statement

I grew up in a blue collar, working class family. In the past few years, half of the people in my family have faced unemployment or unsteady work; one third of the families on my block have lost their jobs. My dad lost his job when I was in high school. After several months of interviews and disappointments, he finally found another job. He worked more and earned less. Eventually that company went bankrupt and he was out of work again.

The United States has officially entered into a recession. Newspaper headlines are calling this "The War on the Middle Class," the battle of "Wall Street versus Main Street." We hear about this economic crisis in terms of job losses, factory cl0sings, bailouts, bankruptcies, outsourcing, union strikes and unemployment lines. We hear about the increasing number of layoffs each month and the sparse interviews of those people shocked to find themselves suddenly out of work.

My work aims to explore the affects this crisis is having on those families struggling with unemployment. I am interested in what we aren't hearing: the shift in family dynamics, the shame, the disappointment, the pride, the anxiety, the humility, the bringing together, the tearing apart, the fear and desperation, the restlessness, and the hope.

D-E-F-E-A-T.

My work and my life are an amalgamation of media stimulation: researched, reorganized, and regurgitated. Being a child of the 90s, I was weened on television... which introduced me to generations past (mostly in the form of sitcoms). The books that I had access to at my home and various libraries were all old, filled with outdated information. I was intrigued by odd images- vintage visual vocabulary that did not translate due to content, design, and ageing. What interests me is largely due to the way information is presented: the great pyramids are just as captivating as dental hygiene if done correctly.

I consider the mid 90s to be the pinnacle of creative entertainment; it was the era that went, perhaps, too far. Most everything was marketed to the adolescent male- without regard for his parents. Gross-out cartoons (such as Ren and Stimpy) dominated Nickelodeon as well as MTV. Commercials made fun of adults: Bubble Tape went after the lunch lady, while Frosted Mini Wheats encouraged a rebellious attitude towards your family reunion. Toys were based on Rated-R movies and shot missiles... far! Grunge music filled the airwaves with apathetic ballads against high school, love, and your girlfriend's parents. It was a lost generation that realized the world was shit and only smiled when authority cringed at their freak-out art. Eventually, the protest expanded to include commercialization, and then it was over.

Upset parents convinced the FCC to enforce a TV rating system. MTV replaced cartoons with prime-time soaps. And politically charged music was killed by synthesized pop. The demographic became pre-teen girls, and corporations made billions overnight. The creative, angst-induced freak-out was over. But it wasn't just the death of imaginative 90s culture, but bizarrity in general. As long as there have been sitcoms, there were wacky premises: The Beverley Hillbillies, Mr. Ed, My Mother the Car, Mr. Smith (LOOK IT UP), Night Court, and so on. The networks wouldn't air a sitcom unless it focused around a non-traditional family: The Jeffersons, Diff'rent Strokes, The Golden Girls, Alf- for pete's sake! Today, TV consists of uninspired reality shows, generic cop, lawyer, and medical shows, and sitcoms featuring the formulaic bubbling dad, know-it-all mom, and their (almost invisible) 2.5 kids. The demographic shifted again to adults, particularly middle-aged women and their guilty pleasures. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible.

The early 90s were all about me- the angst-ridden boy with an affinity towards the weird, violent and grotesque. Now, society is geared towards everything I was taught to hate. My artwork is a nostalgic reflection of my childhood: a quiet riot glorifying the golden age of mass-media.

Statement

Throughout my work, I am exploring issues of dominance and the division of land and space due to class, race, politics, and conflict. In the beginning I looked at plant life, protected and preserved by humans as well as controlled and governed in order to accomplish goals determined by curators at an outdoor museum. I turned to exploring divisions and differences in neighborhoods within close proximity of one another as a way to draw attention to the physical boundaries created by money and power. Attempting to show this by bringing fragments of these places to the same level through a video grid, I was careful not to favor one over another. These spaces, which I saw as fragmented and separate, turned out to have more in common than I expected, forcing me to re-examine my intentions. Though I was continually exploring topics with two or more opposing sides, I was always careful to balance them equally as to not say anything that might be out of place. A final video in which I unapologetically label neighborhoods in Chicago through my own perception of the place and who lives there begins to conquer these issues, letting my own bias and identity show through. Moving forward, I want to know more about the shifting of populations, contestation of spaces, and the effects of power on minority populations.

statement

My objects serve as evidence of a possible life. Though now static, they serve as an indicator of growth, a preserved specimen. These pieces become relics, infused with the memory and feelings of their creation. Details and textures become an imprint of each step in their progression as forms, as bodies aware of their history and source of being. I consider them precious in their role as documents of a time and feeling, yet they also serve as parasites. This is due to their formation—physical and emotional cannibalism of the self. The value of the piece comes not only from the experience of creation, but also from the transfer of person to object. Considering my life as valuable, I attempt to transfuse that worth into a tactile, visible container through efforts resembling penance. This creation of a being endeavors reconciliation between fear and wonder, fact and feeling, distance and empathy, and intuitive action and its limitations or rules of invention. These rules allow for the works to serve as physical solutions to emotional problems and guarantee a relationship where the more I put into it the more I get out of it. Perhaps also transforming the parasitical into the symbiotic.

Juxtaposition

My work juxtaposes diverse aspects of my life. In the absence of an identity defined by a single religion, culture, place or ethnicity, I have been searching for a definition of my self. I created, “Paper Trail” an installation mapping my physical path over a year, to explore the memory of place. In the following piece, I attempted a new form of expression, or rather, combined the way I express myself playfully in hoop class with the way I express myself in my art practice. Throughout the semester I have been examining my current place through the lawn, which I see as a defining aspect of this place where I now live. I juxtapose my delightful childhood memories of the lawn, with the lawn’s current devastating environmental impact in the Chia Sandal project. The culminating project of the semester presented me with an obstruction that showed what a wide gulf still exists between who I am and what I express artistically.

Alone = All One

Humans are by nature social creatures, motivated by survival. We band together to form societies and achieve great things, but this does not prevent us from feeling alone.

