25 December 2007

14 December 2007

D o' D

























Drawing of the day. Future icicle travel.

05 December 2007

Shiva Linga paintings coming to Boston



A few months back, Feature Inc had a show of these magnificent
tantric paintings- which I didn't chance to attend, but did once come
across an exhibition catalogue in Paris detailing work of similar
origins- a little volume which pretty much changed my life. It turns
out that Feature's show was a smaller version of this Paris show,
the show is a traveling one and will be coming to Boston, to a
yet-undisclosed location.

An excerpt from the exhibition text, by Franck André Jamme:

"Even if Indian aesthetes have always collected them, as beautiful
as they appear to them, the sole purpose of these paintings is actually
meditation, hence their entire vocabulary. They are also used for
visualization. For example, you get up in the morning. Then, almost
immediately: face-to-face with the thing, for several minutes. Until
it has filled your mind, right to the top, until it has slowly eliminated
everything else. Then you come back to the world, attend to your
daily affairs. With the difference that, when you want to, you can
instantly recall the image in your mind, and what’s more, you
can re-create the entire world of this image, namely the image
itself enriched by its constellation, in short all that it first precisely
signified augmented by what it has produced, given rise to,
released in us, as crystalline and operative as in the morning."

Something to look forward to...will keep this post updated.

*thanks Shelley for the tip!

02 December 2007

D o' D





Drawing of the day. Transliteration.

Jack Strange to Land Rainbow

At the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery a few weeks ago, this tiny piece by
Jack Strange caught my eye...and though almost the whole show was
composed of really good work, Strange's piece was memorable
in that latent, ha-Ha way when I realized that his "Spinning
Beach Ball of Death" is actually a lift from the little icon that
comes up when an action is waiting to be executed (on a mac).
Which is only really funny when you consider the work in
the light of All Painting, Ever.

ANYWAY, on the highway coming back from the MIA show,
with all the trucks going by and at the same time thinking about
big art installations, big things in general, and then from that
to rainbows,
it occurred to me that on a nice, long stretch of highway, it's
theoretically possible to create a massive moving chain of these
18-wheeler trucks, - maybe even one several miles long.
And, let's say they were painted the in full color spectrum, from
end to end (e.g. the first twenty trucks would articulate a subtle shift
from red into orange, and so on) so that the experience of viewing
the piece (from the side of the road) could last several minutes
(if the trucks passed by slowly)...and could MAYBE even change
the entire way that light is perceived as the piece goes by.

Like, grounding a rainbow.

29 November 2007

M.I.A.





Worcester Palladium and M.I.A. was short and sweet, 11 + 3 song set,
the last song of which she put herself on the crowd, - of course, no
worries. I don't know, but there's something about the blinding
flash-flash combined with the ritualistic dancing (definitely not an
American dance- but a willing to work with the American dance)
hardened by the killer instinct and softened by the lycra, that
makes the girl's combinations of music and self really worth
paying attention to.

We met a photographer from the Globe outside, waiting
for his reporter- they're running a feature on Friday,
supposedly.... link TBA, and further thoughts regarding
the MIA Trojan Horse theory.


update: so here's that link...

And while yeah, the "sonic murk" was true (her work comes
off much truer with headphones on, as there's subtlety that
the Palladium venue is perhaps not NASA'd up for), I don't know
what she would think of the Globe (the photographer clearly
wasn't down -"I only have to stay for the first three songs ")
and the show wasn't even sold out, unlike both NYC shows....
once again falling back on its puritanical roots, New England
rubuffs the advances of the anarchists.

18 November 2007

Tar Sweater at Smith & 9th




It looks like the MTA finally realized that even elevated railways
need a little snug, what with the winter coming...

04 November 2007

Zurich Plant Installation

Walking through Zurich airport, I happened upon this fascinating
display of airport decor...




If you look upwards, the plant extends through several floors above.
What's so quintessentially Swiss about it, though, is that someone
thought to tailor a habitat specifically for a plant- this in a passageway
of the airport. Almost random, but definitely serendipitous, and the
construction of the container substantiates that feeling: it seems
just right, both for the plant and for viewing purposes.



Even the label is artful. Plant life taking the place of art!



There is a man who comes with his nice rolling thing and
clears away the leaves that have been shed by the plant.
Maybe this even happens several times a day.

