There is no real theme for this show. It's false premise: a dubious and murky notion about 'aberrancy in abstraction' is just another example of curatorial babble. This is a gnostic, suburban goulash of west elm castoffs artfully posed in a sterile setting. It is thin on idea and top heavy with promises not kept. There are no aberrations--aesthetic or otherwise--to be had here. What remains is the hubris of a curator scrap-heaping a gallery for an end-year non event.
I cannot get past this line, I'm laughing to hard: 'How can you reinterpret a classification that so easily assimilates any nonrepresentational work? And what exactly constitutes an "aberrant" abstraction? A realistic painting of a log cabin, maybe?' Can't wait to read the rest of the article, once I calm down a bit.
I cannot get past this line, I'm laughing to hard: 'How can you reinterpret a classification that so easily assimilates any nonrepresentational work? And what exactly constitutes an "aberrant" abstraction? A realistic painting of a log cabin, maybe?' Can't wait to read the rest of the article, once I calm down a bit.
...this is a finely focused and deeply felt appreciation of the Wyeth's. They are out of fashion in fashionable art circles. Maybe it is time for a fresh look. I will never understand the fixation with Helga. That is someone I would not want to wake up with on even the warmest of mornings.
...this is a finely focused and deeply felt appreciation of the Wyeth's. They are out of fashion in fashionable art circles. Maybe it is time for a fresh look. I will never understand the fixation with Helga. That is someone I would not want to wake up with on even the warmest of mornings.
Brilliant! Your assessment of Laib's self mythologizing peregrination into the colliding energies of biology and philosophy illumines the emptiness of an idea (is there an idea here) actualized in real time and space. I like my metaphors fat with possibility. An endless-seeming,horizon-crunching chiaroscuro of "handcrafted" rice mounds simmering in the destitute sibilance of curatorial babble leaves me kinetically underwhelmed. Why not use ham hocks and collard greens to get the message across? Or how about pig shit and sauerkraut! There are many paths to the palace of aesthetic satori. The real message embedded within this doctrinaire effort in the zenescent-sublime, announces the bankruptcy of conceptual praxis. It is an art world conceit whose moment has passed.
Brilliant! Your assessment of Laib's self mythologizing peregrination into the colliding energies of biology and philosophy illumines the emptiness of an idea (is there an idea here) actualized in real time and space. I like my metaphors fat with possibility. An endless-seeming,horizon-crunching chiaroscuro of "handcrafted" rice mounds simmering in the destitute sibilance of curatorial babble leaves me kinetically underwhelmed. Why not use ham hocks and collard greens to get the message across? Or how about pig shit and sauerkraut! There are many paths to the palace of aesthetic satori. The real message embedded within this doctrinaire effort in the zenescent-sublime, announces the bankruptcy of conceptual praxis. It is an art world conceit whose moment has passed.
I would be very interested to know if Raylene actually attended this exhibition. Her reaction is completely different from the one expressed to me by the vast majority of visitors during the previous five weeks of this exhibition ( it runs through Dec. 31). I am fifty-four years old and have never seen an entire town age and reflect over a more than 20 year period of time. The only project I can compare it to is the 7UP series, which tracked 14 people in England over many decades. We've had well over 1,500 visitors so far and I hope more will come and make up their own minds as to the usefulness of such projects. Thanks for spreading the word!
Mo Dickens
Gallery Assistant
Belger Arts Center
Nov. 10, 2009
I would be very interested to know if Raylene actually attended this exhibition. Her reaction is completely different from the one expressed to me by the vast majority of visitors during the previous five weeks of this exhibition ( it runs through Dec. 31). I am fifty-four years old and have never seen an entire town age and reflect over a more than 20 year period of time. The only project I can compare it to is the 7UP series, which tracked 14 people in England over many decades. We've had well over 1,500 visitors so far and I hope more will come and make up their own minds as to the usefulness of such projects. Thanks for spreading the word! Mo Dickens Gallery Assistant Belger Arts Center Nov. 10, 2009
This fallow field has been over-plowed one time too many. Let us have a moment of silence for the quiet dignity of semi-polluted small town life. Please pass around the barf bags while the clouds part and distant bugles announce the coming of the saviour; sociologized in the guise of reverential truth telling,phallocratic savant. "My cousin Earl" does a much better job anatomizing the quotidian and tragicomic exigincies of white trash culture than this uber-unctious, barely-breathing exercise on hand wringing for middle class white folks with college degrees. If there is indeed any art to be had here, it is in the self delusion and hubris of the art-professionals who conceived this piss-pious examination of how tough life really is in the mindless terra incognita of relational aesthetics.