Even when surrounded by our own kind, we may feel disconnected and removed from the moment at hand, like we are lost at sea with one foot on the shoreline.

In my work, I strive to find the connections between us, those that can tap into our collective strength, and free us from the isolating moments when the true meaning of humanity seems lost. I look for reminders of the fact that the ability of one human being is immense, but our combined potential is infinite.

reintroduction

In 1999 a friend’s family sold their house and moved to Cleveland. They had the biggest house, the best games, and the most junk food. They had given us full reign of the basement, which had its own entrance and opened onto a swimming pool. My friends and I literally lived in that basement and I get the feeling my mom is still secretly hurt by the amount of time I spent there. The night after they moved some friends and I snuck into the empty house with sleeping bags for one last night, stubbornly holding onto our time there. The house was completely empty. Every surface was scrubbed clean for the next family to start fresh. But as we lay there talking and laughing the empty space was filled by our conversations and memories. Through my work I have tried to do the same, to create a presence in empty space, to show traces that imply action, and make things that are felt more than seen.

A house is an enclosed space, separating inside and outside, providing shelter, comfort and storage. But my home is more ambiguous. It requires a spatial freedom, feeling needed by others, and a comfort of existing without pretense. Home is spoken of spatially but its structure is made of people, knowledge, and memory as well as space. When I move, my sense of home is damaged but not destroyed. I am still connected to distant homes through telecommunication and I can build new connections through shared language, interest and history. Geography was easy to ignore, but I think a sense of home requires the passage of time. Without my past experiences I have only the initial, static definition of a house.

I’m now questioning the role that iconography of the house will take in visualizing my sense of home, as a spatially defined identity. My other, larger challenge is to reveal more of myself in my work. I find myself circling back to the initial question: “what details of my life do I reveal?” This obstruction is the most unsettling. My work is autobiographical, but when I hear the word “confessional”, Tracy Emins tent assaults me like a nightmare! The modernist aesthetic is an attractive shield but is often just as exclusionary. How does an artist balance being revealing without sensationalizing or being presumptuous?

statement

I employ the human figure as a metaphor to probe socially related themes and try to perceive underlying connections that exist between seemingly disparate things. I have been examining hierarchies of power within social structures and how social structures are created, where they originate, and the way the social structures fluidly transition into one another as a means of sustaining themselves and expanding indefinitely. I’m interested in the way these structures fluidly transition into one another, embedding themselves in unexpected places and the various forms that they take on. My aesthetic includes collecting my own drawings and paintings done in a variety of medium on different paper surfaces, and reassembling them with texts of my own that I collage together in layers. The approach becomes an extension of the content and process becomes integral to the end in the use of a variety of surfaces that become connected through the piece, the layering suggests the constant transformation of society and constant shifts of power at every level.

in the car

It’s almost silent in the car with the windows up and the radio off. The fan is blowing, but its on low, whispering from the vents on the dashboard. There is activity on the other side of the windows, but from inside it’s like the whole world is on mute. The normal humming of the engine is amplified slightly due to lack of other noises in the cabin; it speaks up for just a second as it shifts into second gear at ten miles per hour. Then, continues humming.

Michael's Bound Boxes

Fifteen boxes are stacked haphazardly, tied together by a maze of thin rope. The boxes vary in size: 2 large, 5 medium, 8 small. The small ones can fit nothing larger than a coffee mug. They create an asymmetrical mass of squares and rectangles. On the outer edges, some boxes hover above the floor, suspended by the rope binding. Hooks rest on top of the boxes, attached to the ropes as if to be hung from the ceiling. This suspension undermines the sense of weight created by the mass of cardboard and the unknown contents of the unmarked packages.

cultautobio

I grew up with Barbies. Family and friends would buy them for me without anxiety and my mother never hid them away while directing my attention to the birthday cake. I went through many phases with them, from an age where plain sheathed figures without accessory were chewed upon until the rigid support system of the leg was exposed to buying them swiftly with untraceable birthday card cash. I would arrange the special edition velvet gown with fake rubies on the bodice so that it looked like just another piece of old outfit in a pile of doll clothes to my family but distinct and preserved to me. To be one of the gang I consented to their use in my brother’s daily broadcast schedule. It was called the Barbie Freak Show and was hosted by a stuffed animal, a sea turtle we bought at the Baltimore Aquarium and named Fresca. I owned the pink motor home that opened up to a deck situation so naturally the reality show was placed in a nudist trailer park. Most of their clothes were missing or in tatters after leaving them in the garden overnight so the costuming worked. I was never into the little hairbrushes woven into the box either. We were blissfully ahead of the times.
Most of the plots fell into the themes most observable to us: How do all these teenagers date when all the female characters were related and all the males were as well? Was there incest in the history of Barbie and Ken? Were they a band of orphans, two families bunkering through the cold war, having to start over after the parents die, their emotional wounds cauterized to the outside world leaving only the bonds between each sister’s and her similarly aged companion as they try to make it in the world?
They didn’t confuse me, shatter my perception of self, or push me to dream of the day when I could wear neon orange pumps that match my lipstick. Barbie dolls did not matter one-way or the other. In my mind they were just as weird, and just as entertaining, as the Alien brand toys that began to dominate the soap opera world of New Pangaea as we moved into the afternoon time slots. (New Pangaea, obviously, is the future reconciliation of our continents, dinosaurs return, as well as many other mammal-like creatures with Napoleon complexes and grappling hooks. The Aliens attack several seasons in, this served in some ways to temporarily unite the carnivorous dinosaurs banished to Itchy Itchy Island with the mainland force of Pro and the other peace minded beasts. Two Popples served as defenders of the continent and are then forced to acknowledge their own other status while attacking the closer in appearance to themselves aliens. But I won’t pretend we know what the “other” was yet, despite referring to the Poppies only as “blue guy” and the newcomer “white guy”. )

