Roman Signer
While watching a video of a group show called “Under Destruction,” I happened upon the work of Roman Signer, a Swiss artist who makes a lot of work based on carefully arranged, displacing situations in the physical world. Usually, only a photo or a film clip remains. The piece in the show I first saw, “Rampe,” shows a Piagget work truck carrying drums of water rolling up a ramp and falling over backwards.
In other works, he uses radio controlled helicopters in enclosed spaces to absurdly illustrate the chaos of restrained space and an imprecise exposed device. My favorite is “56 Kleine Helikopter,” in which 56 of them are launched in a small room at the same time. The result is entirely predictable, and yet eerily insect-like. Watch a video at:
“56 Kleine Helikopter” : http://electricskies.blogspot.com/2012/01/its-war.html
A man sits in a room wearing a respirator while hay is forcibly shot against the ceiling in a claustrophobic “Hay Fever,” which makes me itchy just watching it:
“Hay Fever”: http://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/29/roman-signer/images-clips/26/
And finally, a photo simply documenting an event that once you realize what happened, is quite funny:
“Easter Bunny with rocket.”
So simple. And perfectly the expression of a mischievous boy left to play in an art studio. The sense of humor in the work has a lot to do with the absurdity of the scenarios. But perhaps ultimately, Signer’s work leaves us asking ourselves whether all the rest isn’t just as absurd?
Tauba Auerbach Book
RGB Colorspace Atlas Volume 1, 2011
Digital offset printing on mohawk superfine paper, 3200 pages, linen, binder’s board, acrylic paint
*
When flipping through an art magazine, I usually feel overwhelmed with the incredible diversity and wide range of ideas explored. Typically, only a few images or ideas stand out. Today, it was Tauba Auerbach’s RGB Colorspace Atlases. It is such a simple idea utilizing the best of what can be done with a technology, in this case, digital printing and bookbinding. A truly stunning idea and a beautiful execution.
The ugly sign city
Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Sky Ladder”
Came across a couple photos today of Cai Guo-Qiang’s work. I love the pieces he’s done that I’ve seen, and these are no exception. Orchestrated Inky-black explosions in the sky in a triangle, or a smoke rainbow? Awesome. Ephemeral, and instantly evocative of the moment of creation, when the audience after waiting for hours finally gets the singular and brief encounter with something made and then blown apart by the wind.
Cai Guo-Qiang, Black Ceremony explosion event. Commissioned by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2011, courtesy Cai Studio, photo by Hiro Ihara
You belong in the most secret part of you
An excerpt of a letter from Sol Le Witt to Eva Hesse in 1965:
Dear Eva,
It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itchin, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rumbling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!
From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and your ability; the work you are doing sounds very good “Drawing-clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger and bolder… real nonsense.” That sounds fine, wonderful – real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor.” You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end” You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!
I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working – then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO!
It seems I do understand your attitude somewhat, anyway, because I go through a similar process every so often. I have an “Agonizing Reappraisal” of my work and change everything as much as possible = and hate everything I’ve done, and try to do something entirely different and better. Maybe that kind of process is necessary to me, pushing me on and on. The feeling that I can do better than that shit I just did. Maybe you need your agony to accomplish what you do. And maybe it goads you on to do better. But it is very painful I know. It would be better if you had the confidence just to do the stuff and not even think about it. Can’t you leave the “world” and “ART” alone and also quit fondling your ego. I know that you (or anyone) can only work so much and the rest of the time you are left with your thoughts. But when you work or before your work you have to empty your mind and concentrate on what you are doing. After you do something it is done and that’s that. After a while you can see some are better than others but also you can see what direction you are going. I’m sure you know all that. You also must know that you don’t have to justify your work – not even to yourself. Well, you know I admire your work greatly and can’t understand why you are so bothered by it. But you can see the next ones and I can’t. You also must believe in your ability. I think you do. So try the most outrageous things you can – shock yourself. You have at your power the ability to do anything.
…
Sol
Micheal Heizer’s “Levitating Mass”
Micheal Heizer’s Rock just arrived at its new home. I just found out about Heizer’s newest project, “Levitated Mass,” at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary art and I am quite impressed. It’s amazing, really: 10 million dollars spent to move a big rock from Arizona 105 miles to LA. Is it much different than the Egyptians building monuments for immortality? Only our conceptions have changed. Still, one can’t help but be awed by the scale of the project. And it sure is a nice rock:
Heizer is no stranger to epic projects, having cut trenches in canyons, erected bunker-like monoliths in the desert, and my personal favorite, “North, East, South, West,” at DIA Beacon in New York. And while he is sometimes criticized for his hyper-masculine or even arrogant approach to altering the land in which he works, I find a sublimity in his gestures of scale and proportion. Serious is another word that comes to mind.
The rock came from a quarry, and so was not an isolated natural phenomenon, but rather a new emergence, culled by human activity. And now it will sit atop a trench that will allow viewers to pass underneath the raw 340-ton chunk of earth.
I can only imagine the feeling that I would have underneath such a mass. The gravity will be palpable. Fear will arise in the stomach. It will act on the body that encounters it in a way that leaves us feeling insignificant while in awe. It reminds me of the felt tension of a Richard Serra piece, but with a more wild mass. Whatever else it might be, it will certainly draw crowds as an icon of highly ambitious contemporary art. I’m sure I’ll be part of that crowd.
SFMOMA SECA 2011 show.
I went to SFMOMA today to see the SECA show, which awards Bay Area artists each year with a grant based on producing innovative contemporary work. I was particularly captivated by Mauricio Ancalmo’s ‘A Lover’s Discourse,” which consisted of a projector suspended from the ceiling spun around in circles by a connected turntable, which would stop and reverse in the other direction, pause, and continue again, while playing the record mounted under the needle. The film was a short loop of a couple on a stroll through a garden. I was immediately reminded of my love for film, the whirring of the film projector and the beauty of the incandescent image. The motion of the projector would get moving so fast that the image was impossible to follow. The metaphors for relationship seemed so clear: the back & forth nature of attraction, the relative speed at which love develops and sometimes seems to veer out of control, and even the apparently messy disregard for order with the cords strewn about on the platform. While watching the piece, two sisters came in and laughed at the swinging film. They began to spin, trying impossibly to have their bodies follow the moving image. When the image reversed direction, one sister noticed and began to spin the other way. The other had blissfully given up trying to follow anything and just kept pirouetting in the same direction she had started in. The image of the two girls spinning and laughing while the projector swung the lovers around was as sweet and pure as an art encounter could be.
