Emvergeoning

Photographs seem to be capturing my attention lately. I’m compelled to share some of the scintillating gems I uncovered thanks to M + B Gallery in Los Angeles and the thoughtful, informative blog, Conscientious. Austinite William Hundley breaks the monotony of snapshots by poking gravity in the eye in pictures like the image above. He seems to be a favorite over at Wooster Collective. The Lovely Loretta Lux also seems to strike gold with ambiguous, puerile portraits like this:

© 2004 Loretta Lux

Thirty year old Jehad Nga reminds me of Sebastiao Salgado in his ability to uncover the vulnerable humanity behind international headlines.

© 2006 Jehad Nga

For more fun with photography, I softly suggest a visit to the musings of
I Heart Photograph.

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I made a second visit to the Museo Alameda today, planning on writing a little review. I hadn’t seen anyone actually review the content of the exhibitions, with most commentary focusing on the political aspects of the enterprise (or worse, fights that broke out at the opening — we’ll let the tabloids cover that topic…). But just now I noticed that Edward Rothstein has already done a pretty good job reviewing the exhibits for the New York Times (this is their second article on the museum). A lot of people I’ve talked to had the same questions: Laura Bush’s purse? Quartz crystals? A satellite? What does this have to do with the Latino experience?

But I think there is something going on at the museum that could be pretty interesting if executed in a more cohesive way. There is a blend of ancient artifacts, cultural detritus, and contemporary art that is, in my experience, unique. If the curators of the museum were able to make more effective use of the Smithsonian collection (hint: Lady Bird Johnson’s brooch doesn’t help us understand Latino history), but also tie these artifacts to important contemporary work, it could play a role in educating us about the past but also make a positive contribution to the development of Latino culture today. The potential is there, but unfortunately, the first round of exhibits doesn’t quite pull it off.

[Photo: Michael Stravato for The New York Times]

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“Inland Empire” last night, not sure a traditional review is the most appropriate response (although that one will give you a good idea of what you’re in for).

But some thoughts. The red velvet curtains, the flickering lights that have haunted Lynch’s work since “Twin Peaks” (or earlier?) return. I think they still work — I think, in fact, they have developed since the Block Lodge. I wonder what this would look like to someone who hadn’t followed Lynch’s work. Are these images strengthened or dulled by a familiarity with Lynch’s vernacular?

To me, it’s not quite as crisp as “Mulholland Drive.” The contrast between acting and living isn’t as striking. There we see a reversal: the superficiality of life contrasted with the reality of acting. Here it all seems to blend and shift, there is rarely a moment in which you can say “ah, she’s acting” or “yes, this is real.” So “Mulholland Drive” remains for me the high point of Lynch’s ability to draw you in emotionally. There are more genuinely funny, scary, passionate moments there than in any of his other work (that I’ve seen).

For some reason, I kept thinking about Buñuel’s “That Obscure Object of Desire,” and how Buñuel used two actresses to play the same character in order to represent the shifts in identity. Lynch, instead, leaves the actress the same, and changes everything around her. Although he did use the Buñuel technique in “Mullholland Drive,” and I think (perhaps) at the very end of “Inland Empire.” If I’m reading this correctly, the shift in roles at the end of “Inland Empire” is a moment of freedom, whereas in “That Obscure Object of Desire” it seems to be a prison.

When the identities of the characters shift, relationships remain intact. I think this is an exploration of the tension between layers of identity. We may reconstruct our identities, but still relive the same relationships, until we transform ourselves on a deeper level. This is the “happy ending,” I think: she fundamentally changes her role in life, somehow.

Ultimately, though, this is a work of texture: visual, auditory, poetic textures contrasting and playing off of each other. Everything from the framing of the shots to the set design, lighting, soundtrack, dialogue and sometimes very subtle shifts in camera focus, give the sense of a development that is simply not narrative. There’s the suggestion of a narrative, of a developing plot, but in many ways it remains a very formal work. It is about the creation of mood, the development of character, the movement of story, but the moods are ambiguous, the characters are unstable, and the plot is pretty much non-existent. As Jason says, this does feel like the culmination of Lynch’s art, and I’ll add, probably about as good a definition of “post-modern” are you are likely to find anywhere.

