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This coming weekend I will be flying to Dublin to hang my show at Rubicon Gallery. It opens on Wednesday 5th May. Here is the invite...
26.4.10
Bihotz
This coming weekend I will be flying to Dublin to hang my show at Rubicon Gallery. It opens on Wednesday 5th May. Here is the invite...
23.4.10
Things seen - Vuillard
Edouard Vuillard: Under the trees, 1897, oil on canvas, 53x67cm, held in the collection of the Museo Thyssen, Madrid.
17.4.10
Manifold
Here is a little painting, one of a number I will be showing in my forthcoming show titled Bihotz at Rubicon Gallery, Dublin.
Manifold, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 35x25cm
16.4.10
8.4.10
Spider's touch
The spiders touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.
Alexander Pope from the Essay on Man.
7.4.10
Petals on the ground...
Shadows and white petals on the ground which I observed while out for a walk the other day.
The application of paint: to define this a little...it is not expressionistic or the exaltation of gesture, it is not the drama of action painting either. The way one paints or makes something can so often seem like a parody of itself. So, perhaps for me, it could simply be a placement of material, of paint...colour. Making marks. Depositing and positioning something on a surface. Most importantly, it is touch. Through the hand and movement of the arm and body in time, the eyes touch the surface with the brush or implement. Accumulations. Leaving evidence of my time on the surface which becomes a painting. The images form organically like the growth of a tree. Tributes to themselves and the knowledge that the looking is never really done. And then the contradiction: trying to fix and hold still the fleeting moment and that which is always in flow. Leaves fall to the ground along with white petals and the shadows of branches slowly come and go...
6.4.10
3.4.10
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La Folie du Jour
Can I describe my trials? I was not able to walk, or breathe, or eat. My breath was made of stone, my body of water, and yet I was dying of thirst. One day they thrust me into the ground; the doctors covered me with mud. What work went on at the bottom of that earth! Who says it's cold? It's a bed of fire, it's a bramble bush. When I got up I could feel nothing. My sense of touch was floating six feet away from me; if anyone entered the room, I would cry out, but the knife was serenely cutting me up. Yes, I became a skeleton. At night my thinness would rise up before me to terrify me. As it came and went it insulted me, it tired me out; oh, I was certainly very tired.
From The Madness Of The Day by Maurice Blanchot 1973, translated by Lydia Davies: Station Hill Press.
From The Madness Of The Day by Maurice Blanchot 1973, translated by Lydia Davies: Station Hill Press.
22.3.10
Crisscrossed
But shadow enlivened by atoms of sunlight
Constantly crisscrossed by sleepless flies.
Francis Ponge from Mute Objects of Expression
Constantly crisscrossed by sleepless flies.
Francis Ponge from Mute Objects of Expression
21.3.10
Hoy en el estudio...
Two paintings practically finished. In fact, the darker of the two (shown at an earlier stage on the blog) really is finished. Both are oil, spray paint and collage on linen:
9.3.10
Two Fold Frame
... A twofold frame of body and mind./
The state to which I now allude was one/
In which the eye was master of the heart,/
When that which is in every single stage of life/
The most despotic of our senses gained/
Such strength in me as often held my mind/
In absolute dominion.
William Wordsworth, The Prelude
The state to which I now allude was one/
In which the eye was master of the heart,/
When that which is in every single stage of life/
The most despotic of our senses gained/
Such strength in me as often held my mind/
In absolute dominion.
William Wordsworth, The Prelude
3.3.10
Klezmer Tango
What I like about Tango is the way it threads different elements together: something highly refined, something very raw, different traditions, Spanish, Italian, French, Jewish....Jazz, the classical tradition....and a lot more. Here is an example of Klezmer Tango:
Daniel Melingo
I discovered the music of Daniel Melingo about a year ago. Wonderful stuff...the world of Tango...
25.2.10
20.2.10
15.2.10
10.2.10
Risk
"Risk is a quest, from occurence to occurence, in the infinity of possibilities"
George Bataille from Sur Nietzsche.
8.2.10
6.2.10
26.1.10
14.1.10
Three drawings
Photography usually only operates on one level. It is purely visual. The camera - an extension of the eye that is almost the passive receptor of the endless flow of ever accumulating images. A drawing or painting of a certain kind can be something really very different. It can integrate the eye with all our senses. One's body, through its movement is an interface with a manifold sensorial reality. Our hands see. Our eyes touch in a particular way the surface of paper. Something is brought into being...it is not just an image or representation (that would be too virtual). It is a kind of realm where one responds to the world in a special way. Through time the drawing unfolds, texture, the span of the hand (an intuitive measuring), the tensing of mortal muscle and bone. Flow and friction of the drawing implement on surface. Our mind should not be plagued by concepts here. Instead, through the making (and the viewing) of such works and processes it should learn how to attune these experiences of the here and now, collect them and learn how to see and feel them in a more intense way.
November - Bernhard, 2009, coloured pencil and holes on paper, 32.5x25cm
Shadows - Tree, 2009, coloured pencil and hole on paper, 32.5x25cm
Time Tree, 2009, coloured pencil and holes on paper, 32.5x25cm
November - Bernhard, 2009, coloured pencil and holes on paper, 32.5x25cm
Shadows - Tree, 2009, coloured pencil and hole on paper, 32.5x25cm
Time Tree, 2009, coloured pencil and holes on paper, 32.5x25cm
10.1.10
29.12.09
Things seen - Helmut Federle
Japanische See im Mondlicht (Japanese Sea in Moonlight), 2009
acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
There is currently an exhibition of five small paintings by Helmut Federle at Peter Blum Gallery in New York. Sadly I won´t be able to see them in the flesh. There is a very good interview with him in the Brooklyn Rail by John Yau and the painter Chris Martin.