…

I played in a way that only helped me to perceive the world and was not dictated to me by an object’s bias or image. We dictated its place in the ever-increasing detailed world constructed to contain it. What I could have been told by an unrealistic doll was not mirrored in any reality I knew. My dad cooked our food, took the most care with his work, picked us up when we were sick at school, but was also a carpenter. My mom worked late, went on business trips, but was a nurse. When it came time to translate play to real life actions and later into my artistic practice it was my father’s example I wanted to follow. Not a man’s role, not a woman’s, but the guy that worked on a piece of furniture until it was perfect and whose warm hand fit perfectly over my face when I had a headache. I would sweep up the sawdust in his shop, saving particularly long tendrils until my love for them meant their destruction in my clumsy hands.
As I became older the outside world began to seep into my family and make me aware of my gender. Aunts and Uncles would give me body lotion or glittery earrings while handing my brother gift cards to bookstores. Was I not supposed to like books? When did books become masculine? We used to combine what we cared for so well. Later on while taking art classes I felt for the first time that it was unusual for a girl to be in the woodshop. My professors were all male and paternal and I did not use the tools well enough and on the occasions I did was overly praised. I saw a lot of beautifully made wood objects and welded beings skulking about the studio, threatening to fall on me and generally being useless other than to tear the clothes of anyone who happened to brush alongside. Literally retreating into a corner, I set to work on being without craft. I would make spindly legged tables and write on the side that I was a student of so and so, put my wax dipped tissue papers and some baubles carelessly on top, and wait for people to tell me the table takes away from the pretty carelessness of the objects.
I started thinking more about Lee Krasner. I didn’t care much about painting then. But she was an abstract expressionist at a time when they still had to know the craft and then work if for themselves, appearing to many as if there were none. But I would never not think of her as Pollack’s wife. If someone is merciful about the first sentence in her biography it is the second, Pollack’s wife. Thinking about how detail was feminine when Krasner painted with it, when grandma embroidered with it, when I curled glue into thin gauzy sheets with it, I wondered why we felt the need to care so much about the little things.
After seeing one of her paintings in person, a dark number with hieroglyphic shapes, I found my answer. We needed to work intensely on small areas, prove our devotion and hard work, how much we care more, as if care was equal to value. We would earn our way through labor. I began to see my work as penance. I can work my way out of this situation and every knife slip, crock-pot of wax overturning, and pinprick would help me get there. Working my way back to a time when I didn’t see my play as different from my brother’s, when we worked together for fun, I started making my own skill sets. These are not particular to women, but to me. I can take a wrapper off a straw much faster than you. My muscle memory was just as good as someone accustomed to curling his or her arms around a band saw. My pieces provided me with the reconciliation of what I wanted and what I was told is valuable. I couldn’t deny the value they had to me, I knew how much went into them and anyone taking more than a glance would see it as well.
My conflict with woodcraft remains. But I take the time to appreciate their method of penance.

your obstruction

Askia: Start and finish 10 drawings defiantly about a single subject.

Brad: Everyday, for 1 week, take action on an idea by making something. Share each construction with someone different.

Charlie: Make an un-apologetically biased/opinionated video every day for a week. Shoot and edit each within 24 hours.

Erica: Write a play based on one of your paintings. You can be one of the actors for the play.

Michael: Define your home visually without reference to geographic place or the past.

Sean: Take a personal flaw and render it mortally serious.

Sarah: Go to someone else's lawn and make something explicitly playful and joyous without a hula-hoop.

Susan--5 drawings larger than your height in any direction, using any part f your body other than wrist and elbow as fulcrum.

Zhang: Build a city in your studio.

We'll look at these second week in December.

Host vs. Creator

Blue pen lines weave together like twisted fishing line, suggesting a pulsing network. The system is self-replicating and parasitic, feeding off its host and creator. As the organism grows on the page so does its dependence on its host and vice versa, but this is not simply an isolated entity. Similar creations exist on separate pages, each an instance of a different relationship and state of mind. Eventually these creatures will grow beyond the second dimension, forcing new relationships and new modes of replication.

These organisms are born from impulse, not intention, and they are steadfast in their sense of self-preservation. Their creator bends to their instincts and in turn feeds off their forward motion and drive.

The Marvelous Power of the Hoop!

Forget your responsibilities! Throw away your cares! Join this simple and energizing hoop class and return to your days of childhood bliss. There’s no need to feel awkward or embarrassed when dancing with a hoop. Everybody wins!

Students delight as hooping forces a grin ear to ear. All this can be yours at no cost! Wrinkle creams and exercise routines can return your body to a state of youth, but only this hoop class can return your mind to a time when life was this good.

Susan's waxy lumps

Four waxy, knobby lumps in various shades of craft store candle wax sit in a shallow, tabletop height container of black sand. There is a red one, a purple one, a caramel colored one, and one the color of coffee with cream. The lumps, each about the size of a child’s fist, are made up of smaller lumps, bumps, knobs, and protuberances. They sit perfectly still, evenly spaced apart in their container, which has plenty of unoccupied sand. One, however (the purple one) sits higher than others atop its own red velvet covered container to the far left side, allowing it to be about five inches above the others. It has its own pile of black sand to rest upon that it does not share. The sand does not look smooth, nor does it seem rough. It has the quality of beach sand that has not been traversed upon; it just lies where it was put. The container that holds this small scene has a grey rubbery lip that keeps the sand from spilling out onto the floor. The lip encircles all for sides of the rectangular, hand made display which stands waist high on four spindly wooden legs.

Something Marvelous for a Snowy Day

Royal de Luxe is a French mechanical marionette street theatre company. The Sultan's Elephant is the fifth in a series of giant pieces.
The Sultan's Elephant

birds, beautiful

Sarah shares her hoops.

Our familiar instructor directs us to a collection of hula hoops against the wall. Of the various diameters and colors, though most are black with bands of neon pink or green curled around the exterior of the tubing, we are advised to choose a hoop reaching our belly button. She says our belly button, not our navel. Matching her words, our instructor glides over to a boom box, pigtails waving, peppermint striped skirt floating.
And the beats start up. But lightly. The pop tunes hover underneath the instructions:
When the hoop touches you, you move into it. It helps some to keep one foot in front of the other.
Our communal gyrations begin.
The beats get louder as the instructions get more complicated. Through crashes, rogue hoops, and wall bumps, the group achieves a rhythm. We don't start or stop at the same time, but the process is constant. Where we come together is in noticing the achievements of one another.
We run through a series of tricks, the movement of our borders increasing with our foibles and smiles.
Now for the big hoop. We have a moment discussing strategy. How do several people hula hoop in an oversized model? Starting small we succeed through one member of our team. Add more.
And we succeed in a different way. The hoop falls, but everyone wants to figure out how we can make it work next time.