Everything in Switzerland is so kempt!

Eva Farago, in memoriam


1950-2007

31 October 2007

All Souls' Night



"It wer a col nite but we wer warm in that doss bag.
Lissening to the
dogs howling afterwds and the wind
wuthering and wearying and nattering
in the oak leaves.
Looking at the moon all col and wite and oansome.
Lorna
said to me, 'You know Riddley theres some thing
in us it dont have no name.'

I said, 'What thing is that?'
She said, 'Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its
looking out
thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis
of it only some times.
Say you get woak up suddn in the middl
of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap
and the nex your on your feet
with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put
that spear in your
han it were that other thing whats looking out thru your
eye hoals.
It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan

and sheltering ow it can.'
I said, 'If its in every 1 of us theres moren 1 of it theres got
to be a
manying theres got to be a millying and mor.'
Lorna said, 'Wel there is a millying and mor.'
I said, 'Wel if theres such a manying of it whys it lorn then whys
it loan?'

She said, 'Becaws the manying and the millying its all 1 thing it
dont have
nothing to gether with. You look at lykens on a stoan
its all them tiny manyings
of it and may be each part of it myt
think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing.
Thats how it is with
what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the
many.
Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and
oansome.
Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us like we put on
our cloes. Some times
we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the
arm hoals and it tears us a part. I dont
think I took all that
much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatis it mor.

It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal
how its tiret of me
and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tel you
some thing Riddley and keap this
in memberment. What ever it
is we dont come naturel to it.'

I said, 'Lorna I dont know what you mean.'
She said, 'We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun
we dint begin
where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I don't know
what we are to it. May be weare
jus only sickness and a feaver to
it or boils on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen
what Im
goin to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us.
It dont think
the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.'
I said, 'Whats it afeart of?'
She said, 'Its afeart of being bearth.'
I said, 'How can that be? You said its ben here befor us. If it
ben here all this time
it musve been bearth some time.'
She said, 'No it aint been bearth it never does get beartht it
all ways in the woom
of things its all ways on the road.'
I said, 'All this what you jus ben tellin be that a tell for me?'
She larft then she said, 'Riddley there aint nothing what aint
a tel for you. The wind
in the nite the dus on the road even the
leases stoan you kick a long in front of you.
Even the shadder
of that leases stoan roaling or stanning stil its all telling.'

Wel I cant say for cern no mor if I had any of them things
in my mynd befor she tol
me but ever since it seams like
they all ways ben there. Seams like I ben all ways

thinking on that thing in us what thinks us but it dont think
like us. Our woal life
is a idear we dint think of nor we dont
know what it is. What a way to live. "



from Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban , p. 5-7

08 October 2007




off to Budapest.

29 September 2007

"Virtual Popcorn Popper"

Ok, link scrambletime:

-Nosnibor has a new blog here, well worth checking out.

-Jay di Feo has an excellent show (only the second best after Chris
Wilmarth's, at the Nielsen's) to be reviewed in minutae soon.
(Go shaped paper as passage between drawing and sculpture!)

-I had a 4-day show (which also took 4 days to prepare) at Studio Soto
last week, and am now thinking about this as a possibility for all art
shows in the future- as a way of aspiring towards the temporality of music.

Philippe Lejeune graciously created this page from a video interview of
the show.

-Studio Soto might be on its last legs; with a lease renewal pending, but
by no means certain, Soto will need to find some sort of substantial support
in order to continue. PLEASE GO TO SOTO SHOWS! and donate!

-Roberta Smith weighs in at the Anaba/Chris Buchel debate...but oh...oh!
Let's move on.

-To the 2008 calendar: there is, rumor has it, a revolutionary way of
paper-organization for next year.
To be published soon.
Start saving your 25 dollars now.


that's the beaut of a floor at Soto.

07 September 2007

Bee Update



Back from Europe and listening to the news with voracity, yesterday heard a show about the real cause of CCD in North American bee populations. As it turns out, our cellphone-radiation speculations
were wrong: it's viral.

(the whole story here)


The fascination with the morality of the story, has turned into
fascination with the science of how this diagnosis was actually
obtained: researchers actually sequenced the genetic material
in bees, to find a possible agent of cause. Following this thread,
check out the video on the (new and expanded) X-prize page....
With bees it was probably much simpler than with humans, but
the ultimate question is...do we want a disease-free world?

