Karl Weiming Lu at Andre Zarre (Origins)

Karl Weiming Lu was a member of the first generation of Chinese artists, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, to seriously begin experimenting in the visual arts. This movement is usually cited as having begun in some of China’s larger cities around the year 1985 but it only lasted a few short years as the government soon cracked down on such expressions of individualism around 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square horror. This crackdown seems to be one of the reasons we see so much representational work coming out of China, although Chinese artists have cleverly learned how to make political and social as well as deeply meaningful personal statements through super-realism and other types of representation in response to an official frowning on more experimental techniques (although you do sometimes get experimental techniques coming out of China anyway).

Lu now lives and works in Sydney and he apparently first created his ‘dripping flow’ technique in the 2000s as part of a series he did on the theme of memory. For his current amazing show at the Andre Zarre Gallery, his work seems focused on the paradox we live with every day and which should probably be driving all of us nuts – how could the universe come from nothing or how could there have always been stuff/energy from which to derive a universe? As the old rhyme goes: “How could something come from nothing? How could something always be? It’s the riddle you can’t answer. It’s the answer you can’t see.” Basically, if we are to trust the human intellect, nothing should exist.

To be honest with you though, when I saw Lu’s work at Zarre, I liked it because it seemed to employ the perfect technique to capture the central problem of memory for me. Memorizing stuff that we see or sense is fine. Memorizing information is fine. The real problem happens when we have meaningful or transformative experience in our inner reality and try to capture that for further use. That doesn’t seem to work well and the process seems to degenerate or deteriorate in the way that we see Lu’s paint dripping down his canvases from his arches or spirals or other figures. When we experience some motive or emotion or any type of inner process that we find valuable we attempt to make it more concrete or we attempt to create a visual representation for the experience, but the experience becomes lost and the visual markers soon lose any meaning. So I see a bit of process art in Lu’s swirls and spirals – we see a beginning and ending of a process but at the same time we see the deterioration of the experience as it is attempted to be shifted into a more usable cognitive form.

The paintings also work, however, as an investigation of origins and our attempts to capture that which seemingly can’t be captured.  In Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Faustus flat out asks Mephistophilis how the universe came into being and Mephistophilis becomes outraged. Even the chief representative of Satan can’t tell Faustus how the universe came into being. Lu’s abstract images and his technique in creating these images seem to capture our constant attempts and constant failures to crack the one nut that seems impossible to crack.

Karl Weiming Lu

Recent Paintings

May 21 – June 25, 2015

Andre Zarre Gallery

529 W. 20^th Street

New York, NY 10011

Yoko Ono's Wish Tree at Jim Kempner Fine Art in Chelsea

My friend Yunhee took a couple really good photos of Yoko's "Wish Tree" at Kempner. 

I just learned, by the way, that Kempner also has created a very funny video series about what it's like to run a Chelsea art gallery.  www.themadnessofart.com   It's worth watching.  

To ancient societies trees held symbolic and even magical power. A tree was like a bridge between the earth and the sky. The roots of a tree penetrate deep into the earth and derive sustenance while the trunk rises and branches reach into the air. So even today a tree can be thought of as a type of bridge between the earth and the sky, or a bridge between the ‘lower’ and the ‘higher’ or our animal nature and our godly/spiritual nature.

On her website Yoko Ono explains that as a child she would go to a nearby temple and, like others, tie wishes written onto little strips of paper to a tree branch. The trees in the courtyard of the temple often held numerous of these wishes from her community. Indeed, Yoko has been facilitating the replication of this process since 1981, around the world, and she has been keeping all of the wishes that people leave on her “wish trees” for an Imagine Peace Tower. She currently has such a wish tree at Jim Kempner Fine Art in Chelsea.

When I was passing by Kempner recently, I saw a small group writing out their wishes and tying them to the tree’s branches and I was, frankly, affected by the sincerity of the act. People were earnestly hunched over or squatting on the ground scribbling onto a little sheet and then looking for space on the tree where they could hang their wishes. So although many people feel intimidated by contemporary art, or say that they don’t like modern art museums because they don’t understand what the artists are doing, Yoko has found a way to really engage people, through art, in a deep and significant manner.

