Scott Indrisek

Scott's droll wit as well as the playful and kinetic way in which he references pop culture reminds me of Fischli/Weiss. Like the Swiss duo, his allusions to everyday vernacular are contemplative and subdued. The graphically appealing image of what would otherwise be a discarded object, also seems to be mischievously poking fun at the oft-quoted structure of the grid.

Scott's paintings share the intimate scale of books and reflect Scott's background in literature. His diptych simultaneously reiterates the inherent physicality of both the novel and the adjoined paintings. It made me think of Camille Paglia's belief in the physical concreteness of text, to her, "text exists as an object; it is not just a mist of ephemeral subjectivities." It's always difficult to discern between when Paglia is being bombastic, and if she is being sincere, but between all the grating bravado she does have moments of brilliance. Although dismissing subjective experience is completely ludicrous, the idea of thinking of text as a physical entity is fantastic!

The intimacy of the scale accentuates the private and intriguingly enigmatic quality of Scott's paintings. There's a seductive aspect in the richness of the paintings' tactile surface, and a compelling tension that exists between the abstracted and illusionistic space.

I love Scott's painting within a painting!! The tenderly painted monochrome on the left side of the canvas pays homage to a painting that Scott's father made. The strong personal element that is present within all of Scott's paintings emanates an aura of emotional complexity and depth.

Scott also keeps several blogs in which his deliciously biting satire debunks the absurdities and power dynamics in the art village. The hilarity in much of Scott's writing relies on replacing words that have become ubiquitous and generalized, with descriptions that expand meaning with exactitude and precision. When Scott refers to Jeff Koons as an industrial fabricating tycoon, in his blog, Brant Watch, he gives a more incisive and accurate depiction of what it is that Koons represents rather than if he were to refer to Koons simply as an artist!

Satire and caricature have always shared a common language, and Brant Watch is reminiscent of George Grosz's scathing portrayals of society. Although our situation isn't nearly as dire as what was happening during the Weimar Republic, our unpromising current climate is a stark contrast to the economic prosperity during the Clinton administration. Especially as technology replaces people in the workforce, the middle class continues to be eradicated, and the dollar consistently loses its value, not only does it seem unlikely that the economy will ever recover even closely to what it once was, but the widening of the economic gap becomes even more conspicuous than ever, making Brant Watch especially timely.

http://brantwatch.com

http://shitmycatsread.com

Alison Kuo

Knock knock. Who's there? Banana. Knock knock. Who's there? Banana. Knock knock. Who's there? Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!

Each time I enter the elaborately convoluted labyrinth that is Alison's universe, I feel as if I'm not entirely sure which way is up or down anymore. The cacophony of symbols and their extensive possible meanings inundates the senses, in a way that mimics the overwhelming complexity of the world itself. Is it a peach or a uterus? The easily recognizable, BPA-laced goo that we recognize immediately as canned fruit seems even more revolting in this recontextualized version, and instead looks like vomit or the mutilated pulp of internal organs. I am reminded of DFW's short story, Little Expressionless Animals, in which the three year Jeopardy champion, Julie, finds comfort and respite from the burden of her encyclopedic knowledge in univocal words, which are words with only one possible meaning. Alison's maximalist project seems to be the antithesis of univocality.

By mashing together seemingly unrelated and perplexing symbols, Alison inculcates her viewers with her love of the bizarre and unexpected. Her intoxicating sense of pleasure and play belies a dark and insidious undercurrent. Framed in a new context, the insulting way in which early humans are typically depicted in natural history museums seems some how more apparent. Lifeless and lacking in any characteristic idiosyncrasies, the wax figures have been stripped of their humanity and individuality within how they've been represented. The Othering that Alison brings our attention to is not altogether different from Gauguin's imperialistic portrayals of Polynesia, although Gauguin invested more attention and care in romanticizing and eroticizing his primarily female subjects. Gauguin's paintings are so beautiful, that people often fail to recognize the inherent exploitation in finding paradise in another culture, and the blatant misogyny that they represent. He was very strategic and knew how to manipulate his audience with his apocryphal depictions of utopia. Instead of painting the missionaries or the venereal diseases that they brought with them to paradise, Gauguin painted what people wanted to see rather than how things actually were.

The way in which information is disseminated is a dominant subject in Alison's work.  Alison presents us with ideas and never preaches or moralizes, always maintaining a sense of ambiguity and complexity. Her anachronistic mix of both old and new pop cultural imagery is as intriguing as it is puzzling. By distorting linearity and time, Alison calls attention to how spurious conceptions of sequential time are.

