To distract me from the still

[Movies and a rapid succession of images as source]

My newest painting acted upon a leap of intellectual faith (an emphasis on working the source before moving to canvas), whereupon I saw all of my old habits resurface (over-blending, simple geometric shapes, hidden brushwork, nude pastel colors, under-paint omission, etc.) because I felt uncertain.

But I'm pleased with the result.

Re-organization of the same variables (--I'm a slightly more confident but in no way more talented technician at 21 than I was at 16--) when left to the unconscious function can compose something as good as new, the test of which is how immediately people can still see me, and my past, in it, without the correspondence being formulaic or predicated.

I am distracting myself from the still to move past constancy; my relationship with visual expectation is narcissistic, a search for solace in my mirror; reassurance of my abilities won't come from a head beyond the glass...

Push away!

I know I will be frustrated but I will be free

the state of my love

I want to see you before I leave New York
I want to leave you before I see Berlin

May 22-23 | Pretty Young Things | NYC

A two-day exhibition/party saved from the depths of debauchery by the godly talents of twenty pretty young things, this upcoming Saturday and Sunday, May 22+23, downtown.

Official press prose below:

NEW YORK, May 2010 – Anne Huntington and Diana Campbell present PYT (Pretty Young
Thing), a temporary salon-style art show to open, and close, just before Memorial Day. PYT is predicated on the idea that artworks from emerging contemporary artists have an important place both in personal collections and personal spaces. With this domestic ethos in mind, co-curators Huntington and Campbell have invited over 20 contemporary artists to exhibit their work at a spacious renovated downtown loft for a temporary weekend exhibition.

The show’s name references the youth of its curators, the artists featured and the budding collectors that it will target as guests. PYT seeks to forge relationships between collector and artist in this casual, unintimidating environment. PYT will open on Saturday, May 22 with an intimate brunch in the exhibition space, further underscoring the livability of the mixed-media works being shown. The reception will be from 6 – 8pm. The show will close Sunday.

Huntington and Campbell decided that their inaugural curated show would work best by
fusing their closely connected professional facets: collection advising, art management and event organizing.

Jacob Abramson and Suzette Guy, Todd Bienvenu, Winston Chimielinski, Annika
Connor, Anna Coroneo, Alex da Corte, Benedict Dos Remedios, David Foote, Amit
Greenberg, Nir Hod, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Alexis MacDonald, Ben Olson,
Meredith Ostrom, Anita Ragusa, Alexandra Richards, Jason Shelowitz, Mary Nelson
Sinclair, Grant Singer, Carlo Van De Roer , Virginia Vergara, Martynka Wawrzyniak

Debut art exhibition project connects young collectors with emerging contemporary artists in intimate salon-style domestic space.

Come and let's have some fun

simple with force

I start on a new painting and I go, "This is it!" But I should (and think I finally do) know by now I can't push the technique. The mind can soar on leaps of faith, the body just goes splat.

Maybe you know this about me, I rely heavily on my source materials, which most of the time I out of laziness don't play around with enough -- and that's when I end up with half-assed paintings that seem retrogressive instead of pro-.

(Actually, they're quite fully-assed paintings, they usually take more effort than the ones that are in line with ideological progressions, because I work work work on them without ever reaching a point of satisfaction.)

Pushing the ideas, letting the technique carry itself, finishing a painting for my May 22nd show and it better be good.

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!)