Harbored

The October 11 opening of my exhibit HARBOR at Matteawan Gallery took place one year to the weekend after I executed a series of painted moves that ended up resulting in the base layers on which the Harbor compositions would be built. 

This act of painting done on Columbus Day weekend in 2013 was the final "processing" of Advent 2011, the last project to appear on the board of kork.  For Advent 2011 I sent postcard images of a 2001 painting, THA to 30 artists and asked them to manipulate the image in the photograph and mail it as a postcard back to the office of Deborah Bailey Browne CPA in Poughkeepsie, where it became an advent calendar marking the end of 2011 and the end of kork as an artspace - and some for some, possibly the end of the world with the apocryphal apocalypse of 2012 then looming on the horizon. 

The collected Advent 2011 postcards.

I took all of these manipulated postcards as suggestions for how to improve or destroy the painting in question.  The logical final step was to enact these suggestions on the actual painting and see what I came up with.
The video below is a time lapse capture of me going through the motions over the course of three days in October 2013.




After taking the painting through all of the iterations, I cut it up into smaller pieces to be used at a later date.  As it turns out, most of the body of this old painting has reemerged in the collective body of of the Harbor paintings which, as a group consist of 15 paintings.

After having chosen HARBOR as the name of the exhibit and the paintings, thinking of the significances of the word, I came to recognize these new paintings tangibly harbor the physical and intellectual efforts of all the participating artists, forming a receptive bed for a new layer of information and making the whole concept worth that much more to me.

Those participating artists are:

Angela Beloian, James Westwater, Sharon L Butler, Marc Wilhite, Lorrie Fredette, Thomas Huber, Peter Iannarelli, Elia Gurna, Angelika Rinnhofer, Alastair Dewell, Michael Asbill, Bruce Gluck, Kathleen Anderson, Matthew Slaats, Chad Smith, Mark DeLura, Peter Acheson, Jean Brennan, Steve Rossi, Mark Creegan, Mathew Hereford, Deirdre Swords,  Susan Walsh, Catherine Welshman, Kirsten Kucer, Christopher Stackhouse, Matthew S Kinney, Greg Slick, Sara Mussen and Karlos Carcamo.

Dead Hare Radio Hour: Show #40 - Crystal Bridges

Another episode of the Dead Hare Radio Hour is out. The subject this time is the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ar.

Frank and Gloria in front of Crystal Bridges.

Roxy Paine's shimmering tree welcomes visitors to the museum.

Carolina Miranda is back on the Dead Hare Radio Hour (she was the program's very first guest) and she and I compare notes from our visits to the museum.  I recorded our conversation at Carolina's apartment in Brooklyn last May (she and her husband, El Celso, have since moved to L.A.)

Crystal Bridges opened in November of 2011.  I made the first of my first visit to the museum - a week after it opened - with my grandparents who live very close by.  You can see them in the photo at the top of this post.  (By chance, I'm releasing this podcast just two days after my grandpa broke his shoulder in two places from in a fall, so I'm a bit concerned for him.)

 Devorah Sperber's take on the Last Supper.

Below are some links relevant to the show.
Carolina's Crystal Bridges photo diary on her blog, c-monster.net includes images of several of the works discussed.
Carolina's most recent radio piece for NPR on the artist Llyn Foulkes.


A recent update on the Walmart bribery scandal in Mexico.

NPR's series on art destinations.

Martin Johnson Heade's exquisite paintings of rain forest orchids, butterflies and humming birds.

Vik Muniz responds to Heade's orchid paintings.

This Washington Examiner story states that the 600,000 Crystal Bridges visitors in the museum's first year is double the expected number.

A Wall Street Journal story on the Mark Rothko painting, No. 234/ No. 234, recently acquired by Crystal Bridges

Inside the Precious Moments Chapel.

More images from my visit to the Precious Moments Chapel in Carthage, MO. can be found in this photo album.  This is one crazy joint. A real spectacle that is at once impressive, and a wee creepy.

Finally, this episode  wraps up with a short anecdote from Peter Acheson (Show #30 & #36 ) about an encounter he and his buddy Chris Martin had while hiking in Colorado.