20.12.09
Málaga
A few days in Malaga. From the window of the plane mountains (and valleys) covered in snow. While most of Spain suffers freezing temperatures Málaga is surprisingly mild, though it is raining on and off. At the Museo Picasso, Sophie Taeuber-Arp: wonderful, really wonderful. The refinement of patterns and structures which nearly always contain “dissident” elements within compositions. Then Picasso. I rarely think about Picasso. When I do see his paintings and drawings, I am naturally, always astonished. There are some great things here, among them: two small pencil drawings. Almost nothing. Female nudes. Reclining. In each a spontaneous flower like scrawl over the stomach area. Strange things. And, something else to think about, not just Picasso´s colour, but the material too. The materiality of the paintings. The Cathedral has a small museum, in reality just two dimly lit rooms…but at the end of the first room is a Ribera: Saint Peter the hermit: a lovely work, his long flowing beard the light etc. And speaking of the Cathedral, how I would love to see it without any of the paraphernalia: clear it all out, relics, confessionals, paintings, statues and all. I would keep the monumental organ…the only thing worthy of being there. Yesterday, I walked to the Centro de Arte Contempóraneo Málaga where I saw Wilhelm Sasnal again (I saw his exhibition recently in Dusseldorf). This is a completely different show with different works. Mixed feelings, but the odd good painting. Other than that, plenty of wandering the streets, sitting in cafes and restaurants etc (The waiters here are slow and indifferent even when you lose your temper with them – “somos humanos, que espera usted?”). Abundant local Christmas Kitsch everywhere, impossible to escape from it. Crowds that slowly move along the streets oblivious to the rain, spilling out of bars or gathering in clusters to watch street performers. Overkill with Christmas lights in the streets. Smoke everywhere from the roast chestnut stands on every street corner. A shop window display: full of textiles draped to create folds. The whole scene framed by the window creating a "painting", an extraordinary painting. I am reading Eyes Of The Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa, one of those books that expresses so well what one has already thought and experienced in one´s own work – the eyes touch, all our senses, our whole body must be engaged in making or contemplating a painting. I am also reading Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Thomas Bernhard. I admire Thomas Bernhard greatly – his style, his ferocious humour, his constant rant about Austria etc. I hope I can sleep tonight, in this vast hotel. Too much coffee today and too many petty thoughts in my head. Today has been uneventful. Another long lunch. A long siesta followed by a long walk. Tomorrow my journey home.
Snow covered mountains from the plane window.
Portrait of Thomas Bernhard by Joseph Gallus Rittenberg.
Folds in window display 1
Folds in window display 2.
Folds in window display 3.
View of a square in Málaga...the rain, the Christmas lights.
A market stall showing Christmas kitsch.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Cowboys 2 (2004), oil on canvas, 40x40cm.
A painting by Sophie Taeuber-Arp at the Museo Picasso.
Detail of "Saint Peter the hermit" by José de Ribera.
9.12.09
Rumination
Can we learn something from form in painting and its processes, from how it inter-relates, transforms, disintergrates, re-forms ,opens up or closes up, its presentation etc?
Things read - Blaise Pascal
Changing the figure, because of our weakness.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées: S484/L582
Blaise Pascal, Pensées: S484/L582
Things read - Michael Haneke
“If you build an idea into an absolute, it becomes an ideology. And it helps those who have absolutely no possibility of defending themselves to follow this ideology in order to escape their misery. And that’s not a question of the fascism of the right.
It also counts for left-wing fascism and for religious fascism. You could make the same film (The White Ribbon) – in a completely different form of course – about the Islamists of today. There is always someone in a wretched situation who seizes the opportunity, through ideology, to avenge himself, to emerge from his misery and to rectify his life. In the name of a beautiful idea you can become a murderer”
Michael Haneke, the Austrian Film Director, as quoted by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, 5 October 2009
It also counts for left-wing fascism and for religious fascism. You could make the same film (The White Ribbon) – in a completely different form of course – about the Islamists of today. There is always someone in a wretched situation who seizes the opportunity, through ideology, to avenge himself, to emerge from his misery and to rectify his life. In the name of a beautiful idea you can become a murderer”
Michael Haneke, the Austrian Film Director, as quoted by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, 5 October 2009
25.11.09
Things seen - Fergus Feehily
Here are two works by Fergus Feehily shown recently at Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin:
The Hide
2009
Found frame, found
illustration, watercolour on
paper, wood, cloth and
screws
28.5 x 20 x 1.5cm
Courtesy the artist and
Green On Red Gallery,
Dublin
De Liefde
2009
Oil and acrylic on MDF
and wood, screws
21 x 16.2 x 1.5cm
Courtesy the artist and
Green On Red Gallery,
Dublin
The Hide
2009
Found frame, found
illustration, watercolour on
paper, wood, cloth and
screws
28.5 x 20 x 1.5cm
Courtesy the artist and
Green On Red Gallery,
Dublin
De Liefde
2009
Oil and acrylic on MDF
and wood, screws
21 x 16.2 x 1.5cm
Courtesy the artist and
Green On Red Gallery,
Dublin
23.11.09
Two new paintings...
After You, 2009, oil on linen, 160x115cm
Ordunte, 2009, oil and lacquer on wood panel, 142x110cm
17.11.09
Painting...
Antón Hurtado paid me a visit yesterday. He liked this painting: Passing, 2009, oil & lacquer on wood, 142x110cm, and wanted me to put an image of it on my blog. It has appeared in an earlier state and has undergone a few changes. It has been a very slow piece in the making...
6.11.09
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