PS. After the movie, we managed to get to Rock Bottom before Adult. took the stage. Their set, though short, was pretty heavy. They ditched their guitar player, so the synths moved to the forefront, which as Jeff DeCuir predicted at their last show in San Antonio, was a very good thing. I’m not sure if I just didn’t notice before, but their synth work is really interesting, coming from dance / industrial, but moving into abstraction. They can definitely be compared to Throbbing Gristle at times, but with those punkish vocals, the effect is pretty unique.

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The other night I had a dream that I was searching for one of Sol LeWitt’s cubes in an ancient temple turned into a modern tourist attraction. I won’t go into detail, but the whole dream embodied this strange tension between spirituality, diversion, and aesthetics; not to mention antiquity and modernity.

The morning after this dream, I came across an article in the New York Times about Gregor Schneider’s black cube sculpture in Hamburg. This piece is intended to resemble the Kaaba, a huge cube at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca. Although there is no law in Islam against representing the Kaaba (and it has been represented many times), the piece has been considered too politically charged to show by several institutions. It is now finally being shown outside the Hamburger Kunsthalle as part of an exhibit honoring Malevich.

There are too many convergences here for me to follow all the threads, but the transformation of the cube from spirit (Kaaba, and also New Jerusalem), to feeling (Malevich), to concept (LeWitt), to politics (Gregor) is really leaving me speechless right now.

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San Francisco and San Antonio don’t share too many traits other than their benevolent monikers. Eric Taylor arrived onto the local scene with a subdued and observant manner, something atypical in the art hipsterville of the Bay Area. This new Texan seems to find lots of work for idle hands in the form of repetitive rectangles and clusters of lively algorithms. His latest artistic endeavors are on exhibit at Joan Grona Gallery through the end of the month.

Taylor’s drawings belie another side to his oil paintings on wooden panels. In one medium (oil paintings on wooden boxes), he embraces ambiguity by displaying amorphous shapes in layered compositions. In another medium [paint pens/drawings], he creates vibrant, fantastic yet systematic scenes in concentrated drawings compromised of quarter-inch rectangles. To paraphrase the artist, the small, loose grid drawings give the work “the illusion of clarity” found in analog devices and typewritten missives.

Joan Grona Gallery perfectly suits this show for its voluminous exhibition space and proclivity towards the unconventional. Go see this show!

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Right now I don’t have a lot to say about this, but following up on my previous posts, I wanted to point you to some further reading:

1. This response by Derek Allen Brown
2. These notes on the topic by Eric Zimmerman
3. This quote from George Orwell: In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.

Sigh.

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First, let’s get Artpace out of the way. As the local contemporary art biscuit factory navigates through firing, hiring, and renaming of employees, it’s obvious you won’t be seeing any new catalogs in the near future. A little bird tells Emvergeoning that Kate Green will be leaving the drudgery of Artpace, though no official word confirms whether its of her own volition. Either way, we know she’s bound for better things. In other end of the road news, looks like The Donkey Show, a home/gallery space in Austin, finally bit the dust. No word on what fellow Bard-educated curator R. Puleo has lined up but it’s likely she will go work for Art Palace.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at Ye Olde Blue Star Contemporary Art Center. The local institution seems to be treading new waters to distance itself from a dismal Salma Hayek portraiture show and depressed local interest. A new, cleverly designed membership newsletter offers an earnest effort to steer the ship back into the warm waters of Contemporary Art. This month’s “Monumental Drawing” show managed to coax that fickle New Yorker art crowd into the city limits. Still, artists like Annabel Daou were absolutely inarticulate and disdainfully evasive when asked to expound upon her selected works and her affiliation to the DB Foundation. Ms. Daou seemed preoccupied with talking about her stilletto heels. [Insert ennui induced eye roll here]. Her drawing titled, “A minor gesture” involved scribbles on paper that stretched the world of cursive text into lunging, schizophrenic territories. Nice. I’ve posted a better drawing from one of her earlier shows for this article, since there aren’t any press photos on the Blue Star website. Creighton Michael created one of the larger and yet serenely subtle “drawings” with shadows of white paint-coated clips of disconnected twine and metal. It reminded me of Gego’s Dibujos Sin Papel.

