As I look back an reflect upon this week it seems brimming with experiences, both artful and otherwise. I almost want to spit it out in the ranting dialect of David Wojnarowicz, specifically in "Self-Portrait in Twenty-Three Rounds' from Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration. I think this is an appropriate read for where I am right now, what I'm doing, and where I've been. Cal lent me her edition which I will power my way through whilst here in New York. If it reads anything like this first chapter, it will be a speedy endeavour. Much like how this week flew by full of inspiring and connective experiences with my mentor, and myself.
Beginning with Dumpster diving into Lane's work in situ on her property the plan is to open up the already ornate, almost picket fence like pattern she has carved away from the object. I believe the spiked tips of the fence pickets give it this connotation, but it really seems to be more of a cast iron fencing which rides like a soft roller coaster undulating between dips and peaks surrounding the rectangular composition of the dumpster. It begs you to walk around it through the flow excentuated by its repetition and immensely reductive sculptural process. The work no longer demands the space it inhabits, it is as though it now tries to fit in with the space it has become a part of by the ability to peer through it into the natural environs of the landscape it inhabits currently. The plan is to further open it up, and it looks something like this.
More on this project as it unfolds over the next few weeks.
Next up, I got into some of my own work this past week. I tried to keep it simple, working from some drawings inspired by my trip to the Rubin Museum, I replicated a neon sign located at the gallery's entrance. Drawn in expressive mark making line work produced by a fat marker a graffiti artist uses to 'tag' their pseudo name, I reproduced this double dragon image on an oil drum left over from Lane's 'Sweet Crude' works. Not quite to its final synthesis this project is developing like this:
I'm letting this project incubate over the weekend, this was all plasma cut by hand, as in Lane's process and in her materials. I also got into the oxygen-acetylene torch and again working on the same substrate as Lane, punched out this pseudo name based work in I-Beam:
I feel like this is the time, and place for a name change and evolution. I never related to name base works which predominated the graffiti scene as I entered into it in my mid-teens. I wasn't marginalized, being pushed out of my community in the name of the gentrification in the early eighties, as was the case in New York. It was fitting in this scenario, the 'I am Somebody', 'We Are Here' rationalities to this pseudo name writing on the walls and subway trains literally everywhere. As graffiti progressed with innovation to style and technique the rationality, which no longer fit, as it was being absorbed by mass culture and done by just about all walks of life from not so desperate economic backgrounds; it became an incestuous ego-centric art form. My current life path is all about dissolving the ego, to access what is beyond this. My past life was all about myself caught in the cycle of an addict.
Something interesting is that I only use my pseudo name in the studio and thereafter in the gallery. A space which I don't need to claim. Or do I? Some analysis and further research of this is in order.
My name is Kidbertski, Bert because whenever people pronounce my last name incorrectly they say: "Faux-Bert", not as it is in French, "Faux-bear". Kid for my stifled maturation, apparently when you are stuck in your addiction you no longer mature as an individual, I am 28 years behind my current age of 39 in maturity. Sometimes this fits. My partner calls me Bear. She no longer knows who Bryan is, I believe he was left behind on my studio floor during my last relapse four and a half years ago. And 'ski' belongs to the family of suffixes added to ones name in graffiti writing, such as: em, er, one, rock, or ski. This gives short names length for diversifying one's tagged pseudo name and gives the artist more to work with in terms of aesthetics and flow. So here, in the birth place of Graffiti writing, while working with colleague Cal Lane, whom was always supportive of my amalgamation of graffiti/street art into the studio and thereafter the gallery during our art school endeavours at NSCAD, I will become just 'Be'. I high polished the 'b' and 'e' portions of this cut out which fade, as in the traditional aerosol technique, into rust. This piece is the earmark of an artistic exploration of self evolution.
As for the rest of this wonderful work week (this section will rant on as in Wojnarowicz's 'Self-Portrait In 23-Rounds' style) Cal and I continued her pursuit of the doily dumbbell and bench fabrication, we cooked and ate together (Cal, Tim(Cal's husband), and I) a wondrous vegan culinary concoction of homemade tofu-spiced and fried with a ginger orange glaze, asparagus and nutritional yeast risotto, and smoked portobello mushrooms, a top down race car run to the Metal Market Tool Supply, we filled our faces at George's Place and partook in some philosophical talk of art practice and processes-I subway buroughed into Brooklyn's Bushwick district to check out graffiti and street art installations, finished at the Brooklyn Museum, and currently as I write this blog am braising away a South American delicacy I found at my local Bodega of cinnamon and all-spice rubbed and seared Guinea Pig stuffed with apple, garlic, ginger, tri-coloured carrots and spanish onion which is braising away and I will later convert into goat-cheese gourmet taco's, with tomatillo cucumber and lime cilantro salsa verde. Here's a MaSh-UP to exemplify my weeks experience. Be well all.
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