Conceptually Oriented, Practically Confused
Organic Architectures - Petroleum Storage
I’m beginning a new series of drawings on vellum. Basically, I’ve been scouring the region, and looking at the mechanical arteries, hearts, and whatnot that make a convenient life possible. What if those forms (substations, pumps, onion domes) were given agency to grow and expand as needed? What forms would they take?
I am searching for inspiration this morning. Luckily, I didn’t have to look too far. Checkout this brief video about printmaker Karen Kunc’s work. I was exceptionally lucky to be an undergrad at the University of Nebraska and to be given the opportunity to both take classes with her and study abroad under her guidance. Her work is amazing and I have one of her small intaglio prints from my archives on display in my home. She has definitely influenced me – from my love of “printedness” to the way I see and understand the spatial properties of my surroundings.
Karen Kunc Print
Is a fantastic printmaker that I had the pleasure of working near while completing my BFA at the University of Nebraska. Check it.
And I don’t have any specific steps to take because I don’t start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it’s enough and you can leave it alone.
Bruce Nauman
Finally. After five long months of frigid, often painfully cold temperatures and people, the first hints of spring are starting to tease Minneapolis. Like a cheap hooker that only shows you she’s a tranny after you’ve paid your $50, the cityscape is beginning to reveal all of its dirty little secrets. These include the usual list of suspects that testify to survival strategies in what I can only call “The City Goes To Bed at a Reasonable Hour”. Bottles of cheap Skol or Aristocrat vodka, lost photographs, a few stilettos that couldn’t pass through our record snowfall — these are all the flotsam and jetsam of the life of a contemporary Minneapolitan.
White Flower, 1960. Oil on canvas, 71 7/8 x 72 inches (182.6 x 182.9 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Anonymous gift 63.1653. © 2007 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
As the slide into full-blown winter solidifies, the concepts of failure and reduction have taken over my thoughts. When one thinks of improvement, of being a “better person”, the tendency is to look at what we lack and emphasize what we can acquire. I feel like I have been caught in this quagmire of acquisition for way too long (perhaps roughly 27 years).
Reduction.
Simplification.
These are my new goals.
By all intensive logic, I want less.
I want to fail.
What does it mean to fail? According to Agnes Martin, failure is a state which exists only when one has exhausted all means and possible courses of action. Failure is a terminal condition–an end of possibilities.
Can one consider it a victory to stop doing something? To cease to acquire? To cease to care? Is that really failure? Or is the act of losing all choice, movement, and flexibility that elusive apex of liberation I have been searing for?
Just a bit more Agnes and then I am going to call it a night, crawl into bed, and be blissfully unconscious.
“To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”
I really cannot think of anything I would like more.
Matterhorn/Nowhere
As usual, I am going to ramble along as I work out a few ideas that have been lingering in that cobwebby part of my brain I rarely use. I am referring to the creative/artistic part of me that has been languishing recently as I focus my life on more practical tasks like paying bills, working, and looking like a normal human being.
For the first time in about a year I can honestly say I have a project I am working on. During this summer, I became obsessed with the acquisition of “placeless photographs.” By this I mean photographs of locations that are artificial by construction (such as my collection of Knoll office furniture images from the 1960s) or by incident (such as the 1970s Swedish mountain valley wall mural I purchased at a garage sale).
The latter image and concept has my attention on this very rainy, dismal morning. I would be grateful to be anywhere else right now – even if that meant going to the highly artificial mountain valley in that overly dot-patterned image rolled up in a tube next to my sofa. Despite being highly cliche pieces of kitsch, the paste-up wall mural resonates with personal and cultural history. I remember being in 7th grade, acne-covered, pubescent, and awkward… my only escape during the prison of middle school was memorizing the geographic features on the enormous world map hastily pasted the the classroom walls. On the flip side, my friend Maryann’s grandparents had a forest scene adhered to their dining room walls. I can still remember the contrast of looking out into their bleak, yellow-grass back yard one winter and then being struck by how etherial and strange the half-tone patterned image of idyllic nature on their wall looked.
World Map/Nowhere
Everywhere and Nowhere…
What, really, is the purpose of these images? Are they actually meant to transport us out of our daily environments to someplace better, someplace idealized, someplace unattainable in reality? Or are they merely decoration gone awry? What if the decontextualization of place that is inherent in these types of images is furthered, heightened, and manipulated?
I was walking by the Chambers Hotel a couple of days ago and noticed that the hotel restaurant is now a D’Amico and Sons. This is nothing spectacular in itself, but what is interesting is the way signage has been changed on the building. The previous restaurant was the celebrated/lauded (depending on how you looked at it) Kitchen by Jean-Georges. And the signs for this eatery were dimensional cast metal and attached to the hotel’s chic, Richard Serra, core-ten steel facade. Now, the funny thing is that the facade has changed so dramatically over the course of the last few years that “KITCHEN by JEAN GEORGES” is now etched in the surface of the rusty-colored steel.
In essence, the building is permanently branded with this moniker.
This got me thinking, as always, about all the little ways our lives are being “branded.” The biggest annoyance to date is the branding of the Walker Art Center. (Or, really any cultural institution in the Twin Cities) So, I would like to make a modest project proposal. It goes a bit like this:
In the current climate of corporate sponsorship of the arts, it is impossible to enter a gallery space, museum, or other art institution without being openly reminded of the corporations whose funds have made that particular space possible. Once the realm of private commissions and later the target of public spending through education and social programs, art has now become the a byproduct of corporate culture. It is impossible to be an avid viewer of art and not draw the conclusions that the purchasing of culture by wealthy corporations is in fact changing, editing, sanctioning, and altering our shared culture.
For the project I am proposing, I will strip the Walker of all of the demarcations of corporate sponsorship for the duration of 1 month. During this time, the Best Buy Galleries and Cargill Lounge will be renamed and freed of their associations with corporate ownership of culture. For example, the Cargill Lounge will be renamed Lounge. Imagine meeting at the Walker on Thursday Free Nights… minus the Target corporation.
Art is one facet of culture. Culture is never static. Static entities cannot be tied to the agendas of monolithic corporations.