Food, for Alison represents sustenance and growth, the body in its fallibility and vulnerability, the tactile, and sensory parts of everyday experience, the wonderfully slimy and gooey aspects of sex, the beauty, the cruelty, the pain, as well as the transitory, and absurd nature of life itself.

The indispensable significance of the role of food in rituals and celebrations is also a central theme in many of Alison's performances. Concocting strange and slimy potions and treats that ooze, explode in your mouth, and tickle your throat, Alison toys with impressions by transforming an otherwise banal encounter,  and infusing it with humor and mystery.

Link

Austin Lee

Austin's been making such fresh and exciting paintings!!! I was so inspired and blown away by visiting his studio. 

This incredible gem is going to be in the pink show that I am putting together at Cathouse FUNeral!!  Our opening will be January 18.  

Both the subject matter and composition of this painting remind me of Bacon's paintings of the boxer, George Dyer. I love how performative it is. The boxing arena becomes a stage. There is a tension between the isolation of the boxer and the faceless mob. Having just been knocked down, the boxer is vulnerable to the judgments of his audience.  

Close-up of the crowd. The painting also has a biographical aspect, since Austin was a boxer in the past.

This painting is electric!! Austin is an example of a painter who utilizes technology as a tool, rather than making it the sole subject of his work. There's a sense of freedom, complexity and curiosity in Austin's work that distinguishes him from much of the current trend of paintings referencing the digital realm and technology. 

The element of caricature as well as the structure and palette of Austin's painting remind me of George Grosz. Grosz's depictions of the Weimar aristocracy, drunks, and prostitutes are among my all time favorite works of art. Like Goya, Grosz showed people as they are rather than how people imagine themselves to be or how they would like to be seen.

 The rawness and brutality of this painting reminds me of the utter despair of Goya's drowning dog that hangs in the Prado. When looking at this painting, I can only begin to imagine the vulnerability and dread of being this demon's patient.

This diptych has such a visceral intensity, that it brings tears to my eyes. The thick opacity of the paint application on the authoritative physician imbues him with power and certainty. The hazy technique Austin used to portray the patient; emphasizes her fragility and uncertainty, a stark contrast to the concrete physicality of the physician. The tiny dots that stand in for her eyes almost fall into the depths of her skull, an implication that in her time of extreme confusion and fear, the patient prefers to turn her vision inward.

The tears have such a compelling and tangible, physical presence, that they act as a barrier separating the viewer from the helpless woman. It calls to mind all those portraits that Picasso painted of Dora Maar crying. When Kippenberger learned that he was dying, he painted a series of Picasso's women crying over his own death. People were surprised by how beautifully and skillfully Kippenberger had painted this last series, few people knew that he was capable of such technical excellence. Beauty and technical facility was something that Kippenberger was deeply suspicious of his entire life, because he was more interested in expressing something more human and honest. Nietzsche writes about how virtuosity and a mastery of technique are a disguise that artists use to hide beneath. Anyone can become a skilled technician; it's much harder to become an artist.

Link

Adam Green

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Adam's spectacular Manhattan studio.

I was a fan of Adam's music long before I knew him through his visual art. He is a brilliant musician, and his quick wit along with his mordant sense of irony was something that I responded to immediately. I was excited to discover his paintings during his solo show at The Hole a couple of summers ago. 

Adam has another upcoming show at The Hole called, "Hot Chicks," where he'll be showing his new drawings alongside the works of other artists that he selected for the show. The opening will be January 1st.

Adam's transgressive use of humor, as well as the bustling exuberance, movement, and rhythm are reminiscent of Robert Colescott. Colescott always had a set of drums in his studio and grew up in a family of musicians. There is a distinctive lyrical fluidity in the paintings of visual artists who also play music; in the same way it's easy to spot the dancers in a yoga class, based on the way that dancers approach the technical aspects of each posture.

I started rereading Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, and his description of Donald Duck in the essay, Pontormo's Rainbow, reminded me of Adam's Donald Duck paintings. Hickey describes Donald Duck as being the only Disney character who had "any soul, any edge," and he likens him to being the Dizzy Gillespie of cartoon characters!

We talked about the decadent nature of Garfield the cat, which also keeps reappearing in Adam's work. Growing up I had the entire collection of Garfield books, which had taken me years to complete and that I would read every Saturday morning. At age 12, my new puppy devoured and shredded each and every last page in my entire collection. I burst into tears shortly after discovering the annihilation. I felt like my childhood had been eaten. Eventually, I rationalized the horror and destruction by realizing that when it came down to it, I loved my dog more than Garfield. 

