12.28.09

12.19.09

Lambda Photo Prints each approx 41x32 inches

A Few Summer Drawings part deux

A Few Summer Drawings

March Suite - Acrylic and Acrylic Transfer on Paper

Jacqueline Humphries

"I think that painting is a medium of thought. As a material it doesn't just bend to your will, you have to interact with it, grapple with it. Painting is thinking in material, the pleasure involved in externalizing something that's internal. But one also has to deal with the history — everything that's ever been done in painting; and then there's everything that we bring to it as viewers, all our own expectations, our personal history etc. And there's memory — you're never just dealing with the painting in front of you, but with all other paintings whether you're conscious of them or not. There is an a priori situation, which is integral to its quality as medium. So, painting is a kind of consciousness that we interact with. The mechanics of how that works sort of defy description. It's an immersion, you're inside of it and it's inside of you. It's the world reflected in a mud puddle."

Jacqueline Humphries
http://www.lacan.com/frameXXII7.htm

03.20.09 Collage on Paper

Bruce Pearson

"In the past, when I was doing my early abstract painting, it seemed to me that I was working with a closed system. Now, it seems that the more permission I give myself to find interesting material, the more I open up possibilities. The more possibilities I open up, the better the ideas become. There was an excellent survey exhibition of drawings in the mid-nineties at MoMA called "The Maximal Sixties." It showed that the era produced very strong figuration, very strong conceptual work and very strong abstraction, while also entertaining a large number of other artistic currents. The sixties was a period of great experimentation, not only in the visual arts but in music as well. Then came Minimalism, which as lovely as it can be, was this driven, puritan movement. It was about shutting down possibilities. Now, it seems to me, things are opening up again. There's the notion of new media and the resurgence of old media that is being interpreted in brand new ways. I think many, many artists today are being affected by these new possibilities."

Bruce Pearson
http://www.wburg.com/0102/arts/bruce.html

03.18.09 Graphite and Ink

03.14.09 Graphite and Ink

David Reed

"Painting is the most corrupt, debased form of art and that is its strength and hope. It has possibilities now because it is impure. Painting is very good at absorbing influences. In Western culture it has had a grand symbiotic relationship with Christianity, and today it can have just as rich a relationship with technologies of mechanical and digital reproduction.

For a while it was thought that photography and other media of mechanical reproduction would kill painting. But now we know that the opposite has happened – instead photography gave painting new life, new possibilities. Painting is like the beloved, the enthralled, who has been bitten by the vampire of mechanical reproduction. Rather than killing painting, the vampire’s kiss has instead made painting immortal."

David Reed
Liquid Rubens: Rubens in Las Vegas
Talk at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Las Vegas, NV 2006

Untitled, Acrylic on paper 12x9 in, 2009

Untitled, Acrylic on paper 12x9 in, 2009

Untitled, Acrylic on paper 12x9 in, 2009

Skitch, Acrylic on Canvas 18x12 in, 2009

Skip divided (first state), Acrylic on canvas 18x24 in, 2009

Eric Tucker

"The essence of my work is the indeterminacy of perception. I am interested in exploring visual perspective and the body’s physical awareness of objects. My sculptures are an investigation of the ambiguity of sight and the certainty of tactility. They are sites where visual sensation and physical presence lead to changing interpretations of space and volume. The sculptures present the dichotomy between illusory and literal spaces. Through these different ways of perception, linked with intuition and reasoning, we come to understand our environment and the things in it.”

Eric Tucker
Artist Statement

Jessica Stockholder

"In Making a Clean Edge...I thought of it as a still life. Because of the space, you couldn't get far from the work, so in a sense it was unavailable to see fully. Making a Clean Edge was in some ways about the difficulty of full understanding, about exploring the thought processes, where ideas come from, and how complicated the mind is. When you understand something and have it thoroughly explained, in some sense you've limited it; the explanation defeats the fullness of the experience."

Jessica Stockholder
Inside the Studio: Two Decades of Talks with Artists in New York
Independent Curators International, 2004

02.20.09

Tom Moody

"One of the favored analogies of the people on the Rhizome chatboards attacking current art on blogs and WIKIS is 'using animated GIFs and default blog templates is like using acrylic paint and prestretched canvases!'"

Post on Tom Moody's blog

I use acrylic paint and make animated gifs. I stretch my own canvases though. This sort of techno-centrism that Moody is pointing out doesn't interest me at all. Yes, I use computers extensively, but they are a tool that I use to get the job done. I could quit using them tomorrow if the work dictated it. This sort of thinking seems to smack of the old "photography killed painting" debate that I don't anyone takes seriously anymore. It's about the work not the medium.

02.19.09

Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman: "I think I always was interested in the thing that you weren't supposed to be interested in. But isn't everyone?"

Ian Berry: "I don't think so. I think a lot of people are driven by trying to reach some sort kind of suburban ideal, or the desire to be like their own image of success. Some people want precisely not to be against. They would rather their lawn looked just like their neighbor's, or that they had the same shoes as their friend."

AS: "I suppose I am fueled by that too- everyone wants not to look ugly. We want to wear shoes that someone else says are cool or have a good haircut that looks sexy or whatever. But then at the same time, everyone is trying to be subversive. The only thing that makes an artist different is that an artist has an object that stands in for her and speaks to that subversion articulately."

Amy Sillman
Amy Sillman: Third Person Singular
The Francis Young Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, 2008

02.17.09 Digital Sketch / 5 Variations

02.16.09 Digital Sketch / 6 Variations

Olafur Eliasson on Fred Sandback

"For me, the artist Fred Sandback is the best since his work renegotiates itself every time it is exposed to any space or individual that encounters it. What inspires me most about Sandback is his idea that space is based on a relationship in progress, and within this relationship or trajectory I can both reflect on the space and use the space to reflect on myself. Contrary to a generalized or "normative" space that promotes a single view or method as being predominantly correct, this personal act of self-reflection- throught the engagement with "non-normative" space- both inspires and supports great ideas of individuality in the diverse range of experiences generated between viewers and the work. In other words, Sandback's work has enabled me to be the co-producer of my own space, and to become the projecting vanishing-point from where I can negotiate and constitute a space of time."

Olafur Eliasson
Artists' Favorites: Act II (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts; Frankfurt am Main: Revolver), 2004, p. 9

02.12.09