DOUGLAS TAKESHI WOLFE

Night

2010-12-29T15:10:38-05:00

I find irony in the fact that the absence of light is what makes some images stronger.

I'm a bit of a night image junky.

Time's elasticity, which seems to be more pronounced at night, with it's image exposures in seconds not fractions of..

Time is slow and the image making is more methodical. Your mind's eyes adapting to the environment.

The night helps unlock the unconscious.

Valley of Death

2009-11-15T23:03:23-05:00

A few weeks ago three friends gathered on the doorstep of Death Valley- in Baker, California, a god forsaken truck stop of a town in the southeast of California. The trip was to gather recon for a 400 + mile world record attempt trekking unaided across Death Valley by Todd Carmichael. These are some of those images from time spent in the dessert.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

THE FEDERAL RESERVE, WALL STREET, BANKSY

2009-10-05T23:47:00-04:00

When the world was coming to an end a few weeks ago- up went this piece a block away from La Colombe. Quite amazing- my friend David Guinn who is a rad painter and muralist was impressed by the size of the piece and the gestural quality. I have to say I have become quite a fan of Banksy. He is one of the few people I know that was able to publicly express the outrage of the American people in a public space in a timely manner. I love it when the banking system suddenly gets socialism when they need the big bailout! Privatize the profits and socialize the losses...

THE SIZE OF THINGS.

2009-10-05T20:09:00-04:00

I remember as a kid watching those ridiculously kitchy Japanese Godzirra movies on sleepy, stormy days, with mom making grilled cheese and tomato soup. God those were the days!!!

Well this article isn't about lazy afternoon food nostalgia, rather commenting on the current status of contemporary art scene, particularly photography and more specifically, talking about the finances and the business of art and its effects on the "SIZE OF THINGS." Taking a gander at photography's current loved ones there are a number of artists including Alec Soth, Katie Gannon, Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Hofer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vik Muniz, Thomas Ruff, Rineke Dijkstra, and Robert Polidori that are taking on works of monstrous proportions that would even make Godzilla blush.

Robert Polidori's current visual anesthesia is viewing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art seems to solidify the idea of big is better. Oh, the mind numbing epicness of it all!
Polidori at the Met

There are many philosophical, emotional, and academic implications in the decision for an artist to create a photographic work large: to create a visual tension and impact through sheer size is the most evident. Would the iconic imagery of Irving Penn's cigarette buds be as powerful if rendered as 8x10" prints? Ever since the mid 80's when Jeff Wall started creating huge lightboxes creating cinematic art tableaux that were derivatives from famous large representational paintings from masters, the size the photographic images have taken, the lush scale and grandiose proportions has been pushed to obscene proportions.

A few weeks ago, I emailed photographer Alec Soth represented by Gagosian Gallery and very gently asked some questions of about why he prices, sizes and editions his work. His comments are posted here on his blog, Alec Soth's Blog.
I respect Alec's work and what he has to say for the most part, but I questioned his gigantic sizes of his prints as just a mechanism to sell his work for more money and I asked him how he feels the bigger is better component plays into the visual integrity of his work. His reply in short, "I understand there is a hunger amongst photographers to talk about these financial matters but I am utterly bored with the topic."

In a recent article in Art Forum discussing the paintings of Julie Mehretu, Christian Haye, gallery director of The Project Gallery in NYC has an equation that sells art by the square foot:

"Can art be priced by the square foot, like carpet? On the stand, Haye testified that the gallery currently sets prices for Mehretu's work in just that manner, using a formula based on the size of the painting: $1,000 a square foot for works over 100 square feet, $1,500 a square foot for works from 50 to 100 square feet, and $2,500 per square foot for works smaller than 50 square feet, with a minimum price of $25,000."

The rise of photography in the contemporary art world has now placed itself on the same pedestal with painters and sculptors. Last year Alec Soth's show was followed only months later by a multimillion dollar Richard Serra extravaganza. In order for photography to take it's rightful place in contemporary art history and in the art market the financial gaps between sculptures-paintings-photographs, has to be relatively bridged.

A collector walks into a Chelsea gallery expects to spend at least $100,000 on art, and is now asked if he is interested in stimulating his collection with 4 photographs for the same price that are from the same series that are hanging in the Whitney. To help photography to command prices that can compete against a Serra, Koons, or Twombly the criteria of the photographic work is not defined by the historical importance of the artist, rather the criteria in question is "Can the work be measured in feet and not in inches?" The economics of multimillion dollar gallerists have dictated that there is a relative equation with size and importance.

Recently, a friend of mine, Emmet Gowin had a surprising exhibition at Pace Macgill in midtown, and the show was simple and beautiful. The photographs were full of wonderous emotion, elements of alchemy, spirituality, created works of one of a kind prints that were painstakingly crafted. I said the exhibition was suprising because the prints were impressively small, fitting the intimacy of the work. The price of the print was dictated by the quality of the image not its physical girth. Needless to say it was refreshing.

