Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Mountain Goats unify a contemplative crowd at the Fillmore | SF Music

The Mountain Goats unify a contemplative crowd at the Fillmore | SF Music

Heyyo, new review up!

Clarification:

If a piece of art "looks like a photograph," that's because it was copied from a photograph.

Since when did imitating the depth of field or washout/darkening effects created by a camera become more real than making those choices manually? And I'm not so old fashioned that I think this can only happen from life, I've seen a lot of complex awesome paintings made more real through inventive photoshop manipulations. Its just that to make this work you have to keep very clear the difference between the eye, computer code, and a lens.
This is why a bit of me dies when I hear that reaction, "wow... it looks like a photograph," like its a triumph of technique. It's a triumph of accuracy and patience maybe, but lacking in the innovative and creative stuff that creates truly impressive technique.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Found Objects

Exciting bits of collected information from the most recent week of wildlife, soundscapes and scenery on this strange peninsula.

Art and Money do not go togethor:
One of the most depressing things this week was reading about the sad reality of the art world. Its a really strange business when "its disconcerting" that a single one of your buyers goes missing. Everyone of or relating to making money off of (or spending money on) fine art was at Art Basel this weekend, schmoozing, boozing, and perusing . And I want to be a part of this?

but... Beyonce wearing the Resort 12/13 440 Top Handle handbag...at Basel

Too efficient to be convincingly human:
I met a fellow who listens to the podcast of Dreyfus's Heidegger lectures while he runs. And he's been through them THREE TIMES. I feel like my entire life has been invalidated. He also knew that Dreyfus was inspiration for the professor from Futurama.



the Dirty Projectors
I've listened to "Morning Better Last" several times, once just to listen and several times while painting/drawing. I'm liking it because it keeps up the spirit of the minimalist composers I've been listening to but distilled into short songs that follow each other like little rooms of varying texture. I like as well their moments of indie-pop perfection, which are classy, catchy, and demonstrate a nice range. Like this one from the newer Bitte Orca (which, if you like, you can also hear covered by Solagne Knowles):

Guess I got my swagger back
Lol. of Montreal is seeing Kevin getting back into the groove of the energetic, quirky, eye-candy show. I feel mildly cheated that I ended up at the one depresso, I'm just going to ironically dump balloons on you while I pretend to be God telling you that you're an irrelevant piece of shit performance.


Sunday worship at the de Young
I went to the Taste for Modernism exhibit at the de Young (blog post about this to come) but maybe had more fun in their permanent collection. Second time I'd been through, but with fresh eyes I decided to sit down in front of this Jo Baer and listen to some Morton Feldman. I think it may have been the most interesting 15 minutes of my life.



Monday, December 3, 2012

In late high school and early college I did a few stencil runs with friends. Our collection of hand-cut stencils included a swine flu pig, tentacled robots, Pope J.P. with a sniper rifle, an intricate zebra, and maybe an anatomical heart or two. I also used to make mail-art spray paint collages that are now up in a lot of my friend's rooms. Recently, I've been thinking of getting out my collection of spray paint again and learning free-hand technique. 
    "Urban art" has been manically in for a while now. I own several street art books, including Banksy's Wall Piece, and I saw the controversial Art in the Streets exhibit at the MOCA. I do enjoy a good witty comment or visual popping off a wall, but I've never thought it was something I seriously wanted to be a part. It wasn't until recently that I started to care about the overt yet cryptic nature of tagging. I want to say (sorry if this sounds demeaning, I really don't mean it that way) that its like dogs competing to mark a tree or fire hydrant in the most fashionable way possible. I like this, because when you look at it that way, it seems like a profound expression of the existential question.
   I've been mulling this over and looking into a bunch of taggers who have made some cross over into fine and other arts worlds. I've tried my hand at a few designs. Unfortunately, they look more like Braque and Picasso converging on failed matrices of semantic intent than actual tags. I'll post some stuff if/when I make something I'm happy with. In the meantime, here are some things I like:
 
MIKE GIANT  : I heard about this tattoist and tagger from my cousin, a video artist. He recently traded a video for the original mural it documents the creation of. He also made this video in which you can watch the artist at work.
 
