new paintings

!!!
issue: don't know how many paintings will actually fit in the show due to wall space constraints... but i'm hoping it will be more than 2.

artist statement for catalog as follows:
The paintings are representations of facades, values, and structures of art. These facades are in conversation with common notions of commodity and optical pleasure. The gold is a faux gold substitute, a metal powder applied on canvas to create a glossy interior space of what would be walls of stacked gold bars. The faux gold is layered on to create a deep space, which may be entered. The source is a real space, the United States Bullion Depository, Fort Knox, one which few will ever see. The Depositoy is a major structure for the monetary values in the financial system, as well as for the world's economy. Though the values are just numbers, the bars are the physical basis for the structure.

The works reflect a system of value structures, and the facade on which they rest is optical beauty. The only value of these things is in the pleasure we take from the reflective material, and all that we invest in it.

response to critique

In response to the crit from a few weeks ago, I'll address my goals from the crit. I wanted to find out what people get out of looking at the series. I also wanted to avoid technical concerns, and get down to content and inferred meanings.

I showed my paintings, and the source image, and talked a little bit about the source image.

The comments were mostly about things that I could do to it to get it to be flashier. i.e. some metallic paint, mirrors, beads, bedazzler, reflective things, etc. I don't think I'm going to go that route, until I've reached a breaking point with the materials I currently am using. I did, however, go to Pearl and get mad metallic paint.

The critique was short, and I don't remember anyone having any other suggestions other than experimenting with materials. There was no formal analysis, and no one seemed up to the challenge of talking about content. Which makes me think the paintings might be unapproachable, or difficult to access...

I take it the critique participants found the paintings a little boring, and not flashy enough. Though I'm not sure if making it more flashy would hurt the balance I am working on to balance a cultural critique with a minimalist painting. I wouldn't want the face value of flashy kitsch gems distract a viewer from focusing on extracting a deeper message. Therefore, I am going to ignore the only suggestions that I got, and keep on doing what I'm doing. Because I like it. And that's the only reason to make anything.

works in progress

new works from this semester

First Year MFA SHOW

The show encompassed a great range of works. The spaces were used to the advantage of the artists, creating hanging walls to separate some of the works that were more dynamic. The show was a little confusing due to the lack of labels on the walls? I always find the labels misleading and confusing in the mason gross gallery. The spaces are very well defined, and the labels are always in the most ambiguous place possible. In this case strips of blue tape saying place label here were implemented. Hopefully that gets resolved.
So consequently I'm not sure who had the large Cy Twombly-esque abstractions on the far back wall, but they were intriguing. These paintings had drawings on graph paper still taped flimsily to them, raw canvas loosely hanging from the frame, and an orb of quiet color in the center. That particular wall almost always draws the most attention for me. Whatever goes on that wall is always well presented and centered. It usually steals the show. In this case, though the canvases were warped and unprimed, those paintings were the most memorable and presentable for me. The allure of the wall is most likely in that it is the longest horizontal span in the gallery, and it is directly across from the entrance doors. The wall dominates the scene in every show i've been to in mason gross galleries. And I'm a sucker for expressionist abstract landscapes via storm clouds and graph drawing paper. Who's paintings are those??

For the rest of the show a huge mix of installation, art objects, and various colorful items were strewn about the gallery. Something that happens often with shows that mix installations by one artist and paintings by another is distraction. A huge installation or interactive performance will dominate the gallery space. Whereas a minimalist artist with a clean or muted pallete will experience a clash of business that draws the focus away from their work. More specifically I am referring to the back left room where the center is dedicated to a very involved installation, and the works on the walls that surround and even enclose the installation are very simple, clean, and minimalist works that are engulfed by the installation.
If the artist were to make works that were both paintings and installation, such as the case of the back right room with the moose head, there is an appropriate way to incorporate such works.

grad schools i wish i went to

1.) RISD
2.) YALE
3.) MICA
4.) CALARTS
5.)UC BERKELEY (PhD in Philos of Art and Perception)
6.) UCB MFA in Art

Nov 19 Yale Open House
Julie Wbd and I are going! Anyone want to join?

Mica Open House anyone?

I want to be Barbara Gladstone. In real life plz

The Fair

The lack of artists in this chapter is fitting, as artists have little to no idea what happens with the sales of art. The business side of art remains a serious mystery.

Wowwwww! I had no idea what went on with art once it left a studio. Literally no clue. This chapter revealed a lot about what happens to the works and who is really in charge of them once a sale is made. And once the works change hands, it never stops. The rotation of a collection and the constant sale and resale of works and bodies of work keep things popping. A little confused about the differences between dealer collector and speculator. Especially when dealers collect and artists become dealers and gallerists have collections. Then the dealer that started their own private collection opens up their own "private exhibition space" aka a gallery. I got a little lost in the terminology. But some good tips were given about selling work, selling yourself, and your work selling yourself and yourself selling work. maybe to the devil, but we'll talk about that later.

