And, you're soaking in it

I've been hashing through pieces for my upcoming show out in Colorado in November. I'm doing the show with my buddy Marc Wilhite who just moved back out to Denver from Boston.
The show is a meditation of sorts on a series of speeches written by Italo Calvino that are collected together in the book Six Memos for the Next Millenium. In this collection, Calvino explores five elements (he died prior to writing on the sixth piece) that lend to the timelessness of certain works of literature.

The process of developing this show has been a challenge for me conceptually. We're certainly not interested in creating a series of visual examples to illustrate Calvino's concepts. The exhibit is being called In the Spirit of the text, and that is really how we're working; within the spirit of the considerations that characterized Calvino's approach to both his own work and the appreciation he felt for the work of other writers.

Outside of the specific elements dealt with in the writings, I've been considering the notion of how knowledge and even taste, are passed along and experienced, and how much do we rely on secondary sources to gain our sense of the world. I've been thinking of our society's arbiters of taste or morals and how we absorb knowledge through primary experience or filtered through these arbiters and aggregators - the Oprahs, self help gurus, and John Tesh's of the world. And as artists we process this stuff into application that find their way into the our work.

From that strain of thought, I've been ruminating on how I pick up and absorb snippets of visuals or ideas in my working process. It's like an open ended, scavenger hunt where one discovery or clue opens the door to the next one, creating a zig zag trail of significance within the resulting work.

In one aspect of this current work, this meandering path has led from thinking of the relationship between literature and visual art, and they can stand on equal footing side by side. On top of that, I looked at a passage in one of the memos where Calvino bemoans the inexactitude with which language is oft employed. That ineffectual use of language led me to look at the jumble of letters that arrive in my mailbox as the subject lines of spam. I've been noting these subject lines for sometime for their bizarre, funny language, and often abstract letter combinations.
ligature studies, gouache on paper, 3" x 8"
In the process of applying this spamwerk to the task of creating work, I happened to listen to a podcast lecture given by font designer, Matthew Carter at SVA. Carter spoke of ligatures and construction component in fonts.to an instance where he developed a font in response to text he saw in the paintings of Mantegna, the process of assessing and absorbing elements of similarly ...With all of this in my mind, I learned via Bad at Sports of the 50th Anniversary of the Helvetica font and so it goes.

This trail is indeed meandering, but it's paramount to my reading of Calvino's Six Memos, and the way I'm approaching the exhibit as an appreciation of discriminating immersion. The thrust of my sentiment is that as a critic of writing, Calvino is foremost a lover of writing, a metabolizer of literature. In his Memos, Calvino doesn't enumerate the commandments of writing, rather I feel, he's sharing his joys of his immersion in the stuff. It's the trip you take in the soup, and when you're in it everything's in the mix. With experience and discipline, one is able to discern what sticks, and what gets carried downstream.

I'll get into more of this later, but this sheds a bit of light onto where I'm at currently with this work.

Please rewind tape before returning

Blue painter's tape has become an almost ubiquitous medium for artists. It's a pretty, cobalt kind of blue. Light filters through it nicely...

Well, I use a lot of the stuff when I'm doing my decorative painting gigs. Regular masking tape too. As I wrap up a job, I roll the tape into a glob, sticky side in, as much as possible, for easy depositing in a trash bag.

The activity has sometimes taken on aspect of a short term challenge (similar, I'm sure, to the spirit that spawned the world's largest ball of twine) to see how large a ball I can create given the amount of tape use on a job.

Recently, though, I've taken to seeing this as an opportunity to create some small impromptu sculptures. Without getting too fussy about the shape, I try to be aware of the form as it develops. The added color of paint on the edge of the tape informs the process, adding variety. It's an activity that's a sort of meditation on the end of a project, and the refuse produced by the process.

These images represent a few of the pieces I've done in the tape. A friend came to visit my studio last week, and I told her that at the moment, I find the possibility of these small things more exciting than the thought of painting. As with the skins of dried paint that I've used both as subject in my slough paintings, and as sculpture itself, as with the Blesse wall pieces, I think there's room to play with these things.

Lunchtime Show and Tell

Back in June, I was working on the installation crew for the Martin Creed Feelings exhibit the Hessel Museum at Bard College.

A couple recent Peter Acheson pieces.

Through the middle of the install, I brought in a few small pieces for feedback from my buddies, Daniel Berlin, and Peter Acheson during our lunch break. This began a daily showandtell/critique session with each of us bringing in our work.