OPTIMIST :  Read about this tagger on the Daily Cal website of all places. Apparently their arts writer is very into urban stuff. Plus points for the paper. Cool symmetry and some pac man inspired tags.
APEX : One of the guardian writers covered his show at the 941 Gallery. I love how this one works with the green stuff growing in the crack between the wall and the ground.
REKN : From Endless Canvas a great source of graffiti news in the bay area.
OURS : Also endless canvas. I love the name.
NEWII : This Australian graffiti artist has a show opening next week at White Walls Gallery. The work present will all be paper cutouts of probably pretty interesting compositions.

Poetically Titled and Ethereal Eye Candy from Joe Sorren

 
Everything is Alright Sweetie, Go Back to Sleep


If In This Fire 


Seemed So Very Real

Friday, November 16, 2012

Ascorbic Acid and Dragons

The dragons were smart and didn't play out all of their fantasies, instead they kept them inside and made it out of this world alive.



Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Re: Arm Severing and Masculine Pride

Their lines are tough to mend but you just have to wait and you will get your kick in there. If they kick you first its okay, you just keep it up like your masculine pride depends on it. Like you would rather cut off your hand then to accept that sort of weakness.


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Dystopia! Dystopia! Dystopia!





DYSTOPIA!
The Work of Jeremy Geddes and Jean-Pierre Roy

A new thing, which is kind of cool to me, is this trend of dystopian realism in painting. These painting are usually always perfect. Not necessarily photographic, but with modulations in color that capture reflections and tricks of light and texture that are just real. The surreal images, room for imperfection,  and breakdown of forms scream "I am a painting and that is what I was meant to be!" But, they do so without being caught up in brushstroke and overbearing color in the way modernist painting was.

But, before I go crazy with  having too many things to say, I'm going to narrow in on color. These two painters are sensitive to color in a way I aspire to be. That is, sensitive to the smallest changes which are usually processed and disregarded by the subconscious. There is something overwhelmingly moral about being that attune to detail. But also the manipulation of color in these two painter's work are different. And those subtle differences contribute to the meaning of each. Which I will tell you about now.


 
Jean-Pierre Roy uses contrasts and mild juxtapositions to create a sense of discomfort in his paintings but without losing a basic sense of aesthetic complement. For example, to the left, the primary colors on the stadium make it seem fun and childish. The contrast between the gray organic forms surrounding the geometric stadium first appear like a mystical spectacle dividing form and color from confusion and binary. But looking closer, the smoking fires make clear a much stronger statement about the fine line between friendly competition and actual destruction.

 
I particularly like these two because it looks so easy the way he uses the slightest modifications to create two different representations of blood and an iceberg. On the left the whole painting has dark and foreboding colors and the blood is presented as whole cells. On the left, the lighter colors feel more innocent and are a much stronger contrast with the gaping wound of the ice-berg. These read as statements on global warming to me. The one on the left presents global warming as a natural illness that calls for healing, while on the right is seen as an unnatural violence. These paintings are not contradictory though, and it seems that the statement is that it takes both perspective to rectify the damage done and create further healing.


Jeremy Geddes opts for unifying color palettes in which richer hues create warmth and intimacy and grays increase distance and disconnect. Simultaneously, he often hides things in plain view by the way he balances color in order to force you to take a second look at the painting at the same time that you might want to take a second look at the phenomena they depict.

Is that a Satre reference on the right? Dystopia wouldn't be complete without it huh? The clear contrast between the grey cityscape and the bright yellow hippie van seem to invert history and presence. In this meeting of two 60s symbols (hippie van and astronaut) on the empty, half-finished infrastructure of today, I feel closer to the van than anything else. Maybe its a statement about looking back before we continue moving forward, which wouldn't be unwise in my opinion.

 
There are several good astronaut paintings in this series. I like this one mainly because the pigeon seems to be pulling the figure up. To me these are about the excitement of space exploration which has now become mundane while the problems of our planet remain pressing, as presented in the littered broken down scenery. The ochre-tones in this one are warm throughout except the grey pigeon that you might almost not notice. In fact the first several times I looked at it I didn't even think about the pigeon. The painting is pointing out something that we take for granted, the little dirty things like pigeons in a city, that often permeate our daily lives.



This guy is sticking a fork in a toaster oven to light the halo on his head. Similar to the last one, I missed the halo the first few times I looked. The black that consumes the figure and paled skin tones here make the figure seem shallow and also mute the suggested presence of a halo. This painting was part of a more psychologically themed series, but I like it a lot since I understand too well some of the trouble you can run into when you become overly concerned with possibilities of divinity.


