The longer I spend as an art nerd obsessing, the more I am becoming aware of this sort of feeling halfway between déjà vu and jamais vu–seeing something that is at once something you swear you’ve seen before while at the same time feeling certain that what you are looking at is entirely unfamiliar.
It’s the feeling I had upon seeing this–though the name Isamu Noguchi meant nothing to me. Turns out he was a sculptor and designer. He designed the Red Cube sculpture across from Zuccotti Park and produced the sets for several Martha Graham’s productions. (As a side note: I think one thing that is sorely overlooked in modern education with regards to creative practice is the value of relationships. Even in the times before the advent of the internet, email and social media, the artists that we are still enamored with today almost all maintained expansive written correspondence with a cohort of folks with similar interests, sensitivities and aesthetic preoccupations. I am at a point in my own creative development where I’m realizing that this is something my practice is sorely lacking.)
But–the reason I had that feeling of both the foreign and familiar with this drawing has to do with the thing that Noguchi is arguably most well known for: designing furniture.
He worked with Charles Eames and several other prominent designers to create items for Herman Miller. The so-called Noguchi table came out of this collaboration and remains one of the most popular pieces of furniture ever manufactured.
Even though I didn’t realize they were called Noguchi table’s, my nesting instinct–which I struggle to never indulge–has had a jonesing for such a table for years now. (Further now that I’ve realized the connection, it’s fun to see the heavier lines in the drawing above as echoing the wooden supports for the table.
The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
I can’t say I’m all that into Anja Gea Sladič‘s work but this is a magnificent photograph.
This is ostensibly a photo of someone with a penis masturbating. However–and I am not sure if it’s by design or because my brain is a little bit funky, but it exists as sort of a pareidolia for me; I don’t first see it as someone masturbating or even as a flower (which is actually what I thought it was at second glance), I see it–at least at first–as like one of those scenes from a Terrence Malick project where the characters are passionately and newly in love and they sensually embrace each other in the cream white light transmitted through windows in archetypal middle American single family homes.
The masculine presenting protagonist stands behind the feminine presenting love interest and they kiss and caress and at some point, hands touch her neck and circle under her chin as she’s plied slightly backwards and positioned at the best possible angle for a languid and longing kiss given the angle of the light, etc.
This clearly isn’t a chin–it’s genitalia… but for some reason I have to think of it in terms of a sensual embrace (which isn’t wrong) and as something flower-like before I can see what it is.
It’s maybe not always the best strategy to present the viewer with something it takes them a minute to parse–after all: getting someone to linger over work, to engage and think about what they are seeing is one of the prerequisites of art. This is an instance where I feel the multiplicity of interpretations actually contribute substantively to what is so effective about this piece.
Coming up on four years ago now, I reached out to Chill to see if he’d be willing for me to interview him about his work. He graciously agreed–and the resulting interview remains one of the most popular posts I’ve ever made.
He’s continued to make exceptional work in the interim. I’ve especially liked his divergences into B&W. As someone whose work hinges so much on color–his eye is well-suited to a monochrome palette.
What’s interesting is that where I feel like his early work uses a dominant color to create a particular cast for each image–as I recall I observed that he uses color the same way amber traps insects.
This accomplishes something rather intriguing in its departure from that motif. It feels like his forays into B&W have emphasized a new awareness for texture. For example: this frame has six different textures all superbly rendered–ferns (which I suppose are technically two textures as the anterior and posterior surfaces are very different), the sweater, the lace body suit, skin, socks and there’s even a sense of the solidity of the trees in the distance.
The image clearly wouldn’t be as striking in monochrome–but the color is simultaneously key to what makes it interesting while it also balances hyper stylized color against texture, which manages to render the scene more convincingly naturalistic.
Lastly, I am actually grateful to Chill for his continued patronage of Acetylene Eyes. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that probably 2/3 of the people who find my blog these days get her via his side blog @veryspecialporn.
Initially, the plan was to use this post to heap praise upon Allen’s thoroughly distinct and downright exceptional analog photography.
Then I read her artist statement/bio… new plan: let’s talk about how artists speak about their work.
There’s this notion–as far as I know originating with Renoir–that art ceases to be art as soon as it begins to require explanation.
Practically speaking Balthus’ 1968 retrospective at the Tate was probably the last time anyone has gotten away with the let the work speak for itself tact. Curators, gallerists and the gatekeepers of high culture all demand artist statement tributes and offerings of a modicum of veiled explanation. (I am not suggesting that instinct is entirely pointless… just that it almost always undercuts the mystery and nobility of the work. (Not to mention situates the audience in a position not only of passive acceptance but inferior receptivity where one must be educated regarding the merit of what one is has or is about to experience.)
It is very rare that an artist’s statement not only clarifies but also illuminates. Allen’s is an example.
…Sometimes
I just want to photograph things, see the pictures and burn the
negatives. It’s overwhelming at times, all these memories trapped in
36x24mm acetate frames.
..I’m
not doing this for myself, I don’t have much say in what’s going on.