This is one of a series of stick paintings that Peter does. I took it home to live with for a week. I placed it over a doorway.

This added a nice perk to the work day and it was something I looked forward to each day.

I photographed a couple of the sessions. Toward the end of the install, we mutually decided on an assignment where each of us would create a piece using some trashed luaun that we came across.

Dan Berlin's luaun assignment.

My luaun assignment.

Attitude Adjustment

Weekend before last, I had the pleasure of meeting Ed Winkleman of Plus Ultra/Winkelman Gallery, and the Ed Winkleman blog. I've mentioned Ed's blog here, and on maykr before. It's one of the most insightful and engaging art blogs around, both for Ed's takes on issues as well as the conversations his posts spawn in the reader posted comments. He's an accessible individual, and clearly a thoughtful advocate for artists.

Ed was part of a panel discussion on collecting at the Affordable Art Fair. The panel was moderated by Lisa Hunter and also included Lindsey Pollock and Tom Delavan of Domino Magazine.



I ran through the fair, waiting for something to catch my eye. Only two things did. Ross Bonfanti's cement filled stuffed animals, and Nona Orbach's messy collages.


I then hustled down to Sperone Westwater to see the recent Richard Tuttle exhibit, Memory Comes From Dark Extension and was instantly disappointed. The work in this exhibit it is a multitude of small collage/assemblage work all of which is mounted to the wall using a small bracket of wood and hand tooled bronze that holds the work 3" off the wall. Most of the work in the front gallery uses heavy stock watercolor-type paper that is occasionally bent and creased and painted with watercolor and sometimes collaged. None of the work exceeds 5" in dimension. These pieces felt crafty, not inspired, and looked better in the website photos. There were a few pieces in the front gallery that incorporated oddly shaped scraps of wood that I preferred, but still, I was not impressed.

I proceeded back to a rear gallery, and the first piece I saw was a rounded triangular shape of torn paper about the size of a quarter with some blue crayon scribbling on it stuck to the end of the bracket. I was struck, and the light entered my brain. The interaction of this scrape of paper with the hanging support was in wonderful, messy proportion, and for the first time I noticed the element integral to all of the work in the show; the shadow.



I returned to the front gallery and was able to see that work with my eyes and sensibilities properly adjusted. Still, the work of this series, was the least favorite of the exhibit, but I was able to appreciate them for what they were offering.



This exhibit is full of the wonderful moments that Tuttle allows to happen. Fortunately, the work was patient enough with me to allow me to take the time to calibrate my senses and perception to receive all that it had to offer. Walking through the galleries of this exhibited provided a viscerally learned lesson on the power of art, and the rewards that can come when one takes up the responsibility of meeting the work on its terms.

Some artwork from Skin Trade

I am about to create the beginnings of a new main website. One that will allow me to put the artwork in a new context, and update it with greater frequency without imposing on my buddy, Chad Smith who graciously put my original site together....that should happen in a couple of days. In the meantime, I'm posting a few images of the pieces in the current show at Go North.

Genesis 18, 2007 oil on paper 8"x11"

Genesis 9, 2007 oil on paper 8"x11"

Jumpsuit 2007 oil on canvas 20"x24"

Genesis 11, 2007 oil on paper 8"x11"

Skin Trade installation shots

Here are a few installation shots of "Skin Trade" at Go North in Beacon.

Angelika dressed coordinatingly at the opening.
Go North partners Greg Slick and Karlos Carcamo, with A. and me.

Athough it is not evidenced in any of the photos above, Greg Slick is able to stand erect.

Skin Trade opens at Go North on June 2

Genesis 10, 2007 acrylic, oil on paper

My exhibit of new small works will be opening in two weeks at Go North, at 469 Main St. in Beacon, NY. The exhibit will consist of around thirty small oil works on paper.
Born out of some responses to work that I've been doing examining the nature of "skin," or that which takes up the role of skin .....I began painting on pages from adult magazines. Grafting the skin of a paint film over the exposed skin in the magazine photos, I began finding rather beautiful compositional elements within the images. I found a type of layout particularly intriguing. This layout entailed two images, often of the same size arranged vertically with a small margin between the images and to one side. The margin on the other side is wider, and holds a narrative text relating to the images. After obscuring the photographs, creating new images that often take the form of abstract landscapes, the presence of the text took on a hightened sense of farcity. Divorced from the images it originally served to describe, the text now serves as a piece of pointed absurd poetry. The resulting pairing of text and image provides a serving of crass literature that imposes itself in one's thoughts along with a non objective plane of contemplation suitable for cleansing the mind.

