Things to Remember

(Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1914-1917, oil on canvas, 59 x78 3/4 in.)

1. It’s art if you think it is.
2. In making art, you carry out your own vision, not anyone else’s. It’s more personal than showing your influences and it’s beyond trend. And this is easier said than done.
3. One truly like-minded friend goes a long way. Pollock and Krasner, Guston and Coolidge, Gilbert and George.
4. Lists are simplistic.
5. If you camp out at Monet in Chelsea, you will see lots of art world peeps who don’t answer your emails.

The Morning After

(Crowd shot from the opening of Out of Line)

Some people say, “Fantastic!”, “Love the work!”, “Like the direction you’re going in!”, “Cohesive show!”. But what I dwell on, what I stick to, is the negative. And it’s not even that negative. It’s just not positive, it’s lukewarm, like, “I generally liked it,” or “that’s not my favorite piece.” It might even just be the nebulous “Congratulations.” Then I start feeling my thyroids swell, as if someone were holding me by my neck up against a wall. I’m convinced I’ve done something wrong. Something very, very wrong. And that that one nonplussed comment means the whole endeavor is a bust. That I am a bust. I could spend my whole life trying to change that opinion.

But I digress. Showing art in public is a risk. You don’t show yourself perfectly and therefore you are vulnerable. In front of everybody. But you’ve also made a move, staked a position that can make an impression on a few others, and of course on your own self. I have to say, so far, all in all, this time around, it has been really quite heartwarming.

Installed and Looking Good

And maybe I can return to normal blogging soon.
Hope to see you at the opening or during the run of the show.

A talk with Carin Riley

Here I am in front of Carin Riley's Belinda. Check out the interview on the Donkey Trail.

Out of Line

For Immediate Release:

May 10, 2010



SLAG Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of OUT OF LINE, a group exhibition featuring work by Nils Folke Anderson, Anne-Lise Coste, Elana Herzog, Carin Riley and Molly Stevens, who is also the curator.



May 20 – June 19, 2010

Opening Reception: May 20, 6 – 8 pm

Artist’s Talk by Molly Stevens: June 5, 5PM



The conventional concept of line in visual art is bound to drawing on paper. In this exhibition, however, line is a presence, visible in movement and space, paint and electricity, language and metaphor. OUT OF LINE is a fresh look at a variety of line forms: fresh, meaning vigorous and immediate, but also meaning bold and cheeky. OUT OF LINE takes a risk and speaks its own mind.



Carin Riley’s large-scale paintings from 2010 are the visual confluence of a personal vocabulary of images. Seemingly disparate elements cohere around fluid line work and a metaphorical logic that struts a bold attitude away from linear narrative.



Anne-Lise Coste’s tarpaper scroll from 2009 is a bilingual stream of consciousness that is at once frenzied and hilarious. Line is text but also the loopy marks that form handwritten letters and words.



Elana Herzog’s effortless curtain from 1992 is at once mysterious and plain-faced, solid and delicate, decadent and frayed and, as such, reminds us that lines are not easily drawn. While the piece nods to Surrealism - and also to the Renaissance - it announces the artist’s rich involvement with textiles.



The electric lines of Nils Folke Anderson’s 2009 interlocking neon are bounded by form and released by light. This vibrant orderly disorder provides a model for the show as a whole.



In Molly Stevens’ surging and cockeyed mountains from 2009 and 2010, long currents rise up and down the page, lean into each other and draw apart to form vibrating and off-kilter landscapes.



On June 5 at 5pm, Stevens will present an artist’s talk called “Out of Line,” a subjective survey of what line is and has been in visual art and other domains, including sports, war, language and spiritual practice. The event is open to the public and is free of charge.



Donkey Trail, a year-long blog of thoughts, images and interviews leading to this show, can be viewed at the desk or online at: trailofadonkey.blogspot.com.



SLAG Gallery specializes in contemporary American and Eastern European art and is operated by owner and director Irina Protopopescu.



SLAG Gallery is located at 531 West 25th Street, Ground Floor, suite 10.

(Between 10th and 11th Avenues).

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm.



For press inquiries and reproductions contact Irina Protopopescu, 917 977 1848.

For general inquiries, contact the gallery at 212 967 9818.

Pre-exhibition "what if" syndrome

Neuroses divulged on the Donkey Trail.

