regarding spirituality

The realm of the spiritual is mysterious and inviting. It is a place where we are encouraged to explore the unknown; to search, ponder, and reflect. It is a place where we can gain a greater knowledge of self and sometimes, sometimes, even find illumination.

There is no definitive map or designated entrance to this state of mind- we are each on our own when it comes to accessing the spiritual. ->unexpected place

Agnes Martin and Mark Rothko
AM-creating a body of deceptively simple minimalist paintings that speak worlds to those who choose to take an extended look and open themselves up to them.
Her paintings manifest a meditative effort on the part of the artist and invite viewers to respond in kind. With a relative modicum of line and color, and everpresent traces of the hyman hand, Martin's paintings invite quiet contemplation. Rigid through they may seem, their perfection lies in their imperfection; as in nature, ther are no perfectly straight lines in a Martin painting.

"The great and fatal pitfall in the art field and in life is dependence on the intellect rather than inspiration."
She writes of perfection and of ideals; about truth, beauty, and the sublime; and of being open to self-discovery and fully aware of everything around you, both large and samll.
Happiness is the result of being fully open and receptive to what life offers us, or in her own words:"Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life."

MR sought the sublime in a form of purity through a fundamental use of color, line, and shape.

James Turrell, Ann Hamiton, John Feodorv, Shahzia Sikander, and Berly Korot

JT's particular gift is in allowing us to have a unique and intimate experience with light and to feel its transcendent power.
Hamilton's and Turrell's works take us into the realm of the spiritual by engaging the sensorium, by making us hyperaware of that which is around us.
Art has that rare ability ro make us pause, reflect, and explore our innermost being. It is a key that can unlock countless doors, opening our eyes, our minds, and our hearts. As Thomas Merton, one of the twentieth century's great theologians, has written:

In art we find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

from A Thomas Merton reader (1974)

Ernesto Neto

지젝

http://www.calitosway.net/3645
http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:1xh7aoiaXS0J:www.calitosway.net/tag/대상소문자%2520a+슬라보예+지젝&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=23&client=safari

(1) 주체란 무엇이며 왜 중요한가?
지젝에게 코기토는 자연의 모든 것들이 부정된 이후의 텅 빈 장소, 즉 공백이다. 주체는 자연에서 문화로 이행할 때 "사라지는 매개자"로 기능하는 것이다. 우리는 실재로부터 상징계로 진입하면서 주체를 잃게 된다. 이런 맥락에서 주체는 언제나 그 상실을 회복하고자 하지만, 오히려 주체성을 유지하기 위해 자신의 토대를 외재화시킨채로 둘 수밖에 없다(ex-timacy). 이렇게 상징계에 종속되는 과정이 곧 주체화과정이다. 그러나 여기에 저항할 수는 없는가? 지젝에 따르면 사람들은 상징계의 요소들을 나름의 방식으로 엮어내는 서사적 능력을 갖고 있어서, 주체는 변하지 않는 공백으로 남지만 "자기(self)"는 반복하여 갱신된다고 한다. 그런데 이미 우리의 "자리"가 정해져 있는 것이라면 이것이 저항적 대안이 될 수 있는가? 주체에 대한 강력한 이론화와는 달리, 대안에 대한 지젝의 이론화는 늘 빈약한 느낌을 준다. 기껏해야 "의미화실천"과 다른 점이 무엇인지 의심스럽다.

(2) 포스트모던의 끔찍한 탈근대성
국내에 "성찰적 근대화론자"로 알려진 기든스, 벡, 래쉬/어리 등은 후기 근대를 "위험사회"로 명명하면서도 동시에 자아의 성찰성/재귀성(reflexivity)이 갖고 있는 긍정적 가능성에 주목하였다. 물론 그것이 "폭주하는 자동차"와 같은 불안한 것임을 경고하였지만, 환경과 끊임없이 상호작용하는 재귀적 자아가 갖고 있는 잠재력은 생산적 희망을 보여주는 것이었다. 그런데 지젝은 재귀성의 의미를 완전히 뒤집어버린다. 대타자의 권위가 사라져버린 상황에서 사람들은 재귀적으로 "사적인 법(지배종속관계, 새도매저키즘)"에 얽매이게 된다는 것이다. 귀환한 초자아는 쾌락을 명령하고 사람들은 오히려 스스로를 규제하게 된다. 이와 같은 지젝의 논증은 실제 사례에 적용하기도 어렵지 않고, 경우에 따라서는 매우 설득력이 있다. 그러나 그간의 성찰적 근대화론을 자신있게 끌어와 반박할 정도로 이론적으로 엄밀한 것은 아니다. 하나의 반례 정도로 생각하면 충분할지도 모른다. 어쨌든 다른 방식으로 통제를 원하는 "경향"이 있고 그것이 현대 사회의 "징후"라는 것은 전적으로 납득가능하다. 이와 같은 현대인의 딜레마를 해소하기 위한 대안으로서 지젝은 놀랍게도 아예 이런 조건 자체를 없애는 것을 제시한다. 상징적 질서를 거부하고 혁명을 일으키자는 것이다. 그런데 어떤 방향으로?! 내게는 이것이 히스테리컬한 비약으로만 느껴질 뿐이다. 후기 근대적 자아가 갖고 있는 재귀성을 무력화시킨 이후에도 사회혁명이 가능한가?!