Meet yer Maykr: Mark DeLura

On his blog, Form In The Fire, Peter Acheson recounts his recent visit to the studio of painter Mark DeLura.

Peter's posting prompted me to post images I took during a visit he and I made to Mark's studio back in November of 2010.

At that point, Mark had just embarked on his explorations of clusters of drip-tethered "splatters" (at this point, smaller scaled works done in oil on paper) which can be seen as the forebears of the paintings described in Peter's post.

On our 2010 visit Mark also showed us the large stripe paintings the pre-dated his (I'll just refer to them as "cluster") paintings.

What these works all share is the source of their chromatic character.  The colors here are not random "imaginary hues" but appropriated ones which have been found by the artist in the natural landscape and collected into a library through excursions in which they were mixed from nature.  

In Sept 2011 Mark's exhibit at the voluminous Re Institute in Millerton, NY paired his exploration of form and gesture with a new use of industrial paints (mostly silver and barn red).

It's interesting to me that, as with the earlier works, the colors Mark has chosen for the recent ones are not invented but appropriated and are readymade hues that are "naturally" found in the man-mediated landscape.


Peter will be speaking about his own work this coming Saturday, January 19 at 4pm as part of This Red Door's offering of events at the Kunsthalle Galapagos in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Kunsthalle Galapagos is locate upstairs from the Galapagos Art Space.

I was able to check out both the Kunsthalle Galapagos and the TRD set up on Sunday when I went down to do a little recording for Dead Hare Radio, and to take in a reading of selections from Christopher Stackhouse's newly published volume of poetry, Plural.

The visual evidence of TRD's series of talks and presentations on the gallery walls.

Various readers shared selections of Christopher Stachkhouse's poetry.

Geneve Journal: Embarkment

I finally set out on my Geneve Journal journey yesterday.  Scheduled to depart yesterday from Newark at 5:15 pm to Geneva by way of Porto Portugal, I'm currently sitting in the Newark Double Tree Hotel.  "Technical difficulties" brought about the eventual cancellation of the flight and then the saga of getting hotel rooms for the affected passengers.  After the bulk of our fellow passengers filled all available rooms of the Renaissance Hotel, the remaining handful of us were given rooms at the Double Tree - at about 1:30 am.

From rm 311 of the Double Tree hotel.

Scheduled now to depart at 5:55, with the connecting city being Lisbon, the current snowfall - which is getting heavier now - makes me question the possibility of a timely take off this afternoon.

But, I took a pleasant breakfast this morning with Tim and Marion, a young French couple heading back to Paris after visiting NYC, and I'm able to catch up on some posting while I wait for the airline's call.

Over the last few weeks I began fulfilling the first rewards for supporters of the Geneve Journal Project.  All but a few handful of the Elliptical Drawings have been sent out - the rest will find their destination upon my return.  And I've been able to start making phone calls of thanks to those who joined in on the project.

I'm grateful to all these fine folks who agreed to participate:

Jo Cole, Angelika Rinnhofer, Lorrie Fredette, Deirdre Swords, Matthew Kinney, Beth E. Wilson, Brian Farrar, Lisa Townley, Michael Haskell, Trent Peaker, Erica Hauser, Pamela Todd, Tatiana Giametti, Angela Beloian, Rich Armstrong, Andrew Boscardin, Steffen Hyder, Chad Smith, Ilka Omdahl, Stan Gregory, Frank Albert, Desiree, Will Walker, Matthew Slaats, Andy Clayton, Richard Schoenstein, Randy Caruso, Olivier Pascal Zimmermann, Cristina Schuttmann, Cristin Frodella, Carla Rozman, elboso, Steve Rossi, Cole Wicker, AmyK, Rob Penner, Peter Iannarelli, C-monster, Kirsten Kucer, Peter Acheson, Marcia Acita, Marc Schreibman, Phyllis Lerud, Diana & David Armstrong.

 To project funders: if I've missed any pertinent links, please let me know.  I'll gladly add them.

