Excerpt from a letter written to a friend the day after Zhang Huan Opening:

 

".....I came extremely close to doing something very foolish at the Zhan Huan opening at Pacewildenstein last night.

The installation was a giant concrete slab, 7ft in height and aprx. 50ft x 30ft. To view the piece, there were stairs that were set up over the structure so that the crowd could look down onto the top surface of the slab, it was a conveyor line of people, there was a wait and they checked all bags... very hyped up.

On the surface 50ftx 30ft, was a drawing done with ashes of a field of people ( Chinese). This work was executed by using many artists and was taken from a photograph... There was an artist working on scaffolding while the show was going on.

I came so close to jumping up onto the piece and running to the center, laying down and making an angel in the ash! Think about it... Asian/ Anglo interactive. The eastern field of people dwarfed by a western angel, many artists and many hours / funding altered in 30 seconds by one individual...this is performance art in the raw w/risk!

I scare myself because This was not just a fleeting thought... Andrew, I came so close that in a sense, it happened!
My partner and I discussed Bail ect. all in under a minute ... I hesitated, they shuffled us through and the moment was ripped away.

My thought is that I will have other opportunities when I am established... This way it will not be viewed as a publicity stunt and more importantly... I will have proper bail money and good representation...."

 

WB - May 2008

 

rehASHED

An extension of thoughts on Zhang Huans "Blessings"

Almost 24hrs. after my near fatal mistake at Pace Wildenstein...see: "Paradise lost" blog, some thoughts begin to surface about the artwork showcased.
I just arrived back home after a rainy treck down to Madison Square Park and my memory flips back to the giant SpeedRacer add on the side of a building on 23rd and Park Ave.south.
What am I to think about "Blessings" as a piece of work worth risking my potential career over?
(My advance apologies for playing critic)
What in retrospect do I find impressive about "Blessings"?
It is not the scale of the piece or the artists involved considering the Speedracer add just mentioned is at the very least 5x's its size as well as the execution process being more risky/difficult.(I believe it took less time to complete as well)
Could it be the ashes used?... No, the technique has been done before.
How about the imagery? Taken from a photo, also there is much background space in the image area that is relatively easy to manipulate.
It must be the context in which it is placed.
Just as angels in the snow have been done but set in this context, it would have been... well,... not so great as to risk loosing any time doing my own work.
I guess this is how I feel about "Blessings" in general and much contemporary art on the whole, but I do like the implications of mass participation towards a larger than ego project or projects, see: Blog "Possible/Probable".

Not to beat a dead horse but in retrospect, I am very happy that fate did not pull me into the ash.

WB-2008

 

 

                                                The possible/probable
 

A possible progression of visual art

What I see as the natural progression of the fine arts is a consolidation and categorizing of creative concepts via the web. These concepts would be extracted from a vast pool of the world population and then used as project material on a large scale with input from experts in a variety of the major sciences.

This process allows the common man a creative outlet that could be realized within a collective scheme. All humans have creative thoughts or even fragments of thoughts that surface at different times and if in the right hands these thoughts could be lucrative.

There are also common ideas or even concepts that arrive collectively in waves that could be fine tuned or redirected towards a legitimate project.

When a society fosters creativity on an individual level within a vast network, a vacuum is filled and the product suffers as well as the society.

Restraint is key to the creative process.

The ultimate goal in fine art is the discovery of the new. Any art that falls short of this is self indulgent or obsessive or at best therapeutic. With this view in place, it stands to reason that a scientific approach is the ethical/logical route to pursue.

Political art is a waste of time. The views expressed in political art would always be better served straight forwardly. Political art is narrative and narrative art has a better place in literature. Political art is also time specific and is prone to become obsolete unless the content transcends current events through a universal mode, ie. Kara Walker, Goya, Dostyevsky, Goddard, etc. but this is rare and still more often than not, the content of the work that is of worth is not the specific political viewpoint. ( Some would argue this point.)

The proposal is to position a site where any individual at any time can deposit creative information, this information would be collected and stored in a data base as material to be sorted into categories and consolidated.

The essence of the creative information would be made accessible to a select panel of qualified representatives of the major sciences for review.

At this point, an aesthetic project could be set into place based on information compiled and then could be split into branch projects and handed off to workers/artists for refinement.

The showcasing of these grand scale projects could be held on an annual basis.

The content of these artworks/projects would be substantial and current and thus beneficial to society as well as the individual.

Participants that submitted ideas/concepts that are used as core material or even substantial supporting material could be included in the production process of the work(s).

 

WB  (Fall 2006)

 

*see The coalition for daring behavior.

Created in 2008 by Canadian artist Chloe Lewis.

www.darecoalition.com