when blocks become us.
aka
limited internal space and unlimited external space.
aka
the artist has left the continent for good.

"A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, to or fro, or up or down; there is also a painted white exterior frame band which is edged round the edge to the black. Every part is painted and contiguous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part.
There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion.
There is no space or interval (time).



- Jo Baer (above)




----------

Immediately following her midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1975, Jo Baer relocated to Ireland. Her self-imposed exile coincided with the moment of her greatest critical recognition. For her, the search for a more substantive art required establishing a keen distance not only from the values, ethos, and ideologies that had dominated the New York art world in the 1960s but also from its wider sociopolitical matrix.

She has resolutely maintained this distance, both literally and figuratively, in succeeding years.


via here....

Through a string of events yesterday, I was directed to this entry on Dan Graham.... His work left a huge impact on my last year when it was shown here in Los Angeles at MOCA. Luckily for us here in Los Angeles, Regen Projects is about to open their new show, of Dan Graham's works on October 30th. His work surrounds ideas of architecture, space, memory, scale, mirrors, and interior architecture. In his entry, it states:

"Minimalist art stripped art down to only its fundamental and bare essentials. Rarely were pictorial or illustrative imagery were seen in minimalist works. Minimalism focused on the experience the artwork created for the viewer. The artist purposefully disconnected himself from the artwork. Even in the face of a chaotic world, minimalism was a calm, cool, and stable art form. This minimalist aesthetic was seen not only in visual art but, throughout the art world in literature, music, architecture, and fashion."

"The soul of sculpture is in the center of space and every piece of sculpture is a fragment that recomposes the center. Sculpture is the fullness which opposes the emptiness inside and outside the environment. The full form opposes the emptiness of a room, it is interpreted in a way opposite to that in which one interprets the walls which make up the architectural box. Thus sculpture defines by compressing itself in a silent expansion into both limited internal space and unlimited external space. When the volume of a work of art can be called sculpture, then it is soul. Today it clearly and surely is, because it has been recomposed and resuscitated. "


Michelangelo Pistoletto,
go here...

when blocks become us.
aka
limited internal space and unlimited external space.
aka
the artist has left the continent for good.



1. Jo Baer
2. Talisman London, vintage mirrored cabinet
3. Michelangelo Pistoletto,
4. Rachel Whiteread
5. ROLU Studio







----------------------------

"Angel Orensanz educated in Barcelona and Paris, opened his studio in New York in the early 1980’s after working with several architects such as Marcel Breuer, Martin Gelber and John Portman. He has developed major installation concepts for environmental shows such as Holland Park, London; Red Square, Moscow; Roppongi-Park and Senso-ji, Tokyo; the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin; and ABC Playground (Houston St.), New York. Since the early 1990’s he has developed a prolific body of work in performance, conceptual art and video.

These pieces often carry a marked political and social commentary, reinforced by a very personal poetic language, such as “The shattered Tent” during the wars of the Balkans or his recent multimedia “Burning Universe” for Venice (Summer and Fall of 2003); “Razor in the Eye (Bunuel)” for Florence; and the very recent series “In Nasa’s Lab” and the “Steppes of Mars” in January and February of 2004, developed and shown in his New York space."

ROOM TONES
the Convent of St. Cecilia
21 Monitor St. Brooklyn, NY
OPENING Friday, August 28th, 2009
6pm-9pm with performances by Bulbs and Sister Big Stuff


























An exhibition reflective of our contemporary atmosphere,
Room Tones is also a return to an early and influential site of western art.
The Catholic convent of St. Cecilia in Greenpoint was once a robust institution,
home to a steady then slowly decreasing number of nuns until it was closed and vacated in 2008. Like many empty storefronts throughout New York City,
the situation of this particular convent is a barometer of the complex social and economic changes taking place in Greenpoint
and its neighboring L train enclaves.

Spiritual views and orientations aside, FatherKrische,
pastor of St. Cecilia, has generously worked with organizer Nathan Spondike and his
team making Room Tones an event that will reinvigorate this unique 97-year-old
building into a testament of the new thoughts and
ideas emerging from artists around it.

Room Tones is a collaborative exhibition of 25 highly diverse artistic peers within the vacant
Convent of St. Cecilia. Reflections of the nuns' former usage
of the space permeate thismomentary rehabitation.
Inside this once highly private and exclusive residence, the artists have each been given an individual room to provide an intimate and singular view of their work.

go to website here...

participating artists:
Rebecca Adams
Paolo Arao
Jason Bartell
Nathan Dilworth
Brock Enright
Aaron Frank
Chris Georges
Julio Cesar Gonzalez
Colt Hausman
Adam Henry
Colin Hunt
Brian Kain
William Latta
Qing Liu
Molly Lowe
Owen McAuley
Susan Sabiston
William Sabiston
Mike Schreiber
Emily Mae Smith
Nathan Spondike
Ryan Sullivan
Kristina Williamson
Leah Wolff
KatherineWolkoff

.
the
writings
(drawings)
on
the
wall.
(in the corners.)

Sol Lewitt

"The best part of LeWitt's art, however, isn't how it's made, it's what it does. The finest wall drawings -- and these, by and large, were designed before 1993 -- render one of art's most invisible qualities, content, visible. They make you understand architecture as material; why the wall is a subject; how image, abstraction and text connect; what logic, authorship and even capitalism look like when they're thrown into question. This is no mean feat; it's almost miraculous..."

taken from Jerry Saltz's article here...

