new sound installation...

i currently have a new sound installation up at art center's williamson gallery in pasadena. the show runs until january 15. the sound piece was created using recordings i received from JPL, and an old LP of recordings of the ionosphere via tape recorders circa 1955.

the exhibition was curated by stephen nowlin, and contains some wonderful work by semiconductor, michael c mcmillan, rebecca mendez, and others.

you can see images of some of the works in the exhibition, along with my sound on this youtube clip...

blinky on my mind...

during the last few weeks of blinky palermo's survey, i was invited by lacma to write a guest post on the show for their blog. i have loved palermo's work for a long while, but i had never really tried to write about it, particularly because it was always difficult to articulate my responses - always feeling that the work (especially the early pieces) approached an experience that felt stubbornly wordless. eventually, this inability to write with clarity about palermo's work suggested that i simply let the works speak for themselves, and so in a kind of ridiculous way, i ended up "documenting" a conversation between two works that were hung adjacent to each other: butterfly two and blue disc and staff (which you can read here).

as i exited the last gallery of lacma's palermo survey, i encountered a small vitrine featuring a 1969 edition that palermo did with gallerist rene block called "blaues dreieck" (blue triangle). the piece is deceptively simple: the box containing a stencil of a triangle shape, a blue tube of paint, a brush, and a print. more info on the print can be seen at greg.org (strangely posted on my birthday!), but the instructions in the box suggest one stencils a blue triangle above a door, and then "give away the original sheet"... suggesting the paper stencil can be used to place triangles over numerous doors and on numerous structures.

i was recently invited to participate in a group show at the sculpture center called "time again" curated by fionn meade. over our many conversations regarding the show and what i might include (we ended up with a new sound work for the courtyard, a painting, a recent film, and 16 drawings from a series of 50 that had never been shown). fionn had asked me if they could reprint my blinky text in the catalog, and i realized that more often than not, palermo's work has tended to make an appearance in most of our conversations... so it was no surprise that we were once again moving around with blinky as a kind of anchor point.

"time again" included a 1971 piece by palermo titled "projektion". the piece is basically a photographic document of a projection of a red and blue painting onto the front of what appears to be the facade of an apartment building. the final image (a still photograph) is quite uncanny, and like most of palermo's work as described above, the piece is rich in potential wanderings, yet unable to evoke within me anything that i could articulate in terms of how or why it managed to resonate so strongly. for the installation at the sculpture center, the palermo is hung on the right side of a T shaped wall and my painting hung on the left - with the "stem" wall separating them. basically, if you stood a foot or so from the bottom of the T's stem, you could see both works together, with the thin edge of the stem between them. thus, while a viewer could stand at a distance and see both together, the artworks themselves are always separated physically from each other.

obviously, i was ecstatic to be part of such a conversation (moving suddenly from an invented conversation between two of palermo's works, towards seeing a conversation occur in real time between a work of palermo's and my own.) on the surface, the painting is pretty close in scale, as well as even somewhat related in color, to palermo's photograph; but what is more interesting is their relationship to architecture and site.

palermo's "projektion" seems to shift certain conditions of an existing architecture through the addition of color and light, while my painting was the first that i have made that was directly influenced by the existing architectural conditions within which it was made (i.e. i could not have been made the painting anywhere else as its visual motif was built through my conversation with specific visual qualities of the space). in this way, palermo and i begin to talk about both painting and architecture in relation to ideas of site specificity, and in particular, i believe that as these works create a kind of conversational ouroboros around architecture and painting, where blinky imposes a painting upon an architecture, while in my own work an architecture is allowed to impose itself upon a painting.

as i started to think more and more about blinky's "projektion", i found myself coming back to "blue triangle" - and how both blue triangle and projektion change an architectural situation by adding color and skin. both are somewhat guerrilla actions - though not necessarily of desecration, but more a kind of "dress-up", with blue triangle becoming something of a fake moustache, and "projektion" a kind of evening gown.

while one can find many "folk" precedents for blue triangle - pennsylvania dutch hex symbols, hobo signs, etc.; "projektion" seems a precedent itself for the more public realm of recent projection, such as doug aitken's piece for moma, and the projections thrown onto the new museum which i could see from my hotel. the difference, of course, is that palermo's piece was static, and its "motion" could only occur through the user, through his or her movement around it (i.e. exploring the flat image as architecture, and proving once again that the term "interactive" does not always have to include various bells and whistles ).

in thinking about "projektion's" projection, i realize that blinky manages, once again, to approach a kind of intimacy through stillness and touch - as if the projected painting was gently laid over the facade like a blanket for a slightly cold night. it suggests that the work is not only about how the painting affects the building, but how the building affects the painting...

on the morning of my departure from ny, while walking to get some coffee, i passed a construction site contained by blue large painted walls with several small cut-out windows in the shape of triangles. of course, these openings felt like an inverted version of "blue triangle". as i looked through the openings towards the site (which felt like visiting a secret place), i felt as if i were holding palermo's stencil for blue triangle, and using his frame to see the world.

i then tried to stoop down as much as possible so as to look upwards and still be able to see through the triangle, hoping for a vantage point that would allow me to see the sky through a blue triangular frame - to potentially see blue within the blue, although knowing full well that these two blues would not blend into the full blown monochrome i was suddenly seeking...

perhaps in the end, it is this situation - where one finds a kind of inability to fit things together that gives palermo's work its richness... re-enforcing for me, that a condition of "resolve" or "stability" in an artwork is highly overrated.

last dance...

only a few more days to see my exhibition "stone's throw" at susanne vielmetter LA projects. this coming saturday, the 23rd, is the last day of the show.
gallery hours are 11-6.

images, location, etc. susanne vielmetter LA projects: click here
artforum.com pick: click here

when rainbows become bowrain...

my exhibition at pomona college, when words become forms, will close on december 19. because of the scale of bowrain - a large installation work, this might be your only chance to experience it for a long while... the sound, sculpture, and hand drawn films that make up the piece, were all birthed from a tiny notational sketch by buckminster fuller. fuller's drawing was used as a score towards most of the compositional decisions within the piece. all of the footage is in "real time", and the images of just the films are the actual projection footage...

for more info click here

for those of you who think an embedded video means i'm going to start performing with a laptop, never fear, it took me a number of frustrating hours to export the video without it looking like a broken old scoreboard... needless to say, videos will most likely NOT occur here on a regular basis.

nonetheless, i'm hoping the video will enable the far away folks to see/hear a bit of what i did on my summer "vacation", and for those of you who are local, perhaps it will inspire you to take the drive out to pomona... and if you do, don't miss the incredible bas jan ader show nearby.

when sounds become drawings...

50 sounds of the sea is the earliest work in my upcoming show. the piece consists 50 drawings in ink on index cards, housed in a hand made wooden box with a hand etched piece of tin on the lid. the drawings were made over the course of an hour on the evening of december 1st, 1990. my plan was to repeat the action every night for a year, but i ended up continuing it for only five consecutive evenings.

the drawings were made while standing on a ship at midnight looking at the sea in darkness as one day turned into the next. the piece was an early attempt to allow sound - in this case the ocean - to determine the movements of my hand. it is probably the earliest piece i made attempting to reconcile my interests in both sound and visual activities, as well as the beginning of an exploration of ideas related to recording and translation.

certainly i was thinking about the drum brush drawings of tom marioni, william anastasi's subway drawings, robert morris's blind drawings, and the work of terry fox - all of which i was just beginning to discover. in 1988 while still in grad school, i had been exploring conceptual strategies towards drawing and painting, but it was tentative, and mostly related to richard long and using walks to conceive of objects that would then be made in my studio.

at that time i was struggling with two things. one was to find a way to exploit process towards a different kind of making activity, and the other was to find a way to bring my interest in sound into my visual work - things i'm still exploring and still struggling with 20 years later. these drawings in a box were an important first step towards the exploration of both of these issues, as it suggested a path of making that involved a kind of performative limitation - drawing with my eyes "closed" - and they attempted to use sound to generate images.

also, at its most basic, 50 sounds of the sea was the first work that i made from a score:

"look at the sea in the dark, allow the sound to suggest drawing actions, and don't look at the paper."

i remember in undergraduate school, a life drawing teacher continually yelling "draw what you see, not what you know," and i think the idea of drawing outside at night was a way of messing with that idea, because i couldn't "see" anything but darkness.

certainly, the score for this work was simple, but i had never before attempted to impose a physical or conceptual limitation upon my natural tendency to draw in any way. the action shifted the focus from my eyes to my ears and hands, and it held the potential to generate something i might not expect to make. it also allowed the work to have some level of vulnerability, and accepted failure as a possible outcome (what if the drawings were absolutely uninteresting?). it approached the activity of drawing as an experimental activity, as opposed to a resolved activity.

one other thing that was so interesting is that i found myself incredibly focused on what i was listening to, and realized that one sense could fuel another - in this case sound and touch toward the creation of the visual without the use of sight. listening changed the way i made drawings.

eighteen years after making 50 sounds of the sea, i was working with allan kaprow's scores towards a performance of 18 happenings in 6 parts. while researching his work for a few months at the getty, i realized that the thing i responded to so deeply within his work was how his approach to conceptual process has always been human scaled (as opposed to academically scaled) and how it allows a great deal of room for the intuitive process. kaprow's work always seems to fall on the side of the conversation, rather than the resolved.

my own attempts towards expanding the ways i can mine a conceptual process towards generating intuitive moves, and somewhat traditional objects still feels like an experiment, and much of my work is still, on many levels, an artifact of a score and a performative process.

nothing but what is therein contained...

i spent this past week in philadelphia, to install several works in thomas u. walter's 1835 building for girard college. all of the works were installed on the top floor which has not been open to the public for 100 years. i've posted several times about this project which i've been working on for almost two years, so here some images of the first of three works which will be present in the space (the other two include a letterpress text work, and a sound, sculpture, and drawing installation).

this piece is titled "nothing but what is therein contained", which is a bit of text from stephen girard's will, in which he stipulated that the design of the building could only contain the things that he had specifically mentioned in his will... nothing extraneous would be allowed. the first design drawings that thomas walter made for this building were incredibly minimal and titled with this phrase.

for my own work, i took the phrase and translated it into numbers based on the alphabetical sequence of the letters, and then cut pieces of wood accordingly.

these pieces (running from a 1 foot length for an "a" to an 8 foot plus a 12 foot for a "t") were then painted in groups, a different color for each letter.

i then laid out all of the letters as a kind of stockpile, and then laid out the entire phrase.

i then began to build the structure, beginning with the first letter - "n" - and drilling and wiring the consecutive parts improvisationally, essentially using the letter sequence as a score towards determining what piece of wood would come next. it took two days to build, and it is roughly 16 feet tall. you can see the beautiful dome shaped skylights in some of the images, as well as the doorways from one space to the other. the last shot was taken looking down from one of the skylight windows.

some of the color patterns and painting was inspired by the sketchbook of amish deaf mute craftsman henry lapp, who lived outside of pennsylvania just around the time the building was finished, and the sound was composed using the sound of wine glasses being rubbed and struck with mallets in relation to benjamin franklin's glass armonica. the piece is essentially an architectural map or likeness of the text...

i will be out of town this coming week and airforms will most likely be silent for the next 7-10 days.

the exhibitionist on the road again...

today i go to las vegas for the opening of the exhibition LA NOW at the las vegas art museum. should be an interesting show curated by the la times critic david pagel, and featuring a gaggle of artists from los angeles. i will show 3 recent paintings, but unfortunately will leave the tuned wine glasses and glowing chimes at home... airforms will be back on monday.

the desert music...

well, i've never had a schedule like this, but once again i'm leaving town for a week and a half. this time the destination is the texas desert, in the form of marfa, home to donald judd's chinati foundation and the marfa ballroom for 'the marfa sessions', an exhibition performance event opening on sept. 27. i will be collaborating with stephen vitiello on an installation as well as a performance.

the installation will be based on field recordings we made in the desert a year ago, and will include a cabin size structure built in the landscape with the help of liz chaney. the performance will be inside one of the large buildings of judd's sculptures, with the sound being piped outside to the audience looking in as the sunset begins.

there will also be installations also by Emily Jacir, Nina Katchadourian, Christina Kubisch, Louise Lawler, Inigo-Manglano Ovalle, Kaffe Matthews, Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere, Dario Robleto, Steve Rowell and Simparch, Deborah Stratman and Steven Badgett, Julianne Swartz; as well as a talk given by david toop. the whole thing has been curated by regine basha, rebecca gates and lucy raven

because blogger now has the ability to "schedule" posts in advance, i have pre-posted a few gems, so fear not, airforms will be working it's magic virtually, while i'm driving through the texas desert. if with any luck i have wireless in marfa i'll try to post some images of the installation in progress.

when books are like butterflies...

some images of one of the sound installations i presented in kortrijk belgium for the happy new ears festival, which opened a few days ago. the piece was installed in the old beguinage in the center of town on the second floor of the st. anne's hall, and is titled 'when books are like butterflies'. it was loosely inspired by georges rodenbach's book bruges-la-morte, not so much the story, as the atmosphere of the text. i began by notating every sound in the book as well as every color in sequence, and then used the lists to generate a sound work, a text work, and a set of images. the text and images appear in the form of dust jackets, which frame the speakers playing a 13 minute audio piece through 15 speakers (and the images are mostly from the backgrounds of some of the old music photos i typically run on airforms). rather than create an illustration of the text or a work that conceptually fits cleanly into a single resolve related to the text, the piece presents numerous paths through the same information, allowing the sounds in the book to manifest themselves in different forms (i.e. as sound, text, and image). my main interest is in creating a space of intimate wandering, where one has to get close to the books not only to read and see, but to begin to approach the activity of listening with the same intimate response to reading and looking at small things. even though they are birthed from the same source, the text sound and images do not inform each other as much as they offer different paths of experience.

frequent flyer...

well, my insane travel schedule is taking over once again... i'm going to berlin for a show of my work at susanne vielmetter berlin projects. the above is one of the recent paintings, part of a series i've been working on for the past few years using a classical music score to generate translation systems towards image building. if you are interested you can see most of the work for the show here. if you are in or near berlin, you can get info on the show here, the opening is may 31st.

it is unlikely i will have much of an internet connection or time to load things to the blog, but you never know what might show up randomly... by june 10th i should be back on daily airforms duty again. with any luck i'll bring home some old pieces of paper... i'm making a secret pilgrimage to see some very special things that i'll post on when i return.