I'm an uptown boy! Wednesday 6/16 opening

Just two of us this time (me + Leah Dixon) popping up for a night in a high rise apartment on the Upper East Side. Come join us for art, absinthe I mean champagne I mean wine yeah (no, I didn't say a thing, shhh) and secure a few positive points for your very own quality of life index.

Details for those who are blind to all but text:

THROUGH AND THROUGH

Winston Chmielinski and Leah Dixon

Cocktails: June 16 6-9

220 E. 72nd Street
Suite 14A

low-budget Narnia for little wasp children

I decided to scatter my trinkets in a public place frequented by little wasp children because I know how exciting "the discovery" can be as a kid... And I like to imagine stretched-face mothers scanning the hills and triangulating trees for kidnappers, 'cause only freaks leave frogs and conch shells and pewter people and troglodytes on the ground, right?












(... all the while avoiding poison ivy 'cause that shit's bad news)

car crash coincidence

Coincidence, a search for meaning, I'll tell you what I found.

Yesterday morning at breakfast I explained to my parents why I was throwing away grade school art projects (a fiery orange paper-mâché tiger, a Harry Potter puppet): "If I rid myself of personal ephemera, then when (if) I die you won't feel compelled to contain the memory of me in things, like a shrine."

They were confused, me talking about death over scrambled eggs, though I often speak detachedly and they're starting to take it upon themselves to infuse my words post-dialogue with emotion. They paint me pretty.

Anyway, I left a couple hours later on a kid's size bike (I'm 6'2"), redoubled immediately to switch from a handbag to a backpack, then glided down Pond St. to the rotary crossing, saw an opening in the traffic, crossed, wrongly gauged my speed (bike was in a high gear), didn't look to the left, went went straight straight rolling sluggishly and BEEP and BRAKE and FLIP head over handlebars right where the silver car going about 40 MPH had just barely brushed by my front tire. Hip knee ankle hit hard on the pavement, but I sprung up grabbed my bike and jumped onto the grassy knoll in between two opposite lanes of traffic; a few cars stopped rolled down windows and asked if I was OK, my seizing ankle shook "No" but I smiled "Yes" and off the world went.

Consider the post on Thursday (Boston, wipeout whiteout), the picture from that post, the next-morning conversation, the upcoming month of life changes (I'm done with school, I'm archiving the strewn around tangled past into bullet-point lists in Helvetica partitioned to the E: drive, I'm moving to Berlin, etc.) and any shock at the unexpected will quickly be absorbed by the plush padding of expectation.

It all fits; in retrospect I could've predicted it; I'm shaken humbled razed to the ground when I think how everything would've changed had I been hit -- and I was so fucking close to being hit. Another definition of Coincidence: justification for being stupid... I should steer clear of that ... And instead see myself sitting in front of my computer, typing this, with just a faint throbbing in my hip and a kink in my ankle, as pure luck, another chance to make the most of what I have, now, and to wait for the walk sign and look both ways the next time I try to cut my journey-time by a few minutes.

Fuck. I'm alive.

Boston, wipeout whiteout

My friend Jordan asked me whether it's better to lose everything in a fire or throw it away. I said I don't know, but that what I'm doing now -- purging my cream-carpeted doll-filled room of its lingering adolescence -- feels good. I'm lucky to be able to say good-bye, actually to make a week of saying good-bye, before I fly away on another six-month transplantation.

Dusty room, dusty paintings, dusty mind. I'd like to rip out the carpeting, throw away the furniture, and paint it all white; but I'll probably just donate books dolls and clothing and then buy some coconut ice cream and vegan cookies and play Wii for the rest of my time here. I hear Super Mario Galaxy 2 is mind blowing fun.

documentation, that's all

Drawing out, sinking in process

Four Days Photo Forays

Two Iphone photos abutted

evokes a day's proceedings

Imagine a little Winston in the Invisible Inbetween!

MEN!

JD Samson and the rest of the MEN crew (Michael O'Neill, Ginger Brooks Takahashi + Emily Roysdon) were in my living room I mean at PS122 performing "Who Am I to Feel So Free" roped to one another like leashed Afterschool Program children.
I took a video, and because I took a video I didn't get up and dance -- though I found my movement doppelganger in that girl whose arms flail straight up into somekindaawesome routine at 2:04.

pink beads of sweat at Pretty Young Things

Body heat makes a hot sticky mess out of cotton candy.

I also noticed the setting of the sun because the space at 833 Broadway is naturally so well-lit; that and the room cooled down a bit, and the whites in my painting turned to yellows and blues.

They [the crowd] went through so much rosé -- I stuck to my Perrier, because my head's been hurting lately and I have pine-nut-mouth (everything tastes bitter for ten days after consuming a certain type of pine-nut, google it).

Skipping the after party because I need to decompress, and these bondage straps on my new Yohji pants are at risk of catching on drunken feet and chair legs.

Check it out tomorrow (10 AM - 6 PM), it'll be much more conducive to the viewing of art.

Love!

Vaginal Davis Speaks from the Diaphragm

Vaginal Davis takes us to a heaven or to a hell or to some place in-between (a living room under the sea?) where boys and girls in undies sit on faces and get whipped and licked (whipped as in whipped cream) while she, all smiles, talks freely with her friends -- the creative elite -- in person and over Skype.

Now that the exterior of PS122 has shed its scaffolding, which in some ways served to justify the melange of performance art and heart-to-heart within, the intersection of East 9th Street and 1st Avenue has become possibly the greatest site (at least for the remaining week of Speaking from the Diaphragm) of generational, sexual, emotional, racial, artistic, etc. etc. crossroads.

I feel like the luckiest kid alive that I've been able to help Vaginal with preparations for the show; she is hands down the most positive, loving being in this hemisphere, a veritable fountain of youth from where energy (of the natural kind, though of a magnitude that seems wholly supernatural) flows endlessly and indiscriminately.

I'm riding the Vaginal wave!

And tomorrow I'll be performing as one of the Chat Roulette boys, so please find yourself a ticket and strut along over here. I promise it will be a night to remember, not because I'm back in tightie-whities but because Vaginal only doles out the unforgettable.

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."