In other neighborhood news, this is your last chance to see Hana Hillerova’s lovely thought-forming mirror sculpture at Sala Diaz. And don’t forget, this weekend is the fireworks-illuminated grand opening of the Museo Alameda Smithsonian. Somebody needs to buy Raygun & Andy Benavides some top dollar, imported beer…

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When we meet we know the weeping witness, the wailing waters, the countless victims. They set off in rafts and arrived in bones, behind the veil. Into the blankness our bouquet spilleth. A pleasant day to awaken in the midnight desert (a trickle first, then a river). The kiss of fear warms the wounds of the fearful, welcoming homeward the sibyl of the light drizzle, the thunderous bloom of belief. Approach the watcher with caution. When we meet, we know, on this day (a sea of fire and a shower of blood), the cliff of enduring hope.

[This is a found poem composed of titles of cut paper works by Michael Velliquette. Some of his work is showing at Unit B through Friday, May 4. The image above is The Great Protector (detail).]

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Rachel Cook & Leona Scull Hons have been busy little honeybees this year, and the ripe crop of artists currently on exhibit in the massive Wichita Falls Museum of Art doesn’t disappoint. The humble museum in Wichita Falls, just an hour north of Ft. Worth, houses at least 5 gallery spaces and an amazing planetarium. In many ways, this group show featured a better overview of Texas-based artists than the Biennial. In addition, it gave them ample space to branch out into site specific installations. A good example is Justin Goldwater from Austin. Though known for his drawings, he adroitly rendered his playful and anonymous characters in the 3rd dimension. Here’s an installation shot from “Every party I ever missed.” The cups were all nice little plaster surprises.

I had the honor of being placed alongside the soft-underbellied work of Miss Helen Altman as well as the fuzzy, wild things of Daniel Fabian…this little kindling fire also had a nice white paper circle confetti mechanism installed into the ceiling tiles.

This is an installation view from “Harrows, Sparrow, Sorrows,” based on an Emily Dickinson poem about death, carriages and horse heads.

Here’s a picture of Mimi Kato inside a giant, ape-hand costume sewn by the elusive Celia Eberle. She was really hittin’ the sauce that night.That’s Mr. Goldwater and his Chinese Star in the background watching Mimi’s minimal video installation.
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One last picture, here’s a lesser known, autodidactic artist named Jorge Lopez.

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Justin Parr took some cell phone video of Chris Kubick & Anne Walsh’s recent performance at UTSA, A Thousand Years of Sound Effects (below). It was a three-part performance, with each part focusing on a specific kind of sound effect. In all three parts, the performance was an interaction between the artists and a SuperCollider program designed to play sound effects in response to input parameters, with a certain amount of randomness thrown in. The first part, which was performed by Kubick alone, involved less physical performance than the others. This piece was a collection of bell sound effects, which were played as Kubick interacted with the program through the keyboard and other inputs. For the next piece, Kubick and Walsh both interacted with the computer by stepping on pressure sensitive inputs placed on the floor. The sounds used in this performance were of horses galloping or walking. The final piece used sound effects of people clapping, and the artists interacted with the computer by clapping into a microphone (you can watch a segment of this piece below).

The program also generated video to accompany the sounds. For most of the performance, the program displayed the name of the audio file(s) being played, giving a glimpse into the strange world of sound effect naming conventions. Many of the effects had titles such as “Fairy Belching” or “Claps of old powerful men, white.” Sometimes the titles referred to the location of the recording, other times to more abstract characteristics. The interaction between these sounds, which have no context and therefore a wide variety of potential meanings, and their titles, which at times provided absurdly specific cultural contexts, was of particular interest to the artists. During the horse performance, some images of horses were displayed rather than the titles of the sound effects. The images were fairly crude and had a sort of clip-arty feel.

The performance was rough, and the artists are clearly just beginning to explore the potential of this concept (in fact, this was the first time that the pieces have been performed in public). The work does, however, have a lot of potential, and it will be interesting to see how they develop these performances in the future.

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Upon investigating a recommendation from the bookworms over at Boldtype, I decided to read Let the by California writer and Believer co-editor Vendela Vida. This short book claws through the cavernous roots of a father’s death, a mother’s abandonment and a brittle change of heart. While the main character, Clarissa, searches for emotional terra firma across the bright cold unfamiliar territory of Lapland, she discovers brutal family secrets and the kindness of bucolic, reindeer herders. The locations indulge your imagination, particularly the puzzling phenomena of a luxurious Ice Hotel. The narration leads you along a dark path, but Vida tenders a very American, luminous denouement. Highly recommended for a self-absorbed, rainy afternoon investment.

