~ UPDATE:

The Artifact.

2011-02-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

The artifact as a subject has been a recent topic in my work. My interest in the artifact initially came from a personal involvement with performance art that started about four years ago. While I was in college there was a general re-visiting of the second wave feminist movement and as a result I was looking at artists who dealt with taboo subjects in the 1960’s and 70’s. I experimented with performance partially to understand how it worked as a political apparatus and also because I wanted to find out which taboo subjects existed in the art world at the time. I arrived at some conclusions, most of which are inconsequential to what I am doing right now but while I was exploring these subjects I momentarily abandoned painting to focus on performance. Eventually, I began to think of such things as Carolee Schneeman’s Internal Scroll and Eve Klein’s Anthropométries, objects that function as recordings of time-based significant actions or performance artifacts.

As I got deeper into performance theory I was inevitably compelled to read about theater history and I learned how Artaud led to Grotowski. The Western idea of theater was gradually stripped down to its elements from the late 30’s to the 60’s, first theoretically with Antonin Artaud who proposed to engulf the audience within the stage, and then in practice with Grotowski. Theater was stripped down of the stage, the script, and of the conventional audience-performer relationships. From this I began to carve out a definition for myself of what the term perfomance really meant now, or what it could mean, and the word became so permissive that I felt I was after an absurd endeavor. For example, I deduced that a performer does not need to be human, it can be an animal or a thing; I deduced that any action may be considered a performance as long as it is acknowledgeable, and I deduced that all verbs exist to describe performances except I was doubtful about ontological verbs to be and to exist because it is unclear to me whether they imply action. This might sound a little far-fetched and irrelevant, but it awakened in me a new way of looking at objects, as recordings of different processes and forces that shaped them into their current state. The same interest in objects that I suppose drives Justin Allen to paint worn out consumer goods. This same interest was the prime motivation for the making of a couple of pieces including the Cigarrete Tapestry, the Automated Biography (image above), and the Library Due Date Installation.

I should mention that the work of Maria Teresa Hincapié also brought my attention back to the object through performance. Her background was in theater and she was extremely influenced by Grotowski but also by Joseph Beuys. She was making performances in which she interacted with her personal belongings inside the gallery space. She was addressing the potential of everyday things to stimulate the body and activate the mind, and ultimately, she implying that the relevance of an object exists in the actions it instigates, and that these actions may or may not be relative to the object’s appearance.

After I acquired a new appreciation for objects and how they came to exist in their current state, I began to look at paintings themselves as performance artifacts. It was then that I realized that paintings are most important when they stand as signifiers of processes that were and that are to be, or in other words, that a fundamental part of a good work of art lies in its capacity to belong to and speak of a certain history. Hence came my interest in the artifact.

Formal Modification, Cosmetic Layer.

2011-01-28T02:58:00.000-08:00

I have a new show coming up, and while curating, it’s been good to reevaluate things that I had done in the past, and to compare them to the recent work made in Korea. What is surprising are not the differences, but the similarities between now and before, and in realizing this I have become aware of a habit that I’m starting to consider very essential to my modus operandi. Maybe I had tried to describe it before but had failed, but here is another attempt.

Yesterday, Cigarette Piece (Which from now on I will rename Cigarette Tapestry) was unrolled for the first time since I had packed to leave Rhode Island. It is now stretched like a rug in the center of the room, surrounded by purple paintings that hover above it as if curiously inspecting the new member of the family. And in fact, these pieces are distant relatives; created in different continents by the same hand. It was while I was looking at the tapestry that I realized that conceptually there is a link between the works; these pieces are all made with the intention of bringing attention to some sort of abandoned or half-forgotten artifact (I’ve called the artifact an icon in other occasions).

In Cigarette Tapestry the artifact is the cigarette filter, and its original attributes are present in the final product. Yet the intention is not to make assemblages out of found objects, but to bring an artifact from its current state to one of more relevance, or in other words, to update it. Instead of transformation, the process is one of renewal. The original artifact must stay true to itself since it is preservation that instigates the creation of a work of art. But more importantly than staying true to itself, the artifact must be challenged with additional elements. In the case of the Cigarette tapestry, the modification is mainly formal. The cigarettes are dissected, the butts extracted and sliced, and then they are glued together into a piece of fabric with different patterns.