 I've set up a tout profile.  I'll be posting 15 second videos to this profile which will follow my Genevois goings-on at a micro-temporal and microscopic level.  If you're on the blog page now, you can see the Tout widget in the sidebar to the right.

Museum Didactics run amok

Count me as one of those who feels that sometimes there's just too much textual support material in museum exhibits.  It's clear that there is not dearth of explanatory in the museum world - and indeed, the glut of words seeking a context to explain seems to have spread to the back of the house, as it were, as is evidenced by this label that turned up in the kitchen at Bard CCS last month. 
In fairness, though this signage was intended to combat what was believed to be well meaning faux pas of someone using regular dish soap in the dishwasher, giving flight to a cloud of soapy bubbles eminating from the machine and covering the floor.

Speaking of text, there's a lot of it at the current offering at the Hessel Museum at Bard, and it ain't just on the wall labels.  A retrospective installation of several of Liam Gillick's works from the 90's is on view in the Hessel Galleries in the exhibit From 199A to 199B: Liam Gillick.  Over in the CCS galleries - by contrast - is a glowing, colorful affair featuring a selection of artists in the Johanna Burton curated exhibit Anti-Establishment.

Speaking of Anti-Establishment, just tonight I made the best batch of onion rings using onions I collected - which were cast offs from YES! Association's performance on the opening day of the exhibit on June 23.  The performance entailed both a healthy pile of soil and equally healthy pile of onions, some of which were cut open or gnawed by the artists....
Who says it's only the soul that is nourished by art.   

Over at Form in the Fire, Peter Acheson offers up a personal reflection of Gillick's show.

Both shows are on view through Dec, 2012. 

A Chelsea Stroll in March

NYC is simply a dense cluster of little villages and nowhere does that notion ever feel truer than in Chelsea.  I had a little time to catch a few shows back after making an art delivery back in mid March.

I saw two colleagues from MoMA at the Andrew Kreps Gallery.  I ran into a designer I was helping install this week at Bard CCS.  I ran into Amy Lipton on 11th Ave.  Amy told me about a new gallery in Beacon that I hadn't even heard of.  It's called Estuary Gallery.  It's located over at the loft project off of Rt 52.  Amy said she tried to go to the opening of the inaugural show the previous Saturday, but couldn't find the place (it can be confusing to navigate that area if you're not familiar with it, especially at night.)

At the Josh Smith Show at Luhring Augustine Gallery, I met Jerry Saltz, who was marvelling at the great awfomeness (my word, a cross of awesome and awful) of Smith's work - which has provided me with at least a couple of hours of entertaining conversations.  Peter Acheson and I caught his previous exhibit from last March at Luhring Augustine.  His latest painitngs seem to be striving more for awesomeness than awfulness (something I'm not sure could be said of previous groupings) - aside from those stop signs;  I was challenged by Mr. Saltz to put something that awful in my next show.  That will be priority one, next show I have. 

I also met Phong Bui, editor of the Brooklyn Rail who was at the Augustine with the artist Joel Shapiro.  I spoke with Phong about recording an interview with him for Dead Hare Radio. I was actually capturing ambient sounds during my walk through the galleries and created a sound collage for show #3 of Dead Har Radio.

Let's see....what did I see?  Some unexpected and weird videos - in 3D by Gary Hill, “of surf, death, tropes & tableaux: The Psychedelic Gedankenexperiment,” at Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY through April 23.

I watched Terence Koh edging his way around a mound of salt on his knees at Mary Boone.  Some black and white reliefs of Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks, I believe.  A Tara Donavan at Pace(?) that was a bit too prim for me.  Also, Richard Butler had a show at Freight and Volume.  I'm back and forth with his work, but I'm digging some of his new larger heads.

Upstate road trip

 Sponge Bob and Patrick hitching a ride on the back end of a tractor trailer.

Yesterday, Mark DeLura, Peter Acheson and I made a road trip up to Saratoga Springs to visit the Jewel Thief exhibit at the Tang Museum and then to Greenwich, NY to visit Martin Bromirski's studio.  I'll focus specifically on Martin's studio visit in an upcoming post.  For now, here are a few images from the rest of our day:

 Images of the Saratoga Diner where we enjoyed an excellent breakfast for lunch.

two "disorienting" images of Richard Woods' "wood" flooring and Jim Hodges' greyscale camo.