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Hector Hernandez makes some odd, lascivious objects and he recently exhibited new works at Robot Art Gallery. Check it out before they move down the street to be in the hotbed of activity near Unit B, Sala Diaz and Cupcake Gallery…Robot is relocating to the old Bower space, we’re looking forward to some amazing shows this summer/fall!! Good luck, Jessica! And keep painting those panties, Hector! Looks good.

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Bill Davenport writes on the show that sparked my rant about activist art. Lo and behold, this is one of those shows that tries to raise awareness without quite being able to articulate the problem, and ends up making everyone either feel victimized by some vague power structure or annoyed that they are being preached to by someone who doesn’t really understand what is going on. In the case of energy dependence, most of us are all too aware of what’s at stake, so there’s probably very little need to raise awareness of the problem. And the solution is so complex that no one has quite reached it yet, despite the scores of scientists, economists, and political theorists working on it. So what does he hope to achieve?

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we are alone with insects invading through the earth beneath us, flooding our walls, consuming our light. we are alone with the fruit, just out of reach, that pushes us from our substance; with the herbs that wander on the edge of death, buried in earth returned to the doors. we are alone pushing our feet across stones, dirt, and wood, searching blindly for an entrance that will never exist, or a curtain to collapse this hypothetical world. we are alone hoarding our eyes in unfired clay, in the spaces between blades of grass lifted up above our heads to protect us from the unbounded sky. our tools slowly abandon us more and more each moment for the peaceful dissolution of rust. yes keep moving on and on forward: glory glory glory.

[this post is a response to "unsettlement," a windowworks installation / performance by randy wallace, on view through april 29, 2007 at artpace. photos by todd johnson]

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I went to see Edward Hirsch’s lecture at Trinity the other day, and found him to be a thought-provoking and entertaining speaker. The main thrust of his talk was encapsulated in a single image: the message in a bottle adrift at sea. Hirsch sees the poem as this message, launched into the turbulence of the world with the hope that one day, on a distant shore, someone might be able to give this message life through the reciprocal act: the act of reading. The thought that the reader is required to give life to the poem is a nice thought, and is a good complement to the book series he is editing for Trinity University Press (Writers On Writing). The readers in the audience (presumably a large number of those attending the lecture) got to feel that they do in fact have an essential role to play in the process of writing. I do think it’s important for readers to understand that they are directly involved in a creative process — the act of reading is not purely receptive, but involves interpretation, feeling, and growth. Especially in light of post-structuralist thought, the act of reading can be seen as the creation of an entirely new work.

However, despite the fact that I find his ideas compelling, and do not at all dispute his understanding of the relationship between the reader and the work, I must take issue with his implication that writing is primarily about reaching another person. This is an aspect of it, to be sure. But in my experience of writing (and this does of course extend to other forms of art), there is always an “other” that is part of the process before the reader, and is ultimately more essential than the reader. This other is deeply mysterious to me, but could be called the unconscious or God. Either of these titles will bring a lot of baggage with them, so perhaps it is best to leave it unnamed; let’s just say it is a relationship that can be experienced in the absence of other people. I do not think the experience of the creative act is ultimately dependent on another person (or even the idea of another person), nor do I think that the work remains inert and lifeless between the time of creation and the time of reception. In my experience, there is a give and take, a sense of conflict and resolution, that happens during the act of creation; and even after this, the work continues to live and breath in some hidden corner of the mind.

What the reader brings to the table is not the resolution of some hoped-for communication on the part of the author, but a transformation of the work into something new. With this transformation comes a confirmation that the work has been alive all along, that the poem has an identity independent from its author.

I’m not able to argue this point as forcefully or eloquently as the lecturer I’m responding to, using examples from the writings of Borges and Buber and Dickinson, but this has been my experience of the creative process.