Just as modernism and abstraction was a direct act against representation I hope that there are photographers out there that wish to create works that communicate with much power but rely soley on THE SIZE OF THINGS, and leave the work to speak for itself.

Manufactured Landscapes

2009-10-05T07:18:00-04:00

Just saw Burtynsky in Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary film on the photographer and his ongoing work dealing with man's effect on the landscape of the industrialized world. After the Mao dynasty the agrarian/urban landscape in China was 90%/10%, that figure is now changed completely to 30%/70% urban. The imagery that he deals with is on a massive scale: industrialization, overpopulation, pollution, human rights issues, and the irreversible ecological effects that man forces on the planet make for a queezy documentary. However, Burtynsky's strong view on not vocalizing sides, rather letting the imagery speak is what makes him as an artist and documentarian so effective.
Check him out here - Edward Burtynsky

You look like I feel

2009-03-25T22:23:33-04:00

Robert Longo- whom I am just getting to know a little better is a friend of kinetic sculpture artist Jon Kessler. Both are in the band The Ex Patsy's that have recently gotten back together to play a couple of shows in the city and in Germany. Longo's ability to speak through his drawings is immediate, fierce and upfront. His lush-vibrant distinct post-punk attitude in his early works of dancers and of friends have this uncontrollable flappable rage- that i love.

I am viewing these drawings again for ideas and inspiration, although this work is decades old it feels so contemporary, conceptual and real, the way good work often does.

REST.

2008-12-11T18:10:36-05:00

I have been creating a body that I have loosely based on the notion of rest. I feel that before I came to NYC I needed one, and since then the impact of living and working here has me constantly thinking about the need for rest and what it means.

I looked at the Wikitionary definition of rest and found this:

REST-

(sleep): sleep, slumber
(relief from exertion): break, repose, time off
(freedom from trouble): peace, quiet, silence, stillness, tranquility
(repose afforded by death): peace
(object designed to be used to support something else): cradle (of a telephone), support

My favorite without getting all Ordeal by Roses on everyone, is "repose afforded by death."
Which leads me to the whole western perception of death, but I'll leave that for another post...

Reissue, repackage, repackage!

2008-11-17T22:52:46-05:00

Some old images that I have taken in the past seem to relate to new work that I am creating now. They seem to have sighed a breath of life back into themselves. After taking a look at Eggleston's mammoth Whitney exhibition on Friday, I realized he would reuse old images- appropriating them in a slightly different manner with the next body of work. ie/ The Eggleston Guide somehow bleeds into Los Alamos. So can you tell the difference between the "classics" and the images that have never seen the light of day?

DANGERS OF AN INDIGENT PHOTO

2008-11-13T17:24:13-05:00

Charles Traub- The MFA Director at SVA has a wonderful list of do's and don'ts titled, "Maxims from the chair." After hearing about it through Alex Soth's blog a year ago, I have revisted the maxims for laughter and also for serious inspiration. One of the don'ts is, "Don't photograph indigent people, particularly in foreign lands."

A few months back I travelled to Bahia, Brazil and had the opportunity to photograph some wonderful coffee farmers in a small coffee farm in Utinga. The need to include the portraits of the farmers as a direct extension of the landscape series was absolutely necessary. I found the freedom, poise, and strength of the people there intoxicating and mysterious. At the same time the elements of style that the farmers possessed was infinite.'t photograph indigent people, particularly
in foreign

Crude Son

2008-04-10T23:55:11-04:00

Gregory Crewdson at Luhring Augustine
Is that right? Is it garish or an absolute delight? Are we sick of the big work yet? Judging on the 30 grand price tag the galleries certainly are reveling in the return of Yale's grand cinematic delight.
Crewdson's new show at the Luhring Augustine in collaboration with White Cube London, and Gagosian LA is exactly what it is has been built up to be. It is absolutely, spectacularly, boring! Having said that, within the bore there is a little depth that resonates. I am as white toast as the next guy, and I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle. I have to say, the absolute pain that the suburbs can conjure is executed daftly in all of the images in Gregory's show. That alone I would say makes the spectacle worth it. However, I left the exhibition with a confused glazed smile across my face, much like the pained out characters that mime their way through each and every of his hyperrealistic images. Can we have just a tinge of emotion here? or is that just going to detract us from the conceptual suburban angst?

Bottom line, I was telling an arrange of people mostly photographers, artists, and digital retouchers that they have to go see this exhibition. The reason is the production value being simply astonishing. I am quite sure, though I did not speak with Crewdson, that 8 to 12 images are shot and phased together to create one seamless piece. The investment of digital craft and technique alone is worth your time.