one million photographs from Vietnam

i've just got back from my studio after two days of helping Andy (he did most of the work) install the Harrell Fletcher show, "The American War" (see link in title). This photo is from the original San Antonio showing and not the Solvent Space installation about to open in downtown Richmond. our methods were much more meticulous as we toiled to hang over one hundred photographs of photographs and i'll probably post a photo of our version later.

in a true post-colonialist fashion, Fletcher took these photographs in a war museum in Vietnam of all the photographs and captions in their collection, "The American War". so there's this offhand quality to them because they're snapshots, and some of them are familiar (remember the pulitzer prize winning one of the naked girl, burned with napalm, running away screaming) but their impact, for me, was unexpectedly effective. i've been reading Susan Sontag for our critical theory class and we have specifically been talking about how there are so many images of everything in the world that we get desensitized to pictures that should probably alarm us. mutilating torture, GIs who have become monsters, and chemically deformed children spread across the walls. even so, i expected to be numb to the images and ambivilent toward someone doing 'political art'. instead as i removed each harrowing photograph from it's bubble wrap and read all the captions i sunk deaper into sadness and disbelief of what had happened in that war and what must happen in all wars. i think part of the effectiveness was due to the knowledge that it was a factual presentation of the vietnemese point of view. the greater part of their potency was clearly due to the fact that i was carefully spending time with each image and mulling the whole thing over a period of hours. i wonder if people at the opening reception will have a hard time being penetrated with the depth of this show.
i think Fletcher is successful in riding that line of political art well. by just showing us the facts found in this museum without his own embelishments or commentary he is able to take a step of distance away from the work - freeing us from a heavy handed anti-war protest from a portland hippie (which is where Fletcher is from) and allowing space for us to re-contextualize the kind of images we have, unfortunately, become accustomed to.

Harrell Fletcher, it turns out, has a lot of great ideas (i just checked out his website - linked to this title), loves Sasquatch, and is rumoured to do insightful studio visits, so i'm excited to meet him tomorrow.

one million more cardboard heads

it has recently come to my attention that there is a sculptor here at vcu two floors directly below me who is no stranger to the large cardboard head artform. check out the link for more David Herbert.

one million reasons scientists should make art

1. Tim Hawkinson
2. Having black paint poured over yourself in a bathtub to generate sequential images which dictate the shapes making up this topographical portrait made of foam.

3. Making collage scientific



4. Rainbow Belts


5. Musical paper machet log with tiny dudes that hit the branch stumps in a percussive symphony

6. Gigantic homemade bagpipes


7. Supersonic babies of the future


8. Peter Halley
the ACE staff had left this outside their storage door, thank goodness.




not my favourite Tim Hawkinson stuff, but good enough to keep me from hating the ACE this year and losing my faith in artist scientists due to the rest of the gallery's show (repeated below) - a disclaimer to which i make, in part, in honor of the art ideas of my scientist friend, Elliott Carter Ferris.

one million reasons scientists shouldn't make art

1. Ken Feingold
2. Basing your art on talking heads without referencing "The Talking Heads"

Cindy and Keith talk back on our first encounter with the talking heads that would dominate every room.

3. The sound diffusing foam nailed to the wall is way more interesting than their videos of robotic talking heads.

4. Making artificial intelligence that makes you feel dumber for watching it.

Yep, these bed heads talk.
i will say that creepy talking heads are fun to see with friends, in the same way a bad movie is fun to see.
here Dave kept waiting for these talking heads on pillows to kiss and reminded me of that Dave laugh i loved so much in the late nineties when we were roommates.

5. Making stuff you want to touch, but aren't allowed to.

Keith and Cindy wanted to touch them. O.K. we all did.



6. When the black balls you sloppily paint black are more interesting than the robots you spent years developing.

i think this one is my favourite because of the balls. these heads are cast from the artist's own head.


7. "You are in a flower pot"

we had some good questions for this head that was programmed to respond to the voices in the viewer's microphone. we stumped him pretty good on the nature of his own existence (no pun intended).

8. Installations that make you wish The Talking Heads were being played as a dance track but, once again, aren't.

that Keith can DANCE.

9. Using dummies to up the ante

10. Resorting to the kind of interest one gets when entering an antique shop to lure viewers into another talking head.


11. using more dummies and making me tired of being there.


the first time i ever went to L.A. was about this time of year in 2001. besides becoming friends with Ruel, i saw the ACE Gallery showing Tara Donavan* and selling a catalog of Lawrence Carroll: a life changing experience. The ACE's space is so great and their shows so quality that going to the ACE on Wilshire is the one thing i consistently do when visiting L.A. consequently it's the only stretch of L.A. I feel comfortable with: I know that stretch of Wilshire well, the elephants drowing in the LaBrea tar pits just down the road, the Roo Koo Koo restaurant, and the same little old man who lives in the art deco dumwaiter which elevates you to the ACE.

that said, this was one the most dissappointing shows i have encountered on my ACE visits.

*check out the link to Joe Penrod for his recent entry of an ACE gallery photo of Tara Donovan's ceiling of billowing styrofoam cups.

O.M.C.M.D.U.C.B.2005, part II

"Santa's Little Helpers"







"Barnyard Brawl"

one million hunches

Jasper Johns = Fred Schneider

one million cutllages made during Utah Christmas Break 2005, part I

i think i did buy about a million toll paintings and cutting boards from the thriftstores from salt lake down to manti in order to come up with these. that valley is littered with goldmines.

one million classy things about the art reception in Staunton

first of all: the campus. Mary Baldwin College. CLASS-SSY. this is the building our art show was housed in. i think paul revere lived in it.





second of all: Paul (gallery director and our critical theory teacher). the definition of class. he was so good to us, inviting us to show, making a great reception including a dinner afterward.


thirdly: artists posing with the artwork. here we're attempting to turn the corner of unclassiness by heavily working it's opposite. plus a good opportunity to compare our photos with the ones in the show invitation postcard (Primary).

Jason

Heather

Me

Lauren


Andy

Mike

Marian

a less embarrasing one of me


fourthly: matching your reception beverage to a modest abstract expressionist painting. i love it.