This process of modification, whatever it may be, which I have called a cosmetic layer in more recent writing, has an advanced effect on figurative paintings. The diva paintings, and the ones of Casa Gutierrez, emerged from certain artifacts, including videos, photographs, and objects, just like the tapestry emerged from cigarette butts. All works have a kind of original artifact within them, which is then formally modified. The most recent works are figurative, and in being so, the modification not only affects them formally but also pictorially. The main difference between the tapestry and the recent work is that the figurative paintings seem to speak more directly about memory than the former.

Culture is Exclusive.

2011-01-20T15:56:00.000-08:00

Is culture like a collective curatorial project? Cornel West defines culture in Prophetic Reflections, p. 137, as "values and attitudes that are embodied or expressed in texts, artifacts, or performances, sustained by communities over time, preserving various identities of unique individuals within those communities." It's interesting to think about how much of this process is constructed subconsciously and how much of it is schemed. Any culture that may be described by a word plus the morpheme '-ness' is inherently talking about purity. Considering the history of purity in relationship to the human race, it's hard to live without paranoia.

Cultural Heritage, Authority, and Immigration.

2010-12-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

I’ve been up to catching up with my reading. I’ve been taking up nineteenth century classics that I never got to read when I was in high school. I’ve been busy painting and listening to audio books in the process, so that when I look at my paintings they remind me of stories. I have been thinking about the meaning of the term cultural heritage and how it applies to migrant people. Are those English and North American classics that I've been reading part of my "cultural heritage"? Am I responsible for them and do I have the right to claim them as part of my background?

To the common citizen cultural background is taken for granted, but to the immigrant, cultural background becomes a responsibility and a construct. The common citizen is fed literature, art, and language automatically and systematically from his native environment all of his life. The immigrant brings a personalized idea of what his cultural background is and adjusts it to his new surrounding in an attempt to comply with new political expectations. Part of this process of integration requires an understanding of the new environment: Language is a good example for without a basic understanding of a local language an immigrant will always be marginalized by default. Other idiosyncrasies and knowledge modified during this process are taste, mannerisms, and vocabulary. All of these plus the tangible artifacts left by past generations are considered a culture's heritage.

The immigrant then has an opportunity to choose what to inherit from his new home but will be faced with the inevitable consequences of being an alien. As an alien one has no right to claim authority over local cultural heritage. Or does one? If so, how long does it take then to become naturalized? Ten years? Twenty? Three generations?

It really comes down to persuasion. In order to exist freely, the immigrant struggles to get out of a sector designated for him by his host society. Transcending that spot does not mean camouflage. The immigrant adapts when he has found a way to incorporate all aspects of his experience into a perfectly constructed identity, and since he will be prone to interrogations, language is the most important tool. To belong to a culture means to be able to understand and to communicate it successfully without having to rely on another for comparison. Or better yet, to belong to a culture means to be able to perform it. If the immigrant relies on his past experiences or on his experiences as an immigrant to discuss culture, he will never have the right to exercise authority over it for he will always marginalize himself by his otherness.

Statement For The Gold of Your Horizons.

2010-12-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

My current project consists in the partial obliteration of objects that are fundamental to the construction of a cultural identity. Examples of these are memorabilia, cultural or religious figures (including mythological, folkloric, historical, or artistic icons) and prehistoric or ancient artifacts that aid in the invention of an ancestral past.

How important are these objects (or subjects) in the long run? How easy or how difficult is it to forget them? The poporo, a Muisca statuette, the Tahíno words in my vocabulary: patata, tiburón, maíz, bohío; and the Arabic ones: algarroba, aceite, limón, arroz. Do we remember the functions of these tokens accurately or do we construct them? Do we modify them to fit our ideologies or even our tastes? Am I entitled to my mother’s memories? Do I inherit my past or do I reinvent it? How does collective memory function? These are questions that I ask myself constantly.

The Icon and the Pall: The subject, or “icon” is either displayed in its physical form, or recreated in an academic painting style. Part of it however, is veiled by glazes or covered by thick smothering paint reminiscent of petroleum in viscosity and of nail polish in color.

