The Milk Wax

On the train to Santa Fe, a woman suggested I find my way to Discovery Park the next time I’m in Seattle. She said I would need to make it a destination because Discovery Park is not a place you normally pass through on the way to somewhere else, although you can take the bus. She was also quick to inform me that Miami and New York get more precipitation than Seattle and that sunglass sales in The Emerald City are through the roof.

“But sure,” she said, “the city does suffer from a lot of gray days.” Over her shoulder, through the train window, I saw a rusting, light blue Fiat behind someone’s house.

I finally went to see The Dissolve, the current biennial at SITE Santa Fe.  I can’t get much traction by going into all of the videos in the show, and that should be stated up front: it’s a video show-and that was the pejorative attached to this biennial before it landed in June. Because video (and film for that matter) can feel so flat when it’s embraced simply for its kinetic nature. It’s moving and flickering. Like how my son can watch a commercial for soap or beans or Grand Theft Auto with equal attention. But The Dissolve tries really hard, feeling like a nerd-proud survey of homemade animation mixed into David Adjaye’s thoughtful and colorful exhibition design. My initial reaction was actually against the design. Here is the blue room. Here is the green room. Next you’re going to tell me that there is a red room. Oh, here’s the red room. I just wasn’t feeling it. It all made sense, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it was so tight, so neat. But once I started watching the animations–which describes most of the videos–I mostly forgot the palette into which all of these images were being painted into. Bill T. Jones’ 3-D ghost world and Thomas Demand’s rain piece are just too magical and seductive. I was immersed in the processes. This took 7,000 photographs? This was painted and repainted and painted and repainted? The work isn’t detached, but constructed, like a painting or a score and you witness how time has been constructed by each of the artists. It’s a strong collection that stands on the shoulders of novelty to get at something richer.

There are basically 30 works in the show, 26 of which are by contemporary artists with 4 additional historical pieces. When you look at George Griffin’s mutoscope, the work from the Fleischer Brothers and Thomas Edison’s film you have to wonder why Cindy Sherman’s piece is not considered “historical”; but of course, that’s the idea. The basic premise of the show is that you have a group of living artists that are committed to the handmade even while implementing seemingly new technology, which, for the purposes of The Dissolve, extends primarily to the means involved in creating these animations. Anaglyphic, or stereoscopic imagery, has existed since the 1850s, but its current use has surpassed its initial awe-inspiring effects. It’s not just curiosity flypaper; it adds meaning and depth to what is being shown. On that note, the hand–being handmade–promotes the development of the personal on the part of the artist and requires more subjectivity in the work’s reception.

There is less pomp to this biennial, less Robert Storr swagger, less dick-swinging curation.

Maybe Laura Steward is right about biennials; that they’re played out. And maybe this is a biennial in name only. But  SITE couldn’t afford to lose this platform, so how does it see its future? That’s a good question for incoming director Irene Hofmann. Not only does the biennial bring in a number of international art heavyweights (dick-swinging aside), it also provides an intellectual substance that all of Santa Fe has embraced and become proud of, I think. The biennial, of course, provides that platform, allowing curators to bring in every one they think we should know, but also opening the door to thousands of writers, collectors, art lovers, critics, educators, artists and students.

Finally, whatever, I didn’t want to take Spanish in high school or college, taking French instead. Which explains why it took a Dominican woman visiting from Miami to tell me that La Choza means “the shed” in Spanish.

*I have no idea what either of my French teachers’ names were.

It’s dawned on me that I haven’t seen much art this summer, which is the nature of things in Albuquerque–I should be going to The Petting Zoo on Sunday (emphasis on should). Maybe I’m not interested or maybe there’s not much to see.

Now that I’m back from California and have settled in with our new guest artist at Working Classroom, Charo Oquet, I’ll finally be going to Santa Fe to see the biennial. I haven’t heard too much about it–other than the press–and I’m hopeful that it’s a good show.

If I need to use the restroom at my work, I need to go three doors down and ride the elevator up to the second floor to the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.

