Painting in progress (detail)-Jan ’10

The Vampire

C. Baudalaire

You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken perade,

You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;
-Abhorrence, in whom I am bound
As the convict is to the chain,

As the drunkard is to the jug
As the gambler is to the game,
As to the vermin the corpse,
-I damn you, out of my shame!

And I prayed to the eager sword
To win my deliverance,
And have asked the perfidious vial
To redeem my cowardice.

Alas! the vial and the sword
Disdainfully said me;
‘You are not worthy to lift
From your wretched slavery,

You fool!-if from your command
Our efforts delivered you forth,
Your kisses would waken again
Your vampire lovers corpse!’

(Translation by James McGowen
Oxford world classics)

January is almost over! at last.

(post updated-1.2.10)

really odd angle of the work in progress above.
and for an idea of scale……(still in prog 8.2.10)

The Vampire
(translation in verse-it offers a deeper understanding of the poem posted above, a layer of metaphor)

You who plunged into my despondent heart like the stab of a knife, who with all the power of a pack of devils came with your wantonness and glamour to make my humiliated mind your bed, your empire; foul creature to whom I am shacked like a galley-slave to his chains, a dogged gambler to his game, a boozer to his bottle, a corpse to its own maggots: may you be doubly damned.

I begged the swift dagger to retrieve my liberty, I implored the treacherous poison to stiffen my cowardice but the poison and the blade turned away from me and said ‘Fool, you don’t deserve to be saved from your hellish abjection; for even if our efforts could set you free, you would soon give your vampire the kiss of life’.
(published in 1855 as ‘La Beatrice’)
Francis Scarfe-Complete verse.

Although posted along side a painting in progress, I do not seek to illustrate.

Getting ready for a new painting means getting my head around drawing too. Not that I transfer drawing directly to the canvas it’s more like unpacking the images from my head which are derived from reading materials or particular concerns that I want to explore (duality of emotion, expressed through the physical). Between drawing and painting I get to evaluate the images because although complete on paper they have more to give in informing a painting.

I really want to get some of this new work out into the open now. It needs an audience to interact with it.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting more about my work/thought process.

Nothing Matters
25 Nov—30 Jan 2010
White Cube
Hoxton Square and Mason’s Yard

‘I feel like I’ve arrived somewhere [...] In a completely different way, I feel I’ve got the tools to navigate somewhere. All that expression – doubts, fears, everything – can come out in this arena.’
Damien Hirst in conversation with Gordon Burn, 2009 (White Cube)

This exhibit is split over two venues. I only managed to get to Hoxton. This may leave me at a disadvantage. I have always liked Hirst, for better or worse (well, up until the diamond skull at least) I like the idea of Hirst showing us a collection of new paintings. The unfortunate crows are pretty magnificent.

At White Cube Hoxton Square, Hirst will present a group of paintings, which include three triptychs from 2007-09, each depicting crows shot in mid-flight against blue skies, with outspread wings and violent splatters of red paint across their bodies….at White Cube Mason’s Yard, these crows reappear, as omens of bad news. They often share the space with ghost-like figures, skeletal forms and objects, including chairs, lemons, knives, animal skulls, wine glasses or a scorpion.(White Cube)

Is it my imagination or have I seen a documentary in which Hirst’s production line (assistants creating his artworks) is shown? I cant find it anywhere. Its making me question the works in the ‘Nothing Matters’ exhibit.

Shocked Into Abstraction
Matias Faldbakken
25 November 2009-24 January 2010
Ikon
Birmingham
UK

Ikon presents the first major UK exhibition by Norwegian artist and writer Matias Faldbakken. In works covering a wide range of media, the languages of underground and youth cultures, vandalism and extremism are fused with those of fine art, tracing common ground between them.(Ikon)

Cultural Department, 2006- Acrylic paint on wall

Faldbakken’s work revolves around negation, often taking diametrically opposed positions such as freedom and control or language and visuality,collapsing them into each other to establish new content through the destruction of the old. Cultural Department (2006), a reconstruction of vandalism of the Palestinian Cultural Department by Israeli soldiers in 2002 is rendered with paint directly onto the gallery walls and so resembles a Pollock-esque ‘drip and splash’ painting. His conflation of references to an epitome of modernism and an act of political aggression has the effect of cancelling both out. It suggests also the nullifying effect of cultural institutions on extreme actions.(Ikon)

Abstract Car, 2009-Burnt out Mercedes Benz 1986

The Abstracted Car (2009) is another work that places a sign of equivalence between destruction and abstraction. However, there is no underlying story here — just a car that has been burned to a dysfunctional carcass and that has then been named “abstract”. The whole point was taking an object that would immediately have all kinds of dramatic political connotations and then emptying it of all such things, ending up with what is essentially a rather vapid formal gesture.(Matias Faldbakken)

Away from sound, 2005-Stack of 24 Marshall guitar amplifier dummies

art work not shown at Ikon but similar to Remainder VIII, 2009-Erased spray paint on ceramic tile-Ikon

Here I wanted to make a kind of painting that was really easy to pass by, one that tells us, “move on, there’s nothing to see here”. A type of painting where the quasi-vandalising act of marking space — so prominent in so much modern painting — competes for attention with the act of cleaning up and returning to order, a painting that would stage some sort of collaboration between the vandal and the vandalised, if you will. In painting, there is always the question of what to put in and what to remove, but here it’s as if painting were informed by a much more banal and straightforward problem: How can we possibly get rid of these violent markings and what they represent? (Matias Faldbakken)

This is the one of the more interesting pieces in the exhibition, at the Ikon the tiled wall is shiny black, and as the Artist intended, the viewer could walk right past it, or at the very least not take in the paint that is smeared and left dripping on the surface of the tile and not fully comprehend that this could have been an image that has been wiped away, or perhaps we are so used to seeing such halfhearted attempts at clearing up vandalism that it becomes an everyday sight (the uglier outcome).

