Format...
The format of the site will consist of 1 to 3 month long exhibits (paintings or videos) that I've made over the past 9 years.
This room, behind the blue door, will be a space for conversations, journaling and interviews. My hopes are for active month long discussions on art and all else. Please feel free to ask any questions, leave comments, proclaim likes and/or dislikes. I love the physical product of art, but as important to me is the invisible discourse and culture it generates. Life breeds around good art, like it does to clean flowing water.
My intentions are to run this site for 10 to 12 months, share around 20 of my pieces, write a lot, and by the end of that time we'll have a nice collection and a better understanding of my artistic footsteps. At the conclusion of the 10 to 12 month run there will be no new exhibits.
PB&JC...
For my first exhibit I've chosen to share a Lo-Fi rap video. This video was shot three years ago, in Oakland and Long Beach, CA. I'd describe it as dark and humorous. The project ended up getting shelved, but I liked the performances, so I ended up using the footage to experiment with. There was no crew and was done in the similar style of a pickup basketball game... Whoever was there was shot, and whatever we got we got. I wanted a dirty look, so most was filmed with a $100 Sony handycam. I wanted to experiment, and be free and stupid with some editing and coloring techniques. Hopefully, through all the filth of my style you've found something interesting for yourself.
There's no good reason for me choosing to launch the gallery with PB&JC, I can only imagine how most will receive it. It isn't a particularly good or bad example of my work, but I would say it does contain a good sample of the artistic styling, encoding and technique that I employ. I try to put a level of interaction in my work, so I have a tendency to fill it with types of puzzles and pathways. However, for Chaos to manifest into clarity it has to be literate, so I figure if I deconstruct some of my work then people might find it more accessible.
Life and being human is crazy, and the artistic life attempts to come to terms with that. I don't yet know what the purpose of this site is, but if you've made it here, I hope you enjoy the ride and I thank you for visiting.
Kenya
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before there was Hunger Games there was PB&JC! everyone's gotta eat
To promote the website I'm making postcards each month and handing them out. This month I made 3 different cards, Robot Brain, PB&JC and Hope...full.
I'm not sure how much I'll be writing about the cards in the future, but this being month one, I wanted to introduce and deconstruct the first batch.
Robot Brain...
Mechanization. Automation. Cloning. Cog. Digital. Analog. Zeros. Ones. Binary. Contemplation. Robot brains. Human hearts. Man. Machine.
Robot brain was an old piece, a first attempt at watercolors (crayola). It was tough, having painted with oils for a while. I wasn't getting the concept that oil and water were different animals, go figure. I understand a little better now, but still don't really use watercolors that much.
The subject matter is a meditation on the balance between us as humans and our current trend moving in the direction of the synthesized. Be it the digitization of our media, mechanization of our workforce, scantronning of our students, corporatization of government, cloned food, synthesized medicine, robot militaries... as a people we may be walking in an insufficiently considered direction of dehumanization.
As new generations come up, they accept these brand new synthetic elements like they're an old hat. This trend is causing a bit of a digital tsunami. I'm interested and concerned in following where this wave is taking us, so the subject finds its way into my work.
The fears of dehumanization are slavery and cannibalism, perhaps abstract lengths but if the past is any model, we should be investing deep consideration into where humanity ends and the synthetic begins.
"soylent green is people!"
PB&JC...
Peanut butter. Jelly. Jesus. Stigmata. Toast. Sacrament. Offering. Breaking bread. Thou art... Poverty. Hunger. Religion. Supply. Demand. Body... Bread. Blood...wine.. Grapes..jelly. A modest proposal.
Flashing throughout this month's music video exhibit are pieces of "stigmata toast"... Slices of cheap white bread with peanut butter and jelly images of Jesus painted on them. From these images came the postcard PB&JC. It's ridiculous. A play on sacramental form... bread=body, jelly=grapes=wine=blood.
My initial considerations in doing this piece were in the socioeconomic realms of religion, hunger, nutrition and poverty. But it also comments on how we as a culture market and package wherever we can invent real-estate.
Handing these cards out this month, I've found that there's a lot of different interpretations for this one. It was cool; people really seemed to respond to this card. It's been a good way to break bread.
Hope...full...
Perspective. Gesture. Submerged. Float. Holding on. Letting go. Direction. Gravity. Stubborn. Committed. Decision. Life. Death.
Month one... Out comes the choppy old rap video.. And a postcard of scribbles? Is this my best foot forward? WTF?
Perhaps my goal for the first step of the website was an attempt to test out, study and shatter a bit of your ego.
The Hope...full postcard is my interpretation on an old zen test of perspective. In performing the test, a teacher draws a circle on a chalkboard and asks the students what they see... They reply with ball... head... Moon, or something to that effect. Then, as though removing the veil off a shielded perspective, the teacher suggests that the circle is not a ballish object, but in fact a hole. The students clamor in discovery.
I wanted there to be a slight confusion as to what was going on in Hope...full. By using a blue ballpoint pen to scribble a quick gesture on white paper, I've left the concept of the surrounding negative space vague, but I've given some clues as to where you might be, like a boat named hope... From there, if you assume the perspective of a crab, you should find yourself at the bottom of the ocean.
If I've scribbled and gestured enough, the sketch will give the impression that the figure is being pulled up, but can't because it's anchored by hope. Since doing this piece, it's become ironic how prevalent the word "hope" is in our society and also in that time, how many people have found themselves under water.