dayoutlast is a record of my direct engagement with mostly contemporary art, mostly Los Angelean.

As this blog has evolved since its 2010 inception, so has my perspective. What I once perceived as central within the investigation was what was central, literally, within the photographic frame that I shared here. While still an important consideration, such thinking has also given way to more peripheral considerations, ones also accompanied occasionally by text (written manifestation of thought) and the oscillations between them. What's missing here are larger unknowns surrounding issues of presentation and representation; the amount of time and space it actually takes to accomplish such first-hand observations; and the quandaries between documentation and interpretation.

Despite my attempt to communicate here with image and text what is essential in some respect about the artwork, neither representation should ever be considered a substitution for the primary viewing experience. Of course, occasionally there are exceptions.

Most of the time, these posts are merely remnants---residual fragments---from my last day out.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Steve Roden "ragpicker" @ Susanne Vielmetter



Detail from "symbol/cymbal," 2013
Four drawings (framed), four LP hand drawn labels,
four vinyl records, four turntables, four amps,
four shelves, eight speakers
29 x 138 x 17 inches






everything crushed underfoot, 2013
oil on linen
60 x 36 inches




thirteenth view, 2013
oil on linen
14 x 11 inches


fourth view, 2013
oil on linen
14 x 11 inches


eleventh view, 2013
oil on linen
14 x 11 inches


first view, 2013
oil on linen
14 x 11 inches



a window, a cloud, a tree (mirage no. 3), 2013
plaster, cloth, and cardboard
9 x 18 x 20 inches



which is still. visible. (the orange is mine), 2013
oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches



black extendable (fragments and letters), 2013
oil on linen
60 x 84 inches






Note: The following is mostly a stream of thoughts in the viewing of this show (one in which I could not decide where to start).

Historical convention assumes that abstraction does not address the body (a body) but landscape, which is really just a fragment of a larger body, a celestial one. Distorted figures. Positive and negative space conflation. Symmetry and Mouse Trap. Uterine. Lines hold things together more than they define shape and space, though, of course, they do that too. Dimensional line as structure. Spinning head + speaker ears= MICKEY MOUSE. rodent. Roden. Rodin. YODA. Truss. Bridge. Joseph Stella.  Mostly oriented toward the vertical (upright being) with an occasional horizontal (again the portrait or the landscape).  Incessant (insistent?) layers. Web. Matrix. Subterfuge. Sublimation. Emergence.  Ice... Melting...

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