When I look back at what’s come through and what’s been made, I don’t
know how I did most of it. It was another person than I am now. And
now I’m making things that one day I’ll look back on and say, I’m
another person now, once again.
…Everyone’s
a photographer. It’s not so precious anymore. The “print” is lost… on
a search to find it. Old cardboard with moisture stains and a
distressed image with a small frame around it, nothing fancy, something
cherished. I’ve got ideas, about to act on them.
…Fever. Avoiding suicide.
…There’s
actually a group of aliens making my work, I have no idea how it’s
done, they just give it to me and I present it, that’s what you see
here.
…I’m
waking up with the sun everyday, I can feel it peering over the horizon
like a cat meowing to be fed. Laying in bed, thinking about who is the
real Banksy, some article online got my brain spinning too early,
again. I have a ton of friends who are all half my age, I know there’s
something to analyze there. Watching people my age turn into their
parents, they said that would happen. I feel no sense of beginning,
middle and end, I’m living in a timeless existence where one day I will
cease to exist, taking that last breath and never saying anything more
into this world. I’m lost there, in that last breath, extending it for
as long as I can.
…Someone asked me this week what are my photos about? Okay, no one asked me, I was asking myself. And I stood there, silent.
….These
last couple series I’ve been working on, Gestures, Sunken Dream and
Earth Water are shot with 35mm film using multiple exposure techniques.
I shot fireworks, underwater sea life at the aquarium, plants and the
sea and then reshot the same rolls with a figure posing in my studio.
There’s never any digital modification on my photos. I could probably
create something similar with less orchestration involved but It’s just
too easy to use photoshop, I need to be challenged. I don’t like taking
the easy way out, I’ll get burned if necessary. I like process. I
like figuring it out. I like going to the museum and looking up real
close to the canvas and figuring out how the artist made something, and
then I want to know if they were feeling what this piece makes me feel.
I start to wonder about strangers…
… The three stages of Emotional Exile: Shock, Surrender, Catharsis.
… I’m not a fan, I’m an admirer.
… 4:20
….I used to hate photographs where the feet or hands were cut off, but now it doesn’t bother me.
…I
trust myself more than anyone else, especially when it comes to
developing my own film. My kitchen and dining area are my lab. I
photograph my friends, or will pose myself. Some of my friends are
people I’m really close to, some are people I’m not as close to but I
feel a strong connection with. All these people who are at different
places in their lives, figuring it all out.
…There’s a sense of surrender, but not in a losing sense, one who surrenders to themselves and gives up on apologies.
….When
nothing seems like everything and everything seems like nothing.
no-mans-land feels like an invisible trap door. No one, not a one. In
the ear of the great sea, I call it closer. Hear the blahs slipping
into aahs. Timing is a mother fucker.
….I’m
just really into passion fruit. I love the contradicting taste, the
sweet and the sour, the fact that it’s not easy to eat, that I have to
shove my face inside it to lick out all the seeds.
….That
moment when I go out on the road with just me, my cameras and a bag of
various clothing pieces. Into the wild, following the weather until it
brings me somewhere and then I set up the tripod, figure out what to
wear, if anything, and prepare the camera for a shot. Meter the light,
focus, filter. I have 10 seconds to run into place and then place
myself there as if I belonged. On to the next. I promise myself that
every moment I even think about photographing, I have to stop and
capture it. I’m not taking anything for granted.
….There
are a million ways I could describe myself and today I’m going to put
it like this… I’m a contradiction but I mean everything I say. The
noise of the city gets to me and I’m counting the days until I get to
where sweaters. I’m dreaming of traveling to far off places with just
me, my camera and a sense of adventure, meeting random amazing souls
along the way.
I won’t be able to enumerate all the ways this statement compliments her work. However, there is a central theme: fragmentation.
She speaks of her work as if aliens possessed her and while in control her body made the work. She also uses multiple exposures. There’s mention of how the past is discontinuous with the present, etc.
The form of the statement replicates this approach–the disjointed thought fragments in the writing mirror the visual form of her work.
David Bowie famously practiced decoupage–he’d tear up his lyrics and then re-order them looking for new patterns to emerge. Allen is doing something very similar with both her photography and her statement. In effect: making sense of her statement doesn’t so much explain the work as it offers a map of how to approach the work–that is: getting a sense of the words on the page is a process that is more or less interchangeable when applied to the work.
It all reminds me of a conversation I had while back with a friend who was telling me about a course she took where a writing professor taught a course on literary form but in a way which reduced form to graphical representation.
It strikes me that Allen’s work is very much about illustrating how to use photography to read between the lines. (And with the notion of reading between the lines there’s traces of Renoir’s notion of art being opposed to explanation–i.e. telling someone to read between the lines means that you either won’t do it for them or that you can’t because it’s so obvious that if they can’t see it, then the explanation won’t help them.)
Between the lines is actually an idea which can be graphically illustrated, actually:
Yet, it is possible to deploy the same elements of the above graphical representation in a host of manner which preserve the conceptual integrity of the original while providing more open ended interpretations:
Or:
The ratio of shadow to highlight are the same in all three examples, yet they each have a different psycho-aesthetic effect.