Sean Darby and the Maze of Mirrors

I am at the circus, watching a man trap himself in the maze of mirrors. Which mirrors tell the truth? Which ones lie? Do any of them? Do all of them? Lingering before each reflection, he poses. A portrait for each flaw. Overwhelmed by self-deprecation he contorts to exploit his every imperfection. His audience cringes as the folds of flab, sagging wrinkles, unwanted hairs and blemishes overpower the scene. He distorts his appendages, his feet, his nose, the curve of his spine. The room spins with the voyeuristic parade of hideous self-portraits. They confront him. They confront us. Begging to be challenged, or verified, accepted, or rejected. The bulging belly, rippling wrinkles, and drooping eyelids enchant me as I marvel in the splendor of their ugliness. The physical response of repulsion jolts me with excitement. To be marvelous is to reveal beauty in the grotesque.

Two Cabinets

Two closed, beige filing cabinets stacked on top of each other, slightly off-center. Small pieces of torn and crumpled paper pile up on top and around the bottom. The fronts of the filing cabinets are blank. The slots for content cards are empty, but the top one is painted blue. The cabinets are turned sideways. The sides almost entirely painted, mostly in shades of blue-green, with small areas of yellow, pink and cream. Each has a large head painted on them.

The top cabinet’s head is painted white and faces forward. It has no hair or lips, but an open mouth revealing skeletal teeth and black inside. Only one eye is painted, solid pink. Black lines run perpendicular across the top of the head, creating a pattern of squares. Black lines are also drawn out from the face, connecting it to numerous small squares with text written on them. Some read “export”, but most read “import, export”. The mouth is connected to a larger green square in the lower left hand corner. A detached, pink tongue is painted on it. This square is also labeled “import, export” as well as “Tongue- intelligent, tasting” and “Think with the tongue”. Surrounding these squares are 3-D rendered boxes stacked in rows on the upper left and extending along the edges of the cabinet. Some of the boxes are torn pieces of paper pasted above the painted surface. In the upper right hand corner are two larger pieces of torn paper. The largest is solid blue. The other has part of a completed maze printed on it, as well as a dragon in the middle of the maze.

The bottom cabinet's head is facing right, and drawn in outline. Inside the top portion are numerous outlined squares connected by lines. Below this, extending down the neck, are 3-D rendered boxes. Column shapes separate each box as they go down. Along side this form the word “engulfment” is written repeatedly in a faint cursive script. Two yellow lines are painted out from the mass of squares. One ends above, and the other behind, the mouth. The teeth are drawn with their roots extending up and down. The single eye socket is drawn as a similar, but smaller, row of teeth, painted green. Two boxes beside this have the words “eye teeth eyeteeth” and “eat with the eyes” written on them. Outside of the face outline are large swaths painted green and blue. A purple line extends from the smaller green teeth connecting to four stacked squares. The top square is small and solid green. The middle two together have a smaller, frontal face with open mouth and exposed teeth. The bottom square is made of green graph paper with a pink brain painted over the top. Next to it is written “the mind the intellect reason”.

one more

marvelous combination

To my point of view, the word marvelous should be the particular word to describe an excellent idea that nobody has ever thought about. And, it is also an adjective to describe the creative work that combine two totally different objects together and have a outcome like 1+1>2. The vision is not able to be understood at the first glance. However, it can encourage you to ask questions and induce your curiosity to explore the meaning inside and enlighten you in the end.
I found such marvelous thing in Charlie’s video work. The whole screen was divided into 9 sections and each section is a video shot by Charlie from 3 different cities. The main object which I saw is the road that he’s driving on. At the first glance, you may think that they are shot from same place. Then, you will not only found that the views are different and some of them are turned-off. Because that the driving speed were nearly the same when shooting these views and the main object is the road, every two different roads in different videos can be combined perfectly sometime. With the same speed and similar view, I felt that I am travelling in two different cities at the same time and on the same road. It seems that the border between different cities and the contradiction between time and space disappeared for a while. Different spaces were merged and created a fresh vision experience when watching this video work.

SUSAN: SIMPLY MARVELOUS

Her new drawings of cancerous cells utilize crisp gestural outlines containing a confusing array of repetitious tick marks and layered pointillism. From a distance there is depth created reminiscent of low relief sculpture. When closely analyzed, the textures become chaotic and muddled. Stylistically, from a distance, it appears as clean scientific illustration, but as one moves closer, the texture becomes less precise and reminiscent of histology slides. This duality illustrates Susan’s interest in the beauty of cancer and the mysteriously random, destructive nature of the condition itself, for this Susan is indeed marvelous.

MY CULTURAL INFLUENCE

I most artistically relate to independent exploitation movies of the 70s. The writers, directors, and actors had a certain rebellion towards authority, the mainstream, and traditionalism. They invented new techniques, aesthetics, genres, and a whole sub-culture onto themselves through experimentation. They proved that a lack of funding and general interest should not dictate whether art should or could be produced- they found a way to make films through pure ambition. That’s how I feel: ignore the status quo, redefine convention, depict unadulterated fantasy, and do it all with a sense of humor and naïveté.

Askia

Teeth and bones exposed, anonymous figures confront us with questions about their place and purpose. Individual identities are jammed into boxes that collectively form bricks used in the construction of something much larger. Insides become outsides and organic becomes geometic as a stream of consciousness manifests itself into layers of organized chaos. But how do these pieces fit together and why? Is this an attempt to contain and organize thoughts from some inner depth? Or are these erratic parts intentionally spewed out all over the floor and walls for someone else to make sense of?

