ten visual artists i have been thinking about

kinda makes sense that people who were directly thinking about aids would be more didactic in their approach whereas other queer artist thinking about the body etc. favour strategies recontextualisation/subversion as an analogue for like cruising/subversive sites of pleasure or whatevs. FGT kind of just sits at the intersection between Tom Burr/Roni Horn queer appropriations of Minimalism and General Idea style agit prop.

@EDB - If it's not too far afield, your study could encompass musical responses to AIDS such as Diamanda Galas' Plague Mass and Bob Ostertag's All the Rage.

― Scelsi Hotel (Paul in Santa Cruz), Monday, May 24, 2010 10:44 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink I'm very interested in this, and think I'm actually going to make an ILM thread about it, especially given my interests in house and disco during this time. However, given the fellowship's theme of "image and spectacle", I'll be specifically writing on strategies of representing the AIDS infected body such that the imposition of Ronald Reaganian Silence and the shutting down of Mapplethorpe exhibitions, etc. can be circumvented (in a way that does differ from General Idea style agit prop, i.e. the sort of explicitness of say ACT UP. In the space between silence and silencable, if you know what I mean).

If I may quote FGT: “Two clocks side by side are much more threatening to the powers that be than an image of two guys sucking each other’s dicks, because they cannot use me as a rallying point in their battle to erase meaning. It is going to be very difficult for members of Congress to tell their constituents that money is being expended for the promotion of homosexual art when all they have to show are two plugs side by side, or two mirrors side by side, or two light bulbs side by side.”

So wait, are there TWO famous people with HIV named Larry Johnson?

btw, its back in print and this book is pretty solid for FGT sources

i mean

http://www.amazon.com/Felix-Gonzalez-Torres-Miwon-Kwon/dp/3865211968

plax otm, was thinking the same about the initial query, e.g. that most artists addressing AIDS in the '80s directly named it (probably because of how little national discourse there was about it, or that the conversation being had about it on that level wasn't interesting/didn't address the realities of the disease), cf. general idea's appropriation of robert indiana, AIDS activist tapes, etc

i don't know whether or not LJ the visual artist has AIDS but some of his work addresses it, however obliquely (his pieces about the kennedy family, like the one i linked to above, which are tied to discourses on mourning, celebrity, hustling etc).

i need to stop saying 'discourse'

nah its a good word

Xposts: that book was the first thing I had planned to get, actually.

a lot of the full essays are readily available on the internet and its bulked out w/ sontag and barthes but worth it for the shorter statements and the repros are A+

EDB where are you based? if you have enough fellowship $ you should travel to nyc and visit the FGT foundation, they've got tons of literature on him there

can anybody just visit that btw?

gotta make an appointment and have a viable research project first iirc

pfft viable research project

I was wondering about that too, I have no idea what they do/ what's actually there, I just imagine that all the offices come with a pair of clocks and the candy bowl at the reception is always plentiful.

I live in Toronto, but was thinking about taking a trip up to New York this summer anyways. The fellowship offers money for travel and research, actually; I was joking with people before that if my University wants to send me to go to new york for a week to stop in to the Felix Gonzalez-Torres foundation I'd certainly accept.

And bulked out w/ sontag and barthes is not a bad thing, for me at least.

welll its just death of the author and the voicover from unguided tour

but yeah, me neither

Naming Names: The Art of Memory and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt is an awesome essay abt the aids quilt that raises a lot of issues wrt to instigating a venue for memorial/discourse/activism around aids related issues and implies why a more overt language was needed in contrast to, as joe says, the mainstream suppression of the gay men's health crisis.

Btw EDB i think Tony Feher might be worth looking into but I won't pretend I know a whole lot about him.

like he makes these really intimate sculptures out of found materials and is all "intensely personal language" and also has been included in a good few AIDS related group shows

Thanks a lot. The above mention (or introduction, for me) to Tom Burr was useful, given that post minimalism is kind of my thing, and so he is someone I plan to look into.

As I think about it more, I think that this: "queer artist thinking about the body etc. favour strategies recontextualisation/subversion as an analogue for like cruising/subversive sites of pleasure or whatevs." is the sort of thing I want to pursue (granted, not so much in the context of cruising and pleasure so much as in terms of a site to talk about disease and mourning). Given that this is not an area of familiarity for me, I think it's definitely best to be careful to make claims about means of viable activism, but I'll see what I think after I've done research on all this.

Otherwise:
Mark Bradford is an artist whose work I think is really beautiful, and also makes me want to rush to the library and read up on critical urban geography written about Los Angeles.

http://rickyday.net/blog/MarkBradfordLosMoscos.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KiKDykb0sFg/SCtNXp7YlVI/AAAAAAAAA_Y/_S8b2xUcpN4/s400/mark_bradford_kryptonite.jpg

Really fucking tired of art that makes ironic use of childish themes.

who did those hotel room sculptures in the 70s by piling all the furniture into piles and photographing them. i remember seeing these all the time for a while and now i cant for the life of me remember who it was and ive tried googling this. this is like how it took me years to re-find tom friedman after i heard about him in secondary school.

also edb i have been thinking about your thesis proposal since the last revive and i am now jealous i am not writing it.

turns out i was thinking of florian slotawa

http://www.mocp.org/Slotawa_web.gif

An artist I have been 'thinking about' ;) <3 <3 <3
http://img691.imageshack.us/f/123qrp.png/

hmm, that did not work

http://i31.tinypic.com/xlxmaq.jpg

also edb i have been thinking about your thesis proposal since the last revive and i am now jealous i am not writing it.