So are you contemplating the beauty of the image inspite of the words you've just read, or are you searching the abstract image for clues to illustrate the prose, or does that swatch of color give space for you to reflect on the words, unfettered by someone else's version of the visual.

Here's the press release for the show:

For Immediate
Release:
Christopher Albert: Skin Trade
June
2nd – July 1st, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 2ndth, 6 –
9pm.

GO NORTH is pleased to present the opening of
Christopher Albert’s exhibition “Skin Trade”. The work will be on exhibit from
June 2nd through July 1st, 2007. A reception for the artist will be held on
Saturday, June 2nd, from 6 - 9 pm.
Christopher Albert’s new paintings
use images from pornographic magazines as the underlying structure for the
formal elements of his paintings. Painting on top of the images, he transforms
the graphic sexual images into a sensual blend of colors, forms textures, and
lines. Leaving behind small traces of the original source material and the text
associated with the sexual act. Literally and metaphorically “trading” the
visual pleasures associated with porn for the visual gratifications of painting.

Founded in September of 2006 by artists Gregory Slick and Karlos
Cárcamo, Go North’s mission is to support, exhibit, and promote art by local,
national, and international artists. Our focus is contemporary art that is
dedicated to exploring cutting edge cultural and artistic issues by pushing the
boundaries of traditional media. Staging monthly exhibitions on a rotating basis
gives artists the opportunity to expand and explore new dimensions in their
work. Enabling us to keep our exhibitions fresh and updated, while providing a
place in the Hudson Valley for contemplation, dialog and exchange of ideas.

GO NORTH - A Space for Contemporary Art
469 Main St., Beacon,
NY 12508
gonorthgallery@hotmail.com
www.gonorthgallery.blogspot.com
Gallery hours: 12 - 6
pm, Friday - Sunday

In the belly of the beast

I took advantage of some free time on Saturday to visit the new Libeskind addition to the Denver Art Museum.
It's been a pleasure stopping by from time to time, to check in on the progress of the construction of the building, as the skeletal structure of the extension stood on its own as sculpture.

The exterior of the new Hamilton wing is dynamic, and the exterior public space created by this building in relation to the Central Public Library and Gio Ponti's original museum building is extraordinary. The exterior composition of Libeskind's building and the manner it sits in its environment, represent the best element of the building, but it also signifies the greatest failing of the edifice. This is obviously a structure designed from the outside in, with the resulting pressures bearing heavily upon the shoulders of artwork and visitor contained in the spaces within.

After the assertive, powerful elements looming overhead outside, I was considerably underwhelmed by the lobby which felt unnecessarily heavy, dark and contractor grade. The high point of the effect that the pushing and pulling of the structure's skin has on the interior is the dizzying sensation of vertigo one gets as one looks down at the staircase from the third and fourth floors. It's down right Hitchcockian. It's also the singular saving grace on the interior of the building.
As the Hamilton Wing was opening last fall, The Denver Post's Kyle Macmillan wrote an article with the head line "As Art and as a home for art, it succeeds" As architecture as sculpture, I think it does work, but as a home for art, it certainly doesn't. Art doesn't own this home, it's simply renting. There are so many expansion joints, shadow lines, and compromised installation choices that the effect of the space is actively competing with the artwork. At virtually every turn, the building elbows into one's field of vision, vying for attention saying "Yeah, that Motherwell is ok, but Motherwell and Libeskind, now THAT's a combination." In a recent interview on Colorado Public Radio, DAM Director Lewis Sharp spins the performance of Libeskind's design, saying that the building is anything but neutral. True. Unfortunately this non neutrality does little more than neuter the the very work it was meant to showcase.

There's much to riff on like the odd auxiliary galleries housing some Oceanic and African artifacts located off of the main contemporary galleries which are very obviously unintentional spaces resulting from the building's structure that had to be filled. More afterthought than curatorial intention, these spaces do nothing but add to the adhoc sensation presented as one moves through the galleries.

The selection and placement of work throughout the modern/contemporary galleries is a perfunctory survey through time. Perhaps bowing to the years of bellyaching of local artists that there has been no homegrown contemporary work on exhibit, there are a couple of hometown artists displayed among other work in the collection. A boon to Phil Bender is the placement of one of his arrangement of hubcaps among the Irwin, Judd, and Lewitt pieces. Bender's piece stands out for me as one that perhaps shows an affinity of spirit with these other notable artists, but his presence here feels more like the little brother out on the baseball field only because the older kids are one shy of fielding a full team.