Facts are not feelings

(Qu Ding, Summer Mountains, handscroll, Norther Song Dynasty (960-1127)

If I feel miserable about the way a drawing is coming out, it does not mean the drawing will have a miserable look. If I feel sloppy, it may not look sloppy. And if I feel like it sucks, the drawing may not suck. Facts are not feelings. That still rings true for me.

I’ve tended to think that a drawing will show the state of the artist while making that drawing. In many ways it does. A tense hand will usually make a tense line. But being aware of one’s state and controlling one’s state, doesn’t mean the drawing is aware or controlled. Drawings can mean and point to many things beyond what we’re conscious of. And sometimes they don’t.

A talk with Nils Folke Anderson

Check out the talk on the Donkey Trail. Nils is one of the artists in Out of Line (which opens on May 20!)

Two appealing paintings (seen virtually)

(Amy Sillman, Blue Diagram, 2009, on view at Sikkema Jenkins)

(Louis B. Sloan, 1978)

A talk with Elana Herzog

Check it out over on the Donkey Trail. Elana is participating in Out of Line.

Nothing to say today, so here's a video

Soapbox

(Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow, 1956, about 6 feet x 7.5 feet (big))

The over-press about the play “Red” is such that I really know I don’t want to see it. But I have a lot to say about it nonetheless. For one, there’s a common idea that art is very serious and profound and that therefore you should engage with art because it’s good for you. The gist seems to be that once you get your culture over with, you’ve earned the shopping spree or banana split.

Of course I do think art can be very serious and profound. But that’s a second layer. That’s a bonus. What tends to be forgotten is that looking can be a pleasure (even if it’s a painful pleasure); it can expand your outlook and it can be deeply stimulating. But looking takes practice and confidence - am I seeing the right thing? - in other words, looking implies a building up of visual literacy. And boy is that a dying value.

I’ve always been drawn to Rothko first and foremost because of the wordless moods and deep color of his paintings, not because he was depressed, or articulate, although the former feeds a myth I enjoy and the latter is helpful.

The corny factor

(Amanda Ross-Ho, Bedroom Bandit, 2010)

At the risk of narrowing my field of vision, what I seem to want these days in my art viewing is just a dish of personal meat, hold the irony and hold the headiness. I visited a string of Chelsea galleries last week and I have nothing to report. I went around looking for a spark of spirit – something that speaks of the artist’s personal punch – but found only pastiche and pose. I do understand that originality is null and void, but is searching and experiment?

That said, John Bock’s wall hangings at Anton Kern came close. And I think Amanda Ross-Ho at Mitchell-Innes and Nash hit the mark. Her show is a complex and diverse installation and I’ll be going back to try to put some words to it. I especially like a quilt topped by a poster of a David Lee Roth gone tribal.

Because yes, I do think a personal universe is what I’m after as an artist – at least it is these days. I don’t want to make what’s in but what’s true – even if it’s torturous to reveal.

That’s why I enjoyed these lines from Roberta Smith’s review of "Red," a play about Mark Rothko that she thinks is best when silent, like looking. She recounts her own experiences visiting studios:

Also, corny as it may sound, as a young Kansan new to New York, I was always struck by the possibilities of self-invention and the autonomy and individual will that a studio represented, almost regardless of the quality of the art I encountered there. The basic message — especially powerful to a daughter and granddaughter of academics — was that you can do anything you want to; you certainly don’t need a degree or tenure. An artist made this place called a studio and then used it to make this thing called art that no one knew was missing or needed until it existed. (“We are making it out of ourselves,” to quote Rothko’s contemporary Barnett Newman.)

You already do look the part

(Mondrian in his Paris atelier, 1933)

Is anyone getting sick of posts about me trying not to care what other people think? I am. I’m sick of how art is on my mind.

Like on Friday, my dear friend got photographed in her studio for an article. My first reaction upon seeing the portrait was, “But if the people down at Canada (the gallery) see this, they're going to think you're a dilettante.” She politely told me to screw off. It’s true, why should she try to be anyone else.

I still think that if anyone is going to take me for a real artist, I’d better dress the part: stained clothes, long bangs, long frown. And don’t forget the mess in the studio, the tortured mess. Like Francis Bacon. What a stereotype.

As this same friend reminded me, what about Mondrian’s studio or the portrait of Barnett Newman in wearing a polka dot tie.