"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.

Cf. Tim Sullivan "Lawns of Dawn" @ VACANCY

and

Nick Van Woert "Labyrinth" @ L&M

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.