The room immediately hurls its inquires forward without hesitation. I imagine the process of creation flowing from some inner maze of cognition to physical materialization as a hose with the water pressure so high it takes control of itself, spraying bits of information in every direction. But these bits, they understand one another and ask to be massed together so they can tell you what they are about. This is the way all things work if you think about it: pieces coming together to form structures, cultures, identities, and bodies. What is it that is being built here? Askia’s work may force more questions than it does answers, but it knows what it is talking about and begs for questions to be thrown right back.

from loving the hair of erica's women

smooth and sinewy or stiff and brittle or delicate and light
I would like to feel their hair. I would like to take a sample and compare it to the others. I would like to collect them all so I can demonstrate that we bring together not for the similarities, but for the differences revealed in trying to be so. I’d arrange by texture, color, length and width into rows and columns, clusters, venn diagrams, until I could be sure. Until I could be sure of what background produced the very best hair in the world. Hair for good girl exists in a free flowing environment, in a gridded one, from a delicate literalness.
I would like to propose the protection and preservation of these special environments. Locations in which the rarity and uniqueness of each area’s history is unavoidable yet on the point of obstruction by the demanding structures placed upon it. I vacillate between hierarchies. I can find the ideal in no incarnation, no best environment to act out an ultimate conception. But I don't want to lose the options under layers, obscuring the disparity between the associations that make it impossible for me to stop arranging the cherished pieces.

marvelous

Upon first glance, Xhang’s seems like your “conventional” art studio that you might expect to find on TV, what some set designer thought a studio should look like. You go in, and there are various works in progress. Preliminary sketches, tubes of paint scattered around an easel and palette with several uncleaned and hardening brushes laid upon it. Various seemingly random items tacked onto the wall. A mundane clock you quickly glance over because you’ve seen that kind of clock 100 times a day every day. As you absorb the space and let yourself become adjusted to it, looking around, you become aware of the quiet. The only sound is the quiet ticking of the clock somewhere in the background of your head. But the moment that the sound of the clock is brought into your conscious, it changes. You weren’t even aware of it a moment before. There has been no drastic change in the space and the sounds. It was as still when you entered the room as it is now. Or was it? How can you be sure that the clock just didn’t start ticking just now? You assume it hasn’t because that’s not what clocks do. It was ticking before the same as it is ticking now. So how come you didn’t hear it when you entered this room, the same as you do now? It’s so loud to you now, it slices through the quiet. You close your eyes and feel the ticking. You try to synchronize your heart with the tick, tick, tick. Now that you have become aware of the time, you open your eyes and glance at the clock. To see how long you’ve been there, or just out of habit. That’s when you notice. You squint as if there is a bright light or you have trouble seeing, but there IS no bright light and you DON’T have trouble seeing. You can’t read it. You can’t read the clock because the clock is not readable. It has your standard numbers in English, all in the right place. But there’s no minute hand, no hour hand. Just the second hand, quietly ticking away, business as usual. It seems to slowly smile at you. You become disoriented. You feel tricked. In a subtle way, like the way the clock revealed itself to you after hiding itself from you right in front of you. The peculiar time that it keeps consumes you now. Now it’s your turn to smile. The space has fully transformed. This is not an ordinary place.

train in the rain

Marvelous

I've tried to embed this audio file, but have not succeeded. You can download it
here.

Do you want to go for coffee sometime?

I know the agonizing experience of asking someone out. I feel sick, sticky with sweat, my stomach churning and my heart pounding. The build-up is painful enough. And then, in that final moment of asking, and giving up all agency, my heart stops beating. Time is still and I’m standing there, but I’m dead… waiting.

It’s terrifying and often we tell ourselves, or our friends, that it’s not worth it. Why does one go through all that? Is it hope that this could forever fill a void? Is it beauty so compelling that it replaces fear? Is it desperation with nothing left to lose?

This is the incredible chance that Brad Wicklunds work takes. It prepares painstakingly for that moment. There are plans, how to dress, where to stand. It has all its shit together. But there is also doubt. Holding its breath, it walks up to deliver its best line…

And in that moment it dies. Its heart stops just like mine, waiting in a state of half death for a response. A coffee container could be politely declined, or worse, used once out of pity. A guided meditation heard over a supermarket intercom could be ignored or laughed at. Maybe the audience feels they can do better, or prefers things the way they were. All the others in the room are waiting for someone to come to them. I don’t know if it’s compelled by hope, or beauty, or desperation but despite all the risks, it continues to take this marvelous chance.

from Detroit, 10/24/08

My Autobiograpy

I was born and brought in Shanghai, the metropolis in China. As the inequality and inequity between urban and rural got even worse in China since the “opening and reforming policy” was implemented during the 90’s. When the number of laid-off and unemployed workers increased, the social security system was not yet in place, leading to a yearly rise in urban poverty. Besides that, the lack of resources and imbalanced distribution not only formed a terribly heavy burden of living on urban residents, but also on migrants who work in Shanghai. The burden is even worse for them. Considering of all this, when I was very young, I accepted the so call elite education and was taught mostly the cruel competition in the outside world. I call this, which influenced my work a lot, the “urbanism culture”. When great attention has been taken by other artists on the poverty of rural province or some Africa countries, my works are mostly focus on urban poverty, which is not only on material consumption but also on spirit.

I identify myself as the urbanite individual and my works are focus on the representation of urban life and visible or even invisible pressures on urbanites’ shoulders. In my art, I try to show the fierce competition in the urban life, the employment options, the fast paces of life and most important, the distant relationship between people. I named all these as urban diseases which conforms the main feature of the urbanism culture and that gave me the inspiration of creation.

My desired audiences are mostly the young urbanites, especially the young people who have already graduated from universities. As a member of them, I have a closer feeling similar to them. I, myself, was tired of the urban life and chose to “escape” from Shanghai to Hangzhou, another not that busy city, to pursue my undergraduate study. When I realized that I finally got rid of the busy traffic, the noise all around me and the serious competition sensation that accompanied with me when I was very young, I felt that I was kind of unable to survive very well outside this system. When I was in Hangzhou, I felt very uncomfortable with the uncompleted urbanism, such as the lack of subways and various kinds of stores and most important, the lack of “urban personality”. Then, I began missing the life in Shanghai.

