Exquisite Poop: Blind Reproduction (My first NY opening!)

Exquisite Poop: Blind Reproduction

March 10 – April 15, 2012
Opening Reception Saturday, March 10, 6-9pm
Live performance by Abacus Jones, 8pm
$10 voluntary donation / Refreshments served

A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East 3rd St. 2nd Floor (Between Ave C & D, near F at 2nd Ave or Delancey/Essex)
New York, NY 10009 (212) 674-3778

info@tribes.org / gatheringofthetribes@gmail.com

Original: Mine (Carly Bodnar)
Description: Casey Plett
Reproduction: Lorra Jackson

You are cordially invited to what may be the very last art show at Tribes. Inspired by the different descriptions Steve Cannon’s visitors would give of the art on the walls, and by taking the blind professor to art openings, curator Janet Bruesselbach organized an elaborate art and writing project between 13 artists and writers. It aims to consider the subjectivity of attentive visuality in art writing and the absurdity of symbolic imagery.

The artists were invited to contribute a small two-dimensional work, and commit to another. Images, titles, size and media information were then assigned to the writers, who were charged with describing the art as thoroughly and sincerely as possible. These descriptions were nearly randomly assigned to the contributing artists, who were tasked with recreating the artwork they thought the writer had described, without knowing the artist or seeing the original image.

The first stage of translation from visual to verbal varies hugely in style and focus, even given stylistic restrictions. The artist’s job is even harder and even more subject to the variations of personality and style. Not only was it hard to communicate the most basic aspects of artwork or even the rules of the game, the variations in series are indescribable. The resulting illustration of mis/communication varies from wondrous to farcical and demonstrates the impossibility of translation.

Participating artists: Alexis Duque, Lorra Jackson, Brian Elig, Blair Kamage, Carly Bodnar, Robert Scott, Joseph Materkowski, Samuel Bjorgum, Lauren Kolesinskas, Jessica Daly, David Hollenbach, BMIP (Babyhead), and Nick Musaelian

Participating Writers: Allison Moore, Maddie Drake, Josh Crowley, Jenny Bhatt, Casey Plett, Kaitlin Heller, Adam Kavulic, Zane Hart, Matt Keeley, Amanda Spitzer, Jon Boulier, Ammon Ford, and Chris Heffernan

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In other news, I scored passes to both the Scope and Armory art fairs. A picture-filled post will hopefully be forthcoming.

Love-Hate

All my paintings, or at least the ones I consider the most successful, go through a stage where I completely hate them. The ones that make it from idea to actuality without passing through the hate zone just seem to be missing something. Maybe it's just in my own interpretation, because I haven't "fought" for it, but maybe it's from the lack of physical buildup of markmaking that results from reworking a piece or obscuring the surface, turning it on its head, and nearly starting over. (There was a period where I literally was spitting on my paintings during this part of the process. Talk about hate.) The easy paintings, the ones that don't feel so hard-won, make me a little wary, like the early stages of a new relationship. We haven't been through shit together, we haven't worked through the flaws, so I'm not sure it's worth it yet.

That's not to say that the hate phase is pleasant. It sucks. It's full of self-doubt and standing face-to-face with a painting so ugly that I can't not do something about it. But that's the genius in it. Without that freedom to try something, anything -- why not, there's nowhere to go but up -- and see where it goes, I get stuck in preciousness. I get so caught up on the good bits, fall so in love with them that I can't bear to lose them. Even when it's clear that the painting as a whole just isn't working and needs something drastic, I'm afraid to let the sweet spots go. Perhaps this comes from a doubt in my ability to make anything quite so perfect again. I desperately want to save a copy, so that if I completely, irreparably screw it up, I can revert back to my last saved version.

But that's not an option, and won't be, by virtue of the medium. And despite the unpleasantness of the fear and the self-doubt and the clinging and the feeling stuck, that's one of the things that attracts me to it. It's part of why I have a hard time with the idea of digital painting; the potential for failure is essential.

The current painting in progress is stuck in that clingy, fearful, pre-hate phase. There are a few real sweet spots, glimmers of what it could become, but it's absolutely not there yet. I have no choice but to push it through the hate phase. If I've learned anything about my process, it's that momentum is a big help. So, the plan for tonight is to rush headlong into ugly, to obscure and destroy, drip and splatter -- and to have faith that the painting and I will come out the other side stronger for our trials -- until I have no other choice but to fix the mess I've made.

Sweet spot. In memoriam.

The Unwilling Feminist. Or, dealing with the role of gender in one's own art.

