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, September 26, 2015

Noah Purifoy "Junk Dada" @ Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)


Untitled (Bed Headboard), 1958
Construction







Law and Order, 1965
Plexiglas assemblage



The Door, 1988
Construction




Charisma, 1989
Combine





Urban Sprawl, 1989
Construction





Zulu, 1989
Construction


Hanging Tree, 1990
Mixed media




Picket Fence, 1993
Mixed media




Four Horseman, 1993
Mixed media




Sir Watts II, 1996
Assemblage sculpture




Untitled (Radiator Pink and Yellow), 1998
Assemblage



Not quite sure how I was going to post these images in terms of sequences (my stream of consciousness viewing experience or a more stream-lined chronology), I have opted for the latter, which is not very often, if ever, the case for my interests with this blog. However, something about temporal sequence seemed worthwhile in order to contextualize Purifoy's work within a larger art historical framework, one I had, alas, only begun to know during the Hammer Museum's Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 exhibition of 2011-2012 (see here for my one and only image; see here for the Hammer's coverage).  

To further complicate matters in my recent viewing of this exhibition regarding the sculpture below, I neglected to get a title and date. So, if anyone can help in this matter, please comment or contact me directly.  Disclaimers aside (and there's a lot more that I would like to say about the work and its context), for now please let the images and the details carry the weight of this posting. Thanks and enjoy Purifoy!







Saturday, September 19, 2015

Matt Wedel "rock" @ LA Louver


rock, 2010
fired clay and glaze
36 x 38 x 37 inches


David Hockney "Painting and Photography" @ LA Louver


Perspective Should Be Reversed, 2014
Photographic drawing printed on paper, mounted on Dibond
44 1/8 x 70 7/8 x 2 1/2 inches






Sparer Chairs, 2014
Photographic drawing printed on paper, mounted in Dibond
44 x 70 7/8 x 2 1/2






































Multiplicity. Art historical referents. Perspective should be perversed. Flatness. Synthesis of photo and painting. Self-referential. Likenesses and double-takes. Pictures in pictures. Pictorial space sutures space of presentation. Cards (chance). Scrabble (language; ordering of letters). Portraiture. Scenes of everyday life stripped to the essentials of the activity. Leisure games. Painting portraits as leisure games. Art=game. Approaching movement, motion, and next step late in ones career.

At some point in the viewing process of these works, I stopped tracking titles of individual works and began to enjoy the complexity between painting, photography, and my own complicity taking photographs myself, while looking, while others were looking (naked eye/camera as well), and it all seemed a wonderful dissolution as it reflected on Hockney's career, one primarily of portraiture as it relates to technologies past and present.  The message just might be that art can be seriously fun. To wit, the following two photos captured two different moments within the viewing context of the exhibition.



In this last image, I wish I could have captured this group of three males earlier when I had the chance. From their resemblances and interactions throughout the show, I surmised that they were more than likely three-generations along the same line. Somehow their presence struck me within the context of the show, not just for personal reasons, but more importantly, as these David Hockney painting/photo works delineate and reflect similar themes regarding generation, iteration, and repositioning (all subsuming concepts of passing time). Somehow this integration of art and life seemed particularly poignant.  Though I missed the chance to make my point clear with a photograph, there was still great amusement while four dudes descended this staircase.