If not already, get down and see the Urs Fischer show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in NY for a solid dose of PE before the show closes next week.
Ongoing collection to chart the passage for painting in the continuous current, with writing for work informed by or informing painted practice. Images, modelled and actual paint all twisted like a vine, etc.
PAINTED,ETC. is a broad research initiative currently produced by artist Ry David Bradley to document the practice, understanding and lineage of painting and its descendants in the internet age...PAINTED,ETC. accepts contributions, brief reviews, short artist essays, statements and images.......
To send work click here • PAINTED, ETC.
Recent short paper discussing the digital divide, from Timur Si Qin’s Metamaterialism to Evan & Andre Lenox’s Placelessness.
“The basic question of whether it is really there or not is a philosophical one, with much historic precedent from the writings of Plato to Baudrillard and beyond. In the end whether it was locked to the network, or locked to the world, or to both - it depends on what you call the world. Or which world you are talking about. Assuming there is one world that encompasses many facets, art in this domain shares a great deal with the mythological. In seeing and sensing things beyond what is apparent in open public space. The only difference now is that the illusion has developed to the point that the distance between the real world and the superimposed fantasy world is narrowing in ways central to the development of portable technology. And with it, so are our definitions of place.”
Nice interview with John Transue in Philadelphia based Title Magazine regarding his digital arts practice.
“Around the same time, I registered my first domain:http://johntransue.net. I wasn’t getting any shows, grants or anything really. My .net was my show. My .net became my practice. I was painting in Photoshop and publishing straight to web. I was no longer waiting for oil paint to dry or paying for art materials. I had my computer, internet access and that was all I needed. I wasn’t sure if anyone was seeing the work I was putting up, so I started to get into social networking, Facebooking, and Rhizome. I became interested in found materials via surfing/browsing and finding the latest in warez via peer2peer networks.
Ultimately I realized that most people will not see your work in a gallery context, but rather as a photograph on a website or in a magazine. I became more interested in making a .jpg or a .mov than I was in making a sculpture, taking a photograph, transferring it to my computer, adjusting the colors, and uploading it.”
The other day Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City gave the latest series of iPad Paintings by the artist David Hockney at the Institute of Contemporary Culture in Ontario a short critical spanking. It was kinda fair. In a nutshell - in his handling software “can only ape the act of painting”. It made me wonder, all painting can be reduced to painting that can only ape its source image. Mimesis anyone? Anyway she also mentions that exhibiting the iPad itself with the painting on its screen is a little bit “like choosing to exhibit the easel as well as the painting”. This is a valid assesment. It is a little weird to see ipads on a museum wall, though I do understand Hockneys intent to exhibit the painting on its own terms as a file and as light, rather than as a print or a projection. There might have been other ways to go about it to save it from looking like an Apple store in the musem as Paddy acknowledges. Would a bunch of TV’s (like in most screen based gallery situations) have looked less commercial because of their faded novel identity and generic branding? Maybe we just need to get over it. David Hockney has done much to practically (not theoretically) investigate the instersection between painting and photography and technology in his quirky garish late picasso-esque style over the last 30 years, in fact painting with light from the BBC series (1986) was one of the first things PAINTED,ETC. ever posted. One of the good things about his current show at the ICC in Ontario is the little side events associated with it. They are a little bit awkward (ie: accessible to everyone) which is fine, including panel discussions of this amazing thing called “new media” and how it can be shown in the museum, to political advocacy on the internet, and even - wait for it - digital iPad drawing classes! As well as some younger digital artists presenting their digital art and why it must be digital. If you are in Ontario go and check some of these things out maybe. You can read Paddy’s full piece in Toronto Life here.
QR/ART was a show recently held at the Portland Art Museum curated by Krystal South. Visitors to the museum could wander through and view artwork as usual, but if they held up a smartphone to various works within the gallery that had a QR code placed next to them, a remixed version of the museum piece would appear. If you weren’t in Portland the other night check the database of the show to view all the work before, and after. PE
Image by Micah Schippa