Garfield was huge for our generation. It's not difficult to understand his mass appeal among the children of the eighties, not only was he a symbol of decadence but he was also an anti-authoritarian figure as well. He did whatever he wanted and listened to no one, which definitely appeals to a child's fantasies or anyone's fantasies for that matter! Children are always being reprimanded and controlled by adults, often for merely telling the truth or just being themselves. 

Although Adam's subject matter shares a connection with pop art, his approach also shares a history with Art Brut and Arte Povera. The hybridization of combining pop cultural elements with expressionism, is likewise exemplified in both the paintings of Joyce Pensato and Llyn Foulkes.

Adam had a solo show of all yellow paintings this past summer in Rome. 

This painting was my favorite! It's entitled "piano lesson," and I saw it right before it was shipped to Vienna.

Link

Talia Shulze

The languorous light was just beginning to fade when I visited Talia's Bushick studio...  

Taoists recognize the value of languor. According to Lin Yutang, "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live." The tenets of Taoism are typically anathema to most city slickers, which makes quoting the Taoists all the more enjoyable in the wildest depths of the urban jungle! 

During our visit, Talia talked about what a huge impact the Matisse show at the Met last spring had on the New York art world, and how that correlates with the resurgence of the current interest in the pastoral in art. 

I tend to associate the pastoral with the sublime, since they are both ways of interpreting the natural world. Despite certain obvious congruencies between the two, the two perspectives are more different than alike. The pastoral conjures up mental images of giddy nobility running through pastures and swinging merrily under willows in Watteau paintings. Within the pastoral way of thinking, there is this contrived effort to portray nature as pleasant, benign, and even kind. The sublime is more vicious; it's more like the pastoral's evil, complicated twin. There is this fantastic Francis Bacon interview, which touches upon the sublime, where Bacon talks about how even under the most beautiful landscape, insects are fighting for their lives and biting each others' heads off. It's been a while since I've read it, so I might be butchering it completely, but you get the gist, gentle reader. 

Camille Paglia writes about how we interpret nature as being beautiful because the sheer terror of the tremendous power and brutality of nature is too much for us to bear. I would agree with that, but I also believe in the theory of Biophilia and that the further we remove ourselves from nature the more out of place we feel. Humans are attuned toward plant life as well as other life forms because we are biological beings who long to be amidst nature. Nature is beautiful, even if one ascribes to Carl Sagan's belief that the universe seems neither benign nor hostile, but merely indifferent.  

At the very beginning of Jerzy Kosinski's Being There, there's a passage that compares and contrasts the differences and similarities between plants and people.


"Plants were like people; they needed care to live, to survive their diseases, and to die peacefully."

"Yet plants were different from people. No plant is able to think about itself or know itself; there is no mirror in which a plant can recognize its face; no plant can do anything intentionally: it cannot help growing, and its growth has no meaning since a plant cannot reason or dream."

Although Kosinski avoids anthropomorphism in that passage, he still measures plant life against the human standard. He does the opposite of Morandi, who imbued each of his tenderly painted bottles with anthropomorphic warmth and intimacy; instead his terse and blunt prose describes a form of life that is entirely impervious to our struggles and aspirations. The effect makes us aware of the vastness and magnitude of existence, and the limitations and smallness of our own point of view. It's what Baudrillard is talking about when he talks about the pretension of culture melting away in the desert.

Talia infuses her depictions of the natural world with a sense of humanity. There is something deeply private and sensual, even erotic, about these paintings. The inherent sensuality of Talia's paintings as well as the anthropomorphic, narrative quality is reminiscent of Indian miniatures. The way in which the palm trees wrap around one another is similar to a lovers' embrace, and is a recurring leitmotif in many Indian miniatures.

The sense of mystery, the sensuous, wavering line, and the enveloping color also remind me of Mary Heilmann. However, Talia's layers and transparencies create an illusionistic depth which is very different from Heilmann's paintings which live on the surface of the canvas and never venture fully toward representation.

The playful ease of the confident gesture creates a feeling of pleasure and fun.

Talia's paintings convey a wide range of thoughts and moods. The unyielding conviction of the minimal painting furthest to the right creates a contrast to the comical and endearing, pensive intimacy of the figurative painting second from the left.

Link

I took a brief break from blogging this summer to pursue other projects, but now that fall is almost here, I'm excited to resume blogging and post the recent studio visits I've been on!! In the mean time, please check out these two interviews I did recently for NY Arts Magazine with artists Caitlin Cherry and Brent Birnbaum. Enjoy!

image courtesy of the artist

link to Brent Birnbaum interview

image courtesy of the artist and Brooklyn Museum
link to Caitlin Cherry Interview