(3) 이데올로기에서 현실을 구분해내는 법
내게 가장 익숙한 논의이자, 내가 가장 좋아하는 지젝의 주장들 중 하나를 다룬 챕터이다. 슬로터다익이 제안한 공식, "그들은 자기가 하고 있는 것을 잘 알지만, 여전히 그렇게 행동한다"는 명제는 냉소적 주체의 등장을 알린다. 지젝은 그의 논의를 받아들인다. 즉 이데올로기는 앎의 문제가 아니라 행함의 문제이다. 따라서 이데올로기 국가장치는 오히려 이데올로기 기계로서, 의식보다 행위로 먼저 이루어지는 것으로 볼 수 있다. 알면서도 그대로 행동하는 인형같은 존재가 되지 않기 위해서는 사실 냉소하지 않으려는 결단이 필요한 것이 아닐까? 지젝은 오늘날에도 이데올로기 비판을 가능하게 하기 위한 토대로서 냉소적 주체론을 활용했을지 모르지만, 사실 정치적으로 무감각한 사람들을 마주하고 있는 나로서는 냉소적 주체를 극복하는 것은 매우 절실한 문제다. 냉소적 주체가 확신하고 있는 것과 달리, "세계는 이항대립이 아니라 삼원체계이고 여기서 이데올로기는 상징계와 실재 사이의 유령같은 보충물과 같은 것으로 기능한다"는 것을, 그들이 간파하게 되면 상황이 달라질까?! 결국 지젝은 실재를 직시하고 구분해내라는 말을 하고 싶어하는 것이라는 점을 잘 안다. 그러나 실재에 접근하기 위한 보다 즉물적인 방법으로 우리는 "냉소적 주체"를 대체할 새로운 주체의 모습을 창안할 수 있지 않을까. 이를테면 "이입"이라든가. 예전에 수업에서 이런 이야기를 했던 것 같다. (어쨌든 삼원체계 모델은 많은 통찰을 주는 것이어서 여러가지 복잡한 생각을 하게 만든다. 최근 나는 "몸"을 이론화하는 방식을 고민하고 있다.)

(4) 같은 행성에서 온 남성과 여성, 그 사랑의 이데올로기
"성 관계는 없다", "여자는 남자의 증상이다"와 같은 센세이셔널한 명제를 담고 있음에도 불구하고, 내게는 지젝의 사상들 중에서 가장 불만족스러운 부분이다. 지젝 특유의 독창성이나 흥미로움이 다소 반감되는 지점이기도 하다. 페미니스트들에게는 특히 비판적으로 접근되었던 논의인데, 사실 페미니스트들에 의해 정신분석학이 효과적으로 반박되었던 적은 거의 없으며 이 책에 소개된 주디스 버틀러의 반론도 다소 부적절하게 느껴진다. 정신분석학에 대한 메타비판보다는 차라리 (지젝처럼) "창조적 오독"을 통해 그것을 페미니즘에 생산적인 방식으로 전유하는 것이 더 낫다. 사실 성적 차이는 실재적인 것이어서 상징화가 불가능하며, 결국 이 둘의 관계는 실패한다는 지젝(그리고 라캉)의 논의를 거부하기는 어렵다. 15년쯤 전에 필리프 쥘리앵은 사랑은 "두 개의 오해가 서로 겹치는 것", 즉 실패한 행위라고 썼다. 이 때 쥘리앵은 실패는 곧 성공이라는 윤리학적 입장을 취하는 반면, 지젝은 사랑은 성 관계의 불가능성을 은폐하는 이데올로기라는 입장을 취하는 듯 싶다. 내게는 두 가지 입장이 모두 불충분하게 느껴지고, 라캉에 기반하면서도 좀더 정교한 제3의 태도가 가능하다고 보고 있는데 아직 답을 내린 것은 아니다.

