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

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.





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