obvious suggestion

Someone successfully perverted my perception in the most subtly unsubtle of ways: by contouring Justin Timberlake's face with a thick black sharpie, this vandal was able to disfigure Mr. Sexy Back to a point of non-recognition.

Manipulation of the actual image (photoshopping) is a painstaking process, a definite skill; but to be able to achieve the same, or arguably an even greater, transformation without touching the image itself (working solely on a superficial layer) affects us on an unconscious level because we, or at least I, never suspect that something so vulgar and obvious could still trick our most relied upon sense. Someone, that vandal, is a masterful trickster, and I want to learn from him!

(This is an idea to incorporate into future works, guiding the viewer's visual sense with additions rather than working from within; in the least, I'll be utilizing a new layer, the top-most, and may even venture into that ever-evasive negative space. My intentions are to raise the intensity of the work, and since I haven't a clue what the actual effect will be then there is no malice in this, just a want of impact).

upcoming show, disco roller skating

I'm infiltrating the Upper East Side! Official announcement to come, but mark your calendars for May 27, and make sure to eat a bit before coming 'cause you wouldn't want to over-booze and trip-up on delicate painted things.

Spent the day brainstorming titles and massaging the tired out of the back of my head, then mosh-pit-sun-bathed on Central Park's Sheep's Meadow. So many frat boy bodies, inadvertent pec-flexing, cute but burning babies and girls with oversized sunglasses and not much else.

Pictures of people I liked, both in the park and the adjoining MAKESHIFT DISCO ROLLER SKATE RINK:






Today's wise words of advice from OK Go's Damian Kulash : "Just keep making awesome shit."

one and one and an other

Tongue-stick-out-head-cocked-sideways-duck-footed-teetering epiphany! To be seen, tall, ugly, bent, soft, catching the light around my own emaciated shadow: raw sensations, like a tingling up and over, an opening down and out, like wafting into sprinkler mist on hot humid days...

Recall the reason for closing my eyes on the subway: to feel unwatched, to smile unabashedly. Now consider this walk a subway ride but with eyes wide open, smiling unconditionally (without bearing teeth -- I do believe that teeth, especially ones as big as mine, are actively threatening rather than passively inviting--) and notice the difference: the former, feigning unseenness; the latter, being seen detachedly.

I was on my way to a screening of I Am Love at the MoMA, and I meandered up Sixth Avenue as one among the crowd… For once outside of my own bedroom I didn’t put forth; I just took in. This, in the moment, was a culmination of my body practice: I love you obsessively and I don’t care a bit, see me through and through and don’t you dare look at me, we are completely inseparable and just one and one and an other.
I Am Love was genius, director Luca Guadagnino’s got a beautiful mind, and Tilda Swinton’s a goddess.

The art of undoing

I'm painting over more of my old canvases now, and no one need know which ones: I'm easily influenced by outside stimuli when destructively tranced-out.

"It is until it isn't,"

and my own:

"Effort goes into it and comes unto me."

Which is to say that the time and energy spent on a painting is valuable in of itself, metamorphosing into future works; I need not preserve each stage of development like a collector of shells and skins.

experimentation in pure pigments

Experiments with clayboard: my incredibly old and tired bristle brushes apply paint so unevenly that, on clayboard, every stroke of color contains an equal or greater amount of white. No need to use white pigment with these. Changes everything -- it's just a test -- I quite like the color purity and the overall compositional simplification (white pigment you alien boi).

Of course, every painting contains its own problems and solutions... So the tube of titanium white will remain within arm's reach.

Two paintings today, plus images of my palette (used for both) and my lovely shoe/sock combination. Then I got ramen.

Blank again

It became historical when I couldn't complete it; it and I mutually agreed to stop; we can now move along.

Hello again anew!

External thoughts

I am finding home, and this is a pursuit of the impossible. The ecstasy of a split-second encounter with it (the impossible) is so good, it is too much, but I grab at it and go go go; that feeling of restfulness, yes, is weightlessness before a drop, comfort is just (—where just is everything—) cushioning before a blow. The sequencing glues it all together, and when I grab at it and go go go I trace my motions in pigment so that I don’t repeat. Wash and repeat.

