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, August 26, 2017

"Analog Currency" Curated by Hanna Girma @ The Mistake Room



Pratchaya Phinthong
2017, 2009
Mural sized text in disappearing ink





Michael Mandiberg
Selections from FDIC Insured, 2009-16
124 laser cut found books





John Houck
Portrait Landscape, 2017
Video
TRT: 10 minutes













"Not/Normal" @ Shulamit Nazarian


David Berezin
FLAG, 2017
HD Video
Loop




Owen Kydd
Awol, 2015
Video on digital display with media player, square monitor, custom artist frame
TRT: 1:48 minutes




Owen Kydd
Window #2, 2014
Video on digital display with media player
TRT: 3:00 minute loop

Zarouhie Abdalian "Work" @ LA >< ART


from Chalk Mine Hollow (x), 2017
Hyrdrocal
17 x 8 x 5.3 cm









brunt, 2017
Steel tool head



How are these readymades different than a shovel leaning on a wall, a specific tool signifying a specific labor under a specific circumstance? Duchamp's shovel was apparently random in its selection and, as luck would have it, its use value is determined by chance, which is to say when it snows.  The snow shovel's singular purpose is to clear away the ground and free it of snow, a liminal and temporary precipitate if you will.  The head of a hammer, on the other hand, has many uses, most meant for impact.  So, singularity versus versatility as well as common ground amongst common, mundane activities.

A downward stroke. A point of impact. Charles Ray's comment in Sculpture After Sculpture at Moderna Museet about Ancient Greek sculpture and how the tool strikes the surface as THE condition of Art in any era; the techniques by which tasks are accomplished with specific tools at specific material and temporal points. So, these tool heads (iron-age conjuring, steel-inflicted). No handle, which is also to suggest no body. Nobody. And also no user. Therefore, currently, how the seemingly immaterial has material impact through audio, video et al.

The overall confusion here, for me, seems to be between the aesthetics of the tools themselves and the results of their tasks, certainly sculptural works in all instances both art (hyrdocal chunks and hammer heads) and life (pounding of all kinds).



working edges, 2017
Programmed image sequence
Indeterminate duration

A digital representation of similar, worked surfaces. 




to hazard functions, events, 2017
Steel, aluminum, tarp
Dimensions variable

Industrial remnants under blue tarp (sky reference and/or shanty town workshop roof?).



Zarouhie Abdalian and Joseph Rosenzweig
threnody for the millions killed by silicosis, 2017
4.1 audio
45 minutes


In/Of the head (face, ear). The intermittent sharp drive of metal on metal (presumably a hammer of some kind) that pierces the inner ear vulnerable to high frequency. Head to head.





and

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Brian Dario and Christian Tedeschi @ Reserve Ames


Christian Tedeschi





At the very back of this photo is the first work in this post; I wish I could have had this view minus the foreground elements (the working table).  The connectivity and balance within this single form was enough to communicate what the rest of the show cluttered.  I kept seeing thinker or self-inflicted, ocular wound, somehow fitting whichever way. Along the side of this same photograph is the other work of interest, one more preoccupied with painterly amalgamations upon a cast form favoring two rather than three dimensions despite its physical volume. See below.



Christian Tedeschi






Brian Dario





So many garages across American are filled with stuff, somewhere between utilitarian (functional/useful) and refuse, disuse, discard, etc... At once it is both a sign of living, overconsumption, disorganization, and (aesthetic) resourcefulness, which is to say retaining items for their artistic (non-functional) potential, especially in their latent possibility, which is to say their potential energy, awaiting a moment to be set in motion, yet caught in a collective balance...

We know this stuff, this setting.  Michael McMillen's "The Central Meridian (aka The Garage" at LACMA hardened such a state as art installation in a museum context (see here) and Dario and Tedeschi revel in a similar context and playfulness that continues between solidifying empty forms and activating readymades of all kinds, especially those that imply motion. It conjures this backyard trope, the garage as space for exploration, a place to simultaneously get away from and engage with it all, a perfectly legitimate leisure-time activity.