For more work:
Jeremy Geddes
Jean-Pierre Roy

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Wes Inspired Art, Dream-Pop Nymphs, Clay, and Silver Underwear

I love my internship. Here's a bunch of cool things I found at work yesterday while browsing and researching picks for the Bay Guardian.

Wes Inspired Art
There's an exhibit of Wes Anderson inspired art in SF right now? Lol.
Through Nov 24th 

Dream Pop Nymphs
 
When I asked a friend about Twin Sister live his reply was, "Andrea is an ice fairy nymph backed by a casual collaboration of Brooklyn hipsters." He also sent me this lovely video.
They will be bringing their romantic, sultry, and physchadelic dream-pop to SF next week. Woo!
@Rickshaw Stop
Wednesday/11

Clay
 
Really cool sculpture from the film Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) by Czech animator, Jan Svankmajer. It reminds me of Magritte's the Lovers, which is one of my favorite cynical romantic paintings. Svankmajer's films are gruesome dark comedy often with a philosophical edge. These will also be showing in San Francisco in the upcoming weeks.
A variety of dates

Silver Underwear 
Juergen Teller, Self-Portrait with Charlotte Rampling (from Louis XV)
“Charlotte arrived, and I was totally starting to sweat. She said, Now what are we going to do? I said, I’m going to show you what I’m going to wear. So I went into the bedroom, and I came out in these silver underpants. And she said, What the hell is that? I was smoking my cigarette, breaking out in a sweat. I said, Well, I was just thinking I could kiss you and fondle your breasts. She sat down and got herself a cigarillo. She didn’t say anything. The whole room was quiet for what seemed like months. I was, like, Oh my God, that is the most stupid thing I’ve ever said, how stupid was that? She just dragged on the cigarillo and crossed her legs, and she said: OK, let’s go. I’ll tell you when to stop. I thought, Oh my God, genius. I can’t believe I’m getting away with it.

Juergan Teller's fashion photography has great use of color, mildly unsettling compositions, and content that pushes everyone's boundaries. Maybe its that he's a rare heterosexual male who is actually attracted to his subjects and not a gay man who just wants to take pictures of sexy women. Any which way, I found him on probably the Artisty-est fashion blog I've seen in a while, Creative Unique. Like really, how many people think to look at Nim Chimpsky for style inspiration? Their Daily Unique supplement has a boatload of good recommendations including Grace Jones, Geometric Porn, and the Architectural Avante Garde.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Before there was Alex Grey...

I saw one of Pavel Tchelitchew's paintings in the Gertrude Stein exhibit at the SFMOMA last summer. I wrote his name down because the post-apocalyptic feel of it was a striking contrast with the preceding paintings of abstract art-world inside jokes and serene scenes of luxurious dresses lounging on pretty women in impressionist France (yeah you Matisse.) It wasn't until I google searched him while procrastinating this morning that I was like, 'Holy shit, Alex Grey who?' (The link is there in case you are also going, 'Alex Grey who?' but for different reasons.) Call me a hipster, but this guy was making acid-trip art before acid-trip art was cool. And furthermore, he did it with a conscious.
Note: Its pronounce Chell-e-shetf in case you were wondering.
 

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Infinite Jest: just a really long book with no end or a mind-blowing fusion of the epic tradition and social science fiction?

