Steve Aishman Photography

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:48:25 PST

Information has evolved into a new species of garbage.

The entire concept of someone who is “informed” has changed and now fragmentary 140 character lines of text pass as communication. It is not that this new breed of information is false that is the issue, but rather it is an illusion of knowledge.

We are all watching as knowledge is drowning in a river of irrelevance. There is constant stream of data flowing from one communication device to the other without picking up value along the way.

Sci-fi novels of the 20th century did not anticipate this 21st century state of reading. Bradbury and Orwell taught us to fear totalitarian governments that wanted to burn books, but no one warned us about the general public expressing their freedom to write so much that nothing would be worth reading.

This century’s dystopia novels will be populated by people who read and write all day long, but somehow they know nothing. People who are continually informed and yet have no information. The heroes of these novels will be underground rebels who insist on writing and reading more than 3 lines of text. They can have clever names like Edmund Spenser or Milton Vyasa and these new logos-heros will insist on things like news outlets that pay for and conduct thorough research. Inevitably the next generation of dystopia novels will conclude with death by communal distraction.

This new species of information is worse than being deprived of information because information has become a plague. The more you read, the less you know.

Tyranny is no longer required for the ruin of a society; the freedom to pursue an infinite appetite for distractions can do the job more efficiently. Included in this is the distraction of continual creativity without rationality or analysis.

A 14 year old girl is reported to have sent 35,463 text messages, or about 1 text message a minute in the month of June 2008. “The Old Man and the Sea” only has 27,315 words. The texter in question has stated she texted that much in one month because she was at cheer camp. It seems safe to say that while she wrote more than a Hemmingway novel in one month, the level of valuable information transmitted was probably significantly lower.

The antidote to the venom of cultural distraction is to return to state where reading is considered a serious business. Where the goal of information transfer is no longer quantity, but quality.

It is now November; ticket buying season for Miami Basel even in a down economy. All of the fairs can be followed on Facebook or Twitter:
Pulse on Twitter
Pulse on Facebook
Art Miami on Twitter
Art Miami on Facebook
Miami Basel on Twitter
Miami Basel on Facebook
Aqua on Facebook
Etc.
Etc.

I take these modes of communication seriously. Why would I follow Miami Basel’s Twitter account? Because I want to see if the fairs will be worth an investment in a trip this year. I expect the information they post to actually be valuable. I expect to see exhibitor lists. I expect to see performance art schedules.

But I am already wrong.

One of the fair’s tweets already says, “See you out there!”
It was not worth reading.
It was information evolved into garbage and I was its garbage collector.
I have faith in a return to the seriousness of reading, but I expect it will be a while.

-Steve

Me in Miami Basel 2006

Morgan Pozgar, age 13, is officially the LG National Texting Champion

P.S.Follow me on Twitter or Facebook
OMG LOL

SCAD-Atlanta Photo Exhibition

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:46:50 PDT

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:14:50 PDT

This is a news report and criticism:

On Sept. 29, Boing Boing blogger Xeni wrote a criticism of this Ad by Ralph Lauren:

stating,"Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis."

Ralph Lauren's law firm has now threatened to sue the ISP of the website for use of an "infringing image" and sent them a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice. Copyright law clearly outlines "fair use" as including work reproduced for "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

So here is the simple question, does copyright law give people the right to threaten critics? Even if Xeni is ultimately proven protected under copyright law, BoingBoing, the ISP and Xeni all have to pay a lawyer in order to respond to the take down notice which has a very clear and formal procedure of notice and counter notice (Chilling effects explains the procedure here). Of course this is Ralph Lauren ultimate strategy because in the future, critics will be less likely to criticize their brand because the cost is not worth it.

In fact, if Big Red and Shiny or anyone else that reproduce my blog, runs the image, they may receive a take down notice and have to hire a lawyer to reply to it, ultimately not making this report worth running.

What about galleries, museums or artists that don't want negative reviews of their work? They can all send take down notices and effectively grind all criticism to a halt. In theory, as both a critical and news reporting publication, Big Red should be able to take any image from anywhere and reproduce it in any critical or news reporting article that is about the image. But in reality, Big Red has to be very careful because some images are simply not worth the required response to a take down notice.

Everything Ralph Lauren is doing is legal, just as it is perfectly legal for me to reproduce the image for reporting purposes on my blog and on Big Red. I say if every blogger joins with Xeni and BoingBoing and reports on this image, Ralph Lauren will be the one who can not afford to pay their lawyers to send out take down notices to everyone. As an added bonus, more people will see how terrible their ads, products and corporation are for our society.

So please, write a story about this image on your own blog. You can even take this whole article and reproduce it if you want with your own comments or criticism. I don't care, and trust me, I will not threaten to sue you for copyright infringement.

