Grasping a New Aesthetic Experience:

7-11-09 A.M. Brklyn

From, break it you buy it -to- break it and send it back.

In many corners of this hyper interconnected universe of pattern interfaces and system functions ever expanding experiments on themes go by on and on like water flowing up and down the East River. Depending on what time your train crossed the Manhattan Bridge, the Atlantic will be pushing its salty waters up stream or the Long Island Sound will be rushing down with fresh drops of Hudson and Harlem Rivers. Anyway you look at it, it’s still all greenish brown.

Greenish, Brownish, ish is the new it. If it is, than it is. If it’s definitive, it’s pushy. If it’s vague, it’s noncommittal-- but ish-ish is the new real. It is now-ish.

Whatever art I have been seeing around me is ish. It is good-ish, bad-ish, faux-naïve-ish, and commercial-ish. The lines have been blurred that once separated the distinctions. Were there distinctions? I see artists working toward new problems in a way that is best described in an observation I had in my youth where a caged puppy had defecated and then comsumed his own matter. It’s efficient, contained and theatrical. It is banal, ostentatious, awkward, beautiful, poetic, silly, fun and sarcastic. Sometimes making a joke of the joke, these young artists are seeing themselves see. Not unlike self-consciously trying not to be self-conscious.

Our work, our Art is earthy, lofty, important, meaningless, synthetic, organic, plastic, biodegradable, recycled, handmade, industrial, fake, real, toxic, edible, wild, and domesticated. It is for the individual and for no one all the same. It is both consumption and production, like puppy.

What else could we know but what we know, what we’ve lived? Live our world of online, All-Mart consumer frenzy terrorism fragmented material culture of multi-stage chemical compounded experiences, we web surf, channel surf, reality surf, text, sext, smoke, joke, breed, feed, drink, think-ish.

Tonight like last night they hit the crumbling streets in hipster cigarette packs through the borough on their way to the infirmary. Can you swim to the other side of this anywhere?

Skip it man. You’re flipping your lid off like a soda pop top tab tossed out from a cab. Who’s got the money for the fizz, who for the guy driving this mess?

Art Notes: Fuzzy Math and Dirty Notations

First Published on Neo Images, 2007. A site for Artists and their works. www.neoimages.com

The work addresses the multiplex which is the self. Seeking the appropriate language for a particular idea the work varies greatly in appearance from photo based painting to neo-geo abstraction and collage, narrative hybrid images, and sculpture. Several major thematic origins in my work give way to the inadequacy for a single visual mode.  My interest in manifold ideas can be traced to many artists and other intellectuals as well as from the every day experience, which really stems further back to the notion that any individual needs variation in experience in order to remain stimulated. The notion of variation and an exploratative process can also be traced back to material nature in that one element A can have useful properties vs. another B which also has useful properties but both AB may not be usefull all of the time or in tandem.  The works in their various forms have each in a small way been a piece to the larger whole which is the autobiography.

1-29-09-

1.29.09. N. A.M. NYC.

New York City. Say it again slower. New York City. Never gets old. Or does it? Helicopter flying high over Midtown observing traffic developments on the West Side Highway and FDR drive. Police sirens, fire-trucks, cabs, trains, buses, people, cellphones. It's 5:02, time to roll on out of here. Make your way down the street to your train. Swipe it. Transfer at 34th St. Herald Sq. to somewhere. It doesn't really matter because your train line is unattractive no matter what time you ride. Once in a while a gem surfaces, makes bold headlines across your short attention span and fades back into obscurity faster then whence they came. The tragedy of a glimpse. A diamond in a passing train breaks your feeble reality and it's only 5:09. Women read a gold jewelry catalogue fully illustrated lusting over the gaudy lumps of yellow metal. Good, they leave. Off to spend. But what you ask am I left with? Alone in a packed train car of tired people after a long day's struggle. It's only Thursday. At least it's the same day for everybody. So then again you're not that lonely. A college student pours over her text book. The oppressive weight of an object of distant memory with their low budget design, awkward layouts and outdated graphics filled to the brim with stock photography and jaded illustrations from artists who used to have dreams and aspirations to attain much more. She hauls book and all away. Why? You ask yourself do all Chinese markets seem to use the red plastic bags exclusively. 5:51, you've reached your Brooklyn time zone. You notice Avocado green velvet track pants, you suddenly remember this is why you moved here. New York City, New York City. Living in the land of Kings.

__________________

Holding the train door open he stepped into the car laughing. His cousin followed. They chose a place to stand. Though choice is used sparingly, after all it is rush hour. He took off his fur-lined hood revealing an enormously large scar and pronounced veins in his forehead. As he smiled they bulged as if he was lifting strenuously. He wore an aquiline nose and a sinister smile. Proud machismo. His hair glossed with whatever gel suited him, tied back into a small tail. He glances about the car looking for what cannot be discerned. Chewing gum he rests against the do not lean on door. A large bag in hand, black and red with a shoulder strap. It’s been a long day.