11 July 2007

Barn Month


Some images from my recent residency at the Edward Albee
Foundation- (what a gorgeous ceiling to have over one's self!)
Of course all the beam/construction themes got into the work,
where they are most welcome...






Some dusk-waiting in these photos. Dusk seems to take a lot longer
(is noticed more acutely?) in the country. All in all, an idyllic month.
Many, many props to Mr. Albee for establishing the place...

www.albeefoundation.org


More images coming soon on the website.

25 May 2007

Letter from Brooklyn

yeah i saw the article in yesterday's times. and it was cool. but this is something else.

hey i think i told you when i was 23, and working at kinkos on 12th and university, and ostensibly here to play the drums, i was already into walking around haphazardly on the streets after work to see if i could sniff out what was happening, and that is how, i think i told you, wandering around, i found this cafe that there used to be back then, this cool little cafe on saint marks place on the south side between A and first. it had two bays of kinda wide-ish windows with a door in the middle. it was shabby-chic simple east-village style and there was an anomalous heavy sheet of brushed iron on the left wall that said "Sin-Ă©" in cut out letters.

so when i went in there were these two irish longhairs sitting at one of the like 8 tables in the place, looking like they owned the place, which i later found out that they did. and there was this pretty, sad-looking tough girl with frizzy blond hair working the coffee machine, really mellow. it was still light outside so i got myself a cappuccino and a beer and sat down, and i tried to look available for conversation, which didn't work, but eventually the longhairs paused and looked at me and gave me an in, and i asked what was going on that night and this gaunt guy with long stringy grey hair around these supersharp eyes looked at me for a second and said "Ah, it's good music tonight. jeff buckley. y'heard of em?" and i said definitely not. and this younger dude who kind of had robert plant hair, who was similarly quiet and precise, said this jeff guy was tim buckley's son, and that didn't ring a bell either.

but i hung around alternating coffee with beer until it got dark, and
eventually there were maybe 20 or so people, mostly the kind of office women who think they know what's up, sitting in there drinking either cappuccino or beer or wine, that's all the cafe had. and then finally a thin guy in a white wife beater walked in, sat down at a table where there already were some people, and talked to them while he took out his telecaster guitar and tuned it real casually, leaning back and talking, and everybody else in the place was talking too, it was not like a starstruck thing cause he was unknown, but people were definitely more psyched since he was there. after his conversation he stood up and plugged the guitar right into the p.a. system, there was no amp in the place, and started doing a little fingerpicking, like he was just fucking around. but he kept it going and then after a few minutes, he stepped up to the mic, sort of looking like he was now seriously in the zone, and started singing, and it was real nice and delicate. for the next like 10 songs everybody shut up real tight and all you could hear was the occasional steam exhaust from the coffee machine, and breathing and little talking and stuff between songs. the songs were long and he stretched them out with really relaxed and pretty fingerpicking on the guitar. more people arrived little by little, but not too many. i didn't move from my seat.

so at the end of the night, the place was pretty hopping, and i gave the irish dudes and the blonde girl the salute-bow of respect, and i decided right then and there i would definitely come back almost every week for many months, and I did and it was each time kind of a different revelation. i've seen all the jeff buckley music videos but they seem to have all been made more self-consciously- and i especially don't recognize the experience cause the music changed with the backing band, and all these videos were made after I moved back to virginia.

but finally today this video appears on an english newspaper's site, and it's the only one i've seen that shows what he sounded and looked like standing upin that really small cafe. I think it's maybe not even a lipsync, i think it's a straight up filmed performance of the song. he really did sound just like that, i think he maybe had a chorus pedal or something between his guitar and the p.a. board, but nothing else, it was just eq'd.

turns out the coffee girl was from hungary - this was 1992 and she was really on kind of an adventure with no plan B - and eventually i asked her out because i saw her like 3 times a week and she was unstandably pretty and mysterious. her name was marianna. she told me not to mess with her, she said i seemed nice but she thought she would probably break my heart, i hadn't experienced the things she had.

yeah.



http://music.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,2079313,00.html


written by Andrew Nimmo

23 May 2007

Put-up of the day

Art-Walk roundup

Thanks to all who made it out in the rain
for our open studios. September's (real)
open studios will be massive.

