"Works on Paper" - Ian Harvey and Koo Kyung Sook

This past March, Ian Harvey and his wife Koo Kyung Sook had a small group show at the Shimo Gallery in the bottom right corner of midtown. In this small and intimate space the husband and wife team, who are known to frequently collaborate on elaborate and labor intensive multi-part paintings constructed from small business cards acting as support, put together a grouping of individual works in each of their own unique styles and techniques.

Ian Harvey, No. 158, Ink, acrylic, and shellac. 2016

Perhaps my favorite element of the work I have seen of Ian's, tonight as well as on a few other earlier occasions, is the different approach to materials or the physically of those materials that he gives attention to. The use of the different media, the ink or the acrylic, or even the shellac or occasional oil, all plays a role with the color it brings as well as the varying ways in which its physicality and surfacing are deployed and utilized. The different opacities, or multi dimensionality, or contrasting effects impact the feel of the work uniquely while also spontaneously and deliberately. There are no mistakes or accidents here, there is only intention and expression. 

Ian Harvey, No. 157, Ink, acrylic, shellac, and oil. 2016

Koo Kyung Sook, Markings 15-4, Woodcut. 2015

Koo's work, these magnificent woodcuts, is so physically engaging and rewarding. I stood in front of several, if not all, of her prints show that night and marveled at the sculptural qualities, and at the massive amount of sneaky unassuming and monumentous detail. The pulp that makes up these works has real three dimensional elements to it, the paper pulp having been built up further and further to create winding valleys of color and form. The one color palette is also supportive, creating and highlighting form in addition to that which the winding crevices of the paper itself inhabits. It was so astonishingly straightforward to get lost within these.   

Koo Kyung Sook, Markings 14-3, Woodcut. 2015

We went to MOMA and it was fantastic and totally worth it.

So SFMOMA happened today. And it was ridiculous. We were able to score some special Charter Member Tickets For Cool Kids Only(actual name) for the MOMA charter member event that happened today, April 30th(or yesterday, depending on when this is posted). The day began when I was able to take a train down the bay area, which was also fantastic. Let's hear it for the trains.


Model Behavior

SFMOMA has been closed for just about 3 years now for massive renovations and expansion. This new wing of the museum, sandwiched between existing buildings and towers in the center of the block, roughly doubled the show space of the previous museum. The new addition was designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta as an homage to the notable fog of San Francisco and the imposing rolling wall it is capable of forming in the city by the bay.They were tasked with creating a compelling and relevant form on a nearly invisible site. Model Behavior is one of the first exhibits you are greeted by upon entering the new wing, and represents some of the earliest ideas for the new museum wing.

Model Behavior

Model Behavior

Model Behavior

 Sculpture Garden

Near the exhibit for the museum expansion is an outdoor sculpture garden complete with a living wall and several large Alexander Calder works, as well as other artists. Just off the garden was a large room with several more Calder mobiles on display. In the photo below you can see one of the large scale non-Calder pieces on the balcony, as well as the living garden wall installed behind it.

Barnett Newman, Zum Zum 1, 1969, Weathering Steel.

Alexander Calder, Tower with Painting, 1951, Metal, wood, thread, and paint with oil on canvas mounted on wood.

The plague beside this work of Calder's states that this is piece from an unofficial series he began in 1951 creating wall-mounted towers similar to this one. These were a slight deviation from his more recognizable constellation-style work and showcase a heightened focus on the creation of work from line. In the photo below you can see another work of Calder's, this very large mobile greets you as you enter the museum from the 3rd street entrance and hangs above the redone set of stairs, remodeled to tie in with the now completed new wing.

Alexander Calder

Richard Serra

Richard Serra, Gutter Corner Splash: Night Shift, 1969/1995, Lead. 

Originally conceived and executed in 1969, this work was recreated as a perminent installation at SFMOMA in 1995, taking over three nights to fully install. Serra heated shards of lead and then repeatedly threw them into the "gutter" of the room, the point where the vertical space of the wall met the horizontal of the floor (the literal intersection between the tradition worlds of painting and sculpture). Once each cast was completed, Serra and his assistants removed it from the gutter and placed it on the floor. The work is direct, powerful, and beautiful; displaying the action required in the creation and the unique characteristics of lead as a material.

Richard Serra, 1-1-1-1, 1969/1986, Hot rolled steel.

Richard Serra, House of Cards, 1969/1978, Lead antimony.

I was very excited to come across this work. Each of the four panels of lead antimony used weigh in at 12,000 pounds. Each panel is precariously balanced against its neighbor to create a freestanding and sound work with a hollow center to counter the solidity and rigidity of the panels themselves.