(5) 인종주의는 왜 항상 환상인가?
이 챕터는 지금까지 살펴본 지젝의 이론으로 인종주의를 분석하고 있으며, (1) (2) (3)과 밀접하게 얽혀있는 부분이다. 인종주의는 진정 환상이다. 인종적 타자는 우리의 향락을 훔치려고 하거나, 아니면 우리와 다른 방식으로 향락을 즐기고 있기 때문이다. 그래서 세상에 대한 상식이 증가하고, 다문화주의가 힘을 얻고, 인권과 평등에 대한 도덕적 가치가 확산되더라도 인종주의는 여전히 존재한다. 뿐만 아니라 현대인들은 자신의 인종차별적 행위를 다양한 지식을 동원하여 정당화하기까지 한다. 이와 같은 태도는 논리적 설득으로 타파할 수 있는 것이 아니다. 이처럼 완벽하게 자기충족적인 설명 속에서 우리는 무슨 대안을 찾을 수 있는가?! 지젝은 고육책으로 세 가지 방안을 제시하는데 솔직히 이것은 대안이라기보다는 우리에게 남겨진 과제로 다가온다. 첫째, 환상의 윤리학. 둘째, 시민사회보다는 정부를 지지할 것. 셋째, 환상을 가로지르기. 첫번째는 너무 절충주의적이고 봉합적인 것이 분명하다. 뿐만 아니라 그것이 세번째 방법과 양립할 수 있는지조차 모르겠다. 두번째 주장은 민족주의라는 아킬레스건을 갖고 있는 사회에서 나올 수밖에 없는 대안이라는 점을 충분히 이해하지만, 선택할 수 있는 사안들은 한정되어 있다. 인종주의는 디아스포라 시대에 더더욱 면밀하게 다루어져야 할 것으로, 이보다는 훨씬 더 실천적이고 구체적인 일상의 대안들이 필요하다고 본다.

Ann Hamilton has a background in textiles and weaving. She describes the drawn linde and the thread, weaving, the computational structure of video, and non-narrative works. Writing about her video work from the 1970s-I becoame interested in the handloom as the first computer on earth, as the original grid and as a key to visual structuring....To realize that the structure of woven cloth provided a firm basis for the ordering of video information and time in the creation of precedent at a time when the limitlessness and newness of this medium were being extolled. In an age of such tremendous multiplicity of viewpoints, traditions, and beliefs as our own, it was a physical way for me as an artist, in an effort to heal my own inner striving for peace, to stretch my arms across millemmia to join the ancient and the new in one long embrace."

I don't know that I can articulate that realtionship between the thread and the written line and the drawn line, but for me...it's about the origin of things, about a really fundamental act of making."

time-consuming collaborative work-labor intensive acts of art-making, honored Midwestern work ethic-that labor is its own redemption

making of art is a social act, and that "how one chooses to be social is an ethical act"


Richard Serra-"I think that what artists do is they invent strategies that allow themselves to see in a way that they haven't seen before-to extend their vision."
Process art which emphasized the process of creation.

Laurie Anderson- future-inspired sense of time and spaces as infinite and elastic, and of the world as on eminor portion of a never-ending universe.
space-region of the mind

Place is latitudinal and lognitudinal within the map of a person's life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there.- Lucy Lippard, The lecture of the local(1997)

inner self- the sense of losing and finding oneself at the same time
the lasting impact of one's own immediate experience.
discovering highly personal connections with objects.
gasps of aesthetic response
works that have taken my breath away, brought my hand to my heart, summoned forth and aaahhhh from deep within.
Joy of discovering for yourself what a work of art might mean to you and to you alone?
Childeren haven't lost that ability, but we as adults have apparently abandoned that experiential and personal way of looking at art.
Today our interaction with the visual arts seems to be driven primarily by our culture's obsession with "meaning".
Throw into the equation our increasingly fast-paced life, and you might find yourself wondering why anyone would take the time to look at comtemprorary art anymore.

when we experience a great deal of ugliness or beauty, a great deal of fear or love, a great deal of loneliness or intimacy.