{we hope to have our in-studio sauna built by then}

Anyone who wishes to be added to our mail list
should email either Cheryl (cheryl.time@gmail.com)
or myself (klicova@gmail.com).

15 May 2007

Art-Walk



We're participating in the SOWA art walk this weekend. Unofficially.
Directions and more info here...

13 May 2007

"Man would have only four years of life left..."

...without song and without honey:

On npr the other day, they were talking about the sudden and rampant disappearance of bees in North America... one theory, not entirely implausible, is that the navigation systems of the bees is blocked or disrupted by radiation emitted from cellphones- which prevents them from being able to find their way back to their nests, resulting in what's called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Ow.

THEN,

Tom Ashbrook hosted a woman who discussed a similar thinning-out occurring in the songbird population:

"We are losing our migratory birds. ... Over the last 40 years, many
species have lost 30 to 40 percent of their numbers...a lot of migrants
are coming back earlier because in general springs are coming earlier.
Birds are tracking climate change and they are noticing"


The solution: to toss the phone, and build bird-habitats in the backyard?
Well, there's more at stake here...

For millennia, bees have been symbols of perfect polity. Pliny,
Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch- they have all pondered upon the
virtues of the little buzzers... but that's wild bees. The disappearing
bees mentioned here are domestic. When man domesticates, he corrupts. He intends to be symbiotic, but cannot help but abuse. Bees have had enough, are leaving, going back to their own perfect, natural polities.

If man threw away his cellphones and went back to nature,
he'd corrupt nature all over again, in another way... we won't
settle for stasis, but will always seek progress. Being human is a
blessing and a curse, but for nature, the existence of humans is
definitely a curse. Humans doesn't need nature if they have
technology (which can make food out of non-nature), and other
people (to define themselves against); nature doesn't define
itself against humans, and doesn't take anything from
mankind, only loses to it...

The irony is that even man- who anthropomorphises
nature (as in the ancient symbols of birds, whales, bees)-
still corrupts nature.

The story of disappearing species is a metastory, a story that unites and transcends an already established tradition of stories, which use anthropomorphisation to express fundamental truths about man vs. nature. The new metastory restates and supercedes the same: humans are incompatible with nature, even and especially when they are doing their best to be compatible. As every man dies alone,
so does the species. There is no home to go back to, there is only us. As we stand.
Alone, together.

Hippies and druids and greens and others are right in their
actions, wrong in their thoughts; there is no balance between
man and nature that can be recaptured or recreated. Man has
been an anomaly, a sore thumb sticking out, ever since he
appeared in nature. Those who glory in being an anomaly say
the same thing, but in reverse terms: Nature is here for the
sake of man, for man is special. Man is the paragon of Creation,
Creation was created for man's sake. In either case,
the anomaly theme unites the greens and the priests.
So may as well stop pretending otherwise.

Hence the prophecy is wrong: when bees disappear,
and birds stop singing, it shows we're doing great.

And they're not.

22 April 2007

I o' D





Intaglio of the Day


1 of a series coming from drawing a blank as to what an image might
be (upon preparing a set of plates), and then seeing a fingerprint
embedded in the asphaltum ground on the plate...its magnification.

fwd: save the wails/ a petition

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

tim_signature.jpg
-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

21 April 2007

GMF



Just a belated congrats to Flash's
entry into the Hall of Fame. A lifetime
of "never touching the grooves, but rather
always the side of the record"
...



White Lines for the ears (realplayer req.)

19 April 2007

some revised Americana writing from 360 days ago and a picture of the sky after 4 days of rain

Washington, Allston, Eatonia- greenest of the greengrass then
shymy dew caught on barely blossoms now, the different academics,
differently walking than talking and on to Camino Real- the ROYAL
PATH by the new england where they buy gold cause more than
paper does it weigh
the only new garage doors on the block,
we had a guy come paint them that green of Fenway hinges
left black, looks sharp now we rent them out a sixteen year old
towing a hummer first job, mother still in apron, wipes her
hands from dough
the balcony over
the enclosed alley they just throw things there-
food scraps, papers, whatever- the younger brother
recounts these stories and can barely supress laughter,
the older one wishes he hadn't (friends) the sound of Portuguese,
not
turning around to see the source it's all very much like a sketch
for a pristine tank someone long ago drew up, a museum tank, never
to be used, little dashes
where light falls, fit to be the treasury engraver,
and everything dissipates with the same cadence as the engine below
falls into neutral

from one point,
John Hancock was to be seen from the best, elegantest angle
our arc of triumph at the end of the avenue, a deliberately
exaggerated vertical signature being eaten by fresh mist.