Painting for me is the glue that binds me to others; it is where I do my pursuing, and surprisingly, masochistically, people watch and applaud. (I guess I am highly relatable when I exist as a painting.) I continue for the mini-completions, the arrivals that are immediately beset by departures, the finishing and the restarting that, when layered one on top of the other, up up up and out and back under, take the form of a process unending. It is (just) that, and I make my home in it, and once in a while it corners and I’m reoriented by a lurch and a brake.

Translated to what you see before you: there are breaks and freefalls and encounters and dismissals. I have no qualms about calling [a painting] done because I am just starting. I spread myself thinner and thinner with water to increase my want of reconstitution; and then plops down a confident glob to scatter the weak, and then flies forth a bristle brush to disrupt the geography. Arbitrary intentionality! Impassioned randomness! Take note: I’m clearly confident in something because I admittedly haven’t a clue what I’m doing. In a close to perfect moment I don’t paint I just do and things happen, and if it looks like shit then I smile at its brownness and get some sleep, and if it works… Then I revel for a second in its presence and steady myself for the fall.

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART + me

Kick ass music makers The Pains of Being Pure at Heart decided to use "Ribbons" to front their latest single! Check out the band + their sounds here and see below for the official cover.



Thanks guys!

coloring in A Shaded View on Fashion

A tribute to a real person who felt deeply, "Daul Kim Rainbow Warrior" exists as much a celebration of an impassioned-and-foreshortened life as a reassurance that everything contained therein--the suffering, the success, the pictures and the voice, the words and the silence--is beautiful.

In the moment I related through and through and through.

My painting has accompanied Daniel Wakahisa's post yesterday on one of my favorite blogs, Diane Pernet's A Shaded View on Fashion which, for a pensive moment, has in loving memory returned Daul to us. Thank you.

sat down with HOT CHIP a little while back...

and talked about, uh, music and t-shirts

(opportunity thanks to VMAN Magazine; photographer was sick, so I tried to videotape the band with an iPhone in my left hand... Needless to say I now can sympathize with that naked girl/boy on the bicycle seat who has to hold his/her arms out perpendicularly at Marina Abramovic's MoMA show, except I wasn't naked thank GOD or they would've seen me blushing in more than just the face-area.)

<3

Pictures from IONA

Cold & rainy outside, warm & fuzzy inside. Thanks to all who came, here are some pictures shot by Mr. Udo Mahlmeister (what a German!)

SOLO SHOW @ IONA BROOKLYN, Sunday 3/14

Come see me and my painted peeps this Sunday, March 14, at IONA Brooklyn where the beer's cheap and the bartenders have awww the cutest accents.

Right off the Bedford stop on L train, at Grand St. and Bedford Ave. (180 Grand St.)

I WANT TO SEE YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. But in case that isn't enough I've convinced the staff to drastically reduce prices on beer and wine.

Starts at 3 PM, and if you come early then you'll catch me before the agoraphobia sets in and I run away. So come sooner rather than later. :)

Bring / invite as many friends as you can. The more the merrier.

Show runs until the end of the month.

NOW: Solo Show @ Iona Brooklyn

Covering Iona's intentionally bumpy walls with my paintings. On display now until the end of March, so take a look and down a pint while you're there.


View Iona Brooklyn in a larger map

March 4 -- Chelsea Hotel

The Hotel Chelsea and 2|ONE|TWO|PROJECTS have created an immersive experience in one of the most exotic rooms of the hotel. The paintings of various artists will be hung salon style on the wall and creep up and over the ceiling. The audience will view the works seated or lounging on cushions. The idea is to show all the possibilities of painting and show this through a transition from representational through to abstract and minimalist paintings.

Opening Thurs March 4th
6 - 9pm
Gallery Suite 1019
Hotel Chelsea, 222 W 23rd St, NYC

also
Open Thursday evenings 6 - 8pm March 11th and 25th,
April 8th and 22, May 6th and 20th , or by appointment

Featuring Artists
Gillian Bostock | Winston Chmielinski | Tara de la Garza
Marissa DeMarco | Felicity Faulkner | Meghan Keane
Ayca Koseogullari | Susan Olmetti | Kenneth Park
Sirikul Pattachote | Kate Shaw | Koji Shimizu | Darren Wardle

Alexander McQueen

My mind can't comprehend the death of a legend, Lee Alexander McQueen, but my body understands... I keep breaking down, and it's a strange sensation--that of heaving and crying over a complete absence of thought.