Hanne Darboven "Six Books on 1968" @ Sprueth Magers | Los Angeles

Hanne Darboven "Six Books on 1968" @ Sprueth Magers | Los Angeles

Morgan Fisher / Passing Time @ REDCAT

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Jack Goldstein "Under Water Sea Fantasy" @ 1301PE

still from Under Water Sea Fantasy, 1983/2003

16mm color film, with sound

6 min, 30 sec

It was a unique and rare opportunity to be able to see this film Under Water Sea Fantasy.  I only took one photo, but many could have been taken as there are numerous frames, obviously, I guess.  It was enough for me to capture this one in particular, one that seemed to also resonate visually for me with Goldstein's paintings, the immaculate and exquisitely rendered "pictures" from the 80s as well as the later, bulkier works, also carefully finished.  In both works, one can appreciate relationships between what lies beneath the surface and the event that emerges; how the cumulative, phenomenal effect becomes tangible whether it be spilled milk dogs barking, luminous explosions, and beyond or conversely what lies just on the surface of things.

untitled, 1988

Acrylic on canvas

84 x 72 inches

untitled, 1981

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

82 3/4 x 130" 

still from A Glass of Milk, 1972

16mm black and white film, mono sound

TRT: 4 minutes

 still from Shane, 1975

16mm color film and sound

TRT: 3 minutes

Being submerged under water can be quite pleasant, as a kind of removal, especially if one is quite sensitive.  Sound is deadened, surface tension within the body is equalized. Sensitivities are diminished while a sense of timelessness, which is to suggest also a release and freedom in such experience, persists. To revel in such via film also works similarly, to a point.  So, it makes sense in one way that this film, Under Water Sea Fantasy,  culminates Goldstein's art practice, an inquiry that started with exploring how things would accumulate (literally stack up) to occupy space, to appreciate static tension through friction and also the possibility of possibility, of what happens next.

untitled, 1971, wood

Liquidity absolves, as the film, as the great, fantastic, beyond.  Thus, Under Water Sea Fantasy transcends the sublime, something Goldstein seemed so preoccupied with that he couldn't help but rush to its conclusion, by taking his own life in 2003, a cumulative act of subtraction, presumably.  Not quite an aside, it illustrates the double-edged, existential sword of waiting (and any tensions lying therein), while the ultimate assumption seems nil at best.  All Goldstein's strongest works embrace for me such waiting in whatever intensified repetition yet his own impatience with such matters quickened. Apparently the tensions and occasional releases through works that expressed as much were not enough relief or perhaps, rather, a certain lack of fulfillment may be too much to bear, even for those who appreciate a non sense, which is to say the absurdity of life and the desensitizing qualities found within levels of immersion whether they be actualized or imagined.

Wishing there were some tidy finish here to my thoughts, and perhaps yet another dilemma not unlike the ones Goldstein acknowledged so deeply himself (his explorations of the insufferably of langue are well-known and documented), seeing while sea-ing, the record ends, a dimming glow, when and where fantasy becomes real. Still, and yet...

previous two images, details by James Welling

Jack Goldstein's Studio, 1977/2004

(7) Digital chromogenic prints

15 x 9 inches

Mechanisms @ The Wattis Institute

Trisha Donnelly

Untitled, 2014-2017

Projection

Dimensions Variable

Opposing ends of the corridor

The drop-ceiling

 

Either side of a common wall

Trisha Donnelly

Untitled, 2014-2017

Projection

Dimensions Variable

Either I am completely confused or something interesting was happening between adjoining spaces with Trisha Donnelly's work in this exhibition. Having seen Donnelly use space and its lighting in the past (see here) in opposition as well as sculpting with both projector and architecture, it leaves me thinking that whether or not my observations are true in this instance, they should be; and they should be confused, which I think is to the point of the work, especially in terms of subtlety and nuance within spatial passages (literally) and time (more or less psychologically). Which is which? Inside or out? Dark or light? Or somewhere in between...? And, so it is within such thinking that I viewed her works then and now AND also this group show at large, a show titled "Mechanisms."  Donnelly's works seemed more key than the Posenesnke frontispieces that seems to index the show by location and concept, at least overtly. Again, subsequent transitional/amorophous spaces set up by Donnelly's seem more to an elusive point about this exhibition about systems and machines, ones that are perceived and yet not perceived.

Jacob Kassay

Untitled, 2016

Immiscible acrylic on canvas

93.1 x 43.32 x 2 inches

Jacob Kassay

Untitled, 2016

Immiscible acrylic on canvas

94.96 x 60.02 x 2 inches

Like Donnelly's, Kassay's works also double in two ways, redundant to be sure (and to even say), points to static and dynamic states (works that look like puzzle pieces, themselves like states of a scattered union).  One can't also help but think about the flutter of human perception, the primary built-in viewing machines called eyes, especially as one considers the looping film below.

Jacob Kassay

II, 2017

16mm film

TRT: 24 minutes

Aaron Flint Jamison

Greaser, 2015

Vibrator and purple heart

139.5 x 30.68 x 5 inches

It's Base, 2015

Casters and purple heart

6.75 x 30.75 x 28.5 inches

Purple heart, both common element and military referent, can not be overlooked nor overheard as this work both looked and sounded like something. It's wood grains, like waves, also vibrated thereby emitting abstract sounds, as all good wood would.

Harun Farocki

Deep Play, 2007

12-channel installation

TRT: 2 hr 15 minute loop

Less certain of Farocki's aesthetics, the point made by this video installation that so many layers of mediation accompany any single event or series of events within a set time (the duration of a soccer match in this instance), leaves us still, funnily enough, needing more information rather than less to complete the "picture" at least experientially/holistically AND that no single point of view/moment contains the accurate reception of the event in the same way that Cubism is both celebrated and failed by similar principles/desires regarding simultaneity.  The parallel technologies within human experience are seductive at best as physical analog examples (film and the mass-prolrfereation of printed matter) are replaced by a digital corollary of each.  It was fun to watch for the whole family, and that has to count  for something.

Charlotte Posenenske

Series D Vierkantrohre (Square Tubes), 1967

Sheet steel and screws; 9 elements chosen from a system of 6 pieces

Dimensions Varaible

Somewhat of a seemingly obligatory and obvious indexical point comes with the inclusion of these works by Posenenske.  One must think about the internal workings of architecture, the 20th century readymade as sculpture (mechanical achievement and beauty), and a kind of obsolescence that comes with such cultural/artistic references and artifacts, mechanisms to be sure.   For these works and certainly any considered in this show which rely on newish delivery systems of information, also to include ones filled with hot air literally/figuratively,  I suppose by such thought, I include myself and my own complicity in such mechanistic matters.  

Whatever the case, it was worth thinking about these conditions, somewhere between here and there, 1967 and 2017.  Whether more elusive with Donnelly or Jamison or more straightforward with Kassay, Farocki and Posenenske (try to say that ten times fast),  it was also worth thinking about mechanisms that play literally, figuratively, socially, politically et al within such times.