To some extent Mercury Retrograde (MR) gets a bad rap, IMHO. Used wisely the fake backwards phase of the little hot planet can yield excellent clarifications on problem areas in one's psychic topology. Just don't try to call your bestie to share your latest explosive revelation while you're driving on a crowded thoroughfare!
Dmitru Gorzo painting/sculpture stack at SLAG Gallery, Bushwick, during Sculpture 56 opening night at 56 Bogart.
I revisited my old gallery SLAG to see my friend Dmitru Gorzo's new painting/sculpture stacks. 56 Bogart was hoppin' that night, with eleven galleries hosting/opening the Sculpture 56 program. Paint master Art Guerra was hanging out by the goody table in the backroom at SLAG. I had nice catch-up chats with Gorzo, Art - who was very interested in seeing the new 4D VyNIL paintings - and Irina Protopopescu, SLAG owner. Re-visitation is fun during MR! ...But here's the rub: everyone had the wrong idea that I had moved somewhere! The misunderstanding was hybridized. Some had heard I was moving out of the old studio (but hadn't heard I was moving into a new one!); others put that info together with my dissertation-related absence from the scene and temporary but prolonged AFH social media shutdown - & VOILA! Word in the hood was I had gone on a runner! NOT SO! Or at least, not yet...
WorkNet series #2 by PJM / 40" x 30" / Vinyl on Canvas
Speaking of the new studio - I've been working there for about two weeks and LOVE IT! It's very different from the last space. The good news is NO LEAKS! I've already finished two new 4D 40" x 30" VyNIL paintings, and have started a third. The working title for second phase of the doctoral cycle is WorkNet. My old Costa Mesa-based pal and AFH Gallery Chinatown/Content-era vinyl collaborator Jason Coulston produced one of my all-time favorite responses to a PJM painting. Responding to WorkNet #2, he typed "Damn. This feels like a million little bits of me. Like a confetti of my vinyl soul." INSTANT CLASSIC!
Below is a slideshow documenting the raw iPhone photos of the 269 Powers studio. I've been posting the P-shopped versions at AFH Facebook, Twitter & Instagram:
I've also been posting selected *artworld* links at AFH Google+. At the AFH Pinterest site I've built some spiffy boards. At the Real.Pure.Digital AFH Tumblr I posted a few sweet morsels of net.art. New albums have been added at AFH flickr. The reboot I'm most excited about presently is happening at the main AFH site. Talk about a truly MR-appropriate project! I'm building a click-thru sequence that starts with a YUGE animated GIF & continues with pages that are designed to blow the doors off your smart phone. The pages themselves are super simple. The images are massive, but otherwise the approach so far is very retro for me, reminiscent of early days HTML AFH. The new stuff is HTML5, and I'm looking forward to building some new code chops for the undertaking. I've encountered some head-scratcherz, trying to integrate moving image/audio in the format, but am confident the problems can be resolved in short order. I am dedicated to building an alternative to the ubiquitous & generally ugly/inadequate options for presentation modes in the major online centers for content distribution. I have always held that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc are Lowest Common Denominator solutions for share net-based 4D art. The ONLY qualities they provide is ease of use, and their enormous potential-access pools ("communities"). However, the hidden costs of locating one's output with them are also substantial, including the inherent surrender of civil liberties to participate in their hosted misrepresented *free* exchanges. On this point, I have covered that territory in other texts in a wide array of media and will refrain from recycling my positions for this post. Suffice to say I am thoroughly enjoying the perversity of the timing of my return to wide soc.med, given the loud scandals afflicted the monopoly fixtures currently.
Here are some sample images from the new artforhumans.com series:
In April (post MR) you will see some hot AFH launches, as the platform development continues. The SquareSpace sites will be updated/rebuilt/-integrated (that process has already started). I will be entering the online art market incrementally, and the first step in that direction will happen in the next week or so. Finally, I will be publishing the scanned version of my BETA 4D+ doctoral thesis, mainly through the AFH nexus. Stay tuned!
Title Page, BETA draft of PJM 4D+ doctoral thesis