Richard Serra, Sequence

Richard Serra, Sequence

Just before closing we were able to bribe security to let in to see this massive sculpture Serra has installed in the new admission free section of the museum off Howard street.

Carve, Cast, Mold, Print: Material Meditations

Outside of the wildly impressive and imposing work seen of Richard Serra, and perhaps the specific Diebenkorn seen at the end of this post, this was my favorite part of visiting MOMA on Saturday. Architecture, as well as the concept of form and its tie in with function, has been a topic of interest and influence for my work. Donald Judd (who actually has a chair in this scene, copper in color, seen just behind the laminated wood chair in the front, center) wrote an article in the Design and Art White Chapel book titled It's Hard to Find a Good Lamp. Just as a side note, I actually picked this article to read first because I found the title humorous, and only realized that Judd was the author after flipping to it from the table of contents. Of course I would be interested in an article written by Donald Judd. It's also worth noting that in the entire five page article Judd never once mentions anything about lamps.

The article talks about Judd's efforts at turning a sculpture of his that already resembled furniture into an actual table, and finding that the thingness of the work was already established and any effort at imbuing function into it, such as making it an object with a specific tangible use, was unsuccessful. There is overlap between architecture, sculpture, and furniture, and often similar themes can be present in all three. But while there may be specific venn diagram features to the three, once something is identified as furniture, or as architecture, it can never be just sculpture. The thingness of sculpture is different and less specific to that of furniture and to architecture. Tangent aside, it was really cool and really exciting to see a room like this in the museum of modern art. The text on the wall accompanying this installation has a quote by an architect who's work I find influential.  Le Corbusier famously quipped: "Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois."

15 chairs by various artists/designers

Marijn van der Poll, De hit, chair, designed 2000, formed 2010, Steel; folded and smashed to form with accompanying sledgehammer.

Michael Boyd, Plank, sidechair, model P1201, designed 2011, fabricated 2012, Douglas fir. 

Two Other Really Neat Things

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #67, 1973, Oil on canvas. 

Antony Gormley, Quantum Cloud VIII, 1999, Steel.

Bay Area Exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

A Trap in Soft Division

In March, several of my fellow grads and student-friends took a day trip down to the Bay Area to see some art. One stop we made, not our first stop, was at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Mission in the Soma area of San Francisco. One of my favorite things in this museum, perhaps my only favorite, was Samara Golden's site-specific and multi-media installation A Trap in Soft Division. It is tucked into a side room when you first enter the museum, off to the left side in room that acts a bit like a cul-de-sac off the main area of the building.

Caiti Chan and I looking down into the mirrored floor of A trap in Soft Division, 2016

When you first enter the space you are faced with a disorienting scene. Squared off in the center of the room is a white wall/fence surrounding what at first feels reminiscent of an indoor ice skating rink. The whiteness of the room hits you next, so that while you are trying to place the idea that you are potentially standing before an indoor rink wishing you had your skates, you are dazzled by the stark yet beautifully clean, pale, yet bright scene before you. By now you have reached the waist-high white wall and are trying to comprehend the "ice" of this rink, but the perspective is confusing. Then you look up towards the ceiling and the confusing view begins to register within your understanding of physical space.

Looking down to see up, A Trap in Soft Division, 2016

The "rink" that one is presented with upon arrival is not actually the core of the work. The floor within the square white box is covered with mirrors, reflecting the ceiling far above the viewer. In the alcoves of the room's ceiling are small everyday environments which are shown in the glazed floor of the space, creating an engaging and nauseating sensation of vertigo. Even when you know that what you are seeing is an illusion, the space-shifting sense that you are looking down into a series of rooms stories below you is hard to shake. The initially innocent view of the room as it is primarily presented to you falls away and you are left with this shocking sensation of expanding space. You are fighting your own awareness, and it is this experience that causes you to see your present surroundings differently. 

Panorama of A Trap in Soft Division, 2016

Samara Golden claims a desire to create a "sixth dimension" - a place in which the future, the past, and the present exist simultaneously, with the goal of creating a hypnotic, hallucinatory space that draws the viewer in completely.  Quoted from the following Youtube clip of the installation, Golden creates her work to "gesture towards the materializing the impossible."

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The second work from the YBCA that day that I found powerful and impactful was Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Designed and completed by Pitch Interactive, a data visualization studio based in Oakland, this short narrative data visualization documents every drone strike carried out in Pakistan beginning in 2004. The visualization can be viewed here: http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/. 

