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A New Body of Work
My project, “For two Martinson poems, poorly understood,” is now finished. It consists of paintings, sculptures and one photograph. It will be shown (it opens October 4th) at the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco.
In this series, like in most of the work of the past four or five years, I tried to explore (by tapping, maybe like a physician testing reflexes) the limits to holding basic questions of existence in thought or words or art; in particular, how those limits impose themselves on my efforts to consider new choices against a growing body of past choices. The concern here is not memory, as it has often been said about my work, but the past as a definite force on the present—as a comparative weight on the balance scale of meaning.
In this exploration of or inquiry about highly abstract ideas, I have used the poetry of the Russian Osip Mandelshtam and the Swede Harry Martinson, both of whom, in deceivingly simple poems, transverse a lonely landscape of "the personal" while striving towards large and unwieldy concepts.
The imagery of this new body of work is dominated by trees, snow, horizon, light, soil and figures: I have paired down the work to those elements I consider fundamental in order to manifest and understand (better but, of course, poorly) the nature of choice, regrets and possibility. As always, this work is not the result of an a priori agenda of representational painting nor of a conceptual strategy. Instead, it is the CURRENT embodiment of my efforts towards making sense of the world as I want to make sense of it TODAY; tomorrow, I might work with words or empty rooms.
Neither culture (in the way “culture” is used in art writings) nor contemporary art have been considerations in this new body of work. If I had to locate this work anywhere outside of itself, it would be with poetry, but poetry in its most limited use of the framework created by Mandelshtam and Martinson. To be more specific, not in any way involved with the “discourse of poetry” nor with “the poetic,” a term frequently used to describe affected works lacking in strength of character.
In this series, like in most of the work of the past four or five years, I tried to explore (by tapping, maybe like a physician testing reflexes) the limits to holding basic questions of existence in thought or words or art; in particular, how those limits impose themselves on my efforts to consider new choices against a growing body of past choices. The concern here is not memory, as it has often been said about my work, but the past as a definite force on the present—as a comparative weight on the balance scale of meaning.
In this exploration of or inquiry about highly abstract ideas, I have used the poetry of the Russian Osip Mandelshtam and the Swede Harry Martinson, both of whom, in deceivingly simple poems, transverse a lonely landscape of "the personal" while striving towards large and unwieldy concepts.
The imagery of this new body of work is dominated by trees, snow, horizon, light, soil and figures: I have paired down the work to those elements I consider fundamental in order to manifest and understand (better but, of course, poorly) the nature of choice, regrets and possibility. As always, this work is not the result of an a priori agenda of representational painting nor of a conceptual strategy. Instead, it is the CURRENT embodiment of my efforts towards making sense of the world as I want to make sense of it TODAY; tomorrow, I might work with words or empty rooms.
Neither culture (in the way “culture” is used in art writings) nor contemporary art have been considerations in this new body of work. If I had to locate this work anywhere outside of itself, it would be with poetry, but poetry in its most limited use of the framework created by Mandelshtam and Martinson. To be more specific, not in any way involved with the “discourse of poetry” nor with “the poetic,” a term frequently used to describe affected works lacking in strength of character.
Labels: Ramblings
posted by EMC at
1:44 PM
4 Comments:
EMC, since you have started your blog, you have reflected on finishing two projects, 'nomad' and 'for two martinson poems...' as your reflection on the latter in this blog reveals, you consider each project as distinct entity, with its own goals and achievements. however, how do you think of these two projects, for example, relating? or, let's add your other recent project, the baldwin gallery exhibition, 'another show for the leopard.' do these three projects, for example, 'add up' to something? do you consider them three variations? three stages? or perhaps three different embodiments of three separate problems?
EMC, or, do you even consider these three recent projects in chronological time, as linear, consecutive entities?
Dan, I can see how the last entry suggests a definite boundary around my project but this is misleading: ideas and handling interests are never contained by a project, and the temporal quality is never linear. It is not unusual for a project to depart from a project “finished” a few years earlier and, at times, it seems that some projects start in the future and then wait for the projects that will catch up to them.
Think of the projects as sentences that are part of paragraphs that are part of chapters that are part of a book. Or think of them as part of a web of influences. Each project contains some sort of independent statement or variation but my thoughts about it are influenced—during their making as well as after—by the context of previous and future projects. The projects are themselves influenced by those ideas and people whom I admire or think about. And in this admiration or concern is influenced by considerations—ethical, practical, mundane—suggested by my life.
>>>explore (by tapping, maybe like a physician testing reflexes) the limits to holding basic questions of existence in thought or words or art;
I thought of this while reading Billy Budd last night. The story seems lost, it turns back on itself, the narrator is in the way, the description of the nature of the characters in collision with each other is alternatively pedantic, naive and clumsy, and has some residue of blunt seafaring experience which colors it strangley, as with a faint disapproval of the emo qualities of Captain Devere. Quite stripped of Melville's marvelous sense of humor and jaunty invention, too.
Not saying it's all a simple device, but what the structure does do is to get hold of moments in time and spin them like plates on sticks, keeping them alive while the narration wanders on, letting the light reflect off them. Even the stuttering works for that, the doomed try at saying something, the contination of the-un-uttered, the helplessness, the simultaneous suspension and moving forward.
More than ever, for me, the past and present and future seem all the same thing, and that we spend all our lives carefully separating them seems the single misconception of being alive.
Eliot has all this in Four Quartets, come to think of it.
You see? People just pass by your blog and make a deposit. Sort of like a bank, and sort of like a dog park.
Pack your boxes.
CW
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