Within the project entire series can be created based on theme, such as prehistoric artifacts, divas, buildings, etc. The selection of these objects is based on my own personal history, but when viewed as a body of work these objects speak of a universal feeling of memory and loss. The majority of the reproduced images are taken from photographs, real objects, or video stills. They speak of nostalgia but also of fear and rejection to one’s own past.

English Lit.

2010-11-27T13:36:00.000-08:00

I recently got one of those forwarded messages from a friend. The ones that you are supposed to read, modify and forward to other people. Except this was not really a message but a facebook note in which I was tagged. It was about a list of 100 books made by BBC. The broadcaster supposedly alleged most people only have read an average of 6 of the books included. I was supposed to go through the list, bold the books I have read in their entirety and italicize the ones I only started reading but did not finish, or read only an excerpt. Then I was to create my own note with the list and tag the friend who sent me the message along with other “book nerds” explaining the process so that it could all be publicized and compared.

When I received the note I immediately felt ashamed because I already knew that I was about to confront one of my biggest insecurities – my literary command, and that I was thrown into a game that I could not win. It is not that I consider myself stupid or incapable of playing this game and in fact, if what BBC says about this list is correct then I am above the level of the average reader (at least in England), but I still feel panicky when I see myself forced to discuss this topic in public.

I will not make my own note for my Facebook acquaintances to see and I will not tag anyone in it, but if I did, this is what it would look like:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Embarrassing: Only 10 out of 100. But my interest in literature only began earlier this year. Only seven of the books that are in the list I have read for pleasure and 5 of them I read in 2010. The rest were books that I had to read in high school as part of a curriculum, I had trouble understanding them and therefore I did not enjoy them. When I was in high school, I did not speak English fluently until the very last year, and even throughout college I always struggled with composition and grammar and reading was never a pleasant experience. Reading was an endeavor and I was so ambitious with my art-related projects that anything that consumed time and energy was disregarded by default if it was not directly related. I hated fiction because I thought it was a waste of time. High school thought me that books were not meant for me.

When I was a young boy however, I used to like when my mother read to me, and it seems like she always had a book in her hand when we went on trips. She would read quite passionately in the car while my father was driving and my brothers would beg her to shut up. I liked it though and later I would ask her to read for me. She read the Perfume to me when I was 12, fragments of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, and articles from magazines with feminist undertones but all in Spanish. I thought that maybe it was because of the language that I could not read books in English, and of course that was true most of my life, but then when I was in college and my English vocabulary had diversified to a level that was perhaps better than my Spanish, I realized that it was not the language, but that I had a tired interest in staring at text and I could not bring myself to do it for pleasure. When I listened to my mother read aloud I could look far away or play with the grass if we were outdoors, or leisurely remove my cuticles if we were in her room. In short, I liked not actually having to read but enjoyed listening to stories. Recently I began to listen to audio books while I paint, and now when I look at certain sections of my paintings they remind me of stories that someone volunteered to record on archive.org. Casa Gutierrez will always remind me of Dracula. A painting of the same building entitled Casa Gutierrez, Capilla, will always remind me of Dostoyevsky. And in the same way a more recent painting of Celia Cruz will remind me of Emily Brönte.

Maybe in the United States does spoil the immigrant, and maybe the disenfranchisement comes from somewhere unexpected. When I was in those English literature classes in high school I obviously had a major disadvantage, but by the time I was in college I was convinced that I could get away with not knowing the major and more essential literary works because I had the excuse of the language barrier. Of course I can't blame my high school teachers for letting me get away with certain amount of ignorance because after all, they had thirty-something students in their class and they could not have gone out of their way to help me. I was a lost case, and at some point I was also convinced of it. My high school did not have an ESOL program because it was a magnet school, because you can't be talented and be an immigrant at the same time. How is that for affirmative action? but anyways I made it. I did. And now I have nothing to complain about, just some catching up to do.

Notes:

Jane Eyre was bolded on March 9th, 2011

Great Expectations was bolded on March 11th, 2011

Évita from ET AL., ETC.

2010-11-11T19:03:00.001-08:00

This is really lazy but I'm going to redirect to another post from another blog that is not mine. But basically Évita talks about the things she makes.

AM needs a projector.