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I just saw a headline on the Glasstire RSS feed that reads: “Current event protest art is finally making a comeback.” I have to confess I have an instinctive revulsion to most political art, which I generally find manipulative and cynical. My favorite example from recent years is this Richard Serra print of the famous photograph of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner standing on a box. As a political issue, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the following revelations about torture were appalling to me, but I find this print to be a banal and unproductive form of political activity. Richard Serra may be a minor deity in the art world, but does he really think he can shift public opinion by reproducing an image that has been printed in magazines and newspapers all over the world? This Economist cover, for instance, was much more powerful for me, because it was backed up by actual political analysis. What we need in our politics is thoughtful critical discourse, not shrill activism. What we need in our art is depth of feeling, not emotional manipulation. Arthur Danto took up this issue in more depth with his essay Beauty and Morality. I feel about this Richard Serra print roughly the same as Danto felt about a Chris Burden piece called The Other Vietnam Memorial, which listed the names of the Vietnamese victims of the war: “It does not help the dead and it does not move the living, and in the end it seems merely a clever idea, almost a gimmick, a kind of moralizing toy. Everything about it as art is wrong, given its subject and its intentions. And because it fails as art, it fails morally, extenuated only by the presumed good intentions of the artist.” Danto may have changed his mind about the conclusion of this essay (”the time of day appropriate to action and change may not be appropriate either for philosophy or for art”), but my feeling is still that protest art is much more likely to cheapen the artistic process than to improve political or social conditions.

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Austin artist Kurt Mueller blasted through the Biennial chatter with a multiple in situ sound and rocket science sculpture installation at Okay Mountain, Site 1808 and the rooftop of Chimaymay’s Art Palace. The innovative sound art sculpture traverses the tender ground between Israeli and Palestinian tensions. The tone that acts as a caveat for incoming rocket fire eerily blares from stoic and orderly speakers perched in the middle of Site 1808. I’m still trying to upload the sound, but in the meantime you can try to listen to it and read more about the popularity of bleak ringtones here.

Here’s one of the control centers…Look but don’t touch that button…

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Gary Sweeney continues to make colorful and gradually more complicated works of art, whether he’s using plastic cups or sizzling neon signs. His new work seems to be shedding the humorous exoskeleton to reveal much more stoic and poignant subjects. For the Texas Biennial, he made two gigantic fence pieces depicting the pixelated profiles of these American icons. [Currently on view at Site 1808 in Austin.] If you’re in A-town for the South by Southwest conflagration, then drive by the outdoor exhibition before it’s all just another page in history.

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Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green interviews Olga Viso (Part 1 and Part 2), raising some interesting questions about the preservation of art. The question has become more challenging as more and more artists create work that is inextricably tied to a specific location or, even worse, that is intentionally ephemeral. How do the museums and archives weigh respect for the (ephemeral, site specific) nature of the art against the cultural value of bringing it to a wider audience? One question that comes to my mind as I read the interview is whether certain kinds of art should not be documented at all. Of course this is an idea most curators and critics will be reluctant to entertain, but perhaps there is value in letting an artistic statement wither and fade as the context that birthed it recedes into the past.

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A couple of criminals in the plucky country of Norway decided to cut up a work of art made entirely of 100,000 Norwegian Kroner [the equivalent of $16,300]. Yesterday, some sticky fingers swiped a couple of Picasso paintings to the tune of $66 million American dollars. Oof. This hot artistic crime wave suggests a short contemplation of the ambit of value in the upper echelon of the art world. Norwegian artist Jan Christensen knew the gamble he was taking when he constructed this tempting piece of work. Relative Value sold at its face value prior to the theft from Gallery MGM in Oslo. I conducted a short online interview with Jan a few days ago. Let’s see what he had to say about high crimes, consumerism and counterfeit intelligence:

EMV: How long was the artwork installed before it was stolen?

JC: The exhibition opened January 27, so it was installed for a little less than a month.

EMV: The BBC said the culprits “cut” the notes off the canvas, how did you attach them together?

JC: The notes were glued onto the canvas with wallpaper glue, which is water-based glue. The stretchers measure 2 x 4 meters so the whole thing would have been impossible to sneak out into the street and even put in an average truck. The canvas was stitched onto the stretchers leaving the burglars with no time to properly unstitch it from the time of the alarm going off. Within 12 minutes the security service arrived and the burglars were already gone. The only way for them to move this fast would be to cut the canvas along the stretcher.

EMV: For the general public, it seems that art prices can be arbitrary. Did you consider using counterfeit notes? How does this piece fit in with your previous artwork?

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San Antonio artists Maurice and Liz Trevino invite you to an orgy at Art Palace and their lascivious visions don’t disappoint. Gauging the local proclivity for profane imagery and references [the Donkey Show, big dongs and panty shots in Dark Matter @ Okay Mountain, and Seth Alverson's goat headed girls gone wild in the dining room at Art Palace last month], it looks like spring is in the underwear. With the animalistic hubris of an unbounded libido, the Trevino duo shamelessly reveal all the devilish details of copulation and mild cannibalism. Sighs Matters illuminates sex acts with black lights, bright stoner-flourescent color schemes and scenes of slippery pleasures.
The loaded content leads us through a series of encounters that display pornographic compositions alongside symbols of virility, greed and an indefatigable appetite for the flesh.

