ten visual artists i have been thinking about

Thanks Jeff - I only vaguely remembered it.

MUCH LOVE for mickalene thomas right now:

http://www.andrehn-schiptjenko.com/site/assets/images/ex_group_mlonguel.png

My goal is to find an exhibition of his, go everyday, and steal enough candy to make a full pile in my bedroom.

― mehlt, Saturday, March 14, 2009 1:12 PM (2 months ago)

great post,

joe, the first time I saw any Jesper Just was when I wandered into a retrospective of sorts in the Rotterdam contempoartc. I think for such sensual work it needs to be shown really richly and generously.

Everyone in NYC should go see the Aernout Mik show at MoMA

while at MoMA, go see the Paul Graham exhibit and the photographs of the American West.

Right now is like the perfect storm in nyc for exhibits that are in my wheelhouse, and therefore I am thinking about the following artists:

Richard Prince
Louise Lawler
Jenny Holzer
Barbara Kruger

yeah, plan to see the jenny holzer on its last weekend when friends are in town

Xposts

:)

Except the problem would be, once I get a full pile I know I'd never even touch it, let alone let people take candy, pretty much voiding the work.

I think I'd like to read up on Cy Twombly this summer. . .

http://glennraytutor.com/images/tutor9.jpg
http://glennraytutor.com/images/glennray_new_006.jpg
http://glennraytutor.com/images/glennray_new_008.jpg
Glennray Tutor

I am semi-appalled and disgusted by how great these are, I don't think I'm picking up on half the tricks this guy is using.

http://www.artslant.com/work/image/2028/sprecher_1.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/38/94363588_b8de21b876.jpg

Jered Sprecher

also, yes ruth root!

http://www.vimeo.com/4768078

can't wait for this documentary about sister corita

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1EkBpKvDgAo/STrBp3mQrWI/AAAAAAAAApU/bQq2fLhYSLI/s400/GlennLigon.jpg

glenn ligon

richard aldrich:

http://www.corvi-mora.com/richardaldrich/big/33.jpg

this is maybe one of my favourite paintings ever btw

Right now I am gear up into Christian Boltanski hypermode.

can't find any good pictures of his drawings which i saw a few days ago and was blown away by, but here are some tetsumi kudo sculptures:

http://images.nymag.com/images/2/daily/entertainment/08/07/15_artcandy_lg.jpg
http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/reviews/kley/kley7-11-08-13.jpg

Back to Felix-Gonzales Torres hypermode!

I was just awarded a fellowship (!!!) to do research on artistic forms of representation and mourning amid the AIDS crisis, so at last I'll get to really get busy on FGT, but also Robert Gober! This isn't a field of interest I'm too well versed on, so if anyone else has particularly apposite examples...

That is, of other artists dealing with aids in non-obvious, highly coded ways.

I know he's kind of old news, but I've been thinking about Mark Ryden lately:

http://www.markryden.com/images/painting/treeshow/paintings/large/Yoshi.jpg
http://www.markryden.com/images/painting/meat/cecelia/The_Ecstacy_of_Cecelia.jpg
http://www.markryden.com/images/painting/three/butcher/The_Butcher_Bunny.jpg

@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.

Robert Blanchon is a hip ref. these days i think

i came here to post blanchon ;_;

(although a good deal of his stuff overtly addresses AIDS)

larry johnson's work is all about codes tho!

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_139919_507473_larry-johnson.jpg

My Ostertag and Galas examples fail the "non-obvious, highly-coded" test, so never mind!

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