2010-11-04T00:59:00.000-07:00

This might be the last painting that I make in which the image is not traced directly from a projector. For this one I used the old method of amplifying a sketch with a grid. Realistically though, this process is not fast enough and it is extremely tedious and annoying. I have decided that to produce a justifiable body of work (in terms of time) the drawing has to be completely figured out before the painting is started, and amplified with a projector.

Of course it’s amazing how someone like Claudio Bravo can work from life andemploy a method in which the final product is obtained by the traditionalist repetitive task of fixing mistakes, but the hour ratio spent on each painting using this method results in works that if made for sale seem disproportionally expensive. In fact, the process is not practical at all for an emerging artist even if they are being sponsored.

An emerging artist has two options: to have a day job or to look for funding, and in both cases time is limited. Our era requires of artists to have a certain quantity of works to display every year, or a list of exhibitions in our curriculum vitae that validates our existence and our efforts. Quality is less important than quantity or size when all we need is some text in a document. But that's beside the point, with this painting the lesson was to prevent the fidgety, general-to-specific method of applying paint, and to figure out the composition first in the computer, then project it, and finally, to really spend time mixing paint to avoid going over what’s already on the surface. These images of the progress of a recent painting show some of the unnecessary work that I mentioned.

Yongsan International Art Exhibition

2010-10-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

Opening at 5:00pm on Monday October 18th, goes down on the 22nd.

Yongsan Culture Art Hall (1st Floor) Itaewon. Nearest subway station: Noksapuyeong Station line 6 exit 3 (5 minutes walk to center) Seoul.

for directions click here

Casa Gutierrez

2010-09-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

I am writing in the near darkness of the dawn after another night, the third one in a row to be exact, of painting the Gutierrez House which lies about 600 meters of the house where I grew up. This old traditional coffee plantation is an important building in the history of Medellín for its age and exemplarity, as it has appeared in various historic documents about the city for being an axis of development around the area, and for its very specific architectural design. While painting it, and as a result of a conversation I had with my father about it, I have come to realize there is a possibility that after ten years of abandonment, it might be safe again to move back into the house. It has been for sale since we left and there have been various offers including one by the state itself to turn the house into some sort of museum, but either the distance from the city center or the danger related to the Colombian countryside have always prevented the transaction.

Personally, this topic has always affected me, I never wanted the house to sell not only because I have a familial connection with the house and therefore a sort of romanticism about it, but also because I do sincerely consider it national heritage and I think most people who want to buy it don't realize that. Of course, I need to make the exception of when the state wanted to buy it to integrate it to Arví Regional Park in a project that I alluded to already.

I was 13 years old when we left and I thought it unconceivable that the area was out of bounds indefinitely, yet I have only been back once since for a very hurried and paranoid visit in 2008. My family was virtually banned from that area since 2000, when we migrated to the US due to the armed conflict. Since then it has been considered imprudent and dangerous to go there, but things seem to have finally changed for the better and my father suddenly seems interested in Colombia again. He is even talking about starting a business of agricultural sort within the grounds of the property. In any case, the possibility of putting the house to use is relieving because it means that perhaps the house will be properly looked after, and that's what's most important.

I will now describe my personal relationship to that house, and where the romanticism towards it comes from. Let me clarify before I go further that I did not grow up in the Gutierrez Household, but in another house near it of far less historic importance if any, which is now inhabited. The area was however, all around part of the Gutierrez estate at some point, and to my understanding, it encompassed a vast area including Las Mellizas, which became highly populated within the last two or three decades as a result of forced migration from the countryside. But those are other stories that are not part of mine (at least yet).

Due to my own displacement, I became obsessed with memories of that lost, out of bounds piece of land, and was so preoccupied with them, and with the emotions attached to those memories, that I was in a sort of dream state for many years while dwelling on the past. Being still a child, I made a promise to my brother that one day we would go back to our motherland and that it would be as before, and for a while I was stubbornly committed to that promise. Everything else in my perception was as inconsequential and as ephemeral as the things that a suicide bomber must endure in order to ensure his last mission securely. In other words, the real importance of my existence lied somewhere in my future and my current situation was nothing but a means. With such a mentality, it was very difficult for me to let myself enjoy life or to even look at it objectively.