I usually take the stairs when I come back. I’ve gotten in the habit of pushing the large steel door open as wide as I can and trying to make it down the full flight of steps, calmly, without running, before the door above me shuts. It has a sort of “I just activated a sinister plot” feeling to it.

I have a friend who once asked me if I thought any of the artists we knew had any idea what they actually did. “I think most of them,” he said, “have no idea that they’re actually doing something else.” And it’s strange that while soaking up the fog in California last week, I was struck by the possibility that everything I’ve been making in my studio might not be at the center of my art practice. I mean, I’m blogging here. I’m partnering with Ben Meisner to open another gallery. I have tried to gather shit loads of interviews (sorry Martin!). I have taught and worked at art on a community level–which describes generally what I’m doing now–and which is different from Harrell Fletcher and Portland State and social practice; not better, just different. It would be normal for me to ascribe a secondary status to these activities–ignoring the fact that I have chosen, time and again, the problems that they bring up. It’s just that these other things are on the same level as everything based in the studio. I know somebody has written something infinitely more quotable about art not ending at the studio door. And now I’m off this early morning to said studio and then to look for artists and then to look at a little painting. But maybe a little coffee first.

There have been times when I’ve turned to talk radio to get me through the drives to Santa Fe and back; because sometimes, you get sick of your own music. And I know other people who have been in the same situation (luckily, I don’t have to make that drive anymore). For example, Jonathan Sandmel used to come down to UNM and I would laugh at the wonderfully creepy (and accurate) impression he would do of Sean Hannity. And last night, driving home from Kelly’s Brew Pub in Albuquerque, I was sucked into a talk radio world that had Ozarkan women putting forth their ideas about using specially-designed pumper submarines to plug the BP well in the gulf. Another guy talked about the world ending because there is a giant gas bubble below the well that’s about  to explode and release the earth’s crude into the oceans. And who was I to say they’re wrong?

Getting your head wrapped around what’s going on in the gulf is hard–especially when thoughtless punditry gets in the way–and it gets even harder when you feel the high wave of helplessness stick your stupid head in the toilet and give you this latest ecological swirly. And artists will most likely line up to make art about this: Nikes covered in oil, or perhaps someone performing as a dolphin and dying inside a gallery, which I would go see. Audiences have always derived great pleasure watching artists push themselves to the edge, and sometimes over it. And it’s that kind of expansive, maniacal activity that allows for future innovation.

I haven’t seen the new Bravo show about artists trying to be the next big thing, but it struck me today that a show like that might further confuse the definition of art as it relates to cooking (and maybe clothes design). Art is reliant on a faith-induced alchemy, whereas cooking never attempts to twist salmon into a symbol for man’s struggle for love or world-consciousness. Or maybe it does and I’m eating too quickly to realize it.

I was lucky enough to meet up with Erika Osborne and Tracy Stuckey on Tuesday and I was all ears listening to Erika talk about mountain top removal in West Virginia and how she has modified her approach to teaching and art making. Just hearing the language was interesting: slurry pond, “the hollows”, Marsh Fork, Massey.

And through all of that, things move forward. A new turbine vent for the gallery, an ad in a magazine, new work, people coming (Christina Marsh) and people about to leave (Zach Meisner, whose show you should check out at Inpost Gallery).

This is the big opening for the Biennial at SITE and I’m looking forward to going up on Sunday to see it. I feel like I should go up on Saturday to listen to Rob Storr with Sarah Lewis, Daniel Belasco, David Adjaye, Paul Chan, Mary Reid Kelley, and Kara Walker, but I’m already not feeling it. We’ll see. Either way, this Biennial will have the effect of recalling negative feelings and nostalgia about previous Biennials.

