James Casebere/ Ryan Trecartin at the Guggenheim

James Casebere at the Guggenheim

When I saw the recent acquisitions expo at the Guggenheim, I found the dichotomy of my own work represented through the selection of works (its like when you read a book by an acclaimed theorist and you find ideas that correspond with your own - affirmation, it makes you feel, well, like your on to something, or, that at least you can't be too wrong..) and it made me happy. 

Theres the black and white stuff, the photographic which isn't, the loneliness and emptiness, the strange absence (which, I find it hard to tell: is this a representation of our time, or is it an absence in our time, a need we attempt to fulfill through these images?), architectural scenes, void. 

The work by James Casebere, whom I didn't know about before, wasn't the only ones that fit this category but the one I found most interesting. Heres some random stuff of his I found online: 

Supposedly all the picures are photographed using models of places that he built himself. 

The other pole in this dichotomy describes a sort of frenzy, a hunger, an ecstatic party, sick, insane and high. ///Im reading Baudrillard (Fatal strategies pg 114) "The media make the event, the object, the referent, disappear. But perhaps they only serve as support for a strategy of disappearance which would be that of the object itself"///: . Ryan Trecartin falls in this second category. I love his videos, they have that thing, that Barthes describes in Camera Lucida, "punctum". They are arresting. I'm not sure if I understand, if he is trying to communicate anything specific and I don't really care. It hurts in a good way, like scratching a scab...

(...)
But the new 20-year-olds…
Because things are accelerating so fast, when someone wants them to talk about “internet culture,” they’re going to wonder what the hell you’re talking about. They’re not going to understand the concept of it being separate. I think it’s going to cause a breakdown in dichotomies, and how people try to contain dialogue.

So the videos in Any Ever were largely made in a house in Miami. How long did you live there?
A year and a half. It only was supposed to be two months, and then it turned into this really large project. We kept renewing the lease and the house kept getting crazier and crazier.

It looks pretty wrecked by the last videos. What did the neighbors think?
Everybody was OK with it. In Miami it’s houses, not apartments. You can make a lot more noise. It was a really nice experience, actually. We made a shitload of noise, we lit tons of stuff on fire, and no one ever called the cops. When we were done with sets we would put them in our front yard. It started to look like a huge trash dump. Actually, I’m surprised I never shot a scene in it because it looked amazing.

How many people were living there?
It went up to about 15. But there was a lot of in and out, and the doors were always open. Nothing felt lived-in. Everything was from Target and Ikea, and none of it had any sort of life outside of the movie. We didn’t have a dinner table. We didn’t have anything. If we did, it was a prop, and it was broken.

That must have affected the project.
I like working that way. I’m really into accidents within a context. And I like what happens when you construct a whole space where everything psychologically connects with the idea. So no matter what… Let’s say everyone got food poisoning. We would have to use the beds and the props that were already there, and that would become part of a scene. Like all of this, it was as if there was no outside.
 
From an interview that you can find here: http://www.vice.com/read/ryan-trecartin-596-v17n11

Some stills

Which reminds me of Petra Cortwright (note I have only seen her work online but it looks really nice): http://www.petracortright.com/hello.html

and also Captain Credible, whom I saw at the Norberg Festival in Sweden last summer (2012). Random pictures:

 But maybe its just that they are all colourful and sort of violent... Ah, but isn't that a sign of our time...


NY, Brooklyn, with a fan on and lots of candles, 
12-12-28
  

Gabriel Orozco at the Guggenheim

Sometimes you see something, 
and without really noticing it gets into your head 
and it will possibly change how you work in the future. 
It was this one, and another - 
but Ill have to update that later: 

Gabriel Orozco at the Guggenheim NY.

NY
12-11-27
jetlagged but warm

The Chelsea Galleries: Parker (Rousseau), Ju, Wekua

Some inspiration from NY - The Chelsea Galleries

A bit late perhaps, but at least for archiving purposes. 
Lowres pics on my phone that will otherwise die without even 
entering the cybercemetery. Like all those papers, postcards, 
exhibit descriptions that after a year of floating around in my 
flat finally gets thrown in the garbage. I have a friend who 
keeps all of that stuff though - at least so she says...

-------Erik Parker: Bye bye Babylon at Paul Kasmin Gallery.   
Worth noting is that the colours in these quite larger paings were absolutely electric 
(you can't really see it in these photos). So toxic, and in the way the shadows are
 painted they are sometimes simulating a relation of objects and surfaces as 2D
 ( as a stageset built of flat painted boards) or 3D.  Theres an uncertainty created here -
 what is this place I am seeing - a toxic jungle, or a (toxic) stageset of a (toxic) jungle? 
Its cheerful and brutal and deceptive at the same time.