It’s a huge leap to realize that photography is hard wired with the ability to illustrate what is between the lines. But that fact that Allen not only realizes it but is exploring the possibilities so assiduously is goddamn breathtaking.
Whatever Eberhard lacks in polish, she more than makes up for with her audacity.
Apologies if this is a repetition of a previous persnickety and pedantically harped upon point–however, I am presently too inebriated to be able to figure out how to navigate out of this post and onto my blog to check whether I’m remember on of innumerable discarded drafts (there have been a lot more of those than usual lately, alas) or if it’s just something I thought about addressing and then just couldn’t figure out how to fit it all to words…
Anyway, during the nightmare hellscape that were MFA applications, I thought a lot about why I am drawn to the implications of narrativity much as the magnetized tip of the steel needle finds north on the face of a compass.
On the surface, I am intrigued by the power of stories. People can love you because of and through a well-told tale. Stories can connect people. Yet, the can also be used as Trojan Horses secreting ideological payloads.
My time as a film making student taught me that I might not be as great at judging the merit or lack thereof as far as those sorts of payloads.
I asked myself what would be involved in implying the entirety of a story with a single, static frame?
There are really two reliable ways to do this:
Illustrate a story that is uber familiar to your audience
Or, stage a tableau that allows for a familiar dramatic scenario (Pathos).
Both require being relate-able–a less direct way of saying looking to what has come before. This leads to the sort of work where being lesbian or trans is just another character trait… like born in Louisville, KY, Gay, really likes kabob, etc. as opposed to a wholistic aspect of and projection from the character’s self.
And what we’re finding out is that it’s a lie that our love is only recognizable in the way it mirrors straight love. But we have our own language, or own deeply incised pathos and when you see them you–if you are capable of love–see them too and they mean the same to you.
Eberhard was really far ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. She’s challenging the limits of what pathos allows for in the most fantastic ways.
I haven’t seen any new work of hers in almost half-a-decade. She has an instagram–but it’s private. I would do just about anything to know what she’s up to these days. (She is in the top three on my lists of artists I would do just about anything to facilitate.)
If anyone reading this maybe knows her and could help a super fangirl out it would be supes appreciated.
K Thnx Bye.
Source unknown – Title unknown (192X)
I am posting this because I love the way the two bodies relate to one another against the black negative space. (Keeping with the theme of twos–you can see both subjects hands.)
One figure is curled, the other open… seemingly presented like either a cherub or some sort of water nymph. (Note: how the positions of all four hands work together similar to the two bodies against the black negative space. The cherubic nymph hands imply a triangle with any one of the other hands–but more so with what the other hands frame.)
If you glance at the notes for this you’ll note two things: that it was probably made by Jacques Biederer–a Czech photographer who moved to Paris and became increasingly interested in nudes, erotica and hardcore BDSM/fetish pornography. During Germany’s occupation of France, he was sent to Auschwitz where he died.
Interestingly, the notes also suggest that the curled figure is a man. And while my familiarity with Biederer is admittedly limited. I seem to recall that he had a thing for portraying women as dominant–that could suggest that the commenters are correct that the curled figure is male. However, didn’t Biederer also have a thing for depictions of sapphic desire? Perhaps the undergarments are masculine in cut or design but I’m not an expert on French fashion from the 1920s and to my reading the gender of the curled figure isn’t something that can be determined with any sort of definitive value given only this image–and that’s something that is intriguing to me.
There’s something disorienting about the way this image fits together.
At the outset, there is a focus on the subject. The skin tone is stylized–it skews a bit too red in the shadows, decidedly too yellow in the highlight; however, the overall effect contributes a sense of mid-to-late spring/early summer.
I am reasonably confident that this was made by propping a smart phone against a shampoo bottle on top of a closed toilet let. Twarowski is sitting with her back more or less against the tub. (Also, there’s likely been some in phone editing of the image–I’d guess that the divergence in skin tone was likely in service of creating a sense of depth and separation between her face/shoulders and the shower curtain behind her.)
I am curious about the 22 and presumable 23 tattoos on her outer biceps. But more than that I find myself entirely wrong footed by her website and the way it preserves a notion of personal vs. professional work–in this case the distinction is between ‘diary’ and ‘work’.
The ‘work’ section is… well, it looks like someone who is trying to make their approach to image making appear commercially viable. (As I’ve mentioned recently: I’m not convinced this is ever a productive approach.)
Now, hope over to the ‘diary’ section; see the difference–there’s a shimmering and vital intensity to the more personal work that is utterly lacking in the professional reckoning.
Is this something emerging from training or is it fallout from the belief that something is productive only insofar as it is saleable?
Also, I’m dubious about this notion that photography/image making works best with this sort of additive approach. Where an artist sets out to make work which fits within a specific conceptual niche–essentially building a body of work to fit a prerequisite schema. I personally think it’s better to put in the time making the work that interests you and then approach it in more of a subtractive, freeing the form trapped within the mass of work.
Acetylene Eyes 