― plax (ico), Tuesday, July 27, 2010 6:24 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Having started doing research this week, let me just say: : D

Let me add to this thread: Alfredo Jaar

Whereas shoving pictures of War Torn 3rd World labourers in front of you, national geographic style, would be so glib and heavy handed as to render it ineffectual as art, his use of these types of images, via his arrangement of them (in mirrors, light boxes, etc.) and the according way that they are hence seen by and related to by gallery goes, I think, is laudable (of course I get so caught up in the technique that I forget the content, but that's a whole other matter).

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4v3o2tzGt1qzw5wjo1_500.jpg
http://www.leftmatrix.com/jaargeowr.jpg
http://thephotoexchange.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/alfredo_jaar_lowress3.jpg

Also, now grasping the connections between image, self-presentation, and psychic identity in her work, I've come to really appreciate Gillian Wearing.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TEcR6mijjFo/SvhbPGK5MfI/AAAAAAAAAHw/Rh7-Q7_6HFg/s400/gillian_wearing2.jpg.jpeg

http://www.artslant.com/userimages/3/Gillian_Wearing_FAF08.jpg

My favorite painter is an oil painter named Thomas Paquette
Maybe you have to see this guys work in person before you can realize or truly appreciate the beauty of it
I luckily had a random encounter with his paintings on exhibit when I was at college
I would describe his work as having profound beauty, grace and subtlety
But to use words from a press quote on his website: "Look into the art, and be drawn into the world of subtle drama and dramatic beauty he finds in ordinary places. All of the light, darkness and shadow—as well as the insinuation of hue and tone—in nature and life are expressed."
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8172/010springinprovence2z.jpg
http://www.thomaspaquette.com/paintings/096/springbirchz.JPG

from the most recent press interview on his site
MS - Discuss which part of the creative process you find most stressful.
TP - All of it is stressful if you are doing it right.

So wait, are there TWO famous people with HIV named Larry Johnson?

― Tonight I Dine on Turtle Soup (EDB), Monday, May 24, 2010 2:59 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Somehow my brain froze and I thought that Magic Johnson's name was Larry.

Also:

Doris Salcedo

http://www.spudart.org/blog/images/2007/doris-salcedo-chairs.jpg
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/salcedo.jpg

saw the maurizio cattelan thing at the guggenheim thing, so right now, him

also thinking about willem de kooning and why i dont really like him

oh no hes good

have now seen 'under the big black sun' at MoCA twice, it really is an outstanding show

why don't you like de kooning, max?

the de kooning exhibition at moma was fascinating. like it was so much a better exhibition than he was a painter, bc it was so amazing to see how he grew and changed & eventually pared down, through necessity, almost as something apart from how much i liked his work.

This summer I realized that I think I like de koonings black and white paintings more than his colour ones, which is kind of shocking since I'm a huge chromophile.

i dont know why i dont like de kooning! i am trying to articulate it because i dont really have a good reason. partly its a general distaste for the macho-artist abstract expressionism THING but that feels like such a boring reason to count him out. really i went to the moma show the other weekend and left like completely unmoved.

THOUGH -- funny enough edb my favorite stuff was a collection of like 5 paintings and lithographs hed done in black and white, gorgeous stuff

2nded on 'Big Black Sun'-- alot of that was work I wouldn't have gone out of my way to see, but I was in LA to see the PST shows and heard how good it was. Very well researched and presented, with an immense amount of work.

As for who I've been thinking about: everybody in the "Phenomenal" show down at MCASD, which I also saw and loved last weekend.

i think the other reason i dont like de kooning is that i find most of his stuff kind of ugly and not even in an interesting way. thats shallow, i know. if he seemed like a more interesting person i might have a better "in"

what maria nordman is in that show does anyone know? i've been really obsessing on her after finding a piece about her in an artforum from 1979 at the library.

it's a film installation she did called 'smoke' from the late '60s i think? v 'warholian'

the two artists i've been thinking about a ton from the moca show are ilene segalove and now paul mccarthy of all ppl. and speaking of him i am really excited to see this show:

http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/2012/01/23/l-a-raw-abject-expressionism-in-pasadena/

i never know which of the zillion art threads to bump but apparently mike kelley is dead:

http://www.galleristny.com/2012/02/mike-kelley-has-died/

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6428/birchesenvelopediii39x5.jpg

Today I've come with full force to Alessandro Mendini's work. A lot of concepts I've been thinking about with regards to my own work I'm finding he has explored extensively through his.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0qvyfdaaT1qz6av7o1_500.jpg

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0qszbyhrT1qz6av7o1_500.jpg

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0ql2tCqxo1qz6av7o1_500.jpg

I'm interpreting these as symbols of everyday objects—their usefulness denied; their forms scaled, gilded, burned as effigies. Especially interesting to me is that in spite of this these are still products, Mendini is the head of a design house, all these object/sculptures are still useful. This isn't straight up Claus Oldenburg erecting giant monuments to the everyday; but a play with both form and function that, I feel, speaks poignantly about both. I also find them extremely beautiful!

Oh my god my mind is reeling from watching an hour and a half of Gillian Wearing confession videos (on top of another hour and a half of other G Wearing work that wasn't exactly emotionally lightweight either). Most depressing art exhibition I've probably ever seen.