10 April 2007

easter, but more like april fool's






NB: NOT photoshop, but rather fine cakemaking skills

26 March 2007

Interview with Andy Zimmermann



Upon entering Andy Zimmermann's recent video installation at the
FPAC Gallery, an uncanny sense of time and space warping seems
to come over the viewer. Onto several plexiglass screens composed
to form a jagged wall plays a projection. The images- interiors,
landscapes, architectural fragments- all contain parts which move
slowly between being in and out of focus, playing with varying depths
of field. The factuality of the wall is at times forgotten, replaced by the
clarity of the projection, which articulates a tangible space- but in the
next moment, the rug is pulled out from under the viewer, leaving
only a vague atmosphere of light. Experientially, the piece is sublimely
engaging- sometimes leaving the viewer baffled, but in a wholesome fashion.






Curious about the ideas that went into this work, I interviewed
Andy about his recent show...


MK: The work of yours I've seen prior to this show was at your
thesis exhibition at MassArt. There, you had constructed what
seemed to be a mini-city, which you used as a canvas
for a projection; essentially, an object in a state of permanent
change. In the recent show, however, you seem to be more involved
with an idea of passage- the movement of the viewer seems to be of high
importance to the completing the experience of the work. Can you talk
about how the idea to build the installation evolved for you?


AZ: In my thesis exhibit I was also concerned with how the viewer
moved through the piece. I'm very interested in having projected images
occurring in three dimensions, and the best way for someone to
experience this is by moving around, and into, the piece. You are
right, however, that in Seven Songs, the piece at the FPAC Gallery, I
was dealing with a specific path which the viewer would follow. The
piece is designed to be seen first from outside the gallery, as you
are looking in through the large window and doorway from the
Channel Cafe. Then you walk alongside the piece as you come
through the door and move into the interior space.
The idea evolved as I myself spent time in the cafe. I couldn't
help noticing that people invariably spent a lot more time there,
waiting for a table, waiting to be served, eating, chatting, hanging
out, than they did looking at the art inside the gallery. I just
wanted to make my piece so that people could watch it while they were
eating lunch! I'm very interested in making video poems that have
some duration, have a little plot development, but most videos
installations are limited by the relatively short amount of time that
most viewers are willing to give such pieces when they are walking
through a gallery.
The three-dimensional aspect of the piece, the layers of frosted
plexiglass panels, the cloudy, out-of-focus effect created by
overlapping layers, the different sizes of the panels, all developed
out of the idea of structuring the space so that viewers experienced
the piece first from outside the gallery, and then saw it unfold as
they walked into it. This then guided the content of the songs
themselves, having to do with uncertainty, and illusion; of things
looking different from different angles; of the images ultimately
dissolving and disappearing as you come close to them and walk past
them.


MK : That makes sense...a propos the interactivity of the
transient audience (the audience that views the work from the cafe),
it actually sounds like an attempt break down
the so-called "fourth wall". For instance, the
fact that you have decided to project the "songs" in a random
sequence brings about a different sort of expectation on the casual
looker's part; a lesser one than, say, having the narrative of the
projection be sequential and cumulative. At the same time, my
impression was that the randomization carries with it the effect
of the images entering the viewer's awareness on a more
subconscious level. Was this intentional?


AZ
: You're right about the idea of the 'fourth wall'.
There were a couple of reasons behind the idea of making
the songs play in random order. One was to get around the
viewers' expectation that they could know when they had seen
the whole program; that they might then no longer need to
watch anymore. I wanted them to gradually become aware that
there might still be parts they had not yet seen. I liked the idea
that the piece would keep re-making itself; that even if the
individual parts had been seen, they were going to continue to
occur in new and different combinations, and therefore have a
slightly different meaning each time.
I thought about not only what the piece would be like for the person
who spent a lunch hour there, but also the people who worked there
every day. I wanted the piece to be enjoyable for them, and not oppressive.
Secondly, the piece is in some ways a political critique. It deals with
uncertainty, blurring of vision, things that disappear when you get close
to them. Just because it is called Number Five does not mean it comes
after Number Four. There is not one Number Three, there are two of
them, and three Number Fives. Just because you see it in print
doesn't mean it's true.