By inviting people to make a wish and to place it on a tree branch, she compels the viewer/participant to really focus on what’s central to his/her life and determine whether this is as meaningful as it should be. Some people have written frivolous things, some people make political statements (I saw: “Down with the patriarchy!” written on one slip) but many people express thoughts directed to others who are hungry, homeless, impoverished, suffering injustice/cruelty or in need of some type of assistance. Of course, after making the wish, the participant is also tacitly invited to question what exactly is stopping this wish from coming true. Is it political? economic? racial? Each person is invited to reflect on the extent to which he/she can and cannot take action to make this wish a reality. Each person is, in fact, invited to begin to take action again, on whatever level, to spread peace and justice throughout his/her community.

Trees may have lost their magical power in our post-industrialized, secular world, but they still retain their symbolic power. The Wish Tree therefore represents the latent good will in all of us to wish each other goodness and prosperity, as a first step to finally bringing about a truly humane and conflict free global community. Who knows, this could be a magical process after all.

Powerful Associated Press photos from the Vietnam War at Steven Kasher Gallery

A South Vietnamese father holds his dead child in front of S. Vietnamese soldiers

The war in Afghanistan has now lasted longer than any previous American war (12 years), and although Barack Obama promised (in the 2008 campaign) that he was going to bring this conflict to an end, there is no end in sight. If you want to know why this war will not end, you can look at the photos at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan. You will directly sense the effect that good photo-journalism can have on ending a war and, consequently, you will sense the absence of effect that a lack of responsible photo-journalism is having in the current war.

They said Vietnam was the first ‘televised’ war; what they didn’t say was that it was also the last ‘televised’ war. This photo exhibit shows you why. These photos by AP photographers literally helped bring the Vietnam War to an end. There are ZERO photos coming out of Afghanistan and if you ask any American what is going on in Afghanistan, you will get no answer. At the Steven Kasher Gallery you will leave asking yourself where the photo-journalists are now. Given how affecting these photos from Vietnam are, why don’t we see ANYTHING about what’s happening in Afghanistan? In an era where we have advanced communications technology and stories and photos can spread instantly, why are there no photos of what’s happening in America’s longest war?

A Vietnamese woman is interrogated by S. Vietnamese soldiers

In Afghanistan we are interminably fighting against ‘terrorism;’ in Vietnam we were fighting against ‘communism.’ David Halberstam’s ironically titled book: “The Best and the Brightest,” highlights the creation and execution of the Vietnam War policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Although Kennedy was a Democrat, he considered himself a hard-line anti-communist who was going to demonstrate that communism was not going to spread on his watch. So although Eisenhower had steadfastly refused to commit troops to a corrupt dictator in South Vietnam (whom Kennedy would ultimately assassinate shortly before his own assassination), Kennedy took the first steps in what would become an inhumane fiasco for both the youth of the USA and the people of Vietnam.

A US soldier casually walks through a village he helped burn down

Reading Halberstam’s book is, basically, a shocking experience. We see the fruits of an advanced American education. The best and the brightest men (and ‘men’ is the operative word here) in the nation made ridiculous and cruel policy decisions based on an utter lack of knowledge of Asian culture and an anti-communist belief system bordering on superstition. These men – McNamara, Bundy, Rusk, Ball, Clifford et al., were, for the most part, “Ivy” guys. These were business and government and foundation leaders. These were men of experience and intelligence, yet they were all men of the same race, same basic religion, same educational system and same economic status, who could not move beyond the thinking patterns and racism of their social class and merely sat there reinforcing their own prejudices and insane decisions while 50,000 American men died and at least 1 million Vietnamese suffered the same fate. Indeed, the Vietnamese people still suffer from the war in that thousands of children are born each year with birth defects due to the dioxin in the ‘Agent Orange’ which Dow Chemical and Monsanto provided to the military to drop on Vietnamese forests.

A Buddhist monk burns himself to death to protest the policies of the S. Vietnamese government

The photos in the Steven Kasher Gallery show the ground-level results of the upper-level policy decisions, and anyone who visits this show will be deeply affected by the cruelty, callousness and suffering caused by an misinformed and, frankly, ignorant and indifferent government comprised of American 'elites.' The photos provide a cross-section of the war. We see conquered French soldiers waiting, stupefied and shamed, for repatriation. There is the Vietnamese father helplessly holding his dead child in front of a convoy of South Vietnamese soldiers. We see the Buddhist monk's self-immolation to protest the policies of the Diem government. We see an elderly Vietnamese woman with an M-16 rifle pointed at her head…a young Vietnamese woman continually having her head dunked under water in an effort to extract information from her…the US soldier casually walking past a burning village… the Ohio national guard shooting American college students protesting the war…brave but frightened US soldiers helping their wounded comrades...Vietnamese women and children hiding in a dirty canal to avoid being shot…

 We also see two of the most iconic images of the war. Indeed, we see the whole photographic sequence of Phan Thi Kim Phuc running from her village, her flesh burned by napalm. We also see the photos before and after the infamous shooting by the South Vietnamese general during the Tet Offensive, who summarily shot a young Vietnamese man in the head.

