dayoutlast: SFMOMA

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 SFMOMA. Show all posts

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Selections: Imi Knoebel, Walter De Maria, and Ellsworth Kelly @ SFMOMA

Imi Knoebel

Figur 9 (Figure 9), 1985/1990

Acrylic paint on wood

Imi Knoebel

Weisse Konstellation H (White Constellation H), 1975/1987

Acrylic paint on wood

Walter De Maria

Large Rod Series: Circle/Rectangle 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 1986

This last image appears courtesy of SFMOMA.

I found it curious that this work was configured thus rather than a I had viewed it. I was not aware, nor made aware in the viewing, that it had alternate configurations; there are, apparently, three possibilities, though I have yet to locate information or an image to support a third.

Ellsworth Kelly

White Relief, 1950

Oil on Wood

Ellsworth Kelly

Antibes, 1950

Oil on cardboard, wood, and string

25 1/2 in. x 39 1/2 in. x 1 in. (64.77 cm x 100.33 cm x 2.54 cm)

Walter De Maria "Large Rod Series: Circle/Rectangle 5, 7, 9, 11, 13," 1986 @ SFMOMA

This last image appears courtesy of SFMOMA.

I found it curious that this work was configured thus rather than as I had viewed it. I was not aware, nor made aware in the viewing, that it had alternate configurations; there are, apparently, three possibilities, though I have yet to locate information or an image to support a third.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Cheyney Thompson and Jacqueline Humphries @ SFMOMA

Cheyney Thompson

StochasticProcessPainting (14008 steps) = FunctionalPath (gold9280.16 meters)), 2015

Oil on canvas

Having just come from the de Young with textiles fresh in my mind (see my previous post), it was not difficult to make the connection here to Thompson's painting. I like how works and other perceptions set up subsequent attentions. I also like how this paining functions (not just as visual connection with textiles and the persistence of woven time and space but also that it verifies painting as a function). If we consider the work and its title as a whole, the quest for logic and reason seems self-evident, a balance between time (process) and space (dimensional measurement). The resultant subtlety at a various depths is also worthwhile. On a fairly separate but somehow interconnected front (front being a good word for looking at paintings), the Humphries painting below offers the alternative, the more obviously expressive in terms of brushstrokes yet somehow adhering to a visual system of rows. Somewhere in between these two paintings lies a painted truth.