Faldbakken talks about his purposeful tendency to approach the work in a halfhearted way, that the work was placed within the gallery by the moving team and left very much to chance as to where the pieces were placed. This certainly did not come across on viewing. Pieces looked meticulously placed, I would expect a little more disorder, difficulty and discomfort in viewing, which actually would have improved my experience. An experience which left me slightly void.

Faldbakken’s concerns seem to pull in opposite directions but not so dramatically that the viewer can appreciate the dialogue between object and Artist which left the work oddly dulled in comparison to the artists thoughts about the them and their political and cultural connotations. At times the Artist wants to separate object from such references and at others pin point an issue via the work, which I found in the piece bellow (image not from Ikon Exhibit)

Untitled (video sculpture), 2005

More specifically, you could perhaps say I work with the highly ambivalent responses to the spectacle and the spectacular that can be traced in and through various cultural transactions — i.e. the many situations in which the extremist, or artistic, response would be to try to delete or negate or subvert the spectacular. My remake of the “educational sculpture” of the Taliban — the roadside pole around which they had mounted videotape pulled out of cassettes as a sort of public monument to forbidden imagery — would be one example. I continually seek out icons of the non- spectacular, and I am particularly interested in the many cases in which such attacks on the spectacle still somehow tend to end up in the realm of the spectacle.

I wouldnt usually blog about an exhibit that I didnt enjoy but…..this one left me wondering if it was me that was found wanting. The work didnt present anything new to me, either in its curation or instillation and felt halfhearted in its concept. Despite the Artist talking of this as being a conscious effort, I cant help but feel that leaving the viewer dulled wasnt the intended out come, was it?

There were 3 video works with in the exhibit that I enjoyed:
One of us-2005
Getaway-2003
Untitled (no comment)-2005
All of them had a playfulness that the rest of the exhibit lacked, Untitled (no comment) 2005 seemed to strike the balance that the Artist intends. Between violence and inevitability.

images: Google search + Galiblog

C. Baudelaire

One day in ashy, cindery terrains,
As I meandered making my complaint
To nature, slowly sharpening the knife
Of thought against the whetstone of my heart
In plainest day I saw around my head
A lowering cloud as weighty as a storm,
Which bore within a vicious demon throng
Who showed themselves as cruel and curious dwarfs.
Disdainfully they circled and observed

And as a madman draws a crowd with jokes,
I heard them laugh and whisper each to each,
Giving their telling nudges and their winks

‘Now the time to roast this comic sketch,
This shadow- Hamlet , who takes the pose-
The indecisive stare ans straying hair.
A pity, isnt it, to see this fraud,
This posturer, this actor on relief?
Because he plays his role with some slight art
He thinks his shabby whining entertains
The eagles, and the insects, brooks and flowers.
Even to us who wrote these trite charades,
He mouths the speeches of his paltry show.’

I had authority (my giant pride
Can easily disperse that chattering rout)
And simply could have turned my sovereign head,
Had I not seen, among that filthy troupe,
O crime that did not make the sun to swerve!
My hearts bright queen, she of the matchless gaze,
Who laughed at those who fed on my distress,
And stroked them more than once with low caress.

Beatrice: Beatrice Portinari was the ideal love of Dante’s life and the inspiration of his poetry. The ‘Beatrice’ presented in this poem is undeserving of the poets idolatry. (Oxford University Press)

Uninvited (details) 2009, oil on canvas

Post Update 11.1.10: I’m reading various translations these days. Here’s a more explanatory one from The Complete verse-Francis scarfe

The Poets Beatrice

Across the ashen vacant lots burned to a cinder, where no green grew, while one day I was complaining to nature, and aimlessly wandering, went sharpening the dagger of thoughts on my own heart, although it was high noon, I saw a sinister, storm heavy cloud descend upon my head, bearing with it a horde of vicious demons like cruel inquisitive dwarfs. They began to examine me and, like street idlers gaping at a clown. I heard them chuckle and whisper to one another, exchanging many a nudge and many a wink.

‘Let us gaze our fill on this human caricature, this understudy of Hamlet, imitating his poses with his distraught gaze and unkempt hair. Isnt it an awful shame see this epicure, this pauper, this unemployed actor, this oddfellow, just because he knows how to play his part like a professional, trying to interest eagles and crickets, streams and flowers in his tale of woe and even bellowing his public speeches at us, of all people, who invented that mumbo-jumbo ourselves!’

As any mountain-high pride stands far above the clouds and cries of demons. I could simply have turned my princely head the other way-had I not seen among that obscene mob-O crime which failed to rock the sun!-the queen of my heart, whose eyes are beyond compare, laughing with them at my dire affliction, and giving them here and there a lewd caress.