Among the horror though, we also see some moral heroes. Nick Ut was certainly a hero. Vietnamese, himself, he was hired by AP to take photos of the war. Not only did he capture one of the photos that certainly began to turn the American people against this war, but he also went above and beyond his duties as a photographer to help save the life of Phan Thi Kim Phuc. Daniel Ellsberg is also shown. Ellsberg – the Harvard graduate and ex-US Marine who became disgusted with the war and turned over thousands of secret documents to the NY Times – is shown standing defiantly in front of a court house, smiling, ready to go to trial for taking action to stop something he knew to be wrong. Unlike Snowden, Ellsberg stayed to face the consequences, and he won. Ellsberg stands as one of the true heroes of recent American history. Like these photo-journalists, he helped end this war and also helped to bring down Richard Nixon, one of the more shady of modern US presidents.

This show will leave the viewer quite moved, even changed. Hopefully the show will also leave the viewer committed to asking his/her government and media where the current photos from America’s silent wars are. Photo-journalism helped stop an unjust war, but the American power-structure learned its lessons. Journalists are now ‘embedded’ or just prohibited from documenting what is happening. News sources, as well as news consumers, should be outraged and work harder to learn the truth.

Here is a link where you can see about 30 of the photos from the exhibit (much larger than on this google blog):

http://www.stevenkasher.com/exhibition/91/#!3258

Cobi Moules, Conceptual Realist, at Lyons Wier Gallery in Chelsea

Lyons Wier Gallery has established itself as one of the premier New York City art galleries promoting “conceptual realism.” Conceptual realism is to be contrasted with photo-realism or super-realism. In super-realism (a movement created in the 1960s), the artist often starts with an actual photo and painstakingly reproduces that image (usually) on a canvas. The reaction of a normal viewer to a work of super-realism is often: “Is that a painting!? It looks like a photo!” The second question is invariably, “Why did he/she do that?” or “Wow, how long do you think it took for that artist to paint this?” 

An example of super-realism (Richard Estes):

That’s not to imply that super-realistic paintings are not without meaning or relevance. A person could argue that a super-realist was/is, basically, doing what Vermeer did – capturing and focusing on one instant in the flow of time to engender a better sense of the greater meaning of that moment and, perhaps, to better convey the transitory nature of our lives.

Conceptual realism, however, plays with realism to deliberately convey a greater meaning or concept. The work of Cobi Moules, in his show at Lyons Wier - Bois Just Wanna Have Fun - is a great example of conceptual realism. When you first look at one of his paintings in this show, you seem to see a huge mass of boys foraging around, standing around, rooting round or horsing around in an amazing landscape. Indeed, you might even mistake his pieces for examples of super-realism, until you look closely.

All the boys are, in fact, Cobi Moules. In fact, Moules’ paintings might be superficially interpreted as a wry commentary on the notion of trying to capture one moment in a super-realist piece. Moules seemingly captures many discrete moments within one landscape on one canvas. Indeed, one might feel an amazing contrast between the permanent and the transitory in each painting. Each particular landscape will be there for thousands of years (if not more), yet Moules, or anyone else wandering through, might be considered but a poor player strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage. The enormity of time each landscape will exist creates a sense of permanence or eternity which readily contrasts with the brief moment of our lives.

But Moules is shooting for more than this contrast between the permanent and the temporary – indeed, he seems to be fighting against this. After all, what’s more important: the actor or the stage? Moules’ pieces are, in fact, a wry commentary on the historically significant Hudson River School of painters, who can be considered, according to Moules, to be ideologically linked to certain strains of orthodox Christianity which condemn queer and transgender folks like himself as being ‘unnatural.’