The Jewel Thief exhibit at the Tang is co-curated by Jessica Stockholder and Tang curator Ian Berry features the work of 60 artists.  There are a handful of short videos of the artists and the curators speaking about their work on the museum's website.  The exhibit will remain on view through Feb 27.

Peter Acheson at John Davis Gallery in Hudson NY.

Flag, 2008

I couldn't miss the opening of Peter Acheson's opening at John Davis Gallery on Nov 13.
I've mentioned Peter and his work here on this blog and on maykr many times before.  I've spent a lot of time with him talking about painting - and other things.
These conversations have had a major influence on how I look at painting and how I approach my own painting activity. 

Acheson's work has more often than not challenged my expectations of what a painting can or should be.  More often than not, his work, piece by piece has simply challenged me - directly - about each piece's validity as a work fit for the world.
My struggle to come to terms with the oddest of balls that spring from his hand has been rewarding too.  And even the works which, in the end still flag or fail do so with abandon and ballsy-ness - as should be the case. 

The artist in his formal opening attire.

So, Ok- to separate my relationship with the guy from the stuff he does, I'll say that walking into this show was a thrilling visceral experience, one that triggers a jones to get home and get painting - immediately.  I  relate the experience of entering this exhibit to that of discovering Norbert Prangenberg's work at Betty Cunningham Gallery.  It's funny that the works on the main floor are similar to Prangenberg's work in their slutty application of paint.  Never having done crack or suffered from a debilitating addiction of any kind, I can only guess in my assumption that the sense of walking into either of these two exhibits is like a recovered addict happening upon some den replete with the stuff of his addiction - regained intoxication, but without the torment or guilt.  My response to both these exhibits was the same; reveling in the residue of another's endeavor as if it were my own.
It's funny too that Peter's response to photos of that Prangenberger exhibit mirrored his reflection on his own show just a couple of days ago: "Too conservative."

John Davis' downstairs gallery features a sampling of the different threads of Peter's work, concurrently made, but divergent in intention.  Together they give the impression of a guy that is, at his core, a stick and mud man.

Painting for Ben La Rocco, 2010

So, as I alluded, there are two floors in the gallery, the top floor is predominated by what's been referred to as his vibratory paintings and the bottom being populated with variations of his production.

Martin Bromirski photographing Xochitl

Check out Martin's photos from the opening at anaba.  Also John Davis' website includes a pdf with images of all the works in the exhibit.  The show is up through Dec 5.

I was treated last week to a delightful and invigorating studio visit by Mark DeLura and Peter Acheson.  I'll be heading north to meet up with those two again to do a visit Mark's studio.  Later in the day, I'll continue on to Hudson to take in the opening reception of Peter's exhibit of new paintings at the John Davis Gallery. 

John Davis Gallery is located at 362 1/2 Warren St. in Hudson, NY.  Peter Acheson: Paintings runs through December 5, 2010. Tomorrow's reception runs from 6 to 8 pm.

John Davis has an awesome three-story carriage house behind the main gallery which is open during warm months.  I was able to catch Martin Bromirski's "Circus on Mars" show there a couple of years ago. I missed Sharon Butler's exhibit of Beacon Paintings last year, but I was pleased to exhibit two pieces from that body of work last month at kork.

Meet yer Maykr: Daniel Berlin

Daniel Berlin on left, speaking with Peter Acheson.  Jake Berthot is on the right speaking with another guest.

I attended Daniel Berlin's open studio in Accord, NY this past Sunday.  The open studio was held to showcase Daniel's recent monoprints - which he creates at the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY - and paintings which are all part of a body of work called Kiss Universe.  The hourglass form in this work was immediately familiar to me from Daniel' contribution (Dec 1) to the kork Advent calendar in December 2009. 

Of course more detailed images of his work can be found at Daniel's new website, as can the story about the creation of Daniel Berlin.

some of the great splatters where the floor meets wall.

a selection of older monoprints with a few small paintings.

some of the recent Kiss Universe works.