Film still from Out of Sight, Out of Mind, 2013

Above is a still from the visualization which shows the moment right before the data punched me in the gut with the force of its presentation. In YBCA this was shown in a small black room with only two minimal rectangular stools. The screen is large enough to spread from edge to edge of your visual field. It is presented in a manner where all other stimuli seems to melt away and you are left face to face with this stylized and effectively delivered flow of data points. The data is simple; since the start of the conflict in the middle east there have been an assortment of drone strikes in Pakistan, this data visualization merely presents them in conjunction with a specific time line. However, the manner it which it is presented is impactful and clear. The data points, shown as the missiles fired from the very drones they represent, hit home with surprising resonance. The firm states that this visualization sprung out of the "inadequacies of other attempts to report the effects of an invisible technological war." 

Film still from Out of Sight, Out of Mind, 2013, showing more detail in the data points.

"Not a lecture" with Peter Schjeldahl

Peter Schjeldahl

On Thursday, March 10th, some friends of mine and I made the soggy trek to UC Davis to listen to the art critic from the New Yorker give a lecture. We arrived just in time to hear Peter Schjeldahl inform the audience that he doesn't give lectures, as he never learned how. Additionally, he does not consider himself a scholar, but a writer instead.

Schjeldahl began his non-lecture reading from The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde. "I pledge allegiance to Wilde's model of art criticism," he told the audience. From this reading and from his short commentary afterwards I gleaned a few enlightening quotes.

He quoted Gertrude Stein in saying "Artists don't need criticism, they need appreciation." He stated his perspective that criticism is a performing art, and that every good artist or critic is an outsider in a way that counts. One of my favorite says from him that I grabbed from his talk was "wrongness worries us more than tedium." Which I think is a powerful statement that extends beyond the realm of art into almost any area of human existence you'd like to apply it to. So often I am more afraid of having the wrong answer or doing the wrong action than I am of sitting silently and just dwelling in monotony. As artists, though, we don't have that right. We should be pushing boundaries and asking questions. Routine is a detriment to creation.

Following the reading and brief commentary, Schjeldahl took questions from the audience. When asked about his work as a critic and the writing done for it, he informed us that he didn't know if he would write anything if not paid for it. This raised some questions for me on the purpose of making work and what derives from the act of making. Is it enough to just make and never profit from the work? Or is spinning profit as existing solely monetarily disingenuous to the product created?

He answered a question of camera phones, saying that he doesn't like photography as documentation of art, "you think 'ah, I got that!' No you don't." This raised questions for me about appropriation and the idea of authenticity.

When asked about buying artwork: "Writing a check is so much more sincere than writing a review, because it hurts."

About the perception of difficulty: "It's got to look easy, that's why it's hard."

And, lastly, on the concept of memory: "Memories are always being overwritten. It's why I don't believe in memories. I think they're all bullshit. Memory is synthetic, not a recording device."

Truthfully, I did not know what to anticipate when driving down 80 to this lecture with a noteworthy and well recognized art critic, so I had no expectations to disappoint.  I came away from the evening with a lot to think about and felt far better for it. So, while this was not a lecture as they typically tend to be, Schjeldahl introduced new ideas or reinforced old ones that I had been considering.  I'm glad I was exposed to his work and way of seeing. I'd rather be wrong than complacent.

What if?

I decided I would steal/borrow/appropriate my friend Caiti's idea to make a blog post about an activity we did in our most recent Graduate Seminar this last Thursday. Caiti wrote about hers on her blog, you can find the entry at caitichan.blogspot.com

So, this past Thursday we were scheduled to have yet another grad seminar critique. These are no problem and are actually a lot of fun and insightful; you can get a lot of nice feedback that you might miss out on when showing your work to larger bodies of students, the dialogues that occur can be really good. The only thing was, this was set to be the fourth critique in a grad seminar class we had had in the last four weeks and we were all a little burnt out from the tedium. This day we were asked to select one work to show. We hung our work and were assigned perhaps at random (or perhaps not) to a fellow grad's work and asked to write 15 "what if's". No more information or guidance was given, and we were customarily released to our own confusion. 

Som was assigned a work of mine to reflect on and wrote 15 interesting "what if's" that I wanted to share. I have retyped it below to aid in readability. I should be uploading a photo of the work reflected on shortly once I am back in my studio. I also wish I had kept an image of the list I created for her. Perhaps I can revisit this post once I have had a chance to catch up with her and get some additional documentation. 

  

Travis (Trevor) 

What if...