The couple works together to create sculptures and paintings that tell a venereal tale meant to illicit hot cheeks and fog up an architect’s spectacles. It would be difficult to ascertain where one artist begins and the other ends and the show itself sheds the notion of collaboration as a dichotomy of two different styles or approaches to the same subject matter. The punchy title gives us a pun intent on investigating the life of a coxcomb. The entire house [Art Palace is a hybrid of a domestic dwelling/gallery space] pulsates with a sui generis power that is impossible to resist. You are absolutely compelled to contemplate a muscular, almost maniacal Leprechaun man busting through bright orange bricks somewhat mimetic of The Thing from Fantastic Four. Liz & Maurice took Mexican ceramic sculptures and made them their own by coating them with thick, golden glitter and intense, sanguine red/inky black paint that harbors significant connotations of bloodshed in dried and vivified forms. On the back wall of the gallery, a trifecta of paintings and intermingling lovers gives us a look at a man biting the back of one of his libertines. Flanked by two ravenous tiger heads, the scene quintessentially visualizes a cardinal drive while nibbling around masterpieces like Goya’s Saturno. It’s brilliantly deviant art that’s capable of lingering in your mind; a hot night of raw copulation that you can replay long after the act itself is over.

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While i2i Gallery transgresses an unusual identity crisis [photographer Gary Smith plans to change the name to VTrue Artspace] , the latest show offers sculptures twisted in sexual tension and sailboat festooning. Artist Jerry Monteith carves up objects that ply the unfamiliar with a wandering hand in Hilarious Wounds.

Heading the sculpture department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Monteith takes injured tree limbs from his home state and modifies them to assume human anatomical presence. The result is an imbroglio of antlers, wooden, mossy orbs and gnarly tree limbs that elicit surprising elements from forest detritus.

Alberto Giacometti’s Suspended Ball [pictured above, right] softly lingers in sexual imagery that perpetuates a state of alertness and arousal. Using mimetic juxtapositions, Monteith places smoothed wooden elbows sheathed in coarse fur alongside a buffed, pink convexed curve. The slightest nudge would create a satisfying connection, yet Montieth enjoys this interstitial space. This slightly provocative playfulness keeps Monteith’s work sincerely quixotic.

The centerpiece of the show accosts viewers with a garish display of neon orange, wooden ovals of unripened coconut green and a mess of red, blue and black cross hatching with tape or colored vinyl wrapped around a forked piece of wood. It’s one of the few pieces I simply couldn’t unravel from its abstract intentions.

How many Spanish, Surrealist crutches can you find in this body of work? One of them morphs into a petite horse’s arse, only to become a rocking horse base. The clam beak creature pictured above breaks out of black pearls cloaked in sheer nylon. Exotic allusions to Indonesia and South Pacific gems give this critter an abundance of hidden potency. In a lighter, wall-mounted sculpture, verdant, intertwined wooden limbs end in carved hands that could have been clipped from the criminal mittens of a wayward Pinocchio. One goofy megaphone-mouthed giraffe dipped in deep yellow goads familiarity until it becomes just slightly ambiguous and impossible to define. Be on alert as you peruse the Hilarious Wounds, you might be gummed.

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Its a ghastly place. The floor is smudged with a thousand chocolate hearts, trampled on by high dollar pointed shoe-weapons. The glasses are all asunder, glowing behind them is a thousand LED lights, like tiny stars in the walls, a disco light on the ceiling and pink “fluff,” or “tool,” everywhere. The “tool,” has been heaved around like a massive giant stirred a martini with his finger, while the smattered chocolates just make you think of the fecal fetishes I jokingly hear about every so often in these funny art circles. Strange. It started out innocent enough. Clean, full bottles of tequila, stained pink, sat lined up in rows on the inside of the limo. Boxes and boxes of chocolates lie calmly awaiting consumption by the precious glittering hordes of fans, friends, followers, and skeptics. I worked on the inside. Not inside Lisa Ortiz’s Galeria Ortiz, where the Franco Mondini-Ruiz Love Stories was about to take place, but inside of the limo that Franco hired to party your pants off if you bought a painting from him. Included with this was the opportunity to go inside the limo and have your polaroid taken with Franco. Being the dedicated shooter, I think I saw everything. Here is what I can show you. The others might get me maimed, shot, murdered, or even “ruin my career,” in San Antonio. I joke, and you laugh, but dont even think these photos below are going to blow your mind. Here they are, by request from anonymous fans abroad (really? ..thats what ben tells me.) ; photos from the inside..

