images + words.

i'm eager to hear what you've been thinking since getting back from Fairfield. i hope you had a good time.

i was thinking about your photography ideas. lately i've realized how completely i am in love with the image. Roland Barthes said, "the image has the last word" (i think that's the second time i've quoted that? god, i'm obnoxious). i think my love of the image is closely tied with a lot of things in my life - my fascination with how images of women function in our culture, how images of bodies are desseminated throughout our culture, and how all these things communicate a rich mixture of lies, truth and everything in between. i also love text, i love economy of text, i love how words and language can be twisted and hybridized in so many interesting ways (i have a fascination with parsing apart the names of brand name drugs - try it sometime, it's fun). i have no idea how to incorporate text into my work, it is so, so hard and so loaded (this difficulty with text was actually my thesis for my BFA....i wasn't required to have a thesis, but i made one anyway).

obviously, this is why i love this lady:










i wrote a paper on her for a class last spring. it's weird loving Barbara Kruger and being around clay artists, no one has these interests and i can't really talk about them to anyone. sometimes i really think i should have just been a graphic designer. i would've been a lot happier (and not as poor).

crap.

so, i kind of knew this was coming...not passing, i mean. i knew it wasn't there yet, but it still bothers me. i had a long talk with Magali after my review (we went to No Prob), and she said, essentially, that a lot of the stuff i was talking about in my proposal was so dense that some of my committee just didn't get it. which i don't know if i believe or not, but it was kind of funny.

do you think i should try to simplify my proposal for next go around? i got a lot of feedback saying it wasn't specific enough, which was annoying because i really felt like it was. the only thing i felt it was lacking was a wrap up conclusion type thing at the end.

i think i need to stop thinking about this. i'm still too upset.

philip guston

I decided to research him today. I was attracted to his work but didn't "get" why. But some of his later works are so captivating. They are about studio, about life, about advancing towards something greater even if they are ambiguous and cartoonlike. They are an image, they are not for antyhing but the canvas. He has created his own language through masked figures, shoes, and cigarettes. They are symbols that serve as an extension of himself so completely. He has totally created his own language that is poetic in a completely unique way. Okay, enough platitudes. I think his work might exist in that liminal ambiguous space. Or at least it comes from there.


"There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art. That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities' which forces its continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no wiggly or straight lines..." - Philip Guston


"Though Guston has run through the flaccid seventies with a spine of masterpieces unparalleled in quantity, brilliance, ambulation, and risk by anything in the history of american painting, more of us still don't "get" him than do.
So we come back all the way around: this business of "getting" and "not getting" art. What we ask from art, from paintings in particular, is, if not immediate recognition, then at least the security of knowing that we will eventually differentiate impulse from product. A niche will be found. A style or a subject matter, a consistency of attention or pose, either homage to or illustration of a radiant idea eventually will emerge.
But with Guston it hasn't."
- Ross Feld


In other news, yes, I will respond in posts. In response, I feel a little timid to reveal my face yet, too. But I want to explore why that is. Why do I not want to expose myself? why do I want to over or use mask?

performance anxiety.

do you think it would be easier to just post new entries in reply, or continue commenting like we are? the blogger set up is rather cumbersome.

haven't replied much, sorry, i'm rather depleted from a long day in the studio. one of my pieces fell and so i spent most of the day doing triage.

thanks for the info on the Vedic view of the body...very interesting.

i am intrigued by the this idea of literally using our bodies. it's something i've always wanted to do, always...i guess it's the former actor in me, but so far i've been too self conscious of how i look to try it. terrible. but i think i'd like to explore it, and maybe your presence would make it easier and less awkward for me. looking at Jen Davis' work really helped me to finally start to get to that place. and since i'm committing to this idea of intimate spaces, perhaps that's an aspect that could be explore within masking (almost like the concept behind burlesque performances...the tease is in what you don't see and what your imagination fills in).

Intersections and the body

I thought this was getting long enough to warrant another post. This is in response to Intersections

so i am not concerned at this point if they will interesect.. i am just thinking about sharing ideas and seeing how they might connect. The brainstorming stage. I also think even if our collab does not amount to anything, we might be able to hone in on our interests more by having to articulate them (if even in lolspeak).

So liminality. I think we have a formal connection with it too. The layering, physically creating space. Speaking of which, perhaps you could post a few snaps on here of what you are working on. Then I can see the potential formal connections more.

I am envisioning that we could document the figure in a layered space. If it was the female figure it would be a big difference for me but perhaps good. It could skew the meaning to your interests more. Any examples of artists? I could imagine us wearing masks together.

And in terms of mask identity,

I think there is also something about covering with masks I am interested in. In hiding the face, the body, just having a little bit peeking out, like a hand or an eye, or lips. Makes me think of Tim roda (though I was trying to find a roda image where you see his son peaking out from a pillar, only seeing his hand peaking out). I think there is that duality to masks-- that you can masquerade as someone else, take on the power, the role of someone else. Interesting it can also be about powerlessness, about being covered, unable to get out of the circumstances you are in, a skin that can't be broken through, a glass ceiling. Our own ignorance.

I think that the vedic view of the body is very complex. The overarching one is much more affirming that temporary vessel. It is a divine gift to receive a human body, a rare opportunity for spiritual development. As such, the body is a temple, to be treated with the utmost care (I am saying this as I practically through out my back in Dome today, hah). Proper food, rest, exercise are essential to not just physical health but spiritual and mental health. The new agey concept of the mind and body being connected.

