SAIC_2016
Part 1
In wanting to tell you about my work and thinking about this lecture I have found it difficult this time around to move from thinking about my work in words with making it in mind, to communicate with you about my art. I am not a storyteller. it would all be so much easier if I were.
like my art which is non-narrative, my method of communication is dialogic, with a mentality that’s even irrational.
the connection of my images with words is tenuous, tangential, oblique, as the connections between the aspects of my practice: –
my photographs, that operate like visual note-taking, as drawing has traditionally
my drawings, that are investigative, mostly in relation to spatial concerns,
my paintings, for which I’m most known,
and my altered x rays in which I connect my social concerns with visuality.
When I show you my work, it won’t be in categories because I really don’t think about it that way. I’m also not going to give you exact dimensions. Generally my altered x rays are 14x11, my drawings are approximately either 22x30 or 11x14. Photographs (are ones that I’ve taken and others that I’ve found and deployed) are various sizes, as are my paintings. I group the paintings small, (20x25), medium (34x38) (60x52), large (70x90) If you’re curious about dimensions, or materials just ask in the middle
There are 2 general topics that I’d like to cue you in on now:
One is that although I am certainly not a formalist in any sense of the term I do believe it’s possible for content to be evidenced by visuality and I strive hard that, and I’ll say a word about formalism later. The other is that “cool” has no hold on me –I find it too close to the performative. To turn Dave Hickey against himself and this is a quote from his essay American Cool from Pirates and Farmers:
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Cool is … the act of being seen being oneself.
It is theater without drama, demonstration without pleading, distinction without discrimination, and dissent without violence. For those of us who live in a world bereft of our betters amidst a surfeit of free expression, cool is a valuable resource. Cool people are not noisy or boring. They eschew footnotes and asseveration. Expressive flailing is verboten. You simply declare some specific truth to be self-evident on one's own authority, and the music flows out like a Miles Davis solo. You amaze your peers by investing the evangelical urgency of your eccentric opinions with sotto voce buoyancy, killing them softly.
2. Perform Now – found photograph
we live in a culture based in high performance.
wouldn’t it be interesting to begin an exhibition after ones work had just left the studio and been hung? before the reviews came in?
3. lecture sketch (repurposed)
4. Curtain 3, 2011, 69 x 91” (175.26 x 231.14 cm), acrylic, Flashe, pigment on linen
5. the “Curtain” paintings generally refer to hiding and revealing
for a long time I have been interested in an art that permits the underside of life an expression.
5. this is the sunken cruise ship Costa Concordia, 2012
6. a double sided altered xray from 2011 - R100, 2011, 13 7/8 x 17 7/8” (35.24 x 45.4 cm), photographs, aluminum tape, bookend papers, postcard, colored pencil, tape on roentgenograph
7. R100 verso
8. map of Moscow – from Walter Benjamin Moscow Diary (October no. 35)
9. Altered x ray 2011
10. Photograph with graffiti
here are some fairly recent drawings that are based on absence as well
11. 03-14, 2014, 11 x 14” (27.94 x 35.56 cm) colored pencil, Flashe, graphite, matte medium, pastel on synthetic paper
12. 04-14, 2014, 11 x 14” (27.94 x 35.56 cm) colored pencil, Flashe, graphite, matte medium, pastel on synthetic paper
13. 08-14, 2014, 22 x 29 ¾” (55.88 x 75.56cm) colored pencil, graphite on paper
14. Studio drawing
a painting titled Writing Absence from 2010
15. Writing Absence, 2010, 18 x 16” (45.72 x 40.64cm), oil on linen
16. during the last few years, I’ve grouped the paintings into Nomad, Curtain, Drawing and Tablet categories, the Nomads are based on a period in which I was itinerant, and connected to the work of Jean Prouve - I’ll talk more about that later; the Curtains rely on the sense of behind and in front of; Tablet paintings on the story behind linear b script and some of the script itself, and the Drawing paintings are based on someone saying that I wasn’t really making paintings, that my paintings were really big drawings
Nomad II, 2009, 34 x 38” (86.4 x 96.5cm), Flashe, spray enamel, oil, wood veneer on linen
Curtain4, 2012, 2013, 30 x 27” (76.2 x 65.58cm), acrylic, Flashe, pigment on linen
Curtain7, 2013, 59 x 61” (149.86 x 154.94 cm), acrylic mediums, Flashe, pigment on linen
Curtain8 Black, 2013, 69 x 91” (175.26 x 231.14cm), Flashe, graphite, pigment on linen
