"Explore"

This is like my number one pet hate. I'm not gonna pretend that this is not just a left over art-school-bullshit-radar symptom, but one thing that bothers me whenever I go to see almost any show that leans heavily on establishing itself in its own artist statement/press release, is the use of this little weasel word. Explore. The main problem I have with this word is that it seems to imply an expansiveness wrt the subject matter which often, and not even to the detriment of the work is not even attempted, but I mean....

I feel like exploratory strategies in art imply more than an elucidation, illumination, juxtaposition etc. That exploration becomes the stand in for a vague set of assumptions wrt the relat. b/w the artist and the final product. As though the mere act of artistic mediation becomes in itself an "exploration." I'm not buying it guys.

This, imo, misuse of that particular word feels partic. heinous in instances where the particular concerns of the artist feels kind of modest on a conceptual level. Explore has come to stand for an uncertain and seemingly willingly obfuscated process. And I get where ppl are coming from on this. It is easier to imply a vague strategy w/-in a body of work, esp. when conflicting strategies/instincts/precedents/values constantly seem to disrupt the potential for a coherent and stable voice or elaboration of ideas w/in the oeuvre, even as that condition structures the possibility for the same. At the same time, w/ the deflection of the work onto the statement, which is then deflected onto this seemingly evasive concept of "exploration," the possibility for actual meaning to emerge seems constantly deferred.

more posts to follow in the next couple weeks i swear!

everything went to sleep for xmas which was okay. standard series is on a mission to be more mobile and engaged in 2k10 get ready.

by way of conciliation heres my #1 jam from last year:

GALLERY BEAT!

Hahahahahahaha! I would love to have the balls/complete lack of self-consciousness to do shit like this, well maybe not really. This is kinda the tone I'm going for in this blog by the way, just a blog that is about actually going to shows and having a reaction and thinking about that a little, no holy mountain bs here ppl!

http://gallerybeat.net/

The video of Stephen Irwin's opening is getting a lot of internet buzz, largely due to the fact that Paul H-O calls Cathy Lebowitz, Cindy (dude dated Cindy Sherman for like a long time and made that movie that u prolly haven't seen either) and then gets her to describe some sexually [im/ex]plicit imagery.

LYNDA BENGLIS @ IMMA

Feel like there's an essay in the works on this one, so I'll keep it brief here. This was a great show and one of the reasons that IMMA have been restoring a lot of my previous faith in them after a dodgy couple of years. Lynda Benglis, best known for her ARTFORUM ad featuring her wearing nothing but sunglasses and an, um, dildo, emerged as a figure from the New York Painting Scene of the late 60's early 70's. Thankfully this period has overgone a huge reappraisal in recent years with figures as diverse as Mary Heilmann and Joan Mitchell re-emerging as important and influential. Benglis' work from this period is aggressively feminist in rhetoric, but in its lush materialism and sly disruption of formalism, seems to anticipate queer 90's artists Felix Gonzalez Torres (pro tip for blog readers, if I align anybody with FGT it means I am about to say I like them) and Roni Horn.

I suppose it would be suitable to cite Robert Morris or Judy Chicago, both artists whose awareness of the gendered rhetoric of Minimalism in particular informed their work (Chicago, before she embraced large installations on feminist themes, made quietly prettified Minimalist sculpture) Neither of these artists approached the formal subversion of Benglis though, her flamboyant and gaudy sculptures deconstruct the maleness of the previous decades of american art, the ejaculations of Jackson Pollock and the cool supermensch boy-toys of minimalism, and remake them as bawdy, excessive and bodacious visions of camp femaleness.

Working with latex, wax, plaster, glitter and vibrant acrylics, much of the show has the appearance of Mardi-Gras float casualties (especially due to the repeated use of chicken wire to give many sculptures structure) But it is in this free-floating garishness that the artist stumbles across her radicalness, her affront to bourgeois tastefulness. While her work is lacking in the nuance and subtlety of Mary Heilmann, it makes up for it with sheer willpower. Considering how long it has taken this period of recent history to become canonised, her aggressiveness seems justified yet how odd to think that in a world where Warhol was the most famous living artist, that it took so long for this post-pop abstraction to gain respectability. Still, it is in its persistant un respectability that this show is so much fun, in all its kinky, rubbery trashiness.

Whatup!

okay so i'm worried that this blog is coming across as me thinking i'm uh "reviewing" these shows. I mean yeah opinion comes into it, but really i'm just trying to structure my thoughts around how things i'm seeing is working and also giving some impetus to being more active in *thinking* about the art i'm looking at, and i suppose engaging in a more holistic way with things i see in general.

I've just got back from a trip to dublin where I visited 10 galleries including IMMA, the RHA , Hugh Lane and Douglas Hyde and so i reckon I saw at least fifteen exhibitions in the space of about five hours! Without taking notes. And caught cold wandering around Dublin in the cold I think! So over the next couple of days hopefully there will be a couple of posts about the shows that i thought were particularly great, with a special shout out to Fergus Feehily who was the main reason I had to get up to Dublin as soon as I had two days off work together and whose show at Douglas Hyde not only did not disappoint but far outstripped my own inflated expectations.

Oh and there is the Tulca festival which is on in Galway over the next few days in Galway which I have yet to see beyond the opening show (which i attended immediately after stepping off the bus from my Dublin trip so, you know, was a little burnt out by then)