Blog - Page 94 of 145

The Opposite of Narrow

Space in the body of a breath.

With every idea limited, cut to our own measure, we are always at a loss. Still, you work with what you have. Waking, there’s a hand at the lamp, a sigh, and the sense of some waiting presence. Who is here?

I knew a poet who loved the word vast because it rhymes with a whisper, breathing space wherever others are gathered. There are some sounds that can only move as soft substance, inviting an infinity into the lungs.

Upon exhalation, we are far from ourselves. It seems to happen only for a moment, but we never knew time.

From Fire

Trying, and trying again.

Some say that it is possible to dry a spirit from the cold damp if you bring it by the flame, urging here. Take hold. Offer a warm mug, an invitation to sit awhile.

When it comes to what it is really like, we are left with feeble words, and there are limits to what these may hold, even if you mean to build a cathedral.

Often it is no muse but frustration that spurs a body forward––trying once more, and again––to get warm.

Dreaming a Discovery

Fresh eyes for old forms.

It began with an idea. Considering certain fundamental principles––of geometry, for example––what if we replaced points, lines, and planes with words, sentences, and paragraphs? If truths lend themselves well to interpretation where correct structures are used, why not apply some rules to the invention of new forms?

No one needed to make anything up, only to let the new rules serve as lenses trained on what already is. It was settled, then: a movement began. To join, one only needed to commit to certain practices. Once elected, no one could quit. No one wanted to; there was freedom in constraints, and practitioners learned that they might move easily between Hegel and comic strips, philosophies of mathematics and conversations overheard at flea market stands.

One of the leaders can be found among these every day, scouring the aisles and the remainder bins, the trash piles, and the antique shops with the same reverence he wears in the great libraries of the world. You will hear him muttering to himself as he picks up one after another item to add to his collection. “Hmmph,” he will say, “this might be useful.”

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Inspired by the work of Raymond Queneau and the Oulipo movement, while consulting Warren Motte’s article “Raymond Queneau and the Early Oulipo” (French Forum, Winter 2006).

Disappearing Acts

Shifts in attention.

She knew something shifted when the plot no longer held her interest. Its pretense of coherent motivation rang false. She shifted her attentions then, to the way the nameless organisms within us would respond to the movements of forces outside, including other nameless organisms. Sometimes they were more vegetable than people, more tree than people, more bird. The stimulus mattered so much less than the effect. Yes, she would think, as she watched them. I know this lonely crowd. Then she knit herself a yarn cocoon. The yarn was the same color as her background. When her work was done, she disappeared. What is memory? Only forgetting, like a poem made by the act of erasure.

***

Inspired by the writing of Nathalie Saurrate and the art of Bea Camacho.

Catalyst

A body in motion.

There is a large megaphone. The artist has a question. Is it possible to turn every cell in a chosen direction and if so, what if? What if we all––did?

If the forest is an archive of breath, who keeps things in order? The trees are silent, but not the wind and not what flies and calls between the limbs.

Here is a study in the movement of these bodies answering a call. What does it mean to be here now, together? Meanwhile, trees listen.

***

Inspired by Sioban Burke’s article in the arts section of yesterday’s New York Times (“A Choreographer Who Merges Art, Activism, and the Natural World”) on the work of Emily Johnson. Italicized phrase appears in a recent performance.

Material Concerns

In the garden of mirrored monsters.

In the end, it was the materials that killed her. But isn’t this always the case, these days? she might have said, taking aim at another plaster sculpture. In the beginning, her thing was to hide bags of paint inside, to bleed an aftermath.

When she was done with shooting, she became mother to the monsters. It was a dream vision. Why? someone asked. They locked her up. In lieu of an answer, she returned to her creatures.

See the sphinx, a flower blooming from one breast, her insides shards of mirror. But why? Inquiries persisted. The monsters grew. To heal, she said. A joyland, she named it, locus for a new kind of life.

What kind? someone wondered.

One where when your face breaks, it bursts into a tree.

Someone called it an apocalypse in paradise. She did not object.

***

Inspired by the work of Niki de Saint Phalle.

Legacy

With Salarrué.

Like a Polaroid shaken in the light, details of the once-beloved artist emerge. This happens just before the record of his life is erased by time and war. His students remember.

He was called unclassifiable, a sphinx without a riddle, a gentle man uninterested in greatness. He loved invented worlds and claimed Atlantis as his home country.

He loved the people of the land and not its titles. And they knew it.

***

In honor of the birthday of the celebrated Salvadoran painter, writer, and philosopher Salvador Salazar Arrué, better known as Salarrué (1899-1975). Reed Johnson’s 2005 article in the LA Times discusses a recent resurgence of interest in the artist’s life and work.

Unfinished Business

Matters of making sense.

There is a sculpture in the center of our circle. We look, and when the speaking begins, it becomes clear that while we have been looking toward the same object in space, we have not seen the same sculpture.

It has often been assumed that when the eye sees, the spirit will know, but knowing is a palette, not a product.

One of us had a question. When working, how much of a given environment do you censor to meet what demands? He saw no difference between painting and sculpture, the idea being that any picture is a living thing, sculpted by changes imposed from outside, and never done.

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Inspired by American sculptor David Smith. The italicized question above is his.

Casting the Reach

Bodies in moving clay.

When the artist tunnels naked through clay, one result is this: an elemental frame of bone-white force, stilled in the moment of its most violent eruption. She’s never sure what she’s made.

Not until I remove it from its casing, she says. Here, for example, are some heads. They are made of the impressions of hands. From these, a sculptor thinks. Most of her bodies are headless.

Here is an arm. It points toward a dense nebula, adjusting as the planet beneath it spins, its constant movement borne of an intention to remain still.

***

This post is assembled from phrases and images found in this recent BOMB article by Brecht Wright Gander profiling Juliana Cerqueira Leite, whose DECAPITAR is on view at New York City’s PROXYCO until October 29.

Questions of Measurement

The reach of an image.

How do you find a painting?

There is a process. Look. Cut. Collect. Look. Repeat.

Does it always work?

Nothing does.

Whose dream is this world, and how did we get here?

How do you handle accumulation with care?

How does an image become a backbone,

and how much will it hold?

Consider some rites of passage.

What are the rites of the soul?

When the oracle shares a meal with the nurturer,

what do they discuss?

And who cleans after it’s done?

An architect and a protector meet at a well.

Who is the first to offer?

How do you paint with the materials of a given day?

If the soul is a translucent heart, beating, what is

the reach of its vessels?

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Inspired by the mixed media art of Amber Robles-Gordon