     I have to apologize in advance, I will not do a very good job of answering my question from the post title. It was just one of the many I was left with after reading Infinite Jest and I have to admit, it sounds pretty good. I still am not sure what to make of the book and how much I can say without totally spoiling it.
     Nevertheless, here are my thoughts. I can't help but see its slightly twisted connections to the epic tradition since I just finished a class on them. It has the same tropes but turned on their head-- one of the more pitiable characters emerges at the end as the true hero, while the original protagonist begins his fall around the climax of the book (if it can be said to have a climax at all). Heaven and hell are unexpectedly convoluted in the halfway house and tennis academy. Its similies are never grandiose, in fact they are usually only ironic, and the muse invoked is painfully basic yet fails to hear its call.
     Infinite Jest does however, present an impressive insight into American entertainment and values. We get this through a serious of interrelated yet unconverging stories of drug use, tennis, family history, and other miscellany. These are interspersed with the philosophical discussions of a single encounter between an undercover American agent and a handicapped Canadian assassin.
Infinite Jest poses the problem of what we chose to enjoy versus what we are drawn or often succumb to enjoy and further the negative effects that succumbing can have. These discussions as well as the more immersive examples in the stories form the substance that I think the book seeks to communicate, that is, a greater agency within the limits of ones own life.
     In each situation the limits of each character are clearly defined, but what is truly loveable about the book is how each one manages to express himself in a totally unexpected way. My favorite example is Mario, the third brother of the Incandenza family and the only one not to be enrolled in the elite Enfield Tennis Academy. He is afflicted with an unspecified mental illness, despite which he is incredibly cheerful and manages to explore his own personal interest in film. He hobbles around in the tunnels between tennis courts with a camera strapped to his forehead taking pre-match footage of the students. It is this simple, unconventional type of charachter that I think gives the reader a great sense of joy in reading, one that is easily translatable to one's own life.
    Although the realism and understanding with which Wallace portrays each of his characters and their actions is truly impressive, the most innovate technique with which he creates a sense of realism is his use of climax and anti-clamax. The book covers a wide range of experiences that it would be hard for one person to experience, yet it remains entirely accessible. This is because each persons story is beleivable, it sounds like the wild anecdote one might share over a few drinks at a party. Yet this "epic" doesn't cash in on its dramatic conclusion. Even the meeting of Bloom and Dedalus in Ulysses is more of spectacular occurance than what we see in Infinite Jest.
     It seems to be teaching then, in addition to the message I mentioned earlier, which one picks up rather quickly, that it is not about the top of the mountain, or the epiphany moment, but more about the steps it takes to get there. It orients the readers towards the possible future of the book, rather than the problem solved in it. Which I think makes it quite unique and definitely puts it in the running for social science fiction/ epic of the decade. Though I really should have explained what that means....


 

Friday, July 27, 2012

Lost. Misplaced.

I'm feeling a bit lost in the world right now. Almost finished with my painting. In the meantime, here are some songs I've been on. You could say they peice togethor my current philosophy. Also, I've been reading in rotation: Infinite Jest, Adorno's Aesthetics, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. All of which are good and will merit full reports when I've finished them.
I see them as helping beef up my careful, analytic skills and bring them up to speed with my intuitive ones.

Neko Case- Buckets of Rain (Couldn't find the Bob Dylan version but I approve of this).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Uvy0g3MMM

Nico Vega-Gravity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOkKufaZ84s

David Bowie-The Man Who Sold the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x5OubSeb-U

Junip-Always
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYB0iEiOuzs

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Internal Spaces

"The Dungeon"
Cloyne Court

Abandoned schoolhouse in Jenner, CA

"Self Portrain Between Two Mirrors"

Imaginative Experiments

"Rain Dance"

"Remission"

"Mary and God Mt."

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Friday, April 27, 2012

DFW - FTW

Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid it is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this dark world AND to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
-David Foster Wallace

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

An Accidental Artwork

This morning I was reading the January issue of  Martha Stewart Living looking for recipe ideas for dinner tonight. I was ruminating on how it might feel to live on a daily basis with any of her stunning decors and flower arrangements. Then I came to "The Root of the Matter", an article on plant sickness. Seeing droopy plants in a Martha Stewart magazine was quite the trip. It was like the feeling of Van Gogh's beautiful dying sunflowers with a sickening antiseptic twist. Unlike a Van Gogh though, where life and death in the sunflowers appear natural together, the contrast between the natural sickness presented in the article and unnatural perfection in the rest of the magazine was kind of jarring.



Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Between The Elements of Air and Earth

I had a wonderful image that came to me before I fell asleep on Friday that I credit to an exhibit I saw at art murmur earlier in the evening. The concept was of the Earth as a type of element in which humanity is a necessary level for a particular energy transference. The image was of the planet covered in strange looking tentacles that wiggled like a brain made of snakes.
 
It made me think of this softly, subtly mind blowing video by artist Tadashi Moriyama. I love the very Japanese, detailed and dangerously balanced aesthetic. But it also breaks boundaries of color and concept that I don't expect paired with that aesthetic. The paintings alone were just as awesome, each one the only and any universe at the same time:







I remembered this (and it got thrown back to Waiting for Godot) when I saw Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel on Monday. I finally conceptualized something that I hadn't before in Two Headed Boy Pt. 2.