When I created my work to present the feeling about urban life, I am interested in present the contradictive that urbanites respond to the city life. On one hand, people want to get rid of the competitive situation of life and the distant relationships. However, on the other hand, urbanites seem unable to survive outside this urban system and urban life became the only place that they can be satisfied.It is hard for me to place my situation in this culture. Even I want to be out of it, I still found myself was rooted in it very early in my life. In my work, I try to conflict the dark side of urban life and the problem of thought and action that brought by urbanism. However, on the other side, as a part of them, I myself act and think base on the same way. As being the production of elite education, I was already categorized in the particular state in urban system and I know deeply what I will face in my future urban life. Depends on this back ground, the concept that I want to present in my work are mostly about the representation of urbanite’s stress and the consequence that brought by the urban system.

autobiography

Growing up I was fascinated with everyone’s culture but my own. Every time I had saved enough money, I would blow it traveling. I went to Mexico with a Spanish class. I backpacked Europe during summer vacations. Each time I would have given anything to not be another American tourist. In college I took cultural theory seminars. Sometimes I had to hang my head and shut my mouth, but I wanted to have these conversations, to try to understand difference. I began making art to find beauty in what I thought to be a pretty boring life. Street photographers found wonder in the ordinary moments of daily life. Modernist architects and sculptors found beauty in space, light and raw materials. Although critical of their goals for objectivity, these desires are still close to my heart.

After graduating college, my friends and I began the humbling process of finding a job. I had been told how fortunate I was being an educated, white male, but now it would seem this privilege had betrayed me. I was fortunate enough to get a job at a diner across from the university. Former professors would come in and once again I would hang my head and shut my mouth. I daydreamed a lot. I have this fantasy of waking up to find that I am the last person on Earth. I don’t know what has happened, or why everyone is gone. I may be at home or in a foreign city or on an undiscovered island. The spaces in my photographs are absent of people, I choose built environments that are common, but lack diversity. The New Topographic movement photographed these kinds of places and criticized how our culture has altered our landscapes. Environmental writers, like Barry Lopez, Robinson Jeffers, and Gary Snyder echoed these concerns. My images of empty, urban spaces became metaphors for emotional landscapes. I left the diner to work for a glass mosaic studio. It was a big improvement, but more than anything I wanted to get out of town.

I started teaching in Shanghai. I was no stranger to travel but as routine set in, I felt homesick for the first time. In that situation you make friends so quickly you don’t even notice, until someone surprises you. As these surprises revealed themselves, I often found myself thinking, “How did we get so close? We have nothing in common.” But we did. We were on this deserted island for a reason and it was by choice! We chose to leave behind loved ones, homes, personal belongings, pets. I think most of us had felt alone long before coming here. During Mao’s regime, critical artwork was censored or destroyed. Some artists, through public performances, used temporary unified actions to protest oppressive regimes. They built a community based on free expression. Mark Dion worked with London students and retirees to relearn the history of the river Thames by excavating garbage. These projects built new communities out of a common need or desire.

I was brought up to believe that I had traded in my culture for privilege, or that someone had done that for me at birth. But we are fooled to believe that our culture is in our skin, blood and possessions, and it can then be used to exclude others. I admire the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Alfredo Jarr, and Jim Campbell, who use light, space and ordinary objects for social and personal commentary. I believe in the power of beauty, virtue, and quiet resistance. I value civility, charity, empathy, and fidelity and I ask that my audience value these as well. If so they may come to understand my work as they would a deserted island, slowly and carefully, with curiosity, feeling their body in space and the light moving across them both.

Cultural Bio

Working at a culturally specific museum provided the opportunity to gain a significant knowledge base about a religious, ethnic, and cultural group that I previously knew little about. Organizing and arranging thousands of objects that had no personal cultural significance, but enormous significance to a specific group got me thinking about the importance of recording, saving, and responding to stories of the past. I began to understand the strong connection that is formed between people and place and people with past, especially in cases of forced diaspora. I started to become interested in ways that the past affects the present: what changes and what stays the same? Which stories are told and which are intentionally or unintentionally destroyed? How can one historical event effect masses of people for multiple generations?

Loss of culture and tradition has happened quite significantly in my family over the past 60 years as we have become more “Americanized”. My dad’s family came from Greece two generations ago and immediately changed their last name upon arrival in order to adapt their identity to their new nation (we went from Michalopoulos to Michaels). Since that time, as people with connections to Europe have died, our family has changed from a immigrant family to a domestic family that speaks a different language and has few of the same traditions that existed two generations ago.

Cultural Autobio Excerpt

As an artist I need a sense of connection and a sense of magic. I believe we are all connected and seek to bring out the latent and untapped network joining all of us. Ad agencies are adept at preying on our insecurities and playing to our desires in order to convince us to empty our pockets into their laps. My mission is to subvert the language of marketing to build our confidence and affirm our dreams. As consumers we begin to believe “self” is the sum of that which surrounds, eventually losing sight of the fact that the true “self” is within.

INTOXICATING

They were first lured by the distorted form; but as they drew near, there was an odd odor. The smell of something nutty, familiar, yet foreign. It smelled like mother’s kitchen, but more insidious. No, it was father’s garage- it was the smell of those permanent grey smears on the driveway. It was the sweet smell of gasoline that children deeply inhale while their parent pumps gas. It was the antifreeze that dogs lap up like ice cream. It is quite literally an intoxicating smell. It filled your lungs with warmth, and your brain with newly formed voids. It was dangerous- those of us who grew-up in the 80s knew the “puffers”: an odd race that were too old to still like at home, but to dumb to ever leave. But there in lies the excitement… maybe just a little whiff… a poke.

Grass. Smell.