In this disorganized chaos of Dario and Tedeschi, there were moments of static restlessness combined with reason, deliberate and obvious tinkering.  These are the ones I attempted to isolate within a photographic frame, something the actual viewing did not exactly allow for but worth remembering in their current state/form, at least momentarily so, anyway.  None of the works suggested solidity and permanence in any kind of substantial way, and I took this as one of their main points.  All seemed temporary and on the move either with respect to concrete imagery (skateboard wheels on chair, ceiling fan) or by material quality (dripping paint on cast cardboards or similar, expanding foam frozen in time, stop-gap efforts to contain).  Therefore, an appreciation of time (a spatial displacement) was to be thought about contextually, formally, and conceptually.

Whether one wishes to view the work and its setting as garage sale or end of the season blow-out or other, it's at least worth considering the ideas and subsequent value that surrounds such activities (the valuation and re-eavaluation of materials/objects in such a context: an old garage in an old nondescript part of town,) ultimately, works to be displayed in an antiquated backyard setting that recapitulates the everyday signs so many of us know so well from now and then.

Anthony Pearson @ David Kordansky


Untitled (Embedment), 2017
interlock-cotton-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished frame
17 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 2 inches (44.5 x 21.6 x 5.1 cm), unique


(detail)



Untitled (Embedment), 2017,
interlock-cotton-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished frame
31 7/8 x 12 1/8 x 2 inches (81 x 30.8 x 5.1 cm), unique


(detail)


(detail)



Untitled (Embedment), 2017
interlock-cotton-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished frame
32 1/2 x 26 1/4 x 2 inches (82.6 x 66.7 x 5.1 cm), unique


(detail)






Untitled (Embedment Diptych), 2017,
interlock-cotton-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished frame
each: 41 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 2 inches (105.4 x 69.9 x 5.1 cm), overall: 41 1/2 x 55 3/4 x 2 inches (105.4 x 141.6 x 5.1 cm), unique


(detail)


(detail)



Untitled (Embedment), 2017
canvas-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished aluminum frame
30 1/8 x 17 11/16 x 2 inches (76.5 x 44.9 x 5.1 cm), unique


(detail)


(detail)



Untitled (Etched Plaster), 2017,
medium-coated, pigmented hydrocal in walnut frame
90 3/4 x 49 1/4 x 2 3/4 inches (230.5 x 125.1 x 7 cm), unique


(detail)


(detail)





Untitled (Embedment), 2017
interlock-cotton-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished frame
33 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (84.8 x 44.1 x 4.4 cm), unique


(detail)




Untitled (Embedment), 2017
interlock-cotton-embedded, pigmented hydrocal in enamel-finished frame
33 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (84.8 x 44.1 x 4.4 cm), unique


(detail)





Untitled (Etched Plaster), 2017
medium-coated, pigmented hydrocal in walnut frame,
69 x 48 7/8 x 2 1/2 inches (175.3 x 124.1 x 6.4 cm), unique


(detail)


Two things synchronize for me when looking at Pearson's work, work that I have been interested in since his speaking during my time in grad school sometime around 2008.  The first thing is his stated  interest in the "event/emergence" within the photographic process development seems particularly poignant as an ecstatic image or apotheosis seems apropos.  The moment when something starts coming into view, especially as a function of light.  cf. Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Theresa" as just one of many, when/where light instigates great, passionate feeling, also an experiential envelope much the way sound also works, which leads me to the second thing.  Pearson's connoisseurship as it pertains to music collecting, vinyl in particular, not only leads me to think about a highly refined palate/taste (highly valuable, collectible objects) but also, more importantly, the surface fetish of speaker covers (another dimension of high fidelity attraction), a black, woven mesh from whence an omnidirectional sound experience emerges much like the appearance of image within the chemical process of photography developing. Thus, it makes sense to me that these works incorporate such a distinct passion for process and emergence especially upon such a meticulously worked surface, whether it be a harder carved plaster or a stained fabric. Indeed, a record is embedded in each of these types and they are quite nice as instances of how abstract conditions of light and dark lean toward celestial/ethereal (universal) while intimating reserved expression.  Moody Rothko and much more controlled Frankenthaler come to mind.  Associations aside, twilight thresholds seem to move upon optical occlusions.