Henri Rousseau? Gone toxic - The difference between the beginning of 

the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century - the enemy 

as the violent other, or the enemy as a chemical distorsion, polution. 

In both cases seductive in spite of themselves.

I didnt however see Rousseau in NY. Just internet mindmapping.

 More chemistry, I assume its "IN".

 Mi Ju  Gaia at Freight + Volume. 
From the exhibtion text -

"The exhibtions's title Gaia refers to the Greek

earth mother goddess as well as the scientific 

Gaia Principle, proposing that all organisms and their 

inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated 

to form a single and self-regulating complex system, 

to maintin the conditions of life on our planet 

(James Lovelock). Mi explores the significance of Gaia 

pictorially, as it relates to today's ecological challenges."

 And then, on a completely different, somehow, tangent.  

Andro Wekua Dreaming Dreaming on the Gladstone Gallery.  
This was really good, well for me/ in my opinion. 
The pieces didn't self-evidently fit. The crisp nakedness, anti-drama of the 
space and the way it was lit. Some paintings that I really didnt like as 
singular objects, but that made sense, although yeah, perhaps in the 
way indicated by the title: Dreaming dreaming. I could feel this show physically. 
An awkward feeling of unsettledness that cuts through reality (Yes!)

I think thats the most interesting stuff.

Premiere night sleeping over in my new studio

Stockholm 12-11-01 

NEW YORK HAS BETTER ART?

NEW YORK HAS BETTER ART?
NEW YORK HAS MORE ART
THERE IS GOOD ART IN NEW YORK

We went to MOMA on a friday with free entrance. What was my thoughts on that? I could have figured it would be insanely crowded. Or not, The Modern Art Museum in Stockholm is seldom crowded like that. But then, it has no free entrance ever. But also, the experience of seeing is very different when its juxtaposed with the experience of being seen whilst watching art, or wacthing others when they are watching art at the same time as you are trying to watch it yourself.

So theres a lot of great art at the MOMA that simply escaped my attention. 
Heres some that didnt. 

Mondrian

Mondrian

 Malevich

 Malevich

Braque

Richter

All my excuses for the horrifying lack of quality in the photos, and I am well aware they are all men (ahh!).  

Stockholm
12-10-22 

NEW YORK

Notes on NEW YORK!!
NEW YORK NEW YORK 


Everybody seems to love it, they all talk about it. 
Did I get lost in translation somehow?
A couple of things struck me though as different and important. First the money thing. Money moves much faster in NY, it comes and goes, detached somehow, competely devalued and yet absolutely dominating. People get paid more (at least the freelanceing friends that I talked with, I guess this is not the case for poor chefs and "backstage" workers) than I would ever get in Sthlm, but their rents are higher and their life costs as well. So somehow they still seem to have a more nervous relation to money than I do, barely breaking even. (...)  Second its a very cool and self-aware place. I have always felt awkward with that, I can't identify. Third - and for sure the most interesting notion I had: So, I always look for the authentic in places. I know how retarded that sounds, and that it comes with its own form of exploitation, but this said I think there are some people who enjoy being a tourist and some people who don't. I don't. Lieven de Cauter writes in The Capsular Civilization about how we all turn into tourists in the postmodern city, including the permanent residents, and the cities becomes themeparks... Anyway; we found a diner around the corner of the hotel (Ok so we stayed only a couple of blocks from Times Square). It was a neat place, basic, felt authenic, very American (I have seen these types of places in innumerable movies - reality and hyperreality mixes so well). A friend of a friend, who was there at the same time, recommended another place - The Broadway Diner  - and we went there to have breakfast one morning. The place was, in my head, less authentic. They played 40s jazz and names of famous people who had eaten there were inscribed in plaques lining the walls. I didn't feel anything when I saw those names except more difficulty in claiming my own experience. What takes the place of my experience of the location, is the narrative attached to the names. And don't get me wrong, I love 40s jazz. Its the names I don't get. I have also never been to Madame Toussauds, I dont get that either. The interesting thing was, that when comparing my own position concerning the authentic American, and that of our friend of a friend, I realized that his choice of diner was probably more authentic American than mine. A couple of days later I bought "Travels in Hyperreality" by Umberto Eco at the Strand: 
from amazon site

"From Library Journal

This smorgasbord of 26 pieces ultimately focuses on the boundaries of realism as exemplified by the"hyper reality" of American phenomena like the Madonna Inn, wax museums, San Simeon, theme parks, etc. Though his tone is witty, Eco's purpose remains that of the semiologist. He is concerned about "the systems of signs that we use to describe the world and tell it to one another," and aims both to expose the "messages" of political and economic power and of "the entertainment industry and the revolution industry" and to show us how to analyze and criticize them. 

I haven't started reading it though. 

What is that? It reminds me of Shaun Tan's "The Lost Thing"























Stockholm, 
12-10-22