Grass. Smell. Cut grass in the summer when I wake up smells of play, fun, sunshine, freedom, running, unstructured days. It smells green, fresh, untainted. The dew is moist and yet untouched by anyone. Afternoon wet grass combined with the metallic odor of rain is heavy and flaccid. Dry grass baked in August, dusty, barbeque grease, charcoal, crunchy Ruffles potato chip crumbs. Fertilizer abrasively attacks my nose.

sound

Whispers, gasps and groans. The background noise captured in movies if you were to erase the music and the voices of the main characters. You hear muffled sounds from the extras and whispers not meant to be heard through the microphone; the shuffling of feet dancing to nothing. The dripping faucet that fills a space during awkward silences. Loud silences and silent noises, but no loud noises and no still silences. Fidgeting.

feels like...

feels like acid rain pelting/ against unprotected skin melting/somehow pleasant/feels like acid reflux/bubblin up in ya gut/throwin up a buncha stuff/ u dont remember eatin/feels like newborns teethin gums bleedin chops bitin down too hard on the taste of somethin metallic/somehow delicious/feels like bein caught between two channels/no matter how hard u bang the set it stays scrambled/somehow pleasant.

Job Sounds

The doors swings open and the room takes a deep breath, sucking in a bit of air and dust like a vacuum just as its being shut off. A wood rubber rhythm stirs time and wakes the morning light from its slumber. Counter-clockwise rotations of plastic rings are a prelude to a murky babble into a clay cup. I sit and wait.

I poke my laptop to initiate a round of my favorite game, "I'm Awake, You're Awake" and he yawns into action. The first viewer/customer comes into my office and observes/consumes.

"I know you're doing this performance thing today, but I have a work question."

"That's fine, go right ahead."

Listen

At the beginning, I heard that a child is singing a song and the rhythm is very lithesome. Then a sound like Engine-powered voice came. It sounds like that a plane is taking off. After that, a passionate melody came the sound became louder and louder, when it got loudest, it stop. Then, after a period of music with constant rhythm, the melody became passionate again. Then a chorus song came and then after that, the melody turned in to peace and blue. Then it repeated the very first melody. Suddenly a sharp sound came. It sounds like some metal objects were broken. Then the melody turned bake to smooth and lithesome. After that is again some metal sound. With the lively rhythm of drums, the music came back to the same melody as the beginning and ended with a powerful sound.

smell

Sitting in the same place it wavers over the room, intensifying when the door is opened and when the temperature increases. Sweet and musky, it is praised and lamented from various passers by, until the sensation merits segregation from the general population. There is a sense of purpose in its charm. It takes on other scents from what it encounters adding earth and a fresh dew to its aroma. What was once sweet in a large room, then overwhelming in a small, becomes absent in its abundance. Exposure desensitizes all results from appreciation to aversion. One step in making the audience stand senseless.

Touch

I touch smooth sides and hard edges leading to even harder corners. The surface is slightly rough as if covered in tiny hairs, and only slightly colder than my own hand. It’s solid, but light, easy to lift, and somewhat soft. Its sides give as I test how much pressure it could stand before breaking. But as my pressure increases, so does its resistance. Some edges are hard, solid. Others open into narrow and shallow crevices. The top is weaker than the sides. It’s also a little rougher in patches, except for a strip, smooth as glass, which follows its weakest point. I’ve found a corner that peels apart. The top folds back easily, but the other two sides hold firm. I don’t feel anything inside. The bottom is rougher. I find two sections that cave in immediately, revealing an inner void. On another corner I feel its smoothness turn into hard ridges, then back to smooth. That strip of more mechanical smoothness is here as well.

rooms

I always find it frustrating to try to ascribe work to some particular category, because work is so many things at once. Labels and categories are restraints and in terms of artwork (as many artists would agre), open-endedness is preferable. I would offer that I, like many others, am a constant shifting back and forth between the bedroom and the living room, perhaps a hallway. I suppose there has to be some front and performance, something fixed, some constants. But how can they really be constants? Constants change depending on the audience and the surrounding circumstances. Entertaining in the living room serves to benefit oneself and others, to fulfill a role in society as well as some . So the living room becomes necessary to learn and to teach. Sincere and cynical attempts at entertaining certain others, as well as an imagining of oneself as something else within parameters is healthy. Its purpose fluctuates depending on the circumstances; at times it is a reflection of aspirations, at others it is derived from some simulated or authentic necessity, and still other times serves as a source of twisted pleasure. Then there is the constant retreat back to the bedroom for introspection, to gather oneself, to reject certain aspects of the performance, reinforce others, perfect the act, sort it all out. Futile efforts to move furniture and items from the living room back to the bedroom and vice versa, and then abandoning such projects mid action are not uncommon. Many items remain in transit, boxed and unboxed in the hallway, deciding whether they should be in this room or that, or both. A nagging thought in the back of your mind that you might have to excuse yourself unexpectedly and never come back. Living room and bedroom converge to create a gray hallway that is the self.

If you're interested in mapping...

"An Atlas of Radical Cartography"

http://www.an-atlas.com/

IN SEARCH OF THE AMAZING LIVING BEDROOM!

In a literal sense, there is very little difference between my living room and bedroom; they are part of the same homogeneous pile, flowing into one another via a trail of dirty socks. I would like if my art worked in this same way- a natural flow between the aesthetic of the processes (quite a mess) and the work itself (polished… well, buffed (to be more accurate)). My mind, my personality, my aesthetic does not always translate to my art. It is as though I am taking one object from the pile and placing it on the gallery wall as a representation of the mess. I need to be more intuitive, spontaneous in my art production and display.

