Exploring some new ideas related to the stuff I did for the PornAgain show, specifically trying to deal with some of the parameters important in digital art. Nathanial’s formulation of Compressionist work relates to these in terms of fucking around with the recording process, usually recording aims to be consistent and accurate, he screws that up big time by re-establishing the influence of the artist’s manual control of that process.
David Krut Publishing and Arts Resource
The new site is live and I have agreed to, for a small fee, be web-editor on David’s sites.
Took some photographs at the very pleasant opening of Monotypes by Colbert Mashile at DK, (will upload these shortly) even engaged in a few interesting conversations – and had Je’anna and Béo drop in to say hi.
Richard’s opening talk did a great job of expressing the character of printmaking and shed some light on Colbert’s approach, though David did point out that Richard’s referring to prints as 2 dimensional art could be argued against.
Colbert’s works are, to my eye, all visually pleasing, sophisticated colour systems, some bold, some subdued. They certainly have some emotional content, the show seems to strike a kind of balance between humour and audacity initially, leading to works containing somewhat disturbing content, all tied together in a feeling of ritual and mystery. Figurative and subtle iconography, visually accessible yet with ample space for interpretation and conversation.
They don’t particularly speak to my personal taste.
(Still sad that i had to miss the Kentridge book launch)
Interesting, dense but lucid consideration of some Kentridge related issues, in Art South Africa 2002 by Ashraf Jamal, who didn’t like the idea of a Kentridge ‘Retrospective’ exhibition. It makes for the kind of semantic fuss which I suspect is a practical impossibility everywhere outside of the distinctly intimidating world of arts discourse. I cant resist quoting a snippet from the concluding paragraph, adressing fashionable and popular opinion “…who, knowing better, invariably follow accredited opinion like swine…”
Perhaps a pointless road to go down, interrogating the locus of value, implicit vs. explicit worth etc. That is part of the nature of art, addressing questions so big, grasping the question and its invariably bigger answers, simultaneously, is just not going to happen today and all that you are left with are the occasionally entertaining semantic skirmishes around essentially indulgent artefacts.