Beaury, of all things, would appear to have been the icebreaker. Approached berudgingly at first and with great suspicion, beauty is now readily accepted as a serious topic for discussion.
Agnes Martin-Our emotional life is really dominant obver our intellectual life, but we do not realize it.

Trascendence.
The verb "to transcend" means to rise above or to go beyond the limits of.
The adjective "transcendent" means extending beyond usual limits-surpassing, exceeding.
The noun "transcendece" is defined as the quality or state of being transcendent, of having gone beyond the limits of ordinary expereince.

The German painter Caspar David Friedrich(1774-1840) , a pioneer in the Romantic movement, showed us with his meditative landscapes how "all earthly parts, whether humble or exalted, lead to the unknown."
_> Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Ad Reinhardt

Since Frost has long contended that "Poetry is simply made of metaphor" ("saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority"

the self surrendered to the sublimity of the non-self

we hear and listen to silence.

we revel in stillness.

irreducible, non-discursive experience

Scans have pinpointed which areas of our brain go into high gear and which become dormant when we hava such an experiece, and studies how how we can "instruct" our brain to allow for htis differenct awareness.

It could be the smile, damp eyes, and speechlessness of a visitor who approaches you and squeezes your arm after a profound encountering.

intensity.

This is not the view from back at command central, or from an ivory tower, but from donw where objects and people meet face to face.-humanity

elements including nature, time, perception, allegory, the sensorium, essence, color and memory.

Early in the 19th century, "The Romantics believed that the simplest forms of Nature could speak directly to us, could express sentiments and ideas without the intervention of culture; they dreamed of creating through landscape an art both personal and objective, an immediate, nonconventional, universally intelliglble experssion, a language that would not be discursive but evocative."

Psychologist Kames Hillman, "Beauty cannot enter art unless the mind in the work is anchored beyond itself so that in some way the finished work reflects the sacred and the doing of the work, ritual."

technosublime

Ray's reductivist Roating circle(1988) looks at first glance as if the artist simply drew a circle on the wall, a Minimalist gesture indeed. But if you move in for a closer look, you are rewarded with the discovery that it isn't a drawn circle at all, but a disk, seemingly cut right out of the wall, that is spinning around.

Altman's snowhead, which taps into everyone's childhood memories, whether real or culturlly imprinted. Through the window of a freezer, we peer in and see a snowman with coal eyes, a jaunty carrot nose, and a wide grin. Preserved only fro th emoment, destned ultimately to melt, Altman's snowman reminds us of how we hold on to and often treasure such fleeting memories.

poetisphere

Marcel Proust, "involuntary memory"
-At age twenty-two, he was already tormented by the thought of temps perdu. His early writings resonate with the idea of time as a haunting nightmare. He was introduced to Henri Bergson's view that there are two different ways of considering time: there is time that vanishes into nothingness and time that endures. "Enduring-time" (temps-duree) is psychological time. It is the nonmeasurable, qualitative experience in which the present continuously augments the past without obliterating it."
Proust began to see "inner time," a reality filled with our feelings and emotions, as very different from "chronometric time." "The past," he wrote, "still lives in us . . . has made us what we are and is remaking us every moment! . . . An hour is not merely an hour!" (the Proustian image). "It is a vase filled with perfumes, sounds, places and climates! . . . So we hold within us a treasure of impressions, clustered in small knots, each with a flavor of its own, formed from our own experiences, that become certain moments of our past.
Yet, Proust realized, we cannot reach this treasure, which is buried in our subconscious mind. "Time past" is lost to us, but the sensations experienced are not: here is an inexhaustible mine for art.
When we give our memory an order to bring back a fragment of our past (our "voluntary memory"), it can only suggest the factual data or the skeleton; but the original flavor of the scene will be left behind. This flavor is the "priceless everything" to an artist, making a moment in time unique.
Unusual experiences led Proust to "the truth of involuntary memory," the basis for his life's work. The famous incident of the petit madeleine revealed to him a past lying dormant within him, ready to be called back to consciousness. He was able to retrieve "a feeling of inexplicable happiness" when his mother offered him the little plump cake. He was illuminated by a childhood memory (of Combray), where his Aunt Leone on Sunday mornings used to give him a madeleine, dipping it first in her own cup of tea. It "all sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea!"
How to explain when, from the past, "nothing seems to subsist, the smell, sound, and taste of things remained. And it is these sensory experiences that bear unfaltering the vast structure of recollection!"
Proust thus uncovered a form of memory, beyond the control of our consciousness. Recollection is suggested by some unexpected physical sensation (perhaps unimportant in itself) such as a faint scent, taste, or sound. But that sensation has in the past been associated with a number of definite impressions, and when by chance the identical sensation recurs years afterwards, all the impressions (associated with it) also rush back, en masse. "It is a complete fragment of the past, with its original 'perfume,' that is for a moment given back to us." Resurrection of the past as the aftermath of an accidental, involuntary physical sensation is the keystone of Proust's conception of life and art. It combines past and present.
Proust's artistic engagement with memory intersects in many ways with what science has learned about the mechanics of memory. The physiology of Proust's petit madeleine experience is well understood. The olfactory system, for instance, has a direct, evolutionarily primitive connection to the hypothalamus not shared by other sensory systems, which gives odors a special power to trigger memories in some detail. His work also anticipates modern psychological findings on the degree to which memory is reconstructive, "fleshing out" the details of a remembered scene anew each time it is recalled, the memory itself being merely an "outline.
(http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:b4JObRbq-PYJ:www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/lowen_22_4.htm+Marcel+Proust,+%22involuntary+memory%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=safari)