That consistency of thought however, convinced me that it was my destiny that I would eventually return to the land that I believed created me (and perhaps that I created too). That enclave, which is an area that is real, and is called Santa Helena in the outskirts of Medellín, was nonetheless reinvented and idealized. That world was my past and my future and during my teenage-hood it represented my reality and my purpose. I often feel, when I allow myself to look back into those days, that I was living in a half-reality composed of a fantastical mixture of the future and the past and too little of the present. The future, being a mirror image of the past, was not always a consequence of the present but rather subconsciously I understood it as fate, so I never considered the possibility of failure in this business of “obtaining my life back.” I understand now that the persistence of that half-reality also came from denial. Namely, I revoked the idea that my “real life,” or that one that was not the present one, that one of my childhood, was gone forever. Hence I say that my experience being an emigrant in the United States was somewhat like a dream, or like death, or like a virtual reality, miserable, inconsequential, vain. I had to remove myself completely from the situation in order to understand the grave dangers of idealizing and dwelling. It took ten years.

Living in Korea has given me the time and the discipline I needed in order to achieve some degree of sober introspection. I know that going back to Colombia will not be as I once imagined it, but I think I am more ready to return now than before when everything was so muddled and so passionate, and I trust that by having access to that place again I will finally close a chapter, the one titled The Emigrant Dream. After all, it is the realization of a dream to go back, and it is really rare when a dream comes true, especially this one, because in most cases it is impossible to build out of ash, but the fate of this home was different. I don’t have too much time here and I am anxious, still crossing fingers for the house not to sell and for the violence-factor to keep quiet.

Written 6-30-2010, revised 9-04-2010, revised 3-14-2011.

IAC Group Show

2010-07-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, I will be in a show called Domestic Bliss, and I'm afraid that my entry, for better or worse will undoubtedly look ironic.

Opening Saturday, August 21st from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.

In Na Gallery and Jay Gallery, in Insadong.

For more information and directions click here or above.

This exhibition is featured in Neolook.com

Carlos Motta Pertaining and the Ongoing Colombian Elections

2010-06-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

A multi-channel video installation in which performers recite six different peace speeches that were once delivered by different Colombian political leaders whose ideologies have resulted in their own assassinations. To read more and watch the videos follow the link:

http://www.carlosmotta.com/sixacts.html

Children's Charity Art Auction

2010-05-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

Auction scheduled for May 16th at 1:30 pm, for more information about this event click here.

Proposals for The Late Work

2010-05-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

The Late Work is a show curated by Kevin Zucker and Christopher Ho. Both artists are also RISD professors. Some of their former students made proposals for pieces that hypothetically, are supposed to represent their late works. These are my proposals.

1. Requiem for a Transition - a Sketch. The images included refer to animal species that have become extinct during Kevin Zucker's Lifetime. The diagrams are of frames used for dunnage in cargo. The latter imagery becomes a reappearing element in Zucker's paintings.

2. Marzipan Boxes. Ten wooden boxes containing marzipan confections shaped like fetuses in different stages of development. They are arranged in the style of Ernst Haeckel’s 1874 illustration from Anthropogenie. The artist selects 70 of the most important people in human history according to his own criteria. The embryos are then labeled with the given names of those individuals. Christopher K. Ho believes in the inevitable obliteration of history and humanity in the distant future. The boxes of edible icons mimic the hypothesis of embryological parallelism while highlighting the inevitable perishability of the human race.

Behind Unfruitful Crits

2009-11-30T03:40:00.001-08:00

Reading Thierry de Duve’s essay about Art Education I finally came to realize why I felt so uninspired at the end of college. In When Form Becomes Attitude, he talks about deconstruction as the new form of teaching art in college (this essay is from 1994 but it’s still pretty true, at least at RISD).

There are a couple of problems here. It is the method of deconstruction that has evolved with postmodernism that smothers art students into quiet despair, or else it drives them into a drunken stupor by the end of senior year. According to this model there is always a way to take apart verbally a work of art (or anything else) and to figure out what it is about. It presupposes that categorization is an inherent factor of critiquing art.