Orthodox Christianity and the Hudson River School might have been saying, “Cobi, you don’t even belong on this stage!”, but Moules relishes his presence and exults in his multiple performances, engaging himself within a context of nature which DOES accept him. Moules' work shows that the stage and the actor are inseparable and that the diversity of human types on the stage of nature is a welcome presence.

Here's an example of Hudson River School painting.  I'm not an expert on it, so I am not sure that I can agree that there might have been homophobic ties between it and orthodox Christianity.  I think I understand Moules' argument, though, I guess.  Basically here's what he said in the press release from Lyons Wier Gallery: 

"I see a number of ideological links between their [Hudson River School] works and a specific current American Christian culture that was an integral part of my formative years; particularly in regards to ideas of purity and the honor of sacrificing one's selfhood for the glory of God. As a queer and transgender person, I seek to renegotiate my relationship with this upbringing and the act of being told I am 'unnatural' through such a pointed Christian lens."

Hudson River School stuff:

Michael Brown at the Mike Weiss Gallery in Chelsea

click on images to enlarge them

I think that Novalis is definitely a writer who should be revisited.  Looking at Brown's work at the Weiss Gallery, a few of his quotes ran through my mind:

"The path of mystery leads inwards..."  and "The world becomes a dream and the dream becomes reality."  I also recalled Schelling's "Nature is visible spirit; spirit is invisible nature."  Yes, I still read the German 'Romantic' writers.

If you go to Mike Weiss' web page, you can read details about how Brown creates these pieces. What I liked was that Brown first sketches a scene from nature.  Basically he sketches a barren landscape.  Over this sketching he then places rusty iron bars curved into circular shapes.  In many of his pieces the circles overlap each other in various patterns.

I took the above photo from Weiss' web page (so I hope he doesn't sue me) but you can see a closeup of one of Brown's pieces below.  My friend Tomoko might have been a little tipsy because the photo is crooked, but that's OK, I was tipsy too considering that it was the big opening night in Chelsea when we saw this work and free alcohol abounded.

Yes, we were both a bit tipsy.

Giulia A. took this photo while she and I were completely sober (am I ever completely sober?)

So why do I like these pieces so much?  Well, to me two processes are represented here. I would argue that two inner processes are represented here.  I think that every meaningful work of art is about our inner lives or inner reality and I believe Brown's work can be interpreted in this manner. I think he is illustrating two processes that occur when we perceive aspects of our inner life.  I guess a person could describe these processes as 'perception' and 'reaction,' or 'perception' and 'construction.'

Initially, in these pieces, we get 'nature' in the form of a landscape sketch.  To me, the perception of an aspect of inner nature necessarily leads to a cognitive process akin to Novalis' idea that a 'dream' becomes 'reality.'  We conceptualize what we perceive or feel.  

When language was created or developed, it must have been created or developed to express what happens in the outer world, because when we attempt to describe processes in the inner world, we are forced to use metaphors or symbols from the outer world.

When we conceptualize, we use metaphors or symbols and this leads us away from 'nature' and into another inner process altogether.  This new inner process can be represented by the curving and rusty iron. Like the circular pieces of iron, this process is a coherent whole.  And regardless of the differences that can be perceived, the process is always the same for every aspect in regard to trying to understand the nature of our inner lives.  

The aspects of our inner world exist for us independently of the nature of the aspects, through cognition, and they become other entities.  Like the rusty iron, our conclusions about what we perceive in our inner nature become separate from nature in a coherent and identifiable (and mostly useless) manner.

One can even mention Hume's Law or George Moore's "Naturalistic Fallacy" here.  Hume pointed out that often when we describe a situation, a judgment about that situation often then occurs.  I can't remember his exact quote, but he said something like, "How is it that we jump so easily from an 'is' to an 'ought'?"

So if I engage in some form of introspection and perceive some type of motive or emotion or inner conflict or something I feel to be problematic about how I am responding to the world, this perception leads to a type of transmutation whereby the natural becomes cognitive. I like Brown's work because, to me, it represents this process whereby nature becomes cognition or the 'dream' of the world becomes the 'reality' of the world.

So the cognition about nature becomes a thing in itself, and not necessarily a reflection of the individual details of nature.  The sketches represent 'nature' to me, while the rusty iron hoops represent our 'cognition' of nature and the new, empty world this divorce from nature brings.