We cam experience knowing without naming and being to understand what philosopher George Santayana(1863-1952) meant "To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it."

Piet Mondrian "a nostalgia for the universal"

The universal in art requires active participation.
It requires breaking away from passive scceptance of institutional or academic doctrine, and becoming personally involved with a work of art.

Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882) called upon individuals to join in just such a journey of discovery: "The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and a philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?"

own original relation to the universe
to know the self both lost and found,
to feel the astonishment of being
the raw actuality of existence
the immediacy of life

I wandered lonely as a cloud-William Wordsworth

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay: 10
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood, 20
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
1804.

This is a photograph of Me-Margaret Atwood

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small fram house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photography was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.

but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.)

The art of Richar Tuttle

The idea of an art providing a direct experience of reality, as opposed to a secondary, representational one, is one of modernism's most powerful enduring aspirations. Postmodern criticality has held this old-fashioned and indeed impossible ideal under suspicion, particularly since the 1970's and 1980's. What gives Tuttle's efforts in this arena their sense of legitimacy is the fact that his approach keeps well in check the regressive bluster and forceful assertions of absolute certainties that have traditionally accompanied such undertakings. In his quest to figure out "how to maintain the achievements of modernism, particularly in a world dead to them", Tuttle recovers modernism's best qualities in a subversive, deliberately non-general, and imperfect sublime. Not for Tuttle the creation of a single, unadulterated, and absolute "truth"; instead each piece constitutes a palpable, believable, seemingly inevitable "little truth", a graceful and fearless aesthetic presence in front of which one envounters not a depicted image but the thing itself. The artist is "after essences', certainly; "not streamlined Platonic ones", however, "but informal, folded, asymmetrical, lumpy, hairy little entelechies." This universe of small truths addresses the viewer on the spot in a continually constructed present that helps us to feel what it si to be."

Susan Sontag

To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.

Barthes, Roland. A lover's discourse: fragment.

One day, I shall recall the scene, I shall lose myself in the past. The amorous scene, like the first ravishment, consists only of after-the fact manipulations: this is annmnesis, which recovers only insignificant features in no way dramatic, as if I remembered time itself and only time: it is a fragrance without support, a texture without memory; something like a pure expenditure, such as only the Japanese haiku has been able to articulate, without recuperating it in any destiny.

The imperfect is the tense of fascination: it semms to be alive and yet it doesn't move: imperfect presence, imperfect death; neither oblivion nor resurrection; simply the exhausting lure of memory. From the start, greedy to play a role, scenes take their position in memory: often I feel this, I forsee this, at the very moment when these scenes are forming. This theater of time is the very contrary of the search of lost time; for I remember pathetically, punctually, and not philosophically, discursively: I remember in order to be unhappy/happy- not in order to understand.