One aim of the deconstruction’s method is to force the students to create more complicated works by training them to resist easy classification by peers. So if a painting by a student is purely abstract his peers must find relationships between that piece and the ones made by influential abstract painters from the past, in a process that relentlessly reminds the student that research should consist of looking back in history at your “predecessors” in order to avoid falling into clichés. The result might be constructive but it is always a negative experience for the student.

Another problem is that there are so many branches of painting by now that student’s are getting used to associate themselves with only some of their peers and with only certain lineages. And of course some professors encourage this. This creates niches within the art school of students who follow similar lineages and students who are trying to come up with new and rebellious ways of working which is a lineage on it’s own. So there are groups of students who work with oil paint only and make abstractions on canvass, there are the conceptual artists who work with found objects and text, then the installation artists, or the performance artists who work with bodily fluids or make performance videos, and then there are of course the figurative painters, and those people who make crafts with an "edge". There are of course more subtle individuals who manage to transit throughout various circles and are hard to classify, but the groups are there and they are inclusive and skeptical of strangers, and to have access to more than one is certainly a privilege.

What this turns into eventually is very long and boring critiques, where students only speak during their own turn or their close friends’. During these crits some people fall asleep, and the people who do try to participate end up bashing their peer’s artwork because it has nothing to do with how they work or what they think like, or they just can’t deconstruct it so they say whatever, things as irrelevant and vague as "I don’t like the yellow there, it’s distracting". Realizing this tendencies might be the purpose of the last semesters of college, the next step is to forgive and to ask for forgiveness for any biased clashes, but then again, to really stick with and explore those circles that make most sense.

Installation View from Proactive Solutions

2009-10-11T21:41:00.001-07:00

The Cigarette Filter piece inside Proactive Solutions. Behind it are some fake flowers from Arleen Delima's installation. A video by Sean Monahan The Passion of George W. Bush, Artifact No. 2 and the Library Due Date Installation. The slim wall to the left was a space intervention by Jessica Reaves.

2009-05-20T22:41:00.001-07:00

MYSPACEWASTAKEN.com

2009-04-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

Tatiana Berg Hannah Black Arleen Delima Seán Monahan Andrés Monzón Grant Pylon Maria Salas

at the Memorial Hall Gallery

Cinco de Mayo, 2009.

FADO

2009-03-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

object

About the Cigarette Butt Piece

2008-11-30T13:57:00.001-08:00

I am interested in the paradoxical nature of smoking: an action that disrupts and formulates routine simultaneously, that is pleasant and repulsive, meditative and stress-producing, comforting and destructive, etc. Cigarettes filters which are made out of cotton are tinted as a result of a series of repetitive inhalations by the smoker. In some cases the color of the butts is also determined by their subsistence under different weather conditions. By collecting, slicing, and attaching together the cigarette butts, I gave these disposable devices an unexpected and prolonged life. I created a skin like an animal fur that is the product of different phenomena – including natural production, corporate manufacture and advertisement, personal consumption, and weather conditions. At a first glance or from far away, the skin seems like raw material for the fabrication of luxury items like handbags or shoes, but when examined closely, it is repulsive to sight and smell.

Even though the formal qualities of this material are relevant, the performance aspects involved in the fabrication of it are most important: from the act of smoking to the discarding of the butts, to my collecting them to my assembling them into a skin. The Cigarette Butt Piece is an artifact made of repetitive and automatic actions and its appearance is mostly developed by chance.

Performance Theory, Definition

2008-11-22T11:33:00.000-08:00

A rock can perform the act of rolling, breaking, or sitting. Anything that exists is performing as long as its existence is acknowledgeable. The performer can be living or inanimate. A girl can perform the act of breathing, a fox can perform the act of eating, a plant can perform the act of growing, or dying.

Performance Theory

The term performance is hard to define or categorize, but it's broadness is precisely the characteristic that compels certain artists to work within the field. Performance allows for endless possibilities and experimentation and that is why it is not uncommon for performances to be early manifestations of avant-guarde practices. Limitations or conditions to what performance is are often myths that concur as a byproduct of the conventions of theater. In the following list, I will try to unravel some of these myths as I disambiguate the meaning of the term performance and in doing so, I will hopefully also nullify some limitations that are often given to performance art.

