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.

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Mark Grotjahn "50 Kitchens" @ LACMA

















And so radiating forms persist even in two dimension, even as surface facture seems to disrupt these large works on paper, works that are mean to conjure the dimensions of daily living spaces. For me, these works simultaneously involve advancing/receding space, quickly to be sure, bit like a punch in the nose, a body part that can only be seen through reflection or fabrication.  Obviously, our own face in general is such a place.  With some of the works that have come between these and earlier paintings, it's not that difficult to think about parts of the face, especially as recent positions have illustrated as much.  Sometimes I wonder if abstraction is always searching for what a face looks like, certainly a sur-face and what may lie just beyond either side.

See here for some other possibilities.

I probably should have taken better care of the inventory I include here, but, as you can see from the following list, there are only slight variations across the body of work, all 50.



No comments:

Post a Comment