This fallow field has been over-plowed one time too many. Let us have a moment of silence for the quiet dignity of semi-polluted small town life. Please pass around the barf bags while the clouds part and distant bugles announce the coming of the saviour; sociologized in the guise of reverential truth telling,phallocratic savant. "My cousin Earl" does a much better job anatomizing the quotidian and tragicomic exigincies of white trash culture than this uber-unctious, barely-breathing exercise on hand wringing for middle class white folks with college degrees. If there is indeed any art to be had here, it is in the self delusion and hubris of the art-professionals who conceived this piss-pious examination of how tough life really is in the mindless terra incognita of relational aesthetics.
Thanks for the coverage of our exhibit. You get it and that's always rewarding. Two little things. I take exception to the use of the word freaks. Someone once asked Diane Arbus why she chose to photograph freaks. Her response was that we're all freaks. My response would have been that none of us are freaks.
The other thing is a small, but important misread. Blanche Smith, the foster mother of Brianne Leckness, was not the religious fanatic mother. That came after Bobby Jo (her name as a child) had to leave Blanche's house.
These are little things, but important to me that they be clear. Thanks again for your article.
Thanks for the coverage of our exhibit. You get it and that's always rewarding. Two little things. I take exception to the use of the word freaks. Someone once asked Diane Arbus why she chose to photograph freaks. Her response was that we're all freaks. My response would have been that none of us are freaks. The other thing is a small, but important misread. Blanche Smith, the foster mother of Brianne Leckness, was not the religious fanatic mother. That came after Bobby Jo (her name as a child) had to leave Blanche's house. These are little things, but important to me that they be clear. Thanks again for your article.
If there is a point to this unfocused murkfest it is hidden behind miles and miles of overdetermined and under-nourished journalese.
Simply put-- Andy made pretty pictures that speak to what ails us as a culture. WE 'consume'. As an end in itself, unquenchable and mindless, it is our national pastime. Consuming in America is the complicit activity that unites us and defines us. Andy aestheticized this collective pathology and rendered it's apotheosis as Art.
If there is a point to this unfocused murkfest it is hidden behind miles and miles of overdetermined and under-nourished journalese. Simply put-- Andy made pretty pictures that speak to what ails us as a culture. WE 'consume'. As an end in itself, unquenchable and mindless, it is our national pastime. Consuming in America is the complicit activity that unites us and defines us. Andy aestheticized this collective pathology and rendered it's apotheosis as Art.
are you channeling Dana,or worse- Alice? What is this? It reads like a PR release for the Dolphin. Describing a painting is not a review or a critique. It is just bad writing. And it is boring to the nth degree of recorded time. Were you in a coma when you wrote this? Hire a goddamn critic with an attitude and a discernible aesthetic and an edge. This does not honor the work at all...
are you channeling Dana,or worse- Alice? What is this? It reads like a PR release for the Dolphin. Describing a painting is not a review or a critique. It is just bad writing. And it is boring to the nth degree of recorded time. Were you in a coma when you wrote this? Hire a goddamn critic with an attitude and a discernible aesthetic and an edge. This does not honor the work at all...
good piece CJ! The deadly irony here is that your descriptives are more interesting than the actual show. I had a chuckle when you dared to anatomize the subtle spatial qualities of an apostrophe. It was a poetic investiture of virtue and meaning where none really exists. Yet, looking carefully is indeed part of the discourse. You made a heroic attempt to craft a platform of worth from a junkpile of academic conceits and misapprehensions. While this is a nod to the energetic parameters of your fecund imagination it is really about you and not the work. I will remember your writing.
good piece CJ! The deadly irony here is that your descriptives are more interesting than the actual show. I had a chuckle when you dared to anatomize the subtle spatial qualities of an apostrophe. It was a poetic investiture of virtue and meaning where none really exists. Yet, looking carefully is indeed part of the discourse. You made a heroic attempt to craft a platform of worth from a junkpile of academic conceits and misapprehensions. While this is a nod to the energetic parameters of your fecund imagination it is really about you and not the work. I will remember your writing.
Re: “The Nerman's Aberrant Abstraction is tamer than it sounds”
There is no real theme for this show. It's false premise: a dubious and murky notion about 'aberrancy in abstraction' is just another example of curatorial babble. This is a gnostic, suburban goulash of west elm castoffs artfully posed in a sterile setting. It is thin on idea and top heavy with promises not kept. There are no aberrations--aesthetic or otherwise--to be had here. What remains is the hubris of a curator scrap-heaping a gallery for an end-year non event.