(I’ll tell you as much as I can about each image if you hover your mouse over them..)

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I came across this article on Spiked about Jed Perl and thought I’d do a follow-up on my earlier post. The Spiked article emphasizes some other aspects of Perl’s dissatisfaction with contemporary art that I think are worth addressing.

One issue here is a general skepticism towards postmodern values, which I must confess I share. It’s not that I don’t find postmodern work interesting or valuable (I was delighted to find Richard Prince’s Paintings – Photographs on Amazon for $20), but this viewpoint does lend itself to abuse. At a certain point you have to find something that is concrete and essential in a work to get a grasp on it, but there is a tendency to focus on context at the expense of the actual work.

Another, related point is the role of democracy in the arts. It could be argued that for a museum to be filled with Rembrandts and Mondrians makes it a sort of elitist institution — it refuses to participate in the kind of culture that most people are really interested in. It claims that its standards are higher than the denizens of the MySpace-YouTube Axis of Drivel. Perl turns this argument on its head by insisting that the refusal to make the Mondrians available to the prols is in itself a kind of elitism. It is tantamount to claiming that Jane Wine-box can’t possibly grasp a Mondrian, so why waste her time with it? The museums were instituted for the noble purpose of bringing high art to the masses, and why should that role be any different now than it was fifty years ago?

Clearly Perl’s arguments have a hyperbolic ring to them. The Spiked article quotes Perl as saying “Surely in a wealthy society we have room for a Kandinsky, a Mondrian and a motorcycle show?” — but it’s not as if museums have stopped showing Mondrian. And it seems to me that plenty of art critics are still capable of discussing the formal qualities of a work apart from its cultural context (although I’m not in a good position to judge that, having no formal training in art and not really following the critical dialogue). A lot of people are also probably thinking that Perl is just another Greenbergian curmudgeon, bitterly fighting against cultural trends he doesn’t comprehend.

But I think there is a kind of conceit in certain conceptions of the ‘postmodern’ era. The name itself betrays that conceit — it’s as if there is a belief that we have moved beyond the fundamental problems that faced people a hundred years ago, that we can just slough off the baggage of structuralism and hierarchy like an old pair of shoes. The idea that a work of art can evoke feelings that are both universal and deeply personal, that there are essential human problems that can be addressed through art, is being thrown out as well. This, I think, is what’s bothering Perl — that as we try to move beyond the modern era, we start to deny essential aspects of what it means to be human. One of those aspects is the ability to have a truly personal and intimate relationship with a work of art.

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Over at his blog on Glasstire, Bill Davenport takes a stab a pinning down the allure of art corporations like Kaikai Kiki (corporate home of Chiho Aoshima, who recently anthropomorphized half the buildings in downtown San Antonio in her Artpace installation). His conclusion is that, apart from the marketing benefits, perhaps these institutions provide artists with a fortress to protect them from constant calls for innovation. If the corporation is seen as innovative, then the artists can just work within the stylistic language which has become its signature. They can refine rather than innovate. Perhaps it goes back to the traditional artistic families in Japan, with their domination of certain art forms and their rigid allegiance to tradition.

While I agree with him about the harmful effects of forced innovation, I don’t see why he’s so quick to dismiss the idea that banding together in this way can help artists pioneer new forms. Despite the tendency of institutions to become conservative to the point of sluggishness, well-run corporations have learned to spur innovation in many areas. Although I don’t know much about Kaikai Kiki, it seems to function in a way that is very similar to a record label, discovering, cultivating, producing, and promoting young artists, often with heavy merchandising. In some cases, by bringing groups together under a single imprint, labels are able to cultivate a market for a burgeoning artistic style. Under the right circumstances, this can lead artists to push the limits of the style further, as the audience expands to meet them.

I know the opposite is more often the case — but I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the notion that a corporate setting has the potential to encourage innovation.

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