Monday, March 10, 2008

Me and the WB















I haven’t yet been to the WB (as they’re calling it), but I better go this week. The show already seems like old news.

One of my most vivid fantasies is to be included in the biennial. Not only do I envision it to be the gateway to a stable career in art, but I really can’t imagine a better ego stroke. It’s to the point where I actually feel jealous reading the reviews (that is, way more than usual).

The jealousy has taken a different spin this year, though. So far, I can say that I've also made two of the pieces in the biennial. Believe me, believe me! For months I’ve been fiddling with the idea of therapy as performance art (see Bert Rodriguez), and also a series of drawings under hypnosis (Matt Mulican). If I had only run with the ideas (I dream)! Art is all about taking something to its end. That’s something to remember.

Wait a second. It wouldn’t have turned out the way they did it anyway. But, oh yeah, there is something to zeitgeist. There is something to inevitably being part of your times. And there is something to the fact that artists of the WB type are a demographic. We - I say brazenly - are all onto the same ideas.

2 comments:

Michael Konrad said...

I can't count the number of times that I've had an idea for something and then later saw a similar project exhibited in a gallery by another artist. And it's not always that I didn't follow through on the idea. Sometimes, I've completed a piece, but have been unable to get it shown.

But like you said, they never really turn out exactly the same. And it can be reassuring that you are doing something that another artist also believes to be currently relevant.

Molly Stevens said...

Yes, somehow it's validation, even if your work goes unnoticed.