1. To perform means to act or to operate in some sort of context. Therefore, virtually any verb can be performed, with the exception of the ontological verbs to be, and to exist. Something that performs must exist in some way or another (concretely or abstractly). To perform is to assert existence.

2. In most cases, two fundamental units are required in the conception of performance: a performer and a spectator. Any relational action that can be deduced from these two units can be considered a performance.

3. The performer and the spectator need not to be separate entities. A performance does not require a spectator separate from the performer because the performer could potentially be a witness of his own action(s). However, a performance must be perceived in order to exist. Once perceived, the performer-audience-action trichotomy is true and therefore the performance is true.

4. A third unit is the author. The author creates or defines the performance.

5. An author can define a performance before or after the action has been accomplished.

6. The role of the spectator is to witness and not necessarily to be entertained. A performance does not need to be stimulating to the author, performer, or spectator.

Conclusion: Any action can be considered a performance and be analyzed as such. If I move my left foot at this very moment, I can easily justify the motion as a performance as one executed by myself for myself. Then I can analyze the motives, achievements, and repercussions (if any) of that performance and its relationship (or lack of relationship) with theater, semiotics, anthropology, art theory, or anything else that I want to talk about.

Definition of Performance:

A performance has two fundamental definitions:

a. It is the process of accomplishing an action: i.e. the tests show that the machines achieved a commendable performance.

b. It is a comprehensive action or a process that is observed under particular conditions. i.e. His performance in the administration will determine the future of the country.

A third definition is the appropriation of the aforementioned conceptions focusing on the relationship between a performer and an audience. Usually taking place in a proscenium-based setting, it is often used in conjunction with theater, music, or dance. i.e. a theater performance, a dance performance, etc.

Performance art is an appropriation of all of the above, often focusing on the visual aspects of the performance and often observed from an art theoretical perspective. Because of the usual and more conventional associations of the term performance with theater, performances of this sort are usually misinterpreted and/or misunderstood.

Speech for Roots. St. Petersburg, Florida. August 28th 2008, 10:15pm.

2008-09-02T01:46:00.000-07:00

I want commemorate a performance artist who passed away this January, and I want to talk about one piece in particular that she did, and its conceptual substance. In 1990 Maria Teresa Hincapié brought all of her portable belongings into a gallery space in a big Tula, which is a big fabric bag, and placed them on the floor. Then she started to take the objects from the pile to arrange in a spiral manner around her. She would do this very slowly, playing with the infinite logical possibilities in which the spiral could be arranged. One by one, she organized the objects according to color, shape, purpose, or just plain whim. When she finished placing all of the objects in the spiral, she would pick them back up and start over. The gallery visitors came in and out as Hincapié silently surrounded herself with these lines of everyday objects 12 hours a day for 18 days. This is more than two weeks of strict discipline. But why would someone do that?

When we study performance from an anthropological perspective, we find that humans have an inherent need for ritual. From the beginning of civilizations to modern societies, there are thousands of different manifestations of rituals. There is evidence that In Mesopotamia, before and after the conquest of Babylonia by Alexander the great, there was a costume of bringing food to an anthropomorphic statue that represented the god, in Mexico today, we see a similar costume when in the Day of the Dead, people bring food to the cemetery. American culture has it’s own rituals: We have the most obvious ones, which are the religious kinds and the holidays, but we have other more customary forms like putting gasoline in our cars so that we can drive, or shopping. We have rituals to get up in the morning and we have rituals to go to bed at night. We have rituals at work and for tea… sometimes we go to the beach to feel the breeze and the sand to break away from our daily routine. What makes all of these actions rituals is that they have a purpose of existence. Objects, like rituals, also have purposes. The anthropomorphic statue was to the Mesopotamian people an extension of god, that object had a purpose, and today we have tombstones that serve a purpose: to represent, to commemorate. Every object ever made by a human, was made for a purpose. But what happens when we stop seeing the purpose for those rituals? When we stop seeing the need for those objects? That’s when the ritual becomes routine and the object becomes profane. The ritual and the object become a waste of time.

In my reading of Maria Teresa Hincapié’s performance there are two important factors: The Object and The Ritual.

