DIARY REPORT
(post-viewing free-writes)
(post-viewing free-writes)
KHALIL RABAH, 'I Want to Be With You' @ Brief Histories, 2024/11/15
Making my way through the entryway, the dampened reflection of polished steel reaching my eye. A wardrobe turns away from a floor-bound 2 inches high cylindrical metal dish. They both seem to kind of mock one another with their scale difference. The wardrobe begging for importance in its largeness, the dish begging for its importance through its delicateness, its near noticeability.
Making my way through the entryway, the dampened reflection of polished steel reaching my eye. A wardrobe turns away from a floor-bound 2 inches high cylindrical metal dish. They both seem to kind of mock one another with their scale difference. The wardrobe begging for importance in its largeness, the dish begging for its importance through its delicateness, its near noticeability.
The dish waits to be towered over whilst sending out it’s pheromone for potential suitors—the bright smell of grass that remains at the place of the nostrils with a buttery after-smell. Olive oil fills in what once was emptiness of the industrial vessel, forming a shallow pool—too shallow to peer yourself back to you, shallow enough to carry that same foggy glint that met me moments earlier. Patient in their waiting, spools of embroidery thread—variously colored, all jewel toned (or so it seemed as they are tinted through the olive oil’s cast)—soaking. The winded up lengths are arranged in a grid, challenging to the point of outright refusal of the basin’s continuous curvature. I saw the work twice, the second time a week or so later, dust had begun to cling itself to it’s mate of the oil’s surface, tension of the viscous liquid cradling these shed moments from me a week or so ago. In this pool, despite no reflection of Narcissian-fashion, I could fathom that with the dust, I still peered back upon myself.
MICHAEL IVESON, 'anon' @ foreign & domestic, 2024/11/08
Smaller than my stomach, a grid toothy. Pick something up and then put it down somewhere else. The only problem arising from your beauty is its register of sameness. Art, whether horrendous or hedonistic, royal or conspiratorial, carries the image which the artist agrees to endure for a longgggggg stretchhhhhhh offfffff timeeeeeee. Thus, whatever way it lands: the artist believes it to be the special one. What now when walking in this room everything could be rearranged on these walls and still look the same to a blind man? Beauty in one tone, a rhythm that reveals itself to be not, for deviation is imperative. Then again, yes, the place from which you picked up from is more or less the same. May I suggest picking up other things? Or, at least, having a more curious obsession.
Smaller than my stomach, a grid toothy. Pick something up and then put it down somewhere else. The only problem arising from your beauty is its register of sameness. Art, whether horrendous or hedonistic, royal or conspiratorial, carries the image which the artist agrees to endure for a longgggggg stretchhhhhhh offfffff timeeeeeee. Thus, whatever way it lands: the artist believes it to be the special one. What now when walking in this room everything could be rearranged on these walls and still look the same to a blind man? Beauty in one tone, a rhythm that reveals itself to be not, for deviation is imperative. Then again, yes, the place from which you picked up from is more or less the same. May I suggest picking up other things? Or, at least, having a more curious obsession.
CHARLES STEFFEN, '1995, A Lesson in Life Drawing' @ March, 2024/10/30
Recently I received an email from an artist. It contained a sentiment that stung: “we were close– or at least, as close as 2 people can be when both are desperately preoccupied with passion”. It made me think about the expiration date of my relationships. This question of “how close can we be?” haunts my every moment. I desire absolute intimacy. I want someone to tell me all the terrible things they’ve done, are afraid they’ll do, and would do with just a little bit of egging on. I’ll be there, doing my best to hide my ecstasy. Maybe that’s why I cry when I see someone else, Charles, so painfully splayed open and then realize that he is dead. Why must my companion be someone who I never met, who I will never meet?
Recently I received an email from an artist. It contained a sentiment that stung: “we were close– or at least, as close as 2 people can be when both are desperately preoccupied with passion”. It made me think about the expiration date of my relationships. This question of “how close can we be?” haunts my every moment. I desire absolute intimacy. I want someone to tell me all the terrible things they’ve done, are afraid they’ll do, and would do with just a little bit of egging on. I’ll be there, doing my best to hide my ecstasy. Maybe that’s why I cry when I see someone else, Charles, so painfully splayed open and then realize that he is dead. Why must my companion be someone who I never met, who I will never meet?
Looking at Steffen's drawings of Rebecca, I imagine him showing up to the plexi and sound portal separating him from his muse. Does he evade her glance, ashamed of his studies, or does he look ever more intently, sharpening the quickly-fading mental image to return to his paper with more material? Each drawing brings two things: the search for another surface and a sooner trip back to the bank. Cataloging the curves for his habitual transcription? In the possible ‘evaded-gaze’ case, each drawing refers back only to his last.
GRAVITY-LOVER, on BENJAMIN FREDRICKSON, 'Wedgies' w/ Baron Books, 2024/10/20
I fashion a ladder—a stack of crates, plywood, bags of concrete; all belonging to my studiomate. Up top, there, clung to the gas line like fringe from the nearly-collapsing ceiling is a bungee cord. I’m only 5’8 (the national average height for a man so stop calling me short), and can’t reach it without the help of the mound. After grabbing it, I let m- [...]
I fashion a ladder—a stack of crates, plywood, bags of concrete; all belonging to my studiomate. Up top, there, clung to the gas line like fringe from the nearly-collapsing ceiling is a bungee cord. I’m only 5’8 (the national average height for a man so stop calling me short), and can’t reach it without the help of the mound. After grabbing it, I let m- [...]