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.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Doug Aitken "Electric Earth" @ MOCA LA, Geffen


Sonic Fountain II, 2013/2015
Live sound installation with computer-controlled nine-valve fountain, 
tinted water basin, non underwater microphones, and speakers


Water. Hole in the architecture. Water. Fall. Reverse fountain. Sound of the surface of water. Optical imagery (acid drops). Dropping acid.  Erosion by nature (dirt); erosion by culture (broken concrete and artist intervention). Water wears down all matter in time. The great and waning solvent.
I occasionally think about the last drops of water on earth. One day evaporation and entropy will reduce moisture on our planet to a single drop. Mars had its day and Venus will be next as the sun withdraws, itself a member of entropic processes. 


A meditation, a contemplation, a reflection, a spectacular event. Water as medium. 


I also found myself thinking about Robert Gober's installation at MOCA in the fall of 1997 (see image directly below). It involved cutting into the floor with tide pools visible under grates inside the suitcase all accompanied by a strong rush of water down a flight of stairs.  So, not only was it water in the museum from higher to lower elevations, but it was water beneath the surface, or at least the perception thereof.  




How is this work any different than a fountain feature at a shopping mall? Processed sound. Process. Process. Process. No end. Priceless. Waves expand; waves contract. Sound. Light. Water. Microphones hold the position of a body's ears in a bathtub. Submerged and muffled. 


Land art returned to town. 



twilight, 2014
Cast resin, acrylic, and responsive LEDs




lighthouse, 2012
Video documentation
Jill and Peter Kraus residence, Duchess County, New York
TRT: 5:10 minutes




Acid Modernism, 2012
Private residence Venice, California
Video documentation
TRT: 4:30 minutes



Acid trips. Architectural acid playhouse.





cf. Bruce Nauman's writings title, Please Pay Attention Please.  



Looking forward and through. Back and forth both sides. Reversals. Another kind of mirroring. 


cf. Bill Viola, The Veiling, which utilized projections through scrims


Bill Viola
The Veiling, 1995
Nine scrims, two video laser disc projectors and players, speakers
Edition of 2




these restless minds, 1998
Video installation with three channels of video (color, sound) three monitors and plywood platform and benches
TRT: 8:03 minutes/loop

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) art. 


A final sunset (see also entropy) except it feels too much like a bad 80's version of Europe's "Final Countdown."


Too literal. Too narrative. Too hyper. Too obvious. 






All stations to contemplate the passage of humanity. Evolve...


Mirror fun house. Looking involves sound, language, and feeling. Immersive. 


"The museum is now closed." 
These actual words over the loudspeaker at MOCA not only punctuated the final viewing day of this exhibition but somehow echoed the darker themes that I kept getting as I wandered from work to work within the show, a show that seemed to be about last days rather than lasting days. I suppose all bad, acid trips must come to an end.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Stephanie Taylor "Kong Boos" @ MAK Center


Broom and Rum, 2009
Aluminum










Kindling, 2016
Bronze with tin plate




Ass, 2015
Bronze with partial brass plating

Hopper, 2006
Bronze with copper plate

Pheasant, 2014
Resin




Buoys, 2012
Rope, cement, stainless steel


The Goodbye Song, 2011
Sound
TRT: 2:35 minutes

Piston Toggle, 2013
Sound
TRT: 4:57 minutes



Swam Sea Span, 2012
Sound
TRT: 1:52 minutes


Camp.  A place to gather for adventure as kids in summer and an idea about culture and taste.  Certainly, word play and free association is welcome here in Taylor's world of objects and sounds.  How song, sound, image, and material feedback through such an architectural context as Schindler's early 20th century, west coast porto-modernist encampment seems apropos and simultaneously ridiculous all at once.  Such seems to be the flavor of works.  I'm either wandering through a summer cabin/bunkhouse imagining myself aboard a ship at sea or I'm reveling in one of Modernism's earliest residential sanctuaries.  Whatever the fantasy, and I'm assuming such worlds are not mutually exclusive here, there is such an oddity and peculiarity to it all that one must stop and consider carefully what is and possibly what is not.  Knot? Such is the purpose of art when so contextualized, I believe.  Whether or not you enjoy camp or Camp, you can't deny you had some fun.  It's just a matter of whether you are telling anyone about it or not. Knot. Knob Goos...

Susan Sontag's 1964 essay, "Notes on Camp," may or may not apply here, but, regardless, it's worth thinking about. Click here to read.



Saturday, January 7, 2017

Kim Fisher "A Little Bit of But" @ LA >< ART


Abutment. Painting in a corner like the crease in the center of a book (or magazine). 


This photo appears courtesy of www.laxart.org Visit here for more images

Dark, empty holes. Motherwell rhythm... Bontecou void. And altarpiece... 




Shape, space, surface. What lies below, just beneath? Beauty or...? Language. Word play.  Image/Text.  Or, another conjunction which opts for an alter altar rather than another other. An other, what a but offers (with one T). 



A butt (with two Ts) offers body intersections, leg extensions, nexus. A butt conjoins the body.  A little bit of butt would also be like a little bit of funk (a whiff of beauty’s other.) Or perhaps a nickel bag of funk (blooming buds) just because it rhymes. 
Rough around the edges yet intact. Yet, yet another conjunction. 


The way things hang, curtains (or paintings in a room). A sly and considerate move to clarify the space while contextualizing other works in the show and the assertion of spatial consideration, positive and negative. 


The way things hang together, groupings of artworks. Cf. Morgan Fisher, no relation, but... He too used painting to consider architecture and vice versa. He too questioned the surface integrity of things (he the floor, she the wall); the paper thin surface. Interesting how the "curtains" are thinner than the aluminum panels that are mounted on the dyed linens. And yet diaphanous thoughts...Paintings that approach edges and transitions, emergence, becoming other things (sculptural/architectural elements, immersive installations, ephemera)...

Torn about the edges. As in uncertain, undecided… (a promise of things to come). 
Searching for an image through fragments and images. Run-ons...
Periods and ellipses... (lips that is).
And yet an other yes, but(t).
Between two things...