I was fascinated in reading about the Calvanists btw-- especially when it came about in northern Europe. I found the rigid adherence to doctrine and the view of the temporariness of life fascinating. In many ways in Vedic belief, the body is not perfected until enlightenment is attained, that is a normalizing of the body so that is functions smoothly without problems. Even then, the body ages-- because even if one is enlightened, there is this thin layer of ignorance that comes as a result of having a body and being in the world. This is not bad, but is what prevents the soul from absolute freedom. The idea of the layer!!

I will try to post some actual images or links to artists this afternoon even.

can't remember!

ok, i can't remember the name of this one video artist. maybe you can help me, i think she's relevant to you. she's the daughter of another artist (father i think), he gave her a toy video camera when she was a kid and she made all these amazing videos with it, a lot of them wearing masks. subject matter was queer identity (she is a lesbian). damn. can't remember! she made most of the videos while still in her teens. maybe they were in the Whitney in 2004 or 2006? help!

intersections.

ha, i was like who the hell is this elizajayne lady? i didn't realize it was Liz.

okay, so i handed in my thesis proposal tonight, and i also gave Megan a copy. she had a comment: she doesn't think that we have anything in common in our concepts. she reminded me that when you were at UMass i didn't get your work at all. i do now, of course, after getting to know you better and understanding all of it...i think it was the material aspect of your work that tripped me up (and may still trip me up).

so, we should figure out where we do intersect, where we complement each other and if it might work to our mutual advantage, and then lay it out so we have it in one place.

1. Liminality. obviously. for you, it is a spiritual state (?), for me, it is space/place. but still the same idea. power/freedom in the inbetween.

2. Mask/identity. not sure where this is for you...but masks for me connotate constume, a fluidity of identity, and in that fluidity, freedom. which leads back to the liminal.

other things i want to hear from you about:

Body

how you understand the body to be...i know there is a very deep Judeo-Christian tendency to see the body as a temporary vessel (i'm particularly interested in how the Puritans and Calvinism view it as a corrupt vessel), but i think there is a general tendency as well in all kinds of spiritual practice to see the physical body as temporary and transitory....does Vedic/Hindu beliefs line up with this idea, or is it totally different? i'd be curious to know.

(also, on an unrelated note, check out Calvinism sometime....i was doing some research on it over the break. kind of a mindfuck)

Plato's Cave

The allegory of the cave

I only read until "Better to be the poor servant of the poor master" so far. But I actually remember the allegory quite well. Surprising, most have had quite an impact when I originally read it.

I am going to post the rough I am working on that is relevant to the cave:

In Plato’s analogy of the cave, humans are born shackled and bound, only able to look forward at shadowy projections on the wall. Backlit marionettes cast shadows on the wall. All the prisoners know is shadows, unaware of the unreality and unable to see their bodies or even the puppets. A group of the shackled manages to gain awareness of there bounds, loosening them enough to look around the cave. In it, they see that all of their life the shadows that terrified and elated them, are merely projections of puppets, a gross unreality. Managing to leave the cave, free to walk and experience reality directly, they emerge and see real forms and the sun for the first time.
This parable of enlightenment is analogous to much of the explorations in my work. I am interested in depicting what can be seen and what cannot, the material and immaterial. I layer materials with particular attention to light and shadow, two dimensions with three dimensions. Through the layering of forms and the play of light, the viewer’s perceptions of what is real can be played with. A flat surface can be made to look three dimensional. A form can be out of the viewfinder but its shadow projected and layered onto forms within the frame. For example, a form of head can appear in its shadow as a sun.
Like the layers in my work, knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. In waking state, while viewing a tree, one can notice the subtle changes in shape of each leaf, how the branches emerge from the trunk. Sleeping under the tree, one can no longer experience any aspect of the tree, consciousness is black. In dreaming about that tree, the tree can morph into a golden sphinx. In a heightened unified state of awareness that spiritual leaders talk of, the changing states of awareness as part of and in the context of a unified constant state of awareness.
Our mind and state of awareness and body are intimately connected. I place my body in the compositions as a stand in for my state of consciousness in experiencing the world. Sometimes I am masked by a layer, unable to see ahead or behind me. The viewer of my work can see a more comprehensive view, seeing many layers and the complex connections between them.
This parallels my experiences in daily life. I sometimes feel confined to limited awareness, shackled and bound, prisoner to mundane states of reality. I am unaware of my restrictions, the reality I have constructed for myself. A friend or teacher can see beyond the my limited bubble and see the states of life of which I am unaware. In moments of clarity, I can peek out and see above the noise of daily life and see the processes of life humming. I am aware of the constants in the midst of the permutations of my consciousness. Ultimately, I hope my work illustrates that reality is unfathomably larger than our typical view of life.

Mask

mask/layering with body

another

done by David Wojnarowicz, an outsider artist of sorts in village in 70s/80s.

Covering the face/ putting body in frame. Becoming a different persona

liminality

this has some good thoughts on liminality. you might actually be interested in how it applies to ritual (i'm not sure if Indian rituals are still a formal source for you but it's worth a look).

oh.

one more thing. i read this in artforum a few weeks ago and i thought it was interesting. it's frustrating because while all my colleagues are getting riled up about art versus craft, i really think we should be talking about stuff like this:

http://artforum.com/inprint/id=22110

first!

hey walek, so here's our little space. feel free to post those links you were talking about.

i had a good talk with Magali today, and i finally gave her my sources. it was weird to do it a month and a half after the fact, but it gave me some clarity regarding my thesis proposal. i am going to try to finish it tonight so i can spend the entire day in the studio and not worry about it. i will be sure to pass it along to you.

i am excited about this! it occurred to me that we're almost as far away from each other as we can be and still live in the continental US...hence the name. hope you like it.

the continental drifts does sound sort of like a weepy emo-ish band. kind of like Deathcab or something.

b.