I hopped the Metro-North up to New Haven yesterday to attend Yale's MFA Open House. On the way back, my tired mind inevitably wandered to the topic of my own artwork. It looped idly around the whats and whys, contextualized by having just visited a dozen studios of first-year MFA students as they approach the end of their first semester in the country's top painting grad program. My conversations with them tended toward a discussion of their work itself and how its direction is changing since coming into the program, the where and when of their undergrad, and the portfolio and interview portions of the application process. And so I was left pondering how the disparate tangents of work that I'm making and brainstorming (the bodyfolds, the babies, the dress paintings) make sense together as a body of work.

This isn't a new rumination, by any means. Since mostly abandoning my previous 'style'/approach, I've been trying to let myself paint whatever it is that attracts me, without [too much] judgement. There have been ample fits and starts and dead ends, though, leaving a wake of scattered ideas and unfinished pieces. How to bring it all together into something cohesive and application-worthy (whether for grad school or another opportunity) is something I'm often trying to figure out.

Bodyfolds 1
Oil on canvas, 23"x23"

Baby #3: Dexter
Oil on canvas, 17"x17"

This train of thought keeps bringing me to the same conclusion: I seem to be painting about "women's issues." And every time I reach that idea, I'm quite taken aback. Surprised, and dare I say, appalled. And then I'm a little horrified or embarrassed at my own reaction. Is it really so horrible to think that I might be painting about "women's issues," whatever that means? Is the thought of being a feminist artist so terrible?

No, of course not. But it's not something I identify with, either. I've never considered “women's issues” or feminism at all central to my existence or philosophy, perhaps to the chagrin of the women around me. I have been content to essentially see the world as somewhat ungendered, or to accept and live by "men's" rules (and often, to win by them, at least according to my own scorekeeping). The way I see it, I am a body but I don't feel like a terribly gendered body.

Except when I do feel like a terribly gendered body, which of course makes me incredibly anxious. And my paintings tend to come from a place of anxiety. If the challenge is now to figure out the underlying impetus of my imagemaking (rather than what the images themselves have in common, which worked for me in the past) then maybe there's your answer.

So, now to deal with this idea that I might be painting about "women's issues" or making "feminist art" or something along those lines. I think one problem I have with owning those sorts of statements is that they feel incredibly universal, whereas I'm intending to make work about the personal. I'm primarily just sorting out my own shit here; if it's relevant or resonates with someone else, that's great, but ultimately it's secondary. I identify more closely with the multitudes of artists who use personal mythology, psychology, and narrative as content. Furthermore, there's some frustration over the tendency for the question of gender to always be brought up in the context of women's work, but not in a man's.

Help Is Not AppealingKarla Black, 2010Sugar paper, chalk, spray paint, ribbon

Help Is Not Appealing
Karla Black, 2010
Sugar paper, chalk, spray paint, ribbon

“It bothers me that only women's work is gendered. I wouldn't mind these questions if male artists were also asked them.” - Karla Black, interviewed in Modern Painters, October 2011
But I also wonder if that tide might be turning a bit. Both Andrew Salgado (whose show, “Anxious,” was up at Tache Gallery until just today, I believe) and Aaron Smith are working with ideas about masculinity and its portrayal in a way that seems akin to how some women artists who really own their feminine or feminist content have been dealing with those issues.

Untitled (After Bataille)
Andrew Salgado, 2010
Oil on canvas, 40"x36"

Zooshy
Aaron Smith: 2011
Oil on panel, 60"x48"

In examining my work, where it comes from, and where it fits, I think what is closer to the truth is that it comes out of my failure or refusal to embrace women's role(s). The bodyfolds paintings definitely arose out of a tense relationship with my own flesh. The baby paintings arose out of my anxiety (and if I'm totally honest, my attraction/repulsion tension) over children and childbearing. The dress paintings started with inklings of feminine costume or artifice -- quite literally the "trappings" of womanhood? -- perhaps involving mother-daughter relationships and coming-of age rites, and are now shaping up to have something to do with a feeling of foreignness in my own skin.

Lastly, part of my rejection or discomfort over where or whether my art might intersect feminist art comes out of the fact that I'm almost wholly uninformed about the whole thing. Feminism and art? I have no clue, really. I was at the Brooklyn Art Museum a few weeks ago with a friend, where we saw the Dinner Party and got into a discussion about its merits or lack thereof. All I could really say is something like “well it's art-historically important.” I have embarrassingly little knowledge of that whole realm, both historically and whatever may be going on contemporarily. Luckily, to fix that, I just need to read up.