Once the art leaves the artists hands it's really out of the artists control as far as the cost, prestige of owner, and even meaning of the work is completely up for grabs. (I'm thinking lots of art gets grabbed and molested after it leaves the studio, a la Baldessari)

What is a speculator?

"You have to make new work to sell old work" This makes the deal less risky for investors, since they feel safer that the works already made are solidified and over. A sense of retrospect is seriously coveted within the art world. Once a moment has passed, collectors dealers historians and critics take years pouring over the details. It makes it hard to keep up with contemporary art. For me at least it is difficult when the modern art section is filled with dead artists.

"My art is almost unsellable." Is that because it doesn't cater to the market, and if it doesn't cater to the market does that mean it doesn't cater to viewers? Is it really a good thing to be unsellable?

"The amount of art in the world is a bit depressing."
agreed.

I think that when referring to Blum and Poe about the "too much dude", it might have been a comment about the lack of feminine perspective. The two seemed to more attribute this very characteristic to their success. Maybe I'm just being sensitive, but Thornton brought it up not me.

Hopefully now that I know what goes on in the art market I won't start catering to it in my creations. The safety of knowing that as long as I am ignorant to the business side of art then it will never be able to contaminate my work, leaves me feeling blissfully ignorant.

Damian Ortega CAPITAL less at Barbara Gladstone

Damián Ortega at Gladstone Gallery

Ordinary objects are typically used by Damian Ortega to project his interest in the mundane and everyday. This emphasis on one specific object creates a strong meeting, with a centralized idea and concept of what the true meaning of the object is. A simple object can become a powerful message when manipulated by Damian Ortega.

In Gladstone Gallery, his work is created with one simple material. Brick. I of course am always partial to brick. I like the appeal of the down-home southern charm, the old world essence of the material, and some of the nostalgic feelings it can stir up. Also, the solid nature of the material paired with its everyday architectural uses, can easily compose an unbending foundation. The solidarity of the material creates such a bold entrance and message in its structure, it is hard to take the work as anything but serious and sturdy.

The brick is created with intentional voids within the brick structures, scattered throughout the space. Not only does every structure stand far above a standard person's height, but Ortega created the bricks with voids from concrete blocks and brick by sanding them down.

All are titled "Building", and are a dwelling-like structure. It mimics not only the windows found in the NY stacked houses and buildings where people literally "live on top of each other", as well as mimicking Aztec dwellings of the past. Its a display of 5 structures that comprise a series of these dwellings, though they could just as easily be uninhabited.

As you learn more about Ortega you will realize that most work is political, as he started as a political cartoonist. The buildings are exactly that, political representations of poverty in brick form. The show's title," CAPITAL less" evokes the loss of captial. The loss is in the buildings its self, as they represent what once was a thriving structure, though it also represents a sections of the sociopolitical world in which the buildings are imaginarily situated. The buildings are paired with a video of a building in Sao Paulo Brazil, the Treme-Treme, which the video is entitled, that houses homeless occupants. The buildings are also for the capital less citizens of the city. The world play continues! Capital, as in city, refers to the loss of the city in which they once were a part of, and now live within what once was. The nostalgia continues as a capital remembered is lived in but continues to deplete into erosion.

The play on positive and negative space is used as a pun. And we all know how much I love word play. The space is positive shapes, made of negative space. The capital waste turns into a living space. The waste of the space is used as a place for homeless to dwell. It is a serious blunder on the city planning board's record, and this is Ortega's not so subtle way of rubbing it in their face with minimalist sophistication. These spaces come to represent the dilapidation of a structure, and the utilization of such a space. It is industrial and at the same time archaic.

In another sculpture, the inside of ventilation hoses are cast and displayed. An internal space is shown again, and exhibited as a form. The negative space turned into a positive one becomes a conversation with the other 5 pieces of buildings.

I am always completely enraptured by urban environments and all of the contradictory relationships within the atmosphere. The complications of life that arise in such an environment are often convoluted and thriving with positive and negative polarized views on the benefits and consequences of such a structure. Within art the perspective can be sociopolitical, architectural, and a range of confused expressionist representation. Any way you put it, an urban study is one that appeals to almost everyone, and can create a situation for ideal introspection of the structures of a society.

What do I like about it?

I like the minimal materials used

I like the clever show title

I like the ambiguous stance the work takes on the issue it raises

I like the subtlety

I like the simple and pure aesthetic

I like the concepts that come out of such a simple title and structure that provide endless meanings

I like that the introduction on Barbara Gladstone's Gallery makes for a nice segway into my next post about chapter 3...