[The viewer] can consider their relationship to the object in terms of the process, as opposed to the normal way we approach these types of artworks by objectively decoding information. The decoding process is a form of analysis, and the problem is that it keeps you on the outside of the object…My work is an absurd attempt to enter the object, to be as intimate and obsessed as possible with the object.
Janine Antoni, Eating Culture
food and power
Filed under Uncategorized
Interiors
On view now:
INTERIORS original etchings by Meagan Segal
Meagan Segal was born 1986 in Anaheim, California, and raised in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro. With a formation in painting from Pratt institute, she developed an interest in the fine line between the grotesque and the beautiful. In her etchings, Meagan strives to represent the relationship between repulsion and intrigue, and as the daughter of a doctor she draws on medical imagery for information and inspiration.
Meagan received her BFA in May of 2008.
The Good Pizza
446 Pacific Coast Highway
Hermosa Beach 90254
on view through December 9
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Call [for art·ists] :
1 Independent Curator seeking local artists for representation and online submissions.
2 Looking for a variety of styles and media.
Please email jpegs and artist statements to maddiekphinney@gmail.com
curatorial statement for ON TIME: NY to LA
Post World War II, the largely male cast of American abstract expressionists dubbed the “New York School” served to shift the focus of the western art world from Paris to New York. These painters were central in the creation of New York’s vanguard circle lead by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and later Agnes Martin. On Time: NY to LA uses this movement as a point of reference in order to better understand the use of temporality in contemporary West Coast art practices. Pollock’s drip paintings, or “action paintings,” a term coined by historian Harold Rosenberg in 1952, are remarkable due largely to their emotive force and their optical tendency to strike the viewer all at once. This sense of immediacy is emphasized by the flatness of the picture plane, a visual technique characteristic of abstract expressionist artists.
Tera Galanti’s 16401-482 evokes the drips and spills of a Jackson Pollock painting while extending the picture plane into the space of the gallery, encouraging the viewer to imagine themselves mingling among the colorfully rich stalactites that appear to float mid-air. Galanti challenges the immediacy of action painting with the languid dream-like quality of 16401-482, a work absorbed by viewers as they move around the gallery through time.
In much the same way, Michael Rohde’s fiber works call to mind the expressive flatness of paintings by Mark Rothko with his blocks of rich color. Rohde’s rich woven tapestries are produced over a series of months, though their conception is often spontaneous as a Pollock drip painting.
The ethereal works of Linda Jo Russell channel the grid-like meditative quality of an Agnes Martin drawing. Both artists are fascinated by the delicate power of the line: a fixed unit of measurement existing as an unyielding record of time.
Finally, the irreverent paintings of Ralph Massey employ iconic images from the New York School and beyond, referencing Cy Tombly, de Kooning and others. These works are juxtaposed with figures of birds, the notion of flight emphasizing the temporal-spatial nature of the work. Massey’s technique creates a sort of tromp l’oeil which presses against the two-dimensional nature of the work and further reinforces its immediacy.
In 1950s New York, the abstract expressionist movement focused on the production of a work and the physical expression of the artist. In this way, expressionism is more about the record of expression than the expression itself. On Time: NY to LA brings us back to contemporary Los Angeles and, in doing so, encourages the viewer to examine these iconic works as markers of time in an attempt to better understand the contemporary practices of Galanti, Massey, Russell and Rohde.
ON TIME: NY to LA
Palos Verdes Art Center
5504 W Crestridge Rd
Rancho Palos Verdes CA 90275
January 29th through May 27th
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Serrano: queer/corps(e)
A few years ago I started thinking about Andres Serrano’s images of corpses taken at morgues in relation to queerness and PWA photography. Unfortunately I missed his “shit” series at Yvonne Lambert while I was in Paris but am interested in his fascination with the abject in relation to queer theory. In his essay “Corpsing the Image” Peter Schwenger writes:
The corpse,” asserts Julia Kristeva, “seen without God and outside of science is the utmost of abjection” It is that “utmost” because the corpse is the body’s ultimate betrayal of the I. For I has been created in the image of the body, a body that must be bordered in order to achieve coherence. Everything that betrays that coherence—the body’s wastes, its fluids, ruptures, and putrescences—is associated with the abject. This unclean existence must be forfeited for the sake of what is seen as proper, in more than one sense of that term; and on this foundation of the body’s propriety the ego is constituted. The corpse, in contrast, is the body becoming wholly waste, wholly associated with the vulnerability and decay of its coherence (399).
I’m still looking to go beyond the formal question because the juxtaposition between an elegant image and non-normative subject has already been talked to death. But the relationship between shit, death, and queerness is something I’d like to delve deeper into in the future.
to read: Bersani, Leo: Merde Alors! October, Vol. 13, (Summer, 1980), pp. 22-35: MIT Press
L’infection et ses métaphors
L’Infection et ses Métaphores :
Un discours spatio-temporel dans l’art de Félix Gonzalez-Torres
Je veux devenir un virus
qui appartient à l’organisme
Félix Gonzalez Torres
Les outils du maître ne peuvent
jamais déstructurer la maison
du maitre
Audrey Lourd
En 1993 lors d’un entretien avec l’artiste Joseph Kosuth , Félix Gonzalez-Torres proclame son désir d’infecter le système normatif. Un système, qui paraient-ils, nous opprime tous . Trois ans plus tard, Gonzalez-Torres meure dans un hôpital de Miami ; son compagnon Rafale à son chevet, des suites de complications liées à une infection par le virus VIH, communément appelé depuis le SIDA au cours des dernières années. Dans cette dissertation, nous examinerons ce désir de Gonzalez-Torres d’infecter l’institution, l’organisme comme un virus. En le replaçant dans le contexte d’un discours Queer, ce mémoire cherche à situer le travail Gonzalez-Torres dans un trajet postmoderne qui appuie très fortement sur le métaphorique et son rôle dans la transmission de l’information. En appliquant cette notion de métaphore à Gonzalez-Torres comme envahisseur ou espion queer, nous arguons pour une radicalisation queer de la réception de son œuvre. Continue reading
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icon
also ikon \ˈī-ˌkän\
a usually pictorial representation : image [Late Greek eikōn, from Greek] : a conventional religious image typically painted on a small wooden panel and used in the devotions of Eastern Christians3: an object of uncritical devotion : idol: emblem, symbol<the house became an icon of 1960′s residential architecture — Paul Goldberger>5 a: a sign (as a word or graphic symbol) whose form suggests its meaning b: a graphic symbol on a computer display screen that usually suggests the type of object represented or the purpose of an available function
— icon·ic \ī-ˈkä-nik\ adjective
— icon·i·cal·ly \-ni-k(ə-)lē\ adverb
Filed under postmodernism
