dayoutlast: Charlie James

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

Showing posts with label Charlie James. Show all posts

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Heidi Kidon in "Other Worlds" Curated by Martin Durazo @ Charlie James

Overcharged Ornament with an Appropriated Glow, 2018

Acrylic on canvas with LED

glow panels

30 x 40 inches

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Casey Reas "Linear Perspective" @ Charlie James Gallery

Not quite sure where I stand with works like these, it is worth thinking about the relationships of painting (color) and video (moving images) within a perception of time both concrete (these things actually move and change according to some sort of algorithm) and more metaphorically as they reflect conditions of of our current time, especially digital media where quite often the self is thought to be obvious by a hand-held portrait; here portraits are masked by digital "facture." Portraits to be sure, it's less clear the subjects, and hence my own ambivalence about them. Somehow they heightened the view just outside the door. See below (windows through windows from windows, filtered layers to be sure all around).

"Record. Collect. Compose." Organized by Masood Kamandy @ Charlie James Gallery

Veronique d'Entremont, 2015

Phantom Limbs: La Mirada

Paper, wood lathe [sic], paint chips, and other residue

Rimas Samaitis, August 12, 2015, 1:12 PM

Deer Creek Road #4, 10-20 kHz

Jacquard Woven Cotton, Hand Dyed

Rimas Samaitis

Octoloop, 2015

PVC, Sand Wheels, Bamboo, Tie-Dyed T-Shirts, Patinated Copper Pipe,

RJ21 Wire, and Coaxial Cable

Saturday, August 30, 2014

"The Cartographer" Curated by Alise Spinella @ Charlie James Gallery

Charles Gaines

Numbers and Trees, X1, #3, Audrey, 2014

acrylic sheet, acrylic paint, ink, foamboard

46 1/2 x 50 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches

Clarissa Tossin

Shared Napkin (Andrezza, Guilherme, Ludovic, and I), 2007

paper napkin, lipstick, grease, red wine, chocolate, tomato sauce, and coffee

11 1/2 x 16 1/4 inches

Clarissa Tossin

Shared Napkin (Louisa, Lindsay, and I), 2007

paper napkin and pomegranate

9 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches

Alise Spinella

I Hold the Line, 2014

charcoal, grease pencil, graphite, acrylic polymer on canvas

36 x 28 inches

Steve Roden

Gloppen = Open Glow, 2007

Four-color offset printed map

27 x 39 inches

The map, a representation of a surface largely uneven and virtually incomprehensible at any scale, charts a landscape, a body, a relation of parts. Seeing these works had me thinking about Vermeer's paintings that included maps in their backgrounds thereby suggesting a way to look at painting as map but also to think about a subject of exploration, one of great unknowns in Vermeer's time since so few had developed any sense of a world-image, certainly as we know it today from satellite photos and daily, global exchange. So, this show had me wondering, ultimately, how I was to think about the map-maker, the cartographer (the artist I'm assuming) rather than the the map as subject.