The Mike Weiss Gallery traditionally shows thought-provoking work!  Here's their web page: http://www.mikeweissgallery.com/exhibitions

The Optimist by Tim Okamura

There has been a great deal of sensitivity to the condition of African Americans shown in some Chelsea galleries recently.  There is, for instance, an amazing show at Jack Shainman Gallery called: Question Bridge: Black Males.    www.questionbridge.com

At Lyons Wier I saw a painting by Tim Okamura that I thought was worth passing along.  He calls it: The Optimist.

We see an African American woman who is apparently surrounded by poverty and violence but who has attained to a degree of tranquility despite her immediate surroundings. Indeed, we even see a type of graffiti halo hovering over her head.

It's a very optimistic painting - I am not even sure this level of serenity is possible and, at first, due to the obvious halo, I thought that the artist was, perhaps, being ironic. 

Being an optimist myself, however, I tend to think the artist was being more sincere than ironic and I appreciated the positive and hopeful belief that even in situations of harsh adversity we can believe in something better and perhaps even reach a state of grace or serenity.

So here's an image of a person who was not corrupted by her surroundings and we are challenged to think about the inner means and struggle she engaged in to reach this state of grace.

Thank you to Giulia A. for taking this photo for me.

Wooden Stuff by Mangle at Magnan Metz Gallery

So why, in the early 20th century, did Marcel Duchamp turn a men's urinal over, sign it and then call it art?

I think Duchamp was more interested in focusing on how people go about interpreting art than he was in actually trying to convey ideas or experiences.  He was asking people to think about how they think about art.  When you look at a piece, what are the cognitive and emotional processes involved?  Why do you look at art?  What do you want to get from this process?  How do you hope to change by looking at art? What do you expect art and artists to do for you?

By taking a functional object and turning it upside down he was also, basically, saying: there is stuff we can use and then there is stuff we can't use, and the stuff we can't use is or can be 'art.'  It is there for us to think about or derive meaning from.  I think Duchamp showed that if you are really a thoughtful and insightful person, you can even derive meaning from an overturned urinal.

At Magnan Metz Gallery there is a group of artists from Colombia doing work in this vein.  Apparently the artists call themselves and, among other things, take household items and make exact duplicates of them in wood.  For instance, here is an electrical cord made of wood:

So what is your interpretation of this electrical extension cord?  By rendering the cord useless, the artist goads you into thinking about what it could mean symbolically.

I especially liked these elegantly twisted hammers.

To me, the twisted hammers indicate the end of a grim and ridiculous process in which the tools themselves were not even adequate for the job.  This represents the point where the person just says, "Enough already!  I'm finished!" Then he/she twists the hammers around each other in a last act of frustration.

The gallery's website: http://www.magnanmetz.com/

Photos of the wooden cord and the twisted hammer were taken by Dominique J.

The Super-Realism (Urban Mysticism) of Max Ferguson

There's a fallacy that super-realistic painting is superficial.  Someone was once surprised, for instance, that I liked many of the artists represented by Gallery Henoch (a gallery that specializes in the work of artists who prefer a very realistic painting style). She said, "Dan, I thought you liked art that was challenging and had some meaning to it."

Many people seem to think that in regard to super-realism, the medium is the message.  No; I would say that if you look at Max Ferguson's stuff, it has a kind of urban mysticism the way that Caspar David Friedrich's stuff had a natural or rural mysticism.

I think the key to taking in what Ferguson is conveying is the fact that he always paints people in a super-clean, and I mean super-duper, super super duper anti-septic setting.  Look at this guy on a subway platform.

Folks, if that platform were, indeed, that spotless, the MTA station workers would deserve their bloated salaries.

The anti-septic nature of the environment in Ferguson's work seems to create an even greater sense in the viewer of temporality.  It's the essence of city life - permanence and transition. That station is going to be there years after this guy is dead.

It's better to see Ferguson's paintings at Henoch.  I wish, for instance, I could show you a close up of the guy's face at 34th street.

Here's another example of an anti-septic stage where folks strut and fret their hour:

Yes, that' a painting.

I love this next painting of a man surrounded by books.  Even the overwhelming number of books he has piled in front of him does not disturb the tranquility established through the super-realistic style.

Is this a person who has fled the real work and lives in his books, or is this a person deeply involved in the processes of life searching for an answer?

Here's an elderly man who has stopped by his local (completely sanitized) diner to grab a bite to eat.

And here's a man absorbed in a life without the latest gadgets.

Here are 3 famous paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, who was a German "Romantic" painter of the 1800s.