Sandra Cisneros, The house on mango street

Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imaging what I can't see

Jessica Stockholder

My impulse to make a work begins with my feeling that emotional life isn't allowed room in the world. This feeling is personal to me and my history, but I think it is also a modern issue in that a lot of people share those worries and feelings. So my work becomes a place to make fantasy and emotional life as concrete and real and importanr as a refrigerator, or the room that you are in.

position of viewer= one of empathy toward my process
subjective relationship
labor as a kind of meditation
obsessive - compulsive behavior
but it is not
labor as a prayer

anish kapoor

I began to see that my abiding concern with the sublime, with the idea of a poetic halt, a moment of stillness, a moment of silence, was there in this moment of darkness.
The sublime, while it is a notion about a moment of reverie, is also a notion about danger. It isn't all beautiful. shorten distance between artwork and audience, to make it possible to feel the whole of the reverie, to make the reverie as palpable as possible.

The Matrix Map

Mapping is a sparial process; a process of spatial transcription.
Mulitples exist in one space.
Multiple viewpoints add dimension.
One point on a map does not mean anything unless it is seen it relation.

A map can be viewed in its entirety as well as for details.
Maps are enterable from any side.
Changes cause people to alter their maps.

You make the map and the map makes you.

Creating a matrix map is the first step in giving tangible representation to our vision field.

Goulish, Matthew, 39 Michrolectures in proximity of performance, Routledge: London. 2000, 46

How do we understand something?
We understand something by approaching it.
How do we approach something?
We approach it from any direction.
We approach it using our eyes,
our ears,
our noses,
our intellects,
our imagination.
We approach it with silence.
We approach it with childhood.
We use pain.
We use history.
We take a safe route
or a dangerous one.
We discover our approach and we follow it.

agnes martin

in my best mometns I think "Life has passed me by" and I am content.

JANINE ANTONI Sigh, 2003 50 X 90 X 20 inches Curtain, wind, fabric stiffener Courtesy of Luhring Augustine Gallery

http://www.grandarts.com/exhibits/RPaine.html

http://glasstire.com/ReviewsDetail.asp?id=120

Roxy Paine/ Second Nature

LESSON PLAN:
Using systems to create art

OBJECTIVES
1. To create a system/machine to assist in making art
2. To learn about how chance affects artistic makingMATERIALS
Lazy Susan (can substitute a pottery wheel or any spinning disc), heavy white paper, several colors of India ink, small squeeze bottle (could substitute eye dropped or turkey baster) cardboard, mat knife, marker, and newspaper. (Optional: four 6” dowels per student and hot glue)

BACKGROUND DISCUSSION
Roxy Paine is a sculptor who often builds and programs machines that make art for him. These machines vary: one makes sculptures, another makes paintings, a third makes drawings.
While each object made by the machine is unique and slightly different, Roxy maintains some control over the outcome. He programs information into a computer that determines how much the conveyer belt should shake, how long paint should spray, what color ink to you use, etc.

ACTIVITY
1) Prepare the Lazy Susan by taping or tacking a piece of heavy white paper to it. Cut the paper so that it fits on the Lazy Susan (Note: If you wish, students could build there own spinning wheel by drilling a hole through s piece of would and have a dowel or peg run through it like a turn table.) Lay newspaper beneath the Lazy Susan

2) Creation of a template table: Students cut the cardboard to be slightly larger than the Lazy Susan with an interior border that is slightly smaller than the paper. Then, they will draw a simple linear design on the cardboard with marker. The line should have a beginning and ending point, and it should not overlap itself. The students will then cut away the marked line using a mat knife. The space must be wide enough for the squirt bottle tip/eye dropper. (Options: Students may hot glue the 4 dowels to the corners of the cardboard so that it becomes a table that can be placed over the Lazy Susan, or a third student may hold the template in place.)

3) Decision Making: Before the art making stage, which will consist of one person spinning the Lazy Susan, and another dropping ink in a consistent manner through the template, many decisions should be “programmed.’ Here are some suggestions:
How fast should the wheel be spun?
What color ink should be used?
How concentrated/diluted should the ink be?
How fast should the eye dropper be moved through the template?
How much time should be allowed for the ink to dry between layers?

4) Art making: Following the programmed decisions, work in groups of two. Have one student spin the wheel, and the other move the specified ink in the eye dropper through the template. Are a specified amount of drying time, repeat the process with a new ink color/dilution or new wheel speed through the template. The final product should have 3-5 layers minimum.

5) Series:(Optional) Repeat the activity. However, this time use a different “program”.

CLOSURE
Place the drawings on the wall with their instructions next to it. How do the works look similar? How do they look different? How does wheel speed affect the outcome? How do the different template shapes affect the image?

