obvious implication and the resulting form speaks directly to ideas that our media, in this case the New York Times, is being edited obscuring truth as it reveals only partial events. The difficulty of identifying the imagery, which has had its surroundings erased by blackness, references the difficulty of comprehension when context is stolen from us.

I was happy to find work in this show, which both compelled me as art and allowed me to ponder political themes in interesting ways that standard political communication does not usually engage.

Art of Democracy: War and Empire is on display at the Meridian Gallery through November 4, 2008. For more information, visit meridiangallery.org.

14th Annual Artwalk NY

I am participating in the above auction. I donated one of my watercolors of a homeless persons cart which I think is apropos.

Monday, November 3, 2008

ARTWALK NY 2008 takes place on Monday, November 3, and will pay tribute to the visionary artist Robert Rauschenberg. Now in its fourteenth year, we will join with returning Co-chairs Richard Gere and Carey Lowell to remember his unparalleled contribution to the world of contemporary art. All ARTWALK proceeds directly fund the Coalition's life-saving programs.

ARTWALK NY
Monday, November 3, 2008
6:30 PM - Silent Auction + Cocktail Party
8:00 PM - Live Auction
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th Street
New York City

ABOUT ARTWALK NY

Each fall, ARTWALK NY unites artists and art lovers in an effort to help our homeless neighbors, and to celebrate the most important artists of our time.

This year, the Coalition for the Homeless will pay tribute to the legendary artist Robert Rauschenberg. Now in its fourteenth year, ARTWALK NY has become one of the City's largest and most anticipated annual art auctions. The event will feature a silent and live auction along with a cocktail reception. Previous events have featured works from artists such as Donald Beachler, Chuck Close, Jenny Holzer, Zhang Huan, Jeff Koons, Glenn Ligon, Brice Marden, Yoko Ono, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Sze, Juergen Tellerm and more.

Click here for the updated list of participating artists.

All proceeds from ARTWALK NY help us provide a safety net for the thousands of New Yorkers who arrive at our doorstep every month.

New Work

IMPERMANENCE

Afternoon Stroll down Mission Street

Paris Hilton at the Center for Contepmorary Arts, Santa Fe

I just finished this drawing of Paris Hilton (28" x 36") for the show "You Know How I Feel" at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe which opens this October. I think I may work a little more on the right-hand side of the picture, but the face is done (maybe).

Sid Garrison's San Francisco Studio

You can see Sid's work at: www.sidgarrison.com

Vierra and Friends

If you want to know where to get the best hair cut in town, this is it. Vierra and Friends has a relaxed retro decor (new finds keep appearing at every visit;recently glass buoys showed up). Robert Service cuts my hair. I went through a lot of different salons before my friend, Ravenna Taylor, recommended Robert and I have not had a bad hair day since: no hiding under hats anymore!Vierra and Friends is tucked away in Cole Valley: 85 Carl Street, 415.665.9335.

We Be Sushi

I never wanted to eat at We Be Sushi and have avoided it for years. I tend to eat at immaculately clean-looking sushi restaurants which has something to do, I believe, with an underlying nervousness about eating raw fish. These "immaculately clean" restaurants inevitably translate to spectacularly expensive. Regardless, last week I went with a friend to We Be Sushi and was surprised by its fantastic food coupled with its reasonable price. I went back by myself the following day for lunch (see above). As it turns out, I was also synchronously reading Yasunari Kawabata's Thousand Cranes at the time. Kawabata, by the way, studied to be a painter but published a novel at an early age and consequently became a writer instead. The book reads like a visual poem. The story of an ill-fated love affair is imbued with larger universal significance though the ageless beauty of the ceramic tea cups and bowls used in the tea ceremony.

Similar|Dissimilar

"Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror")

I just heard a beautiful piece of music called "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror") by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt
played by cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Awadagin Pratt. This is an podcast I can't seem to access, perhaps you'll have better luck: http://saintpaulsunday.publicradio.org/artists/artist/index.php?ac=bailey_pratt.

Here is a review by Jane Palmer in the World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, April 2008:
Cello-piano duo enchant audience


Heavenly music briefly held an audience in rapt attention Tuesday night at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

Inspired by the clarity of sound in the Kiewit Concert Hall during the first half of their program, cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Awadagin Pratt changed their second half performance choice. They picked the emotional "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror") by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Notes hung in the air. The audience soaked them in as if they were gentle strokes of the hair and sips of luscious wine. Heads were still. Feet were still.

Compared to the complex Mendelssohn and Shostakovich compositions in the first half of the program, this Pärt piece for piano and cello was simple. The impact came from the way a single note, one finger strike on a single piano key for example, could convey a melody and resonate in the hall. The moment was simply perfect.

ordinary|extraordinary

Sad frogs, sad dolls, and sad plants

Sidewalk

I did not realize that my camera was in film mode when I photographed a broken plate shard. I just went with it and continued filming the sidewalk. I attached a sound track , Six Pack, from the Dirty Projects, and kind of liked the results.

Guarino Guarini + miscellanious sightings

Here is Guarino Guarini with his paws lined up:

This is the table setting for a dinner on July 27 at Jamie Brunson and Walter Robinson's place. I was happy to see my painting next to Jamie's on the far wall with Walter's cookie-God over us.Shoes:

Theodora Varney Jones studio in the Mission District

Marta Sanchez-Vasquez and I had coffee, cookies & cantaloupe at Theodora's bright and infinitely interesting studio space.