1^stFactor: The Object: In the action, she was giving each object respect by letting it influence her behavior. In doing this, she was emphasizing how immense of a communication tool an object can be and how emotive it can be. In a society like the one we live in today it seems ridiculous to pay homage to an object because everything seems replaceable, especially everyday objects. Compare that for example, to the care and devotion given to objects in indigenous societies around the world. Hincapié was encouraging the audience to thing about their quotidian objects as important material goods, and not as temporary items of disposable nature.

2^nd Factor: The Ritual: The performance was called Una cosa es una cosa. One Thing is One Thing, which is a title that alludes to time. Is, is a verb, a conjugation of the verb to be. Is, is also an eternal word, one that stays in the present forever. With this piece, in a ritual of arranging and rearranging her everyday, Maria Teresa Hincapié demonstrated how to experience eternity. This piece could be done a million times and every time it would be done differently according to the performer’s mood or instincts. This allows the performer her to get lost in time.

Maria Teresa dedicated her life to encourage people to slow down, to look at things from a different perspective, to observe, to analyze, to listen, to be influenced, to pay attention and to play with reality. Once she said, “I invite us to stop, to transform time into something sacred”. She invites us to be satisfied with what we have and to make the most of it. To live our lives to our fullest, with discipline and with joy.

Exposicion de grado de la Universidad de Antioquia

2008-07-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Ayer fui a la cámara de comercio de Medellín para ver la exposición de grado de algunos estudiantes de la Universidad de Antioquia. Habían bastantes fotografías, varias instalaciones, y algunas pinturas. Devo mencionar dos de las obras que me llamaron la atención.

La primera, titulada “Lapidario II” es una instalación de Orlando Martínez. Se trata de seis rectángulos que cuelgan del techo frente a una pared blanca. Cada rectángulo esta fabricado con un material transparente y tiene impreso un rostro diferente, pero esta cubierto con cera blanca translúcida que no deja distinguir los rasgos de cada persona. Los rectángulos reposan en seis estructuras acrílicas respectivamente, estas estructuras pegadas de la pared sirven como repisas para sostener seis velas que estaban encendidas durante la recepción. Las velas derretían la cera mientras que los presentes miraban, revelando así partes de los rostros que estaban impresos en los rectángulos. Esta instalación tiene connotaciones con la iglesia y con costumbres como la adoración y el luto.

Otra instalación por Olga Lucia Trujillo colgaba del techo en el tercer piso. Una malla de alambre estirada sostenía numerosas patas de gallinas fabricadas con un material que puede ser plastilina. Esta obra da énfasis a la interacción forzada del animal con objetos fabricados por los humanos.

También pone al animal por encima del espectador para que se vea desde abajo (ya que los humanos se ponen por encima de los animales normalmente) pero a la vez, esta obra muestra al pollo como un material comerciable ya que todas las patas están hechas del mismo color y de la misma manera, fabricadas y plásticas. Con esta instalación ingeniosamente titulada A-Pollo, se habla de la visión manipuladora e inhumana del hombre mientras el espectador se siente amenazado al estar bajo tantas gallinas.

Mujeres de Negro

2008-06-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

I saw a cool performance today where this activist group of women called "Mujeres de Negro" laid a huge sheet of green plastic down in the middle of a park and then put soil on it in rows. Then, they planted seeds and placed corn ears on top, then this guy with a suit came and kindof gave them money to get them to throw the corn away and then he became the "proprietary" and made them work for him, brought armed fellows to watch over the women and made them plant non edible plants like palm trees (which they of course just carried from the side), people came and fumigated them later etc... It was mostly acting, but it was very visually oriented. I was excited. I've decided I'm going to make a report on performance art here in Medellín and try to publish it in the US.

Medellín

2008-06-18T02:33:00.000-07:00

I am currently in Medellín doing research for my Summer internship with Guillermo Escobar. I want to write an article about performance art in Colombia during my stay but it has been hard to find information about the discipline here. I remember seeing a book with a couple of pieces by young artists at the RISD library, and the book was specifically about the current art scene in Medellín. Tomorrow I'm going to Rionegro to meet Guillermo for the first time, I'm sure he will point me in the right direction.

Egg Piece

2008-06-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

I updated my website recently and I added a section just for performance art. The newest performance is called Egg Piece. You can see photos and view a short description by clicking the picture below. There are also a couple of new paintings.