Living Room, Bedroom

I want my work to be in the living room, leave the house all together, but I tend to hide in the bedroom. I have always made work that looks at a vast picture, a broad view of the world, but is still self-reflective in some ways. In the past, the studio has been very important to me. It is a bedroom of sorts, where I feel that I can block out the party in the living room and distract myself with something that may only matter and make sense to me. I contradict this by saying that I am an observer of landscapes and culture, someone that wants to make work about the world. As someone that often works in photography, I often bring my bedroom studio out into the world... but I still stayed inside it. What I want to do is allow myself to make work that says something about myself, but is also accessible by the people at the party. Breaking comfort zones may be the hardest part.

living room

According to this article, Goffman indicated that there are two kinds of fronts, one is that already established and the other one should be selected from several well-established choices by performers. It also means, we shall maintain an idealized impression. Then the question comes, “How to choose a proper one from them?” “To accentuate certain facts and conceal others” is the answer from Goffman. As a graphic designer, I always taught by my teacher to “Listen to the client” while “Keep your own standpoint.” The former one is the thing what you shall accentuate when performing as a designer and turns them out in works, such as hot topics, popular color which has already be asserted as the “avant-garde color”, the formulaic fonts. The most important rule is to obey the routine under the client’s fostered impression. Meanwhile, I also have to adjust my works considering the difference positions of clients and audiences.
I found the extent of how far you can keep your own standpoint, is strongly connected with the social occupation you attained. The social has a rigid stratification and inequality, and for different levels of position, the reality you’d like to represent is different. Thus, I think my works are more like “living room”

Bedroom v. Living Room

In response to Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life:

Goffman likens the bedroom of a home to the backstage of a theater, describing it as a place where the “actor” prepares him or herself and is not meant to be seen by the viewer. The living room is compared to the stage, where the viewer is allowed to see a carefully arranged space and articulated performance intended for consumption. In regards to my own art practice, I would say that most of the noise happens in the bedroom, or studio. I usually only let the viewer see the finished product, distilling the work down to a presentable visual, event, or performance. This is misleading, because, for me, the most exciting part of the art process is right in the middle, when I no longer care why I started on something and have no idea how I will finish it.

Our bedrooms are places of privacy where the true, unfiltered and unchecked versions of ourselves become visible. My work is the bedroom over the holidays, when I know people will be coming over. The bed is made, the clutter has been relatively organized, but I still have dirty clothes in the hamper and forgot to dust my dresser. I portray my fears, insecurities, observations, bitterness, and so on, but present it in a form of visual coding that has to be analyzed to fully be understood. Some people might come into the bedroom and see it as a clean room revealing secrets here and there. Those who snoop around will see the dirty laundry.

PIPA PIPA TOAD... in labor

some images

aerial view of the middle east with superimposed borders

aerial view of a rice field

aerial view of "The World" in Dubai, an island real estate development for the wealthy

My interpretation of the metaphor is that the living room represents the exterior self that we consciously present to our chosen audience while the bedroom represents who we are in our most private, intimate, primal moments. I've been talking about a disconnect between the way I make art and the way I live my life. In other words, my artwork is the living room (or maybe it's the lawn) and I'm uncomfortable with that. The work comes from my observation of nature and a knowledge that people I don't know will see it. I create works that are esthetically pleasing to many people and have intimate detail, but are not particularly revealing of who I am. Rather than performing the role of artist, I want to communicate the way that I live, see and think. I'm hoping to move my artwork toward the bedroom, but still be selective about what moments are available to the viewer. That is to say, I'm not looking to expose every visceral and mundane detail of my existence through a Big Brother type of surveillance, but I am seeking to convey something intimate.

My work and where it comes from.

After reading Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life I question whether any expression of self is more or less authentic than another. Who am I when performing my idealized self (in the “living room”)? Do I act out how I assume I am perceived or in opposition to it? Do my fronts of race, class, gender, etc. say something inherent about me or about the audience’s expectations of me? If my audience is equally distracted by these questions can we ever have a mutual conversation? My work isn’t literal. It (maybe) doesn’t disclose my personal fronts, and it might seem that I am removing all personal information from it. But my goal is to find presence in absence. I believe that there are more basic human fears and desires that show through my work. It’s a way to better express feelings that I have been unable to do with words, an effort at being open and intimate with a stranger. And my ultimate hope is that we might shed our fronts of difference, become permeable for a moment, and have a slight glimpse of what it’s like to be someone else. My work is a conversation on the porch late at night, after a rough week and few drinks.

Chickenhead

Gear

beehive

rooms

I was trying to avoid posting this first, but was worried I'd forget tomorrow:
My work is sleeping on the couch. Intimacies are left out but there is still an attempt to tidy up before breakfast. Typically private content is brought out into public light to be exposed, rearranged, and presented as solutions to emotional problems. Heaps of logical data solving an emotional issue would seem to be a goal of the left-brain; that is, if the elements were not brought together in a fantasy. In keeping with the metaphor, the drapes were left open to the act in both rooms, and they enjoy it that way. The unconscious is fundamentally honest, just lacking the details to prove itself beyond a personal understanding. The consequences of creating these solutions are not always discernable beyond those who know the “secret” function: a list of citations, physical embodiments to personify, the projection of wonder onto fear and so on. What is clear is that they are evidence of a sentient something, a characteristic as valuable as the liar’s tic or choice of guest soaps.

Hall of Biodiversity

Image from the world.

Stabilized bigfoot film.

When Pictures Do the Talking

by ahhhitshayley via Flickr

by Lan Bui via Flickr

by Lawraa via Flickr

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/09/19/microsofts-im-a-pc-ads-created-on-macs/

by LuisDS via Flickr

van gogh_Wheat Field With Crows

RON MUECK: HYPER-REALISM

JR from "28 Millimeters" series

Women are Heroes - Morro de Providencia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Face2Face Project - Israel/Palestine

from: http://www.jr-art.net/

Wolfgang Tillmans, "New Family", 2001

Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968)
New Family, 2001
C-print
Collection of Phyllis Tuchman © Wolfgang Tillmans
TL.2007.74.42

What I love about Tillmans work is that he captures the poetic, the extraordinary, in the mundane. He shows how beautiful everyday things can be and is playful in his observations. His images and collections are accessible to people from non-art backgrounds and intellectually stimulating for artists, academics and collectors, as well.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California 1972-76

Time's Arrow

Hiroshi Sugimoto

1987

(Seascape, 1980, reliquary fragment, Kamakura Period, 13th century)

Gelatin silver paint, gilded bronze

from Hiroshi Sugimoto: History of History

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Aspirational Image

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

"Untitled" (placebo)

an introduction, continued

an aspirational image from each