Drawing4 Grey, 2013, 60 x 65” (152.4 x 165.1cm), acrylic mediums, Flashe, gesso, graphite, pigment on linen
Green Tablet2 (revised), 2013, 22 x 28 ½” (55.88 x 72.39 cm), Flashe, pigment on canvas
Little Nomad 4, 2013, 13 x 15” (33.02 x 38.1cm), aluminum tape, Flashe, ink, oil, pencil, wood veneer on linen
Little Nomad2, 2013, 16 x 21” (40.64 x 53.34 cm) acrylic mediums, graphite, veneer on linen
Little Nomad 5, 2013, 20 x 25” (50.8 x 63.5 cm), india ink, oil, wood veneer on linen
Nomad (revised), 2013, 34 x 38” (86.36 x 96.52cm) acrylic, Flashe, oil, spray enamel, tape, wood veneer on linen
Small Drawing, 2013, 20 x 26” (50.8 x 66.04 cm), graphite, ink on linen
Small Dropcloth Drawing, 2013, 20 x 25” (50.8 x 63.5 cm), acrylic mediums, graphite, pigment on dropcloth
29. BLANK
For the past several years, my attitude toward life and painting and teaching has been informed by the 1977 lectures of Roland Barthes. In these lectures he applied himself to a “living together” (most likely utopian) idea of society. he suggests: a society that would allow everyone to live according to their own rhythm inside the community, a society that wouldn't be based on the alienation of individuals by a power (whatever its forms) fixing strict rhythms. Barthes straightforwardly defines the Neutral (le Neutre) as something that thwarts and dodges the paradigm. The paradigm of this system is based on an opposition between two virtual terms (A and B); the mechanism of this conflict is that it finally has to lead the individual to choose one of these two terms in order that a sense may happen.
Neutral, then, stands as a third structural term that annihilates this implacable binarism of the paradigm. It occurs from the cancellation of the opposition in the paradigm: Neutral, degree zero, is defined as what is neither A nor B.
31. and a word about “Formalism” - it is complex and contentious as a critical term. and it is based on binary thinking that assumed various guises over time – Heinrich Wölfflin, Roger Fry, Clement Greenberg. When I was a student Greenberg asserted the primacy of a particular aesthetic by means of a formalist analysis that was
32. based on Wöfflin. Greenberg’s formalism became linked with the style of the work he supported – color field painting – but was based on assertion.
My difficulty with such terms is that they exist at such a tangent to the practice of painting. It’s like at a dinner with interesting people where it’s impossible to keep track of things because so much is going on – the conversation, the conversation’s sub-text, and everyone’s body language.
33, 34 installation of my altered x rays at the Field Institute, Insel Hombroich
35 installation in Leipzig
Although I don’t know formalism on any deep art critical level, I do know that it has been utilized to remove a sense of the world from the practice of art, and has enabled the consideration of a painting as an autonomous object, often outside of any social system. I have always refuted this. On the most elemental level, my altered x rays and nomads assert the existence of the world at large, as do my curtain and drawing paintings.
36. one of the “drawing” paintings
The category of the Neutral that Barthes attempts to invoke in his lectures is an effort to evade those structures of language that impose themselves as obligatory. First, it is a refusal of gender. The Neutral is the neuter. It is also a refusal of the rest of the oppositions that align themselves with the paradigm of gender—particularly active/ passive and subject/object. But more, the Neutral is irenic. (condition embraces peace) is non-conflictual, non-aggressive. It aims at dodging or baffling the paradigmatic, oppositional structure of meaning, aims at the suspension of the conflictual basis of discourse.
37 BLANK
38. Along with ideas and other art, my work has been informed by my life experience. When the loft in which I’d lived and worked for over thirty years received a vacate order, and I was living between places and working in the borrowed studio of a friend, I began a series of what I call “nomad” paintings. They were based on my life situation and were inspired by the shapes and forms of Jean Prouvé. About a decade ago, I became aware of the work of Prouvé (8 April 1901 - 23 March 1984), the self-taught architect who designed and produced structures and furniture for nomadic existence. I learned about his ideas and felt a kinship. Prouvé had been a member of the French resistance, sought to foster connections between art and industry, and made efforts to link art and social consciousness. He had a collaborative attitude toward craft and imagination. I’ve shown you some of these already & here are a few more.
