dayoutlast

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

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Gregory Michael Hernandez @ Roberts & Tilton

A Monument to Infrastructure (Bunker #1), 2013

Concrete, acrylic paint, wood, hardware

76 x 76 x 76

Aside from it's funny presentation on a very undersized plinth (read: base), I was only interested in this sculpture. If the base wasn't enough to complicate the viewing, it would also have been nice to see the work by itself without any other visual distractions in the field (other artworks on the wall). In one version of my viewing (seen in the photographs above), the only way to isolate the object was to get in close and lose the whole. This was actually a good idea as it afforded thoughts about the subject of the work (architectural defense) and the numerous perspectives available: eyeball, globe, pac-man...

John Mason "Crosses, Figures, Spears, Torques" @ David Kordansky

Steve Roden "ragpicker" @ Susanne Vielmetter

Detail from "symbol/cymbal," 2013

Four drawings (framed), four LP hand drawn labels,

four vinyl records, four turntables, four amps,

four shelves, eight speakers

29 x 138 x 17 inches

everything crushed underfoot, 2013

oil on linen

60 x 36 inches

thirteenth view, 2013

oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

fourth view, 2013

oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

eleventh view, 2013

oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

first view, 2013

oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

a window, a cloud, a tree (mirage no. 3), 2013

plaster, cloth, and cardboard

9 x 18 x 20 inches

which is still. visible. (the orange is mine), 2013

oil on canvas

48 x 36 inches

black extendable (fragments and letters), 2013

oil on linen

60 x 84 inches

Note: The following is mostly a stream of thoughts in the viewing of this show (one in which I could not decide where to start).

Historical convention assumes that abstraction does not address the body (a body) but landscape, which is really just a fragment of a larger body, a celestial one. Distorted figures. Positive and negative space conflation. Symmetry and Mouse Trap. Uterine. Lines hold things together more than they define shape and space, though, of course, they do that too. Dimensional line as structure. Spinning head + speaker ears= MICKEY MOUSE. rodent. Roden. Rodin. YODA. Truss. Bridge. Joseph Stella. Mostly oriented toward the vertical (upright being) with an occasional horizontal (again the portrait or the landscape). Incessant (insistent?) layers. Web. Matrix. Subterfuge. Sublimation. Emergence. Ice... Melting...

Maha Saab @ ltd

Horse in the Dark, 2013
acrylic, oil felt on wood panel
60 x 48 x 2 inches

Untitled (steel, silk, sweat shirt), 2013
Marker, silk, steel,
Dimensions Variable

Highlights, 2013,
Enamel, oil, fiberglass on steel
72 x 19 inches

Maureen Gallace @ Overduin and Kite

Landscape. John Marin. An extremely, modestly-scaled picture that suggests a greater whole, the vast. Friedrich without the human figure. Here, a domestic building void of activity stares blankly toward and from the horizon, partial to the sky in amount. Each door/window is the frame within the frame which alerts the viewer to the game, the game I have chosen to play by photographing each door and window detail in order to not only enjoy the intimacy of carefully appointed brushstrokes, but also to think about histories since Marin. Rothko springs to mind next (but only in structure); this is a tough one, because landscape painting of this kind tends to find its way to shops and stands in beachside communities. By context (contemporary, urban art gallery) and installation strategies (the paintings themselves spread spare throughout the viewing space like tiny little portals), I can also read Gallace's work as multiple layers of the ongoing questions surrounding flatness/depth, doors and windows. The painter's obsession with light (broad strokes and smaller dapples) continues.