In April, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts had its second exhibition of sculptures by Roxy Paine, a young artist whose work is some of the most exciting around. It speaks to the artist's role as maker, and to the sort of making, in variety and difference, that is his provenance. Paine's work connects artmaking to the theoretical and logistical methods employed passively by the artist in creating an active art object. Paine insists that his work is about nature and its potential. This recalls Harold Rosenberg's essay "The Anxious Object," which describes how any artwork which is opaque can work off of the viewer's anxiety to suggest ideas. In Paine's case, that idea is a sense of the mode of communication being formed. This language is invented in three ways: by an attempt at the organic simulacra; an organizing of abstract aggregates; and by a mechanically repetitive action.

The first thread of Paine's work is represented by mushroom field (1997) and poison ivy (1997). These works study the superficial and structural edifice of natural organisms. In both mushroom field and poison ivy, he assimilates the multiplicity and organic density of living matter. Both are just what they describe, images composed to as to immediately mirror the surface design of nature's own idea. mushroom field is set upon the floor, two thousand individual models for real-life psilocybin mushrooms, each drawn out and designed with variations of color and growth patterns, as well as the wavelike pattern of the field as a whole, covering an area some ten or twenty feet in diameter. The effect is quite unsettling, of encountering these realistic lifeforms sprouting from the dead wood floor of the gallery space. It is almost hopeful in such a stance. It suggests that the gallery takes part in the in the growth of the artist, or the art in general. In poison ivy, the attention for detail is the same, but the approach is different. Instead of building a natural manifestation into the gallery area, he has collected living poison ivy plants and planted them inside a glass-enclosed patch of ground, along with versions of the self-same plants which he has fabricated.The effect is one of puzzlement, even of wonder, but a certain degree of encounter has been eliminated in placing these specimens under glass. They can no longer exert an effect upon us via their touch or proximity to us, or through our anxiety related to this particular plant.

model painting (1996) and model for an abstract sculpture (1997): both represent a system of communication developed solely by Paine, edited and constructed like hieroglyphs. In the first, he has been able to isolate solidified flesh-colored polymer brush strokes; in the second, he has accumulated various blister packs. Blister packs are part of the refuse of daily life, something which Paine has been able to utilize with regard to ideas of both positive and negative space inherent in their forms. In other words, it's initially difficult to view them as forms created to wrap around other forms. But within their model skeleton they approach a sense of anatomy, of social and political connections between shapes. Each pack then becomes a house in a town, a cell in a body, or a symbol in a system of scientific order. However, the objects accumulated with these works are neither mere simulacra nor Dadaesque mind-games made flesh. The shapes of the objects, if they can be called that, whether blister pack or polymer brush-stroke, suggest only the vaguest of forms, creating an inventive and playful acrostic of formal origin. Their organization is the creation of the new language being formed in us.

The third and final thread of Paine's work is represented by paint dipper (1997), a machine constructed to create paintings by a slow and methodical process. The canvasses hang above a vat of thick white house paint, which is timed to open and dip them down to a certain measured point every few hours over the duration of twenty-four hours. It moves so slowly that rarely does the spectator actually see a painting being dipped, but as it hangs there, dripping paint off onto the machine and the floor around it--completing the process for which it was built--it is fusing ideas of natural formation with inorganic production, and this points out the limitation of the machine. By the manner of its manic and regular action, a process of ambiguous signification surfaces, one which can also be seen in any of the other works here, a negation of individual creation that when taken to an extreme creates a force of juggernaut proportions. This is the activity into which each of us falls when we try to compensate for the stultifying complexity of creative demands. Thus, paint dipper shows itself as eerie proof of our inability to contain or answer the complex demands of everyday life. All that the artist retains is his individual and idiosyncratic vitality. Paine's work is never dependent upon the forms invented in nature, but in forces directly supervised, and to some degree invented, by the artist. His control of them is both his freedom and ours.

David Gibson

New York, New York

1997

Roxy paine

Paint Dipper is a computerized, ten-foot-tall machine which repetitively and obsessively creates paintings formed by what is programmed into the computer, modified by the random results of the dipping process. A truly industrious artist.

paint dipper is an imposing mechanical device which routinely and unceremoniously submerges fresh stretched canvases into a narrow steel tank of thick white paint. Operated by an absurdly small Macintosh Powerbook protected from paint splatters by a tiny sheet of Plexiglas, the electronic dipping vehicle automatically dunks and then redunks each canvas at two and a half hour intervals. Until completion the canvas hovers over the contraption, dripping and drying, as if catching its breath before the next plunge. The fruit of this repeated dunking is a bulging, tumorous rectangle, it's geography caked with dappled paint and thickly dribbled stalactites. Beautiful, really. And ripe with associations to the culturally over-saturated canvas, be it minimal or maximal.