1. the object artwork it were suspended (fishing line) something that wouldn't show
2. made the process markings were more apparent
3. used there was a dif. shade of turquoise 
4. there were more curves as opposed to angles, perpendicular, & parallel lines 
5. this particular piece this piece had a backside and was displayed on a the pedestal a pedestal/ground/specific pedestal specific pedestal?
6. more experimentation with finishing treatments to wood (stain/epoxy resin/pour wax on it/burn it/anything other than sanding it)
7. hung on the wall crooked
8. this piece was separated into 3 dif pieces perhaps act as a triptych
9. backside there was a backside and displayed
10. process parkings on the wall like in the studio
11. shadows painted on the wall that don't necessarily match up to the piece itself
12. hung a few more couple inches away from the wall
13. jutting out @ an angle
14. more holes in the side of the plywood in some kind of sequence
15. paint the whole thing blue

And Bring to Bloom the Flowers - Mustafa Shaheen

Mustafa Shaheen - TRVR,  2016

So there I am. Check it out. Even got some Boston on it.


My friend Mustafa is a phenomenally talented painter, with an excellent grasp of form and light. I was honored to have the opportunity to sit for one of the nine portraits included in this recent show of his. This is a fairly delayed posting on the show, I began writing this back before Valentine's day, but I wanted to finally complete this and get it published.

This past month Mustafa had his first solo show since his graduation last December. After our art club, Form, had a group show in the Union Gallery last fall, the gallery director asked Mustafa if he would be interested in having his own show in that same gallery some months later.  He is a very dedicated painter with quite possibly the best work ethic I've seen in any of my peers. It was stunning to see how he laid out and planned his paintings for this show, the scheduling he had from start to finish and the amount of time he had to block out for each canvas to get it all done to his own particular standards.

We've had many conversations about our mutual drives, the one that fuels our perhaps irrational attention to detail and craft, the particular way in which we both try to master our respective mediums, and the intriguing way we both seem determined to explore similar but opposing needs of ourselves inside the work.

He might be the first to tell you that he is more logical than emotional, and that empathy is not an common feeling he deals with. He might be more mechanical than anyone I currently call my friend. But this interest in understanding others and understanding the emotion of empathy drives the work he does as well as informs his interactions with others. His interest is the contrast of mine, where I have an interest in exploring a more logical and mathematical self, seen in the clean lines and well planned forms of my sculpture.

It was fantastic to be able to see his work displayed as it was on such a professional level. He does excellent work, with a desire to understand the inner workings of his subjects, why they do what they do and what drives their daily decisions. There is also an fascinating element to all his work that can inform one about the tendencies of the artist; despite Mustafa's desire to understand the emotional meanderings of those around him, his work is done in such detailed and meticulous practice. His paintings, in ironic and literal fashion, might be more about him as a person than the models that sit for his work.

Making a House a Home, recent work by Helen Grandy

My friend and studio-mate Helen Grandy just recently had her first solo show up in the R. W. Witt Gallery here at Sac State. We have mostly connected in our shared sculpture classes. Helen would tell you she was predominantly a painter, though she might sound a little conflicted as she said this; Helen does have some wonderful three dimensional work, too.

Helen Grandy - Meet Me With Grace, 6' x 4', 2015

Her solo show, Making a House a Home, is comprised of several of her most recent paintings, all done in oil on varying canvas sizes. Her show is well constructed, with just the right amount of work for the space. As you walk in there are five small paintings(perhaps 5x7s?) hung in float frames to the left and a larger square composition on the right. I really enjoy square paintings. Perhaps it is the sculptor in me, but there is something spacial about them that I can connect with. Or it could be that rectangular canvases in either landscape or portrait format are far more common and more readily skimmed over or dismissed as a feature.

The Witt has an odd layout, and has almost a two room floor plan as it is currently constructed. The second room is longer and somewhat narrow, with two much larger paintings with more traditional landscape canvas sizes on the end caps. The somewhat clean/flat white walls and simple layout of the rooms play well off the hectic yet flowing and calm forms found in her paint. The minimal features in how the work is shown do not compete with the pleasantly busy way in which each painting seems to move organically within its boundaries, adding another positive element to Helen's work.

The pallet that is used is reminiscent of a 1950's or 60's kitchen appliance pastel color scheme, with beautiful blue-greens and warm reds and pinks. It is tough to say if there is any concrete imagery in the work just from a quick glance. They could be shapes and forms of flowers, or flowing colorful liquids in a greater environment. Or the efforts at laying out a more tangible world within the flat plane. The title of the show suggests self discovery. The House in the show title being the place within which one resides, and the desire to make it a Home being akin to the customization and understanding of that space that we all must do when faced with a new residence. The need to identify oneself, to know where one exists in the grand scheme of all things, and to make that location and existence their own. To know oneself. Making a House a Home.