Tonight was a doozy. Saw paintings of bugs and moths in the lobby of a theater, super-sharp works by Zach Meisner at Inpost Artspace, a million drawings and paintings by J. Lynn Johnson at Revlis and a small, multi-layered installation at The Normal. That’s on top of seeing Artificial Selection at 516 Arts this morning, a really cool show curated by Rhiannon Mercer that features robots and other kooky hybrids of nature and machine. While there, I witnessed the awe emanating from our group of middle schoolers as they watched three plastic robots salute and jerk-off in unison (A Well-Regulated Militia Bearing Arms by Adrianne Wortzel). Other things I’ve been carrying around are the Picasso show at the Metropolitan Museum (with Doug and Mike Starn on the roof), Broadway musicals and Che Chen’s amazing screening at Millenium Film Workshop on May 22. It consisted of 8- millimeter films accompanied by an audio track constructed from pre-1970s Afghan records. Pretty amazing.

Now, as I’m getting ready to go to bed, I’m thinking of the role of the audience in molding meaning for other audience members, thinking that Kobe Bryant is a kind of post-Kippenberger basketball star: full of talent, but born after the age of great transitions. In basketball, quality can’t be compromised in an effort to make people reflect on the game, because you’ll lose. So maybe Bryant is more like Lady Gaga: a student of history embracing self-obliteration and asterisks. Till tomorrow, because there’s a lot more to say.

Been a long time since a post! Lots going on–just back from New York, getting new work made, etc., but (drum roll, please)…the site for GENERATOR is up and running.

The schedule for GENERATOR is coming together. Artists already on board include Ann Gaziano, Lee Montgomery, Monica Martinez, Scott Krichau, Jack Craft, Leslie Wilkes, Karl Hofmann and Ed Ruscha, whose book Various Small Fires will be on display for our first show–making things exciting already. And, of course, there’s room for more to happen–performances, screenings, etc., which will develop over the summer and fall. More information and website coming soon.

Ben Meisner and I have decided to partner in opening a new project space in Albuquerque. We have a small free-standing building downtown and planning is underway, tentatively opening this August. More details to come soon…

I kept thinking about beauty during my three days in Seattle. Questions revolved around visual pleasure–what if the only purpose of art is to make something overwhelming beautiful mixed with a dash of the uncanny? Every effort–strategized or not–to undermine beauty has eventually been folded into its overall definition: Eva Hesse, Albert Oehlen, Sonic Youth. Of course, transgression is material, too.

It was the Ukiyo-e pieces at SAM’s Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park that got me going. A small show, I found myself picking at art’s mortality–How long does it live? Is something contemporary as long as it can still be used? Is Robert Johnson more contemporary because I play him on my iPod? Art, like the washboard or stereoscope, passes into history; it becomes useless. When you walk into a room where the walls are pasted with Fragonard drawings, you’re quick to realize that the Fragonard part of the equation doesn’t matter so much, it’s just cool wallpaper. The work, unquestionably of its time, stayed there (as will work by Karen Kilimnik, for example–it’s a future someone’s wallpaper). And there’s part of that in the Hiroshige and Hokusai prints, but there’s also some other indescribable element; the formal concerns of each artist are still active and the work is complex. The process of wood block printing is beautiful, and the materials are beautiful–and those beautiful ingredients are invested in images that both capture and skirt reality. They don’t look real and yet they document events, landscapes, trends and activities. And I think that’s the key: the slightly abstracted images have grown even more powerful with the popularity of comics and anime–especially manga. Just check out Hiroshige’s View of the Naruto Whirlpools at Awa as an example.

The point I’ve come to in looking at so much art is an obvious one: there’s too much of a disconnect between what artists say and what they show. Attempts have been made to overcome that gap through connoisseurship or ethics or institutionalization or quality. Social art, for example, often looks pretty horrible and less intelligent than the platform it’s purporting to promote. Land Art and Feminist Art–as I’ve mentioned before–too often embrace the aesthetic of those areas of art making rather than functioning within a broader dialogue (and of course they expand the art conversation, but I don’t know how useful another sculpture made of sticks or another pair of embroidered underwear is to anybody).

I’m not discounting those valuable histories of art making, I’m only suggesting that the ethics of sympathy can cloud the varied roles (and strengths) of art, speech, experimentation and protest. Maybe there’s a middle-ground? The prints at the Asian Art Museum certainly suggest as much, dragging us through the visual pleasure the artists had in creating landscapes and portraits about sex, class, fantasy, social practice and ritual.