The Anshutz Gallery on the Second floor which is just about the only area in the building with plumb walls. The current exhibit is Radar, selections from the collection of Vicki and Kent Logan. It's reaffirming to be moving through a space with right angles. The drawback in this space for me are the free standing walls that, given the polygonal footprint of the gallery are arrayed in a series of almost parallel partitions that create shallow funnels that at the bottom of which create a log jam of art and audience.

What surprised me most about moving about the new extension was the completely subconscious sense of relief and unburdening that I felt as I traversed the second floor footbridge into the original Ponti designed North building. The first floor of the Ponti building felt like a neglected ghost town, which I imagine will change, and non too soon, for I feel that this it where the soul of the museum still rests.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the curatorial staff will rise to the considerable challenge of learning how to install work in the Libeskind space that hits. It's not impossible for this to happen, however, the potential for it happening might be limited by the political understanding of what the public was paying for when the addition was approved, because the best use of this building may well be contrary to how the building's use was originally pitched.

Expressionistic Graffiti Abatement - 13th & Steele, Denver

I've been in Denver for a few weeks for work. I tend to notice attempts at obscuring graffiti far more than I notice the actual graffiti. This is a particularly beautiful example that caught my eye.

Flat Files show at Maxwell Fine Art, Peekskill NY.

Bentonville

I'll have a selection of works on paper in the Flat Files show opening this weekend, and running through the Summer, at Maxwell Fine Art in Peekskill, NY.

Tet

Most of the pieces included in the show are pastel drawings from the Rk group from around 2004.

Catonverplank I

3 Days in LA part 2

Alison Schulnik at Mark Moore Gallery.

Two final images from our Bergamot Station field trip on April 12. Both are from the Mark Moore Gallery. Above, Alison Schulnik's odd paintings of animals and landscapes were in the main gallery. A couple including the one above, were most diggable because of their wierdness.



Boo Ritson at Mark Moore Gallery.

In a side gallery were five large photos by Boo Ritson. Each work featured a portrait; the sitter slathered with some sort of paint or makeup giving the appearance of a person posing as the confectionery equivalent of himself.





After Bergamot Station, we laid low at the hotel until A's opening. The Paul Kopeikin Gallery is located a block from the LACMA, and is one of a handful of galleries gathered around a courtyard on Wilshire Blvd. I've posted images of A's installation over at maykr.

Other openings that night included two separate shows of Nicola Tyson's work at the Mark Foxx Gallery, one of drawings, and another of paintings. The drawings, which I liked, traced familiar steps as an exercise in loose and spare psycho-figurative sketches. Nothing really original, but that kind of work appeals to me. The paintings felt even more loaded with self conscious steps, and did not go far enough in any direction for my taste.
Located directly above Mark Foxx Gallery, 1301PE was showing a group of small paintings by Charlene Von Heyle which I liked.

Directly across from Kopeikin's space, Roberts & Tilton featured and enjoyable show of the sculpture and drawings of Thomas Kiesewetter. The scale, color and nature of the constructions all worked for me. The use of a variety of pedestals added much to the spirit of the work as each piece was set atop a unique plinth, each one stained or marked showing signs of having served as working platform in the creation of the sculptures.


Thomas Kieswetter at Roberts & Tilton.

3 days in LA part 1

Bergamot Station

We were in LA last weekend for Angelika's opening at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery. I was in Denver for a few days of work, then headed out to LA from there on Friday morning. I hadn't heard about the snowstorm in NY until I got to the airport. I felt very fortunate to be heading in the other direction, particularly knowing that the mess out East would straighten itself out by the time I was ready to return.
Our leisure time both before and after A's opening was filled with looking at art....what a change.
On Saturday morning, we went over to Bergamot Station, a collection of over twenty galleries housed in a former undustrial area encircling a parking lot in Santa Monica.
We stopped into most of the galleries, and saw some very good shows. I snapped some images of the work I found most interesting. Patrick Painter Inc. has separate spaces at Bergamot.

Hope Atherton at Patrick Painter East

The East gallery featured a show of paintings by Hope Atherton that treated the representational subjects with a natural abstract approach.