(images from top to bottom)

1. sol lewitt: Wall Drawing #146. All two-part combinations of blue arcs from corners and sides and blue straight, not straight and broken lines., September 1972

2. richard wright, wall drawing
3. neil campbell : c/o marianne boesky, here 2008
4. unknown wall drawing

Marcel Duchamp
16 miles of string.
1942












"String was among the cheapest materials available, and Duchamp bought 16 miles of it, of which only about one mile was used, to prepare an entanglement in which the visitor experienced difficulties in finding his way to the paintings, a metaphor for the difficulties which the layman often encounters in the attempt to understand modern painting....During installation the string caught fire through spontaneous combustion and had to be replaced by another mile of string. "Imagine that these strings were really guncotton--they always are when they're attached to a light bulb, and I don't know how, but at a given moment they burned. Since guncotton burns without a flame, it was rather terrifying. But it worked out all right. It was rather funny." That left fourteen miles unused. "I gave it away," Duchamp recalls. "It made someone very happy--a kind of insurance, string enough to last him the rest of his life."

















interesting new art blog..... 16 miles.. here.

"It seems to me that the more you find out, the more questions there are;
the more you know, the more unknown things become..."

-Gregor Schneider

Gregor Schneider

"Schneider dislikes explaining his work. He very seldom gives interviews. Long silences fall: his mouth hanging open and empty as he hunts for the right words. You can well imagine the interview that got him out of National Service in the Army - they asked him how he had been spending his time and he tried to tell them about his interest in walls. Even his smile looks upside down.

In his work - in Dead House Ur, for instance, or in his still-to-be-fulfilled “room in which to die” - he is interested, he says, “in the unknown: in the hidden places which I can no longer feel or hear or smell”.

“I wanted to find the point when my art was surrounding me completely but, at the same time, I could no longer recognise it... I wanted to look at the moment that a dying person ceases perceiving. I wanted to think about that transition point. It seems to me that the more you find out, the more questions there are; the more you know, the more unknown things become. And what is more unknown than death?"

taken from article here..

""Making is a higher form of thinking," claims Gregor Schneider, who began to "make" art as an adolescent. So urgent was his desire to be an artist that, in order to pay for the materials he needed to make his sculptures, he even worked as a gravedigger. Introverted, self-effacing, and a close observer of human behavior--with a particular passion for the lowliest of social categories--Schneider has developed an all-absorbing identification with his work, living together with it night and day in an apartment he soundproofed from the rest of the world. Schneider has tried his hand at film, painting, and sculpture, but most remarkable is the installation he created between 1985 and 1994, in his home. There he built rooms within rooms, walls in front of walls, doors that led nowhere and windows that opened onto dead spaces. When questioned about his motivations, he would defiantly proclaim, "I can't do anything else."

from amazon here..



(listen to burger and voigt here...) via motel de moka..

Claus Oldenberg's "Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich)"
(perfect summer lunch)

please
watch
this
installation
film here.
(makes me laugh everytime.....)

and this one too!
it's a paperclip circus!

(lecia-dole-recio)

(Lucky Debellevue)

Two los angeles openings this weekend.

"The Rainbow"
Phil Gallery, Sat July 18 8-11p.m.

Tom Bonauro
Lucky Debellevue
Lecia Dole-Recio
Tony Payne

Adam Silverman
Heath Los Angeles, Sat 6-8 pm.

Artists Steve Abee, Rick Baker, Louise Bonnet, Eve Fowler, Roger Herman, Lucas Michael, Brendan Monroe and Wyatt Troll chose a pot made by Adam Silverman and created a response piece within their chosen medium — sculpture, photography, etc. Each piece (pot and artist response) will be displayed and sold as a set at Heath LA — the show runs until August 17.

Cerith Wyn Evans
'Untitled (Threshold)'
various Tibetan brass bells, rope
21 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow

threshold:

1. A piece of wood or stone placed beneath a door; a doorsill.

2. An entrance or a doorway.

3. The place or point of beginning; the outset.

4. The point that must be exceeded to begin producing a given effect or result or to elicit a response:

Richard Woods.
complete site here...

Richard WOODS redeploys fake wood flooring and 18th century wallpaper patterns. The traditional motifs of these elements oscillate between cheap Classicism and the pomp of 19th century French Romanticism: pastoral scenes, Turkish and Arab motifs, Regency and Arts & Crafts. Richard WOODS amplifies these motifs with an artisinale method using vivid colours, with intentionally vulgar and garish results, in contrast to the pseudo-pretentious and no longer fashionable good taste of these basic motifs. The juxtaposition of these shapes and colours acheives a sense of saturation within the space, with a dense and dramatic effect.

available at moss.....
the wrongwoods......

from coolhunting....

"London-based designer Richard Woods extends his style to a home in Woodstock, NY, giving the nearly 30-year-old structure a completely new look. Known for the idiosyncratic faux wood prints he designed with Sebastian Wrong fittingly called "Wrongwoods," the upstate New York home is not surprisingly "a parody of what a weekend house should be" according to contemporary art collector and home owner Adam Lindemann."



“What I do is much more about the floors or walls making you look at the rest of the space differently."

alison daniel

Beginning on March 15th, Alison O’Daniel will be taking over workspace, and turning it into a paper-mache mountain.

O’Daniel’s exhibition at Workspace will include a new video installation titled Deaf Mountain which chronicles her deaf dog’s encounter with a visual representation of sound flowing down a mountain. The sound will culminate inside the gallery in a physical and synesthetic audiobiographical soundbath.