by Jerome du Bois
This will probably be the last piece I'll be writing about local art and artists for the foreseeable future, because what I foresee is more of the same. The same what? you ask. The same stuff I wrote regarding Brad Kahlhamer back in late 2004, when some emailer complained about us being "negitive":
Is it negative to uphold human dignity, the upward glance, evidence of hard-won optimism?
Is it negative to object to the degradation of women and children?
Is it negative to decry depictions of decapitations in current art?
Is it negative to condemn the celebration of superficiality, so that the cowardly and shallow may hide from the heartbreakingly significant?
Is it negative to point out technical incompetence, especially when its perpetrators are proud of it?
Is it negative to ask for some respect for the human being, the human condition, the human future?
Nobody answered my questions. But I do take a little satisfaction in seeing that my one and only piece on Kahlhamer is still #5 on his Google page, out of about 6,000 citations.
These days, right here in town, this is what I see:
There is a black woman who paints unflattering portraits of herself in whiteface and greenface.
There is a woman who stitches crude portraits and scenes with black thread on small white napkins.
There is a woman who constructs, with plaster and glue and paint, life-sized reproductions of pastries and other snack food.
There is a man who photographs closeups of the faces of people experiencing what used to be, and should be, a private sensual moment.
There is a man who makes collages with sewing patterns and blueprints as background, then paints colored shapes over them.
There is a clinically obese woman who makes charcoal drawings of closeups of her own giant swells and folds.
There is a man who makes "landscape" photographs constructed from various kinds of breakfast cereal.
There is a woman who photographs faces distorted in curved mylar, then reproduces them in paint.
There is a man who "draws" while trundling along roads on a go-cart.
There is a woman who photographs tableaux populated by sock-puppet monkeys.
There is a man who placed an open plexiglas box in a gallery and requested visitors to clip some of their hair and put it in the box.
There is a whole crew of artists customizing vinyl toys.
I could go on, but that way lies despair. Negativity won't pull me through. Nor them, either, but the big difference between us is, they don't mind.
Posted by Jerome at June 10, 2008 08:43 AM | TrackBack