MK
: That's a very clever way of dealing with the issue of narrative;
the idea that the piece keeps remaking itself harks back to the notion
of the artwork as a being in itself . Backtracking a bit, can you talk
about your history as an artist, and how you came to the themes which
you are dealing with currently? Have you always been a video artist,
or is this something you arrived at via other media?


AZ
: I started as a painter; studied it in college. Went through a
long sequence of gradually using more and more relief elements on the
canvas, then shaped canvas, then making painted wall-sculptures.
These still had the aspect of an image painted onto a three-
dimensional surface. When these got heavy to the point of pulling the
bolts out of the wall, I started doing floor sculptures out of welded
steel, then outdoor sculptures. This was my focus for several years.
I came back to the idea of having images on the surfaces of the
sculpture when I started using digital photos printed out on buswrap
adhered to the flat surfaces of welded aluminum sculpture. Somehow,
the complexity of the illusion of depth in a picture layered onto the
actual depth of a three-dimensional structure has always fascinated me.
In 2001, I entered the MFA program at MassArt. There I pretty
quickly got the hang of using digital projectors and editing video
and sound. I brought it right back to my original impulse to make the
images happen not just on a plane, but three-dimensionally. I think
the theme that I've been exploring is the relationship between the
stationary material world, which doesn't change much from one day to
the next, represented by the sculpture, and the fleeting, flickering
sequences of our living moments, represented by the video
projections. In my working process, too, I find it satisfying to
spend time carefully planning and building the framework onto which I
will be projecting, and then allowing the video and sound work to be
more improvisational and spontaneous.


MK: That sounds like a very organic trajectory. It reminds me of
something Robert Morris wrote:

"The trouble with painting is not its inescapable illusionism per se.
But this inherent illusionism brings with it a non-actual elusiveness
or indeterminate allusiveness. The mode has become antique.
Specifically, what is antique about it is the divisiveness of
experience which marks on a flat surface elicit.
There are obvious cultural and historical reasons as to why this
happens. For a long while the duality of thing and allusion sustained
itself under the force of profuse organizational innovations within the
work itself. But it has worn thin and its premises cease to convince.
Duality of experience is not direct enough. That which has ambiguity
built into it is not acceptable to an empirical and pragmatic outlook.
That the mode itself (rather than the lagging quality) is in default,
seems to be shown by the fact that some of the best painting today
does not bother to emphasize actuality or literalness though the
shaping of the support."

And this was written in 1967! I guess I'm just trying to point out
that there is a tendency- almost an inevitability- within those who
have worked in the two-dimensional, to branch out, become curious
about the potency of more tangible media. Based on what you've
described as your history, it seems your work mirrors this condition,
and it's remarkable to see where you have arrived- coming from a
painting background.

Lastly: (and this one's a bit virtual)
Describe your idea of what the ultimate installation would be.
I mean, one you would create. Realizable, or not...


AZ
: An interesting question! I find myself thinking in something like
religious terms. On entering the ultimate installation, the viewer
would be re-born, would suddenly have a deeper, more intense
perception of reality; "…was blind, but now can see!"
It’s a funny puzzle that, to get the sensation of experiencing the
whole of reality more deeply, one has to experience specifics and
details. It is by learning more details that we know we are seeing
more than we saw before. So, that leads me back from the
ultimate installation to the regular installation, one which has
specifics and details which are new to the viewer, and leads to a new
way of apprehending those specific ideas. That, in turn, makes the
viewer realize that it is possible to be, and to actually become,
more conscious than s/he was before that moment. That, ultimately, is
all I hope to accomplish.



more work by Andy Zimmermann can be seen at www.andyzimmermann.com

21 March 2007

19 March 2007

D o' D




Drawing of the Day

On entropy.

14 March 2007

"All right, act natural, everybody"



The governor is beginning to look a little pissed.

Could it be because at a press conference yesterday, he was asked whether his wife's entry into the hospital for exhaustion/depression would make him consider stepping down from his post? Don't those reporters know that even the bike couriers downtown are sporting Patrick stickers on their bikes?

Anyway, let's hope the Dukakis ghost doesn't stay around for long...