What got me was that God isn't human or rational or loving or judgmental, but rather, god is a place... maybe our planet, or a temple, or a patch of grass. This becomes really crazy cool if you think that Earth is only a place to us, but on a larger scale, it is an object in space which we are a necessary part of. Its like we're the electron cloud of an atom and we see our place as whizzing around the nucleus, but any other perspective would not imagine the nucleus as a place at all.

I feel like I could write for days, paint a hundred paintings, and maybe even compose a symphony and I still wouldn't run out of things to say about this topic.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Blogs are for Recipes!


On Monday I decided to make edibles for my travels. I'm not a big fan of weed, but I'm learning to like it. My main intention was really bringing out the weed flavor in the cookies. I even imagined that if I made them well enough, the flavor of the cookie might influence the type of high. I'm still not sure if that part worked. Nonetheless, its a fun thing to think about, the culinary possibilities of edibles.

Here is a rough estimate of my recipe:

1/2 cup of your nickelodeon slime butter
1/2 cup almond butter
2 cups flour
1/3 cup honey
1 egg
handful of oats
1 tsp cardamom
1-2 tsp lemon juice

1. Mix ingredients together
2. Only cookie-making noobs read directions
3. That said, I didn't put in enough flour so some of the butter melted out. Add more flour if your cookies look too wet!
4. Bake em till they're done

The cookies were enjoyed in and around a hot tub, with and with out clothes, sometimes dancing, in one night. (They weren't too strong.)

Friday, March 23, 2012

A Sin for Dante's Inferno


Among those who practice Black Magic, The Phenomenologists

Amidst a dying forest we came upon a workshop
In the center was a metal table covered with tools
And just in reach of all, a hacked stump of wood lay atop.

Men crowded round, and occasionally would drop a knife
Or hammer to grab at their hair-- or seizing on the brink
Of discovery they froze, slavering to taste of life.

They moved together, waves of anxiety rolling through
Like an ocean eternally crashing against the shore
Each man working till the appeasing day might rise anew.

But that honey colored sun, they were never blessed to see.
One man broke away from the group and wandered towards us,
He seemed to be trying to tear the air from his body.

He mumbled “being-towards-life… the meaning of not-being”
His face lit and he shouted, “That being for whom being
Is no longer a concern for it.” Then broke off mumbling,

“No, that is present-at-hand, but, it is, it must be so.”
At that, this great thinker I recognized as Heidegger
He noticed the sign in my face and let his story go.

“You must be curious to know: I lived to grasp of death.
I found and greedily abused, the bliss of non-existence
Now I yearn only for what I missed in that sweet life’s breath

Knowing not my soul would endure thereafter, I lit upon anxiety,
And the emptiness that freed me to choose
A meaning of my design. God was a concept so petty.

We learned to resist the one and the calm of his embrace
And in its stead sought the thrill of self-slaved potential
It was a true Pyrrhic victory, how my heart would race,

 When it heard the cries of my tortured soul.” With that he turned,
Though drawn to work by sudden inspiration. I wondered
At this and questioned my master, this answer he returned:

“They long to feel of peace, the truth of life they shunned as such.
But their work they never can complete, for all equipment
Breaks to unleash that anxiety cursed to follow their touch.

As they taught ‘being-in-the-world,’ here their souls enact
To suffer what they thought, and the air sticks to their bodies
As though there was no freedom of the spirit from the fact.”

It sometimes seems that they are freed, swimming in their strife, then
A thickened cry rises, as the air turns like an angry sea
And they begin to suffocate from that which gave them life.

“Each man believes what he seeks is real, further, better
Than the others, yet sees their tasks as futile as they truly are.”
“Is that not a consolation?” I put to my master.

“Not at all,” he replied, “If they knew their shared state,
Either vain or fruitful, they might find comfort in common good
Rather than the silent cage of loneliness breeding hate.”




Tuesday, March 20, 2012

New Painting!




Inspired by of Montreal's Authentic Pyrrhic Remission


Which caused my fascination with a different Pyrrhus, From Virgil's Aeneid:
There at the very edge of the front gates springs Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, prancing in arms, aflash in his shimmering brazen sheath like a snake buried the whole winter long under frozen turf, swollen to bursting, fed full on poisonous weeds and now it springs into light, sloughing its old skin to glisten sleek in its newfound youth, its back slithering, coiling, its proud chest rearing high to the sun, its triple tongue flickering through its fangs.