So what is paint dipper? A refined torture device? Why am I thinking of the Salem witch trials? And what exactly does Roxy Paine have against painting? Well, nothing, I suspect. And that's one of the very salient things about his most recent show at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. Although Paine appears to be ferreting out the utilitarian properties of a culture which has long since ceased to find a primary use for them, he is doing so with rancor or polemics. He's funny. It's not as though he has an ax to grind. He is, I think, interested in reducing certain cultural forms to their quantifiable elements, but happily, it is not an act of systematic sleuthing, finger-wagging, or disdain. On the contrary, he is inquisitive, almost guileless in his recapitulation of the facts, as if he is a brilliant feral child who has been presented with the task of distilling a cultural milieu with which he has never had direct contact. Of course, this is not exactly the case. Paine is of this world, but it seems he is methodically investigating the tools of modern culture, dismantling them word for word and then reassembling them in a way in which has, at least for him, been emptied out of its original power to transform.

Paine has removed the artist's hand from the process of painting in paint dipper, and replaced it with evidence of a simple mechanical history. The layered white paint, much like coats of primer, functions as if the painter is performing an endless act of preparation, priming and repriming the surface. As if the untouched canvas is already so full of imagery, expression and information that there is little point--or perhaps little pleasure--in covering it with anything else. Nowhere is Paine's tongue more firmly planted in his cheek than in this sculpture.

In model for painting, Paine disconnects an array of brush strokes from their probable destination--presumably the canvas--and catalogues the random facsimiles of paint in a glass-covered wall vitrine. Isolated from their original intent, the assemblage looks much like a Smithsonian display of highly informative ancient crockery which is missing too many parts to reassemble into a whole. In theory, this piece, like floor model, can be reconvened to create the likeness of a work of art, a little bit like assembling a model airplane. But at the Smithsonian, the fractured antiquities, no longer functional as utilitarian objects, take on an entirely new meaning as a visual model of ancient cultural habits. Separated from their usefulness, their functionality is redefined to fulfill a modern analysis of ancient technique and virtuosity, so that other cultural galaxies can look upon them for reassessment of historical accounts.

Similarly, here Paine is commenting on the formal tools of painting and sculpture, reminding us, perhaps, how they have been ravaged by overuse and consumerism and what precious little authenticity remains. Or perhaps that these basic utilities have been so codified and categorized that anyone can find equal or better goods in a blister pack at the bottom of a box of Cheerios. But primarily, I think he just wants to poke fun at an artistic milieu which has lost its tooth.

And then there is the nefarious mushroom, the divinely perilous fungus which can alternately amuse, inspire, poison or heal. mushroom field (psilocybe cubensis) is a delicate bed of perfectly hewn mushrooms. Replicas, that is, of hallucinogenic mushrooms--or mushroom sculptures--expanding across a good part of the gallery floor. And much like their renowned capacity to transform, indeed they cultivate a transformation right on Mercer Street by creating the illusion of a damp, earthen paradise sprouting before our eyes.

Hallucinogens, associated throughout the ages with creativity and the throwing off of psychological coils, are a means to an end much like brushstrokes and sculptural components, much like cultural tenets. And they may offer, in their most refined state, an alternative vision of reality.

But this is not a field of mushrooms, it is a facsimile of a field of mushrooms. Divorced from their natural environment and stripped of their magical properties, they are nostalgic, touching, whimsical. Intertwined with metaphors of myth, science, psychology and aesthetics, here Paine's use of artifice addresses issues of forgery and replication. And the artist's hand, responsible for, and yet eclipsed by, the astounding realism of the mushrooms, is also at issue, where evidence of the human touch is implicit but invisible. In poison ivy field (toxicodendron radicans), a diorama of plastic poison ivy proliferates in a weedy underbrush. One's reflexive "don't touch" resounds, as memories of bare-legged walks in the woods are conjured up. But is it frightening or is it satire? If it's a counterfeit patch of ivy, is it a counterfeit reaction? If ambivalence pervades the work, it is as a fined tuned metaphor in and of itself. While Paine's works are idea-driven, part of the machinery that drives them is the irony of his loose ends.

Janet Goleas

Brooklyn, New York

1997