Albert Oehlen at Patrick Painter West

Painter's west gallery featured the "Leg Show" a group of leg-centric work by Tim Berresheim, Albert Oehlen and Matthia Schaufler which was the initial incarnation of a recurring theme of the ubiquiteness of the German artist. The day before, A was having a conversation with another artist about the current tide of German artists that are supremely visible in LA exhibits currently. It could be that my krautsense is more highly attuned given my domestic situation, but in any case there indeed seemed to an inordinate number of German's represented in the exhibits we saw.

The two most effective exhibits were also very entertaining: Jean Lowe's papier-mache installations at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, and a survey of the work of Scott Grieger at Patricia Faure Gallery.
Both artists appropriate the familiar and send it back to us with a twist.

Jean Lowe at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

Lowe's exhibit spanned three rooms all with intricate constructions. Her collection of fully stocked bookshelves are capable of keeping you engaged for hours perusing the volume of titles riffing on subjects through out the entire Dewey Decimal system.

Scott Grieger at Patricia Faure Gallery.

The Grieger exhibit covers work from 1969-2007 in a variety of media that pointedly references recent art history. There is a group of photographs recreating famous artworks by Robert Irwin, Rauschenberg, Barnett Newman where Grieger cast himself as the replacement for the essential element in each piece. In other pieces, he creates works that could be supposed to be the result of fantasy mashups of artists like Johns+Judd and Newman+Stella.

Grand Central Interminable

On February 24, I was standing at the foot of one of the staircases in Grand Central, reading, waiting for the 2:51 back to Beacon after having run through the Armory show. I arrived almost an hour ahead of time, and had become pretty absorbed in my magazine. I looked up from my reading, and after a couple of seconds realized something odd was afoot. Portions of the crowd in the hall were frozen still. I estimate several dozen people had stopped mid step on the floor of the great hall. The fellow nearest me was struck in mid-bite of his cupcake. I stood and watched the unmoving among the otherwise normal GCT rush for two or three minutes before the living sculptures melted into the crowd at 2:35 accompanied by applause throughout the hall. After just a few seconds, another arrangement of people fixed in location became apparent. This time, a young woman looked on as two companions embraced sadly at the base of the staircase, and another woman lay prone as if after stumbling. This moment of inaction lasted five minutes, and again evaporated with more applause.
Standing unwittingly amid such an intervention was thrilling, partly for the unexpected twist it provided, and by the palpable sense that though not in on the action, by being present, I too had a role to play in the performance. By having been initially unaware of the inaction around me, the entertainment of the moment was provided by the same process of growing awareness repeated dozens of times over as more people found themselves confronting the strange obstacle course, realizing something was up, then reacting to it, trying to interact with it, or imitating it. The most entertaining, though, was the population of folks that traversed the space, weaving around the frozen actors without a clue that anything differentiated that moment from any other.

Update 3/08: I finally discovered the group responsible for the action - Improve Everywhere.

New Digs

Angelika Rinnhofer, Kitchen drawer installation 2007

After about three weeks of moving and unpacking, we are pretty much installed in our new abode. Our new place is big enough to allow both Angelika and myself to do some artmaking, so consequently, we have left Spire Studios where we had our workspaces for nearly three and a half years.


The move has not taken us far; we are just across the street from Spire, and we can see the building from our front porch. For times over the past several weeks, though, we might as well have been much farther away, as I realized that I hadn't had contact with folks with whom I had nearly daily interactions for several years, like Kathy Feighery, Matt Kinney, Alexis Elton and Todd Spire. Fortunately, the haze of moving is fading, and the several months long hiatus from diligent work is ending. Things are reassuming their natural place, and if I need to check in on what's shaking at Spire, I just need to look both ways before crossing.

Icci's favorite, but shortlived perch.

Holiday Stuffing.

While housesitting for my friend Cynthia in Seacliff NY for the week of Thanksgiving, I worked on several small pieces I brought with me. These images are of a few of the things I toyed with while I was waiting for paint to dry on my slough paintings.

Come Gather Round at Unison

Here are some images from the opening and exhibit at Unison Arts Center in New Paltz in which I'm involved in with Peter Iannarelli, and Angelika. The gist of the show revolved around stories and the things we are told when we're young.

Angelika photographed images of the of us enacting scenes from Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel. The images were projected and traced on paper creating large coloring sheets of the scenes.



Peter approached the nature of stories like the three little pigs with a couple of text pieces.



My contribution to the show consisted of a couple of groupings some drawings and paintings, both old and new and some recent wall based sculptures that recall the impact of hearing of prophesies in the book of revelations explained to me by my grandfather.