New paintings [Old Hick + A Big Bang]

The new series of paintings is taking shape. Most of the latest ones extend the Code Duello collaborative approach that Shane & I brought to the ink-on-polyester works executed last fall at chanorth to acrylic+ (e.g., inks, varnishes, other materials) on canvas. Very rarely have I attempted to systematically paint on canvas with another artist [only twice before, over a 30+ -year span] operating collaboratively. Which isn't to say I haven't co-opted other painter's canvases and re-appropriated them before. I have. Nearly my entire undergrad senior show at Notre Dame was executed on a trove of pre-stretched canvases some guy had left in my apartment complex's storage area! My creative relationship with Shane is unique though, due to the long-term shared studio proximity, access, 4D discourse, actualization and production - which makes this undertaking feasible. He's aware of what will and won't work in the toggling process. Shane delivered a half dozen canvases he'd additively texturized/dimensionally underpainted [beautifully] during course studies at Cooper, and I began overworking them. Shane's excellent usage of Guerra pigments contributes a lot to the ease of integrating his prep-elements with the subsequent layers. I won't go much more here into detail describing the exchange process, but I will present in the journal some photo-documentation of the development of these pieces, minus commentary, at least for the time being. (I likely will present a talk on this at DLG-Nashville in July.)

Suffice to say, Shane & I have already begun to discuss consequent steps, continuing the project. Exciting!

As for the 4D painting approach I'm employing: The Old Hick series seems to be emerging from a specific painting [see "Kittler" in the Dim Tim series]; but it also revives a way of building images that I practiced in the late 80s. ...Lots of push-pull, over-under, tricky color, perspective-play and so on, using perspectival and perceptual expectations to activate complex surfaces. I'm thinking in particular of a big body of work that I produced while inhabiting one of those awesome artist studios in Gypsy Alley, off Canyon Road in Santa Fe. I don't think I have any chronicle of those paintings at all, which is a bummer. There were many of them, but I have no idea where they are now. It's a very strange feeling. Anyway, the mash-up of simple composition (informed maybe by a media philosophy of concision, if not precision) with "drametric" effects is in itself new territory to move through.

[Click the image to view the non-chronological sequence. The pictures aren't edited in any way.]

Fall 2013

It's been a beautiful autumn here in the city. Since returning from the Chanorth residency, I've been writing a text on free speech and property. One of the chapters will be published in the Brooklyn Rail's November issue. Good Faith Space is active, with Voyage of the Hippo 2 in September, and three shows planned for October, Including the launch of Wilson Novitzki's musical program, The Maintenance Series, a screening program (no title yet) featuring "Elementals," short films and animations by the amazing Eric Leiser, and another iteration of Shane Kennedy's iconic wall paintings, for the Society for the Prevention of Creative Obsolescence, in an expo called, "Something About Encryption." In November GFS will be participating in the Standard ToyKraft fundraiser gala. In the project room we will be presenting small works by our core Spacers, and introducing some of the outstanding artists we will be showing in 2014, like Jakey Begin and Konstant.

Residency at Chanorth

On September 16, the residency at Chanorth came to an end. It was a wonderful and productive hiatus, yielding more than four dozen ink-on-polyester paintings and a series of prints pulled from paintings in process. The new series is dubbed "Code Duello," inspired initially by a book, Duelling in America, lent me by one of my fellow residents, Jaime Bird. As the series progressed, from small to large works, the scope of the narrative shifted and expanded. Longtime collaborator Shane Kennedy, freshly returned from Voyage of the Hippo 2, at my request joined us in Pine Plains to help with the big pieces. I had an idea to revisit techniques dating to 1986, applied to the Trinidad/Santa Rosa series, techniques which re-emerged during my Content phase (CGU MFA, 2006-7) and the pixel/pull 3D paintings. Essentially, the process involves a pigment pouring on a substrate, to which another similar-sized substrate is pressed. Then, the two substrates, connected temporarily by paint and/or medium, are pried apart again. After the pull-painting dries, it's an option to paint over the abstract painting that results, adding another dimension or dimensions. For Code Duello, Shane and I developed a performative element, alternating turns pouring the ink and directing the subsequent pull. It was great fun, due mostly to our ease working together, an ease developed over the past 13 years on numerous projects.

As for Chanorth, I can share that Josh and Adrianna, the residency admins, were tremendously helpful, great people and doing excellent creative work, too. All the residents shared cooking tasks, and at the end of the month-long residency, we held an informal open studio night, so we could check out each other's new work. Aiyanna, Naro, Luiza and Jaime had used their time to good effect, producing drawings, paintings, sculpture, media works, photos and performance/video. It was a real pleasure seeing the output, which for the most part was new to me, given my studio schedule. The countryside upstate is lovely, and several days each week, weather permitting, I enjoyed the nearby lake. Other residents hiked and biked, and worked on the local farms. We visited neighboring towns, colleges, residencies, historic sites and villages, like Hudson, Olana, Bard, Wassaic, Woodstock and Red Hook, taking in the restaurants, sights, shops and so on. I didn't get a chance this time to visit Catskill, where we produced Wall Street to Main Street in 2012, but it was often in my thoughts, as were friends like Fawn Potash and Sam Truitt.

Below are a selection of the raw studio shots and painting documentation.