If you are a lawyer from Ralph Lauren, please send the take down notice to: saishman@blogger.com

Thanks and I look forward to the lawsuit,
Steve Aishman

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:21:40 PDT

There once was an artist from Boston
Who searched all the way to Austin
“Where is the art?”
He said with a fart
“If this country had balls, we have lost them!”

-A limerick by Steve Aishman

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:37:34 PDT

You shouldn’t be reading this in front of your computer.

People have a tendency to keep their computers in clean rooms like offices or on desks with flowers and potpourri.

This article should be read in your basement or in the archive section of the library.

Somewhere where dust mites thrive.

This article should be read somewhere that people try to avoid or cover up with a Glade plug-in.

Somewhere with history you can smell, but not nostalgia.

I’m not talking about nostalgia.

In the 19th century, nostalgia was considered a disease and its “symptoms” included despondency, melancholia, bouts of weeping, anorexia, and suicide attempts.

There is enough nostalgia and more than enough articles discussing how smell links us to the past.

I’m talking about a smell that snaps you into the present.

Like when you enter a room and you just know it is full of newspapers.

Or that it used to be a gym.

These are smells that make us hyperaware of our senses and more grounded in the present while simultaneously informing us about the past of a place.

Very few artists work with smell and I’m not sure why.

This weekend I saw Radcliffe Bailey’s piece “Storm at Sea, Chapter Three” at Solomon Projects in Atlanta. The piece is comprised of thousands of piano keys, a plaster bust, glitter, and silver candelabra. The problem in describing the piece on the Internet is that only a small part of the piece is visual. It’s easy to write about the intellectual elements of the piece like how the piano keys read as a link to jazz music while visually mimicking a wrecked ship in the gallery. It’s easy to write about how Radcliffe Bailey’s work is multi-layered examination of African American cultural history that reveals a deep understanding of how the past influences the present. What is hard is to evoke the visceral feeling of the piece that is only experienced when the piece is seen, smelled and heard.

Thousands of piano keys in a room have an overwhelming smell that is the grounding smell I am trying to describe. They also produce a palpable silence as the piano keys that were originally intended to make music, have been rendered eternally mute.
The smell of the gallery immediately makes the viewer’s senses hyper aware in the present, but the musty smell of the keys also speaks about the past. Radcliffe Bailey’s work is perfectly represented in this piece because his work deals with issues of African American history, but ultimately, the work is about providing an awareness of the present.

Because of the multi-sensory nature of the piece, it requires viewing in person. Hopefully, Radcliffe Bailey’s work will come to New England soon for more people to experience.

Radcliffe Bailey

Storm at Sea, Chapter Three (detail), 2009,
piano keys, plaster bust, glitter, silver candelabra

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:52:26 PDT

So the other day, I was at the Museum and I overheard two people talking about a Georgia O’Keefe.

“Oh they are clearly vaginas,” said one person.

“No, they’re just beautiful shapes and colors based on flowers, you’re imposing something that’s not there,” said the other.

“Well, flowers are sex organs, so work based on sex organs will always be suggestive, right?”

So I decided to try and find as many suggestive nature pictures as I could find on the Internet.

As usual with my column, I’m not sure if what I have compiled is an art piece made from appropriated materials, an editorial commentary, or just a form of pornography.

Enjoy.

(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

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(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

(link to where I got this image)

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:46:38 PDT

I'm often reminded of artist George Vlosich's work.

You're not familiar with his work?

He's one of the most written about artists of our generation.
The You Tube video of him making his work has been viewed over 1,600,000 times.
His art work has been featured in national press reports on CNN, World News Tonight, BBC, etc.
He even got to meet President Clinton and VP Gore while they were in office.

George was also featured on Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
You see, George Vlosich makes celebrity and sports drawings with an Etch-A-Sketch.
The first time I saw his work I was at a party held at a friend-of-a-friend's house when a report on his work came on. Everyone stopped in amazement to watch him make an Etch-A-Sketch drawing of a basketball player. When it was over, someone said, "Now that's real art. You know, something that takes skill and hours of labor. I know I couldn't do that because I don't have the patience."

I think I evaluate George Vlosich's work as a balanced between the questions of "how hard was it to make" versus "how much of this is just media sensation"?

Here are some other pieces for your judgment:

1. Santiago Sierra's 21 huge blocks of human feces that were shown at Lisson Gallery in 2007.

2. World's largest photo

3. CNN report on a college student who used post-it notes to make a portrait of Ray Charles

4. Micro-sculptor Willard Wigan who made sculpted the Lloyd's Building so it fits on top of a pin.

5. Justