Paul Doran, 25 July
○All Night? All black? All frame? All painting? 12 offcuts play dominos in Paul Doran's painting "All Night" • posted Instagram 14 July 2019/ deleted, unknown? • And yet, light peeks through its cruciform plexus where 40-odd swathes of canvas—40 days and 40 nights—congregate like believers, marking the feast and famine of imagining everything and doing nothing all at once: waiting, praying, dreaming. Never feeling the need to screenshot a painting on Instagram before, painter Paul Doran pokes the need more than most because of his Instagram extinction-bursts, and today, most of all, because of All Night, wherein painting eclipses itself. Not sure my screenshot has the whole picture, I check to see if the original post has survived another day, another night, to imagine the painting's scale comparative to some environmental detail that might locate the painting in the physical world among things. It’s gone. Here, on my phone, All Night is manageable. The image is narrower than the breadth of my eyes so perspectives and light do not shift in the complex and frustrating ways they do in the physical world. Eyes wide open, head still, chin to chest, hand and phone doing all the masturbatory work of zoom and pinch, I imagine this painting to be less manageable in physical space, where sawn edges come splintered, perfect light and shadow do not form penumbras, and screw heads ruined by the artist's blindfolded progress. All Night's a ramshackle painting; a piece of garden shed that bore lonely undergrowth until it wrestled free through the shingles to let light in and life out... at last. Both closed off and opened out, its attraction is both obvious and familiar to me, from my favourite sentence • "A barn, in day, is a small night" (John Updike) • to its absence of colour, echoing my child's last memorable question • "Is black a colour?" • "Turn out the lights and see what you see?" • "Nothing! Scary!" • "Everything."
Liliane Puthod, 27 July
○Towards home, Dublin quays smell of movement, of Liffey, of exhausts, human and machine, synthesised into the disco of smells and memories and images and feelings just experienced in Liliane Puthod's unearthed time capsule of an exhibition How Long After Best Before? at Pallas Projects Dublin. Good art follows you home. •Good times, these are the good times• are the lead-in lyrics to Chic's 1970s disco track titled, you guessed it, Good Times. Liliane has Daft Punk'd + inserted Good Times into plaster board comprising *almost* first-fix fabricated wall looming tall to rewrite architecture at gallery entrance. Down low, another entrance, child height, with •mindyourhead• cast in cursive bronze relief and dressed in heavy PVC strips makes one aware of body and gravity as bending body is choked by trouser belt and PVC buckles and snaps back into position while pushing through and under into den divided by more PVC and decorated by several glazed receptacles and curious brick-elevated drain grids. What divides experiences of Liliane as part of physical group shows by Berlin Opticians and here, solo, is the prioritising of feeling and experience over the art object. It's an irony for sure as this work at Pallas is meta-reflecting on merchandising, housing, transit and consumption of goods in times past, present, future. And yet here in this not-for-profit artist-run space there is a happy conflation and complicity of critical and desiring machines #GoodTimes are being foregrounded for our attention as art objects recede into experience. When collector returns home with Liliane Puthod earthenware jug, collector realises the effect is not the same at home as here in this synthetic jungle of glint. Liliane proffers sensory possession at Pallas: the smell is synthetic rubber, the soundtrack is 70's Disco spaghettified by technique and time, the PVC and neon and galvanised metal like being inside phone looking out at dentist. Bracing. As merchandise recedes into smoke and mirrors of its reflection, its Black Lodge, its Upside Down, what keeps me here is not the tormented musak, but the sacrifice of art objects for an experience that swallows me whole●
The Art Collector, 1 Aug
○The crow, black and empty, drifted upon a chimney pot and, like a g○d, looked into a world of mouths that flapped about a fireplace and where, above the mantelpiece, another vision, that of the artist, hung before secret eyes that secreted opinion. 👀 A few years back in the back of a pub following the Wilhelm Sasnal opening at Lismore Castle Arts I fell into a conversation with an art collector. Rare breed. After stripping back formalities the collector felt the need to share his love for art, a love that, not too far into his confession, seemed tainted by addiction. He told me that he could afford artists in a particular price bracket—we are talking in the thousands here, not millions. He loved his private art collection, making a point of naming the artists before badly describing the artworks. This collector did not separate the artwork from the artist. You can imagine: one fine day an artist sold this collector an image, a shape, a feeling that could not be spoilt by future mehs by the same artist. He was sold, pocket and soul. Or was he? I wanted to know more. Why art? Here? Ireland? He carried on pronouncing his affected love for art, his L❤❤E excessively pronounced, as if satisfied, not really. He had travelled a considerable distance to see Wilhelm Sasnal, even though Sasnal was out of his price range: this desiring expedition was bound by a strip club etiquette, look, don't touch. He leaned over and named South African painter Marlene Dumas as his •never love• It was a lust for the unattainable that he was wanting. The art collector's Love is attained. Lust, never●
School's Out, 9 Aug
○We will refer to it in the future as "That exhibition in the school" when we forget its title, a title perfectly poised for forgetting •ₐₙd ₜₕₑ dₐyₛ ᵣᵤₙ ₐwₐy ₗᵢₖₑ wᵢₗd ₕₒᵣₛₑₛ ₒᵥₑᵣ ₜₕₑ ₕᵢₗₗₛ • again • ₐₙd ₜₕₑ dₐyₛ ᵣᵤₙ ₐwₐy ₗᵢₖₑ wᵢₗd ₕₒᵣₛₑₛ ₒᵥₑᵣ ₜₕₑ ₕᵢₗₗₛ • Gone. I smell the images on Instagram. Assumption not nearly enough, I go smell it for myself. School's out. Still • stray kids play in the school yard where burnt tarmac bakes and school doors, like a toy oven, are found wide open. Inside, kids long gone, summer almost, the smell is past its best before date▪︎ talcum-powder'd. Lots of artworks, some activate, others shy into the gradgrind of the school. Novelty comes with compromise no matter how much you try to save or survive it with your adult interpretations. Feelings abound. My six year old says something good about Lucy Andrews' sap-guzzling crafty apparatus that I can't better. It's a release. This is not about curation • even though the curator seems to know this place, maybe for a lifetime. This is about art surviving in the real world with real people without the curator, without the white walls, without a map. The rub of the world is here, all around, under Samuel Laurence Cunnane's clipped & red eroticism and Sven Sandberg's desired desireless. My kids flip through a book, looking up now and then when women's and children's bodies are revealed literally and critically in Agnès Varda's seriously joyful feminism from '75. We're still not there, not nearly. Too much clothes telescopically shimmy up blue question mark trunk of Hannah Fitz's goofin' off sculpture that could be a real person goofin' off? No face, no eyes, no social cues, my kids wave and say hello like brave voyeurs. Round here accidental art is disregarded by adults because no paper trail, no designation. Better•Without•Map. This space's novelty, this show's hype, shows our conservatism and hunger for alternatives. The artists, mostly Kerliners, one Berliner 👓 and others swim and sink here, and that's ok. These artists in another gallery show would be just another gallery show. The lesson here • art can survive the world, art can survive us, we can survive art, barely🌒💥
Rejected, 15 Aug
○The Perpetrator slams their front door, smiles at the idiots on the bus, piously walks into the RHA Gallery to collect their work and, before stepping back out into the big • bad • stupid world, sidesteps into the restroom to hurl criticism onto the stall wall above the toilet roll. Rejected! I saw it on Instagram. The photograph of the photograph is almost illegible, even though the work necessitates reading before appreciation for composition, slant of text, or lapping tongue toilet roll waiting for the next bum note. The capture is opportunist on the part of the artist--"Ha ha ha, at last, they'll go for this!" With a collective swivel & thrust of hips the RHA selection panel agree the best way to tackle criticism, especially criticism of this sort is (1) recycle it and (2) smear it on our own walls. One-Two… a beautiful waltz 👞👠👞👠Believe me, shitting where you eat can be liberating. The cliche criticism is so cliche that it's vindication of the panel's good judgement, good taste, good standing. If you hopscotch □■□ across the photograph of the photograph you get the gist of the sentiment, something about ⱽⁱˢᵘᵃˡ ᴬʳᵗˢ i̶s̶ ᵃʳᵉ ᵇᵘˡˡˢʰⁱᵗ ⁱⁿ ᴵʳᵉˡᵃⁿᵈ… ⁱⁿˢᵘˡᵃʳ… ˢᵃᵐᵉ ᵖᵖˡ ⁱⁿ ᵖᵒʷᵉʳ… ᵒᵖᵖᵒˢⁱᵗᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵒᵖᵉⁿ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵉⁿᵍᵃᵍⁱⁿᵍ… ᵇᵒʳⁱⁿᵍ. Same old. I like to think the Perpetrator took the photograph. That they crossed out i̶s̶ for 𝙖𝙧𝙚 to make it more authentic Latrinalia, then waited a year to submit, with less rage, more smug. That would be beautiful. That would be justice. That would be art. If not, the Perpetrator made the cut anyway by being selected by proxy through the vision of another artist which, when you think about it, is kind of worse, kind of robbed, kind of Richard Prince'd, kind of a toilet bowl full of shit. The title "The Unknown Critic" bothers me. "The Unknown Artist" would have added pathos, not unnecessary description. Anyway. I cannot unsee the 𝔹𝕖𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕔𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝔸𝕥 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕆𝕗 𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℝℍ𝔸 𝕆𝕡𝕖𝕟 𝔼𝕩𝕙𝕚𝕓𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟. I do not know what I was expecting. Maybe more. Maybe magic. Crystal Balls. A séance. Not that. Never that●
Oisin O'Brien, 22 Aug
○3 things. Text pinned to gallery wall. Fragments of something fossilized in ice-cream green. Dachshund made from unlikely things •glass•paper•honey dippers• stands on stack of text guarding it from F G-Torres associations. Ruff, ruff. These 3 things arm wrestle with gallery wall and floor like dismembered stick insect dipped in hard candy glowing kryptonite. Disjointed yet carefully carefree, Oisín O'Brien shares flip-flop observations from fantasy of neon and camouflaged painting screaming its presence next door to dachshund forming links in the world because it's shaped like ➳ Another artist riffing on the marvelous. Like choir singer transitioning on a syllable (!) or dog's lead visualized as hyphen measuring intimacy or lack thereof in relationship on a given day. Cₒₘₑ ₕₑᵣₑ BₒY! Maybe stick insect metaphor is a false start. Maybe language is being dismembered on gallery wall vis-à-vis anatomy of typeface •SerifShoulderSpineSpurStemStressStrokeSwash• From hyphen>em dash•security>freedom•responsibilities> boredom• these are daytime musings dreamt up when responsibility stops and shadows lengthen. 𝒜𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓃 into the amateur night a collision between EmptyOrchestra is found in word Karaoke. Future and past imaginings become furious present longing for past and yearning for future. Ⓛⓞⓞⓟ Constant movement and displacement of meaning as contexts shift and stories never reach fulfillment or argument, just dropped and discarded like sweet wrapper to imagine its taste 🍬 Temporary tattoo of phat empty speech bubble waits for more words. Text is inside-out here, with •label•make•price•barcode•stitching•showing. Derrida rolls over and insects disperse like signatures. World I glean is world as dessert bowl licked clean by the distracted. All this torments Susan Sontag's proclamation that 🅰 🆃🅷🅸🅽🅶 🅸🆂 🅰 🆃🅷🅸🅽🅶 🅽🅾🆃 🆆🅷🅰🆃 🅸🆂 🆂🅰🅸🅳 🅾🅵 🅰 🆃🅷🅸🅽🅶 These brittle things both objects and words hiding in wrong camouflage in a kind of polite dialectics that synthesize subjects to become synthetic objects leaves brain floating in hypnotic snot of some tropical toad. This empty orchestra with no subtitles, and I sing along anyway●
The Villager, 29 Aug
○In the memories of others her lost soul was 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓾𝓹𝓸𝓷 𝓪 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 found in a nest of prehistoric ferns○in a burnt-out car seat beside a river○at the foot of a mountain cross among campfire cinders○ The villager left the village knowing she would be remembered and retold through her transgressions. Amnesia, she learnt as a villager, is the affliction of the village○the village forgets your transgressions, no matter how big the transgression is, if you stay put in the village for life. T̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶3̶ ̶k̶i̶d̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶ was on villagers' lips until they weren't. T̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶e̶n̶c̶i̶r̶c̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶s̶e̶x̶u̶a̶l̶ daily○weekly○monthly○yearly lapping the village, sometimes three times a day, lassoing her with constricting dreams of b○uncing arms & elb○ws & knees & nipples & l●neliness. Those that left the village, like her, were immediately demonised, forever remembered in absentia as if time and transgression stood still, and forgetting, if not forgiveness, was dependent on your forever presence, circling, nipples○○ Now she found herself in a new village, in the city. For a long time she'd marveled at how this new village forgets its artists if they leave and have no point of contact from that point onwards. It's hard to remember artists in the flash discontinuities of their art's slow presence. 17 years ago the now superstar artist John Gerrard gave a visiting lecturer at IADT when she was a student there. As a student she connected with the artist's early explorations into the confetti remains of college notice boards... What she took away from the lecture was a comment the artist made about leaving the art scene for a year on a residency and feeling like he had to start all over again when he returned. You stay in the village and all is forgotten. You leave the art scene and all is forgotten. Villager and artist, forgiven and forgotten, it seems the world is a place to grow horns or disappear. As her horns mature, far away from the village she was born and raised, she wondered what horns were needed for artists to not disappear, to be the devils of their time, so Time remembers, if not people👹
Adam Fearon, 5 Sept
○Lazy curating averted. Adam Fearon jumps the queue of expectant Irish artists waiting for day out at historically significant and scenic Kilkenny Castle where Butler Gallery will uproot next year for bigger□ yet less central and historically significant and scenic Evans' Home 💍 Butler's reception area sees small vertical screen displayed alongside digital innards documenting innards of Adam's studio gazed through 3-D animated mesh. This vérité walk-through—𝕊𝕙𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕘𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕥𝕝𝕪 —acts as point of contact and barrier to seeing•feeling•touching imagined body of artist. Our impossible technological fate accepted, we are fully embedded. IT Iᔕ ᑎOT ᗩ ᑭᗩᖇTIᑕᑌᒪᗩᖇ ᔕᗩᗪ TᕼIᑎG Zadie Smith sadly concedes re the infirm novel. Adam's work is a sad thing. A leggy aluminum frame with mirrored encasing sneakily hides streamlined screen wherein artist is found troweling curtain of plaster from the bowels of screen. Distant and enigmatic💭Pollock dripping paint behind glass 60-odd years ago💭Dan Graham through the looking glass 20 years later. Bright mirrors yesteryear, black mirrors today. Same difference. In our airports, our hospitals, our homes, our most intimate relationships are impregnated by technology. Technology is persona here, heart here🖤Adam Fearon the artist retreats into chrome & mirrors & permeable membranes of technology and its housing. In this surgical and clinically excoriated jungle gym I feel I might cut myself for fear of not feeling. Everything swims underneath. An amorphous and translucent bath of water wallows beneath 👁level like a decapitated iceberg • bas reliefs try hard to find sculptural forms that approximate human or animal, traces and gestures of the body. No birth here, no afterbirth, no blood and guts, sweat and tears, fingerprints, joy, relief (ₛᵢgₕ) just the feeling of an infinite pregnancy, of never again being touched•loved•kissed or held... with love. An anti-Siren or Siri orates from a centrally located video installation about myth & technology & something. Hand releases grip of bedsheet. Surface bubbles stop p○ping. Swimmer stops kicking. Ba-dum. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep💔●
Genieve Figgis, 12 Sept
○In a put-on cockney accent Geoffrey Bennington--philosopher and best buddies to Jacques Derrida's deconstruction--performs a scene to students. He picks up a bottle of water and asks 📢 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥'𝕝𝕝 𝕨𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕟? The inherent critique in this facetious tableau is an assault on the Idea that a person or persons sat around a table and came up with words for things. Thing is, we'd 1st need words to come up with more words for more things. Philosophy tells us that language is already there before us💥Noam Chomsky tells us a child devours 1 word every hour on 1 exposure. Like the big bang of language 𝔊enieve 𝔉iggis' paintings must have already existed in the dark matter of consciousness, hers & ours & theirs, for them to assault culture the way they have🦄fashion designer Marc Jacobs is latest to fall under the candyflipping wings of her influence. Abducted 5 years ago, the wait for 𝔊enieve's paintings in Ireland has been tantric♋except for Irish Arts Council eyes only, whom I like to think had a n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ t̶o̶ f̶o̶r̶g̶e̶t̶ when they purchased 1 recently. Following her MFA 𝔊enieve went from relative obscurity participating in solo & group shows in Dublin at artist-run Talbot Gallery and curator-run Flood Gallery to stateside introductions by artist-provocateur RichardⒸPrince & Bill Powers of Half Gallery (& Instagram) and a catalogue essay by one of the best, David Rimanelli. Since then the multiverse of artworld meets celebrity world meets fashion world has coalesced into an et al. of etc. affiliations & flirtations online. The 𝔉𝔦𝔤𝔤𝔦𝔰 Effect placed on social media as a potential legup into the uddered heavens has kept artists keeping on with their social media image dumps even though the dream is by now a sunken cadaver in our image engorged social media times🐄 5 years ago I stood beside 𝔊enieve and her paintings on opening night at Flood Gallery wondering what's next, never imagining I wouldn't get to see her work up close for another 5 years. Yet better to miss artists than tolerate them.【Ｗｉｔｈｈｏｌｄｉｎｇ】you could say, is the edifice and garden of desire🍆🍑
Niamh O'Malley, 18 Sept
○We are tourists. Necks arched back to take in height & distance. Maps aren't tall. Things are both bodily & mathematical here—Archimedes splashing in bath before a thought that changes the world .ssǝɹɓoɹԀ Artist Niamh O'Malley measured here, maybe twice, three times, countless times in her head. All artists, past & future, measure in the governing largeness of RHA's main space that takes dominion over artist in their head & artwork in reality. Upon entering head lost to distances and displacement of things as usual 56cm-centred artwork is lost to air like a child's balloon. Leaden tones & shapes ○crescent○half○full○ capture the moon of vision like a cancer, dark and shadowy. Other governing presence of museum-sized artist statement is blurred in distance. Good. Distance between art & institution dissolves in this arena of distances, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, art to institution░L░e░t░t░e░r░ to eye. Hardest thing to do in art is to siphon then spur feelings from a thing that perverts the nature of a thing. Steel & glass & wood range and draw distance to pour into fuller more compressed poetic moments where white brush strokes sleep on a bunk bed of glass panes or viral pencil marks pollinate to a burnished metal finish🐝 Memories propel in silent gaps, all made up or made wrong—dumb dreams dreamt-up in language. Twigs of memories spliced from the world of named nature & Big other ■ Leggy LED screen swipes away fugitive captures of silvery grass believers ● Big shield of frosted glass wars with its name, its shape, its use, half projecting memories inward inside a home, a history of closed doors, and half outward to let the light & image in. Beyond the barley yellow RHA floor, up high, past petalled metal into framed blue sky, up up up above this after-harvest children might envision crop circles of a Third Kind. We make up impossible things in our minds so they cannot be committed to the material world. Niamh O'Malley wants to still the world, or us to stay still before the stillnesses of her lissome gestures. This overarching gesture seems an aesthetic afterthought with the harvest over and our fate fait accompli. Swipe🤳
What is an Artist, 25 Sept
○Gorgeous writer George Saunders shares something gorgeous with gorgeous listener Paul Holdengräber of 𝕃𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℕ𝕖𝕨 𝕐𝕠𝕣𝕜 ℙ𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕔 𝕃𝕚𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕣𝕪 Something about his first 4 self-proclaimed failed novels trying to be High when in fact he was Low. So following 4 George Saunders dug deep for 5 to become the writer he is today without further need for future soul○beating■ Soul○beating is a phrase taken from the autobiographically intimate essay of the same name by the American painter David Reed, who had the strange aspiration to be, of all things, a "bedroom painter". Reed heard the phrase from Milton Resnick whom he studied under at the New York Studio School in the 1960s. 𝙸𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚙𝚑𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚁𝚎𝚜𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚞𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚋𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚊𝚗 𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚜𝚝 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚘𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔■ George Saunders made one big, thunderous, traumatic, rupturing, King-Kong-beating-upon-the-soul change. Little earthquakes are not nearly enough to go from High to Low fₐ ₛₒ ₗₐ ₜᵢ dₒ■ Painter Chris Evans took five years to "puke up" art school. I can see him in his studio, heaving against the glimmer of newborn rainbows; heaving day in, day out, mostly dry retching on all fours, bit by bit coughing up a person, all white & hollow & silent & almost brand new. What is an artist?○
BYOB, 2 Oct
○Hello artist-run space. I've missed you. Your nostril-blossoming damp. Your blunt corners. Your half-licked-white walls. Your electric dentistry. BYOB. This time you've cleaned yourself to within a spec of your life. Mesmerizing absence of dust conjures cinderella flash flood came in a bucket, mop, vacuum, hands & knees. Your giant pumice floor awaits the circular indecision of tiny art feet. No shadows of spilt beer. No flaking or spat paint. Didn't expect your big, smudge-free glass entrance, the vinyl epigraph, the seated welcome desk, the cleanliness. Godly. That's okay: we're all insecure about what we are in the beginning. Endings we know too well, too late. Just Wait(!) Phone in hand I frame my feet against your floor ignoring the presence of art all around. 4 inhabit you until next time. Art might be temporary but you are dead. ░I░ ░w░o░z░ ░e░r░e░ nowhere to be found… yet the thought prophesizes future nostalgias that the short-lived always perpetuate. Just Wait(!) I wander over your floor, walls, raftered heights before I w○nder over your delinquent inhabitants. You & them & everything entwined. Over their shoulders it's you I see this time, standing side-by-side with others long gone but not forgotten: Monster Truck, The Joinery, thisisnotashop, Broadstone, others close by, elsewhere. This is the first and last time I will see you. Your short but lived presence will be haunted by wagging tongues and boom silences for the time being. I will come again but next time you won't mesmerize like now, subjugate like now. You'll disappear under the cover of familiarly, comparison, ambition, history, art. Even now, standing here, art already haunts the future: remember how Sibyl Montague's nursed abject cultures transformed you into a fridge for a sec; how Richard Proffit's homeless shrine transcended your thick walls turning bunker mood into celestial night; How Glenn Fitzgerald's big paintings where big good; How Liliane Puthod's eternal BACK IN FIVE collapsed in on itself to high 🖐 your memory🍌 before you left the building. Bye●
Aileen Murphy, 10 Oct
○Upstairs [on Instagram] 2 chairs are joined at knees by Paul Hallahan. Downstairs (in person) 2 paintings are joined at hips by Aileen Murphy. Half or whole, we are passengers. Art, in the gallery [not on Instagram] in its best sense, & nature, is awkward. It oughtn't be negotiable--better if it's missing a limb, wearing a patch, stubbornly resisting every desire to be whole, either for itself, artist, you, words. Especially words! Even though split down the centre the throb of the heart can be seen in the physical redaction that plays out like a blind spasmic phantom organ in AM's twitchy tichy dypyness👁 Like Flannery O'Connor's deep south fleshy & wounded words that compose bit-parts of body & mystic, AM too wants body & mystic in paint🙏We all do, makers & onlookers. There's lots of baring one's breathless frustrations on canvas here. Open, exposed, wounded, one painting with juggernaut window-wiper marks spreads itself wide like a muddy windshield👁 another blacked-out by silly silhouettes 👁and yet another, the shoutiest and most resolved of the lot, speaks more literally than its lippy tongues & split nose & lips might proclaim from across the gallery. The passengers of these paintings, before they were thrown from the car, have been lost & found & lost again to the exhausted instinct of destroy & leave. Do they work? Don't know. Left in the gallery they proffer question marks of different sizes and orientations? OᑎE Oᖴ TᕼE ᑕOᑎᒍOIᑎEᗪ ᕼᗩᔕ ᗷEEᑎ TᑌᖇᑎEᗪ 90° ᗩᔕ ᗪᖇIᑭᔕ ᖇᗩIᑎ ᔕIᗪEᗯᗩYᔕ. Words are silly silhouettes here, shadow puppets. Like phone in hand before art in gallery, words manage to manage. First time Big & Solo in Dublin, AM shows us how things have been made--glue holding the angles of tubular perspex frame--and unmade--raw paint clings like baby slugs to window during storm of wrong moves. More wrong moves… more wrong words. It's never been clearer to me than here today that words fail, even though words are more assertive than you or me or painting, to elucidate art. Words ride shotgun while painting blows its brains out all over the dashboard. Drive●
Psychoanalysis & Art, 16 Oct
○Psychoanalysis is better in a relationship, like all us narcissists. 7 years teaching Psychoanalysis & Art at Trinity College Dublin I have come to know it intimately through conversations that take place around that most excessively shy object, the contemporary artwork.These intimate experiences have proffered the suspended belief that the artwork is healthy and we are ill. Like Derrida's dictionary there's no *signified* in psychoanalysis, just chain-smoking signifiers💭💭💭💭💭 It is a system of words that continually rewrites itself in the presence of art, of human. It is not a Top 10 symptomatology 🅲🅰🆂🆃🆁🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽🅰🅽🆇🅸🅴🆃🆈 🅾🅴🅳🅸🅿🆄🆂🅲🅾🅼🅿🅻🅴🆇 🅿🅴🅽🅸🆂🅴🅽🆅🆈…(I forget). Psychoanalysis is best left under the covers so you don’t see it writhing with another body under the brightest, noisiest, skin & hair scalding fluorescent lights and cameras📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷 This is the picture of psychoanalysis I hold, not the porn picture, but the under-the-covers picture. The suggestion of two bodies, opposites and the same, working each other out of an unworkable knot with care and ears👂👂 Listen, that ruffle of something under the covers--u̾n̾d̾e̾r̾c̾o̾v̾e̾r̾--be it the unconscious making shapes or the shy art object fee🄻ing and f🄻eeing from the wor🄻🄳 of wor🄳🅂. Psychoanalysis' wordy relationships are sometimes twisted—Feminism, Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, Jung, Deleuze & Guattari. It's an orgy out there of nay and yay. It breeds argument for those bound to another cause. Out of relationships, good and bad, psychoanalysis produces as much words through its friends as its enemies. It's a word factory. And yet unlike dissemination under the grip of capitalism it ought to stay suspicious of its vociferous product, its own wordy system, revisioning its misfires towards justice or justification over Truth. THANK YOU—R.MUTT● H.BELLMER● M.KELLEY● EOIN.MC.HUGH● G.CREWDSON● SACHER-MASOCH● JOANNE.REID● TOTES.HAUS.R● BRUCE.N● P.ROTH● P.MCCARTHY● S.SONTAG● CINDY.S● R.GOBER● D.ARBUS● U.BURKE● DAVID.L● ALFRED.H● 𝕁.𝕄𝔸𝕐ℍ𝔼𝕎 [𝕋𝕆𝔻𝔸𝕐]● MORE● OTHERS● DEFINITELY ⓄⓉⒽⒺⓇⓈ. I'm learning●
The Little Wood, 23 Oct
○The little wood cradles itself against the gallery as if born into a world without a mother. It's a sad little big thing with branches for arms for architecture to form floating reaching 🤳synonym.com 🄲🄾🄿🅂🄴 🄱🄾🅂🄲🄰🄶🄴 🅃🄷🄸🄲🄺🄴🅃 🄱🄾🅂🄺 Let's go with 🄶🅁🄾🅅🄴 short for Grover from the Muppets, & next upstairs to children's testimonials from the broken ground of Syria. I get Anita Groener's multiform approach to get me to look & look again in formal signatures • among them by children • that I recognise in myself—empathy being a mirror of the self found in external reality. And yet I cannot fully empathise with the *subject* of Syria the way I might empathise with, let's say, art. I have two young kids. Bad grammar, spacing issues, tangential madness, humongous full stops● marking the pleasure after the pain of the stupid sentence are signatures I empathise with upstairs, but not Syria. I have no experience like that experience. I get the 🄶🅁🄾🅅🄴 downstairs with its modernist sensibility & whimsical coloured twine to help grid and measure its self-consciousness, its shame, its vulnerability, its formal pride. It floats, or seems to float, with nested feet trying to be birds, to fly, hovering, uprooted from the world to have its branches nurpl'd to form a house, a home, with no solid footing, destitute, but pretty. I like it. I like the drawings too, drawings that gather marks, not make them. I did my homework on Syria a year ago toward a review of Brian Maguire's Syrian paintings at IMMA. Nothing but Syria on my mind, image after image, white helmets, children caked in grey dust & dark blood. I did the work obsessively and released it, like a PhD student, onto others when I got the chance, and moved on. I can hear your psychological riposte but it's not that. Here two woods press against one another, one soft, one hard. There's a monograph. I won't be reading it. Deeper meaning will not be achieved there. Perspective and empathy are worlds apart. The grove, the drawings, like poetry, the only things that slow me here, pointing inward to a truth that's not found in language. The artist holding herself in this little wood is message enough●
Jonathan Mayhew, 30 Oct
○"He does his own thing" is the reply after sharing my experience of Jonathan Mayhew's work at Pallas Projects Dublin. What's it mean to 'do your own thing' in an art scene that professes freedom to 'do your own thing'? Does it mean that everyone else is doing the same thing? (Seems like that sometimes.) Or at the very least conforming to a language & its execution that is legit, agreeable & understood as art by the given community? Art was never what the artist said art is; art is always what the given art community says art is. To speak of an artist 'doing their own thing' says so much about, if not consciously so, of the homogeneous language of art that we have inherited from tradition and learnt from our peer communities. The statement "He does his own thing" is rife with ironies & contradictions like all commentary on art ought to be. Especially if we consider JM's work being a memento mori of other artists' & culture's things. In fact JM "does his own thing" by not *doing* "his own thing". We don't invoke the names of other artists in the presence of JM's selfless work because they're already named or intimated in the title or execution of the works. Other artists doing their own thing exist bi-proxy as bi-product. We are given everything here except "Jonathan Mayhew". Conceptual coyness is not on the cards, just the readymade happenings (ticking clocks & Live & Let Die flowers) or tributes & nods to tradition from which JM's "own thing" springs forth. The sediments of originality, of doing your "own thing" were never sourced from the unspoilt self anyway, but from the spoils of tradition. Original artists have always been legendary 'stealers' (P.Picasso) legendary 'borrowers' (J.F.Handel) legendary 'plagiarists' (W.Shakespeare). The formation of the stylist is indebted to other voices. No smoke, but mirrors aplenty embed JM's work in his repurposing of Love & Death & Time through the resurrection of a cast of artists for whom Love comes easily—F.G-Torres • Kathy Acker • Mark Fisher. Today it’s easier to think sincerity is being p̲e̲r̲f̲o̲r̲m̲e̲d̲ by contemporary artists. JM's observational tragedies show the world is more than its stage. Bow🙏●
Cafe Painting, 6 Nov
○My wife sees it. I see it. We see it. After securing respite from rain and riot in crowded café, our rioters wrestle with hot chocolate from adult mugs. A painting • a snow-scape. Nothing extraordinary beyond weight and symmetry of composition and tête-à-tête between off-centre this and that. But backward step from perceived clichés tells us something different. Foregrounded fence, a somewhat silly retention, real or imagined, challenges first impressions beyond and before the pale: the painter that painted it, the covert context that cradles it, us as observers coveting it, and the price tag €85 tethered to it. (FYI: the image does not wrap around the edges as café paintings seldom don’t.) Phew! What painter hurdles a timber fence to take a photograph from such a sheepish sentiment in the bᵣᵣᵣ of winter... and then commit it to paint, to public scrutiny, to time? Not a friend. No, a stranger, penned in before a paradise, or an image of a paradise chosen because it's exactly what it’s not, what it cannot ever be. Even if the painter didn’t hurdle, even if the painter chanced upon this scene in the snow or upon some cosy kitchen table, this painted image of something lost and out of reach is paradise found, painting figured. Sure, another detached painter living off flat images of flat images with deep, liquid intentions—abjection comes in white too, as absence, as possibility. Pew! But how deep a thread of canvas can be if a painter is not so... so-so. 🍼There There🍼 Here the details are entrenched. Here—there—where the fence meets the painter’s lovingly gabled initials 𝗠𝗠 (Like 𝐿𝑜𝓁𝒾𝓉𝒶’𝓈 𝗛𝗛); where the pure shadows thrust against the lying snow; where the evergreens pose a problem; where the Y-fronts trail comes skidding from the house—exit and entrance, a past and a present as arbitrary and innocent as brown fingerprints decorating two white mugs●
The Painters, 25 Nov
OPENING NIGHT🍻💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪Diptych of painters walk into gallery to shoulder air & forced sociability that perfumes it. Silently they separate as if preplanned maneuver. One turns back to everything but crowd. Other swoops close to everything but crowd. Black-head close. Then pulls away to find his lean. Shoulder to shoulder they muppet something quick & absolute. Their eyes, now lazy, fall back on the crowd. Oorah💪
Surf's Up, 29 Nov
○Artists today are surfers, surfing under a moon of typeset & paper. You're in or you're out. Don't bicker. Bickering is loaded with want. Choose. Choo choo chooosing (or is it choice..?) changes with age, with responsibility, with time, with those that hang on or hang back for the next wave. Artists surf, and the surf is changeable. The twenty something surfer is fine, no questions, having fun. Blonde. Thirty something & big questions are asked by the surfer & surf. Forty something & the questions stop and a freewheeling, toe-grasping longboard acceptance coasts the artist into a waking dream of nostalgia & regret & sometimes, bickering. If you're lucky you'll catch a wave of opportunities for two years to swim under a trickle of funding, ink, groping hands to temporarily beach on yellow under blue. Then you’ll find your feet digging their heels into the sinking sand. Opportunity turns autumnal as leaves drift across a chalky grey surface to freeze later in the navy winter. Nice. You could wade back out on your longboard & sandals & grey for a smaller wave, but why? Why bother? They're just going to judge you comparatively, generationaly, historically. You're older now. Thirty something. Remember: big questions being asked by the surfer & surf. You bicker, youth don't; you want a specific want, youth are want. (Or maybe you'll get a mama early on & entertain the smoke & mirrors veiling the empty vehicle of visibility into an accepted & tolerated quantity, unchanging, never to be visited upon by the real necessity to wipeout, again & again & again.) Change might be overrated though. Breaking stuff too. What’s wrong with cementing a future, a legacy, mama's mortgage, the nuance of you which you broke first in art school to end up mending over a lifetime. Trauma has a lot to answer for. Waves end🌊
Banana-gaf, 17 Dec
○TOO MANY ART OBJECTS; NOT ENOUGH ART. Maurizio Cattelan's banana with gaffer tape is an erect reminder of the dedication of the contemporary artist to reify their art & identity as objects, cropped from life, from setting, from context, from history, from flesh, from social & aesthetic awkwardness, on Instagram. If your burning issue with Maurizio's banana-gaf is the use of banana & gaffer tape over art & hobby then your definition of art lies somewhere between medium & craft; if the vulgar sums of money exchanged get your goat then your definition of art lies in the monetary; if the invisible lack of effort frustrates then your definition of art lies in visible labour; if the lack of meaning tongue-ties your appreciation then your definition of art lies in its message; if you put it down to "your taste" then you might as well deal art the mother of coffee-table-book blows and proclaim "all art is subjective"; if Maurizio is your problem then Maurizio is your problem; if you're angry then you're looking in the wrong direction; if you're nonplussed then you never had faith in art trade fairs and still wonder why art colleges continue to drag students to suffer them. Any one of these singular responses or definitions or values is lacking. We know in the next couple of years, if not months, Maurizio's banana-gaf will bless the covers of coffee-table art books that sum up contemporary art in one sweeping title like ART TODAY. This is a certainty. Banana-gaf is made for books like that. This perfect, instantaneous, front on, yellow erection--"Unicorn of the Art World" its first collectors christened it--is deepthroat before you've tempted to parse its context or intent. To do so would be as dumb as parsing a joke so as to peel back its funny. Banana-gaf is titled 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯. The not-so-funny thing is, all those not invested in art, or not part of a community of art that take art seriously, will ascribe this momentary and temporary gaf--albeit its canonical legacy already written on the spoilt & eaten bananas that make up its week-long history--to all contemporary art. Last week's hugfest at the Turner Prize was all a bit much anyway. Reset🍌
