dayoutlast: April 2015

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.

--Justin Lowman

Friday, April 24, 2015

Rosha Yaghmai "Easy Journey to Other Planets" @ Kayne Griffin Corcoran

John Tremblay @ David Kordansky

Kelly Akashi and Sean Raspet @ Chateau Shatto

If transparency is more a function of phenomena, then ineffectual candles and 4mm plastic as wall (glass?) remind us that this is more metaphor than actual concern. That structure is revealed is straightforward enough. What it adds up to is quite another. Valves (permanently closed off) attenuate key points of the framework.

Chandeliers and fallen wax on fallen pillows, soft landings for extinguished dreams (past/present/future locations of deep thought). One in which the spatial contingencies integrate and combine rather than simply adorn or become extraneous distraction.

Bees.

Suspense.

Continuity.

Filtration. Air. Olfactory. Curve to straight. Back to front. Coil. Single redirect. Duct. Reflexive, recycled (Modernist). Reflective.

The relation between in/out is like the twisting/turning of a knob, activated by a willing participant not unlike an act of a god setting wheels in motion. Smell and memory. Head and tail. Ourobouros. Smithson polyp. A slight return.