39. Little Nomad6, 2014,
16 x 15” (40.64 x 38.1 cm) Flashe, oil, veneer on linen
40. Little Nomad7, 2014
26 x 20” (66.04 x 50.8 cm) oil, veneer, watercolor on linen
When I lived in a region of the States that I found difficult, in which I went out as little as possible, an interiority informed my work yet spatial concerns were very much present.
41. Reflection Of Space 5, 2002
38 x 36” (96.52 x 91.44 cm), aluminum, charcoal, graphite, pastel, and oil mediums on muslin
42. Reflection of Space 3, 2002
36 x 38” (91.44 x 96.52 cm), aluminum, charcoal, graphite, pastel, matte medium, oil mediums on muslin
43. This section is called II Social decisions
Beuys used to say, if you want to change your work, change yourself. And I say, when you change yourself your relationship to society changes.
What makes work interesting and relevant may be its link to social decisions that we make everyday– how we communicate with each other, thinking processes, people relating to each other, truths, lies, and sins of omission.
I produced my altered x rays in response to the AIDS epidemic
When I sensed a hierarchical environment, I became interesting in the informel which then became a huge influence on my work.
An interesting exhibition was done by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss at the Pompidou Centre in the late nineties that connected some of Georges Bataille’s thinking, particularly base materialism, to Art Informel as a force that destablized existing foundations. The exhibition, and the accompanying text, Formless: A User's Guide (1997), attempted to disrupt binary conceits about 20th century art, for example, the split between form and content. The text was an influential instance of the late-20th century postmodern criticism, and had an exclusionary, esoteric nature that feels even more exclusionary and esoteric today. Yet at the time, their terminology (“base materialism,” “horizontality,” “entropy”) was a relief from the wisdom and pieties of art writing. The exhibition mixed Robert Morris felt pieces with the work of Fautrier, and Fontana, and others, was remarkably heterogeneous, and had an element of funk.
44. Lucio
45. 13-07
22-1/4" x 29-3/4" (56.52 x 75.57 cm) colored pencil, graphite, pencil on paper
46. image deployed as a floating object
As a notion in a psychoanalytic context via Georges Bataille, formlessness expanded my notion of what painting might be. Base materialism and irrationality counter a striving toward logic that is inherent in making discrete art objects. I do believe painting can be a source of irrational pleasure, and provide access to an experience unmediated by language. In my curtain and drawing paintings, I attempt to make perceiving and making the topic of the work.
47. Who Knows, 2007
102 x 105” (259.1 x 266.7 cm), acrylic mediums, pastel, pigment on portrait linen
48. a large photograph I took called “the Sex Pistols” (this shows a demolition right across from the train station in Brussels, around 1996)
49. Canal St from the same period
I feel that color is a key element in painting of all sorts. I have tended towards a reduced range of color for many years in the interest of experiencing color most fully, like how colors become more compelling and easier to see on an overcast day, or, in information theory, that one understands difference most when they are minute. In the fall of 2014, I shifted my practice towards an emphasis on what might be considered conventionally beautiful color.
50. Tree of Life 2, 2014
24 x 21” (60.96 x 53.34 cm) acrylic mediums, Flashe, watercolor on linen
51. Fixed Points, 2014
61 x 51” (154.94 x 129.54 cm) acrylic mediums, Flashe, watercolor on linen
52. Roots, 2014
61 x 51” (154.94 x 129.54 cm) acrylic mediums, Flashe, watercolor on linen
53. Paint Table Arabesque, 2015
Flashe, mediums, watercolor on linen, 48” x 77” (121.92 x 195.58cm)
56. Seascape, 2015
Flashe, mediums, watercolor on linen, 51” x 61” (129.54 x 154.94 cm)
57. Queen of Spades, 2015
Flashe, ink, mediums, watercolor on linen, 61” x 51” (154.94 x 129.54cm)
59. 01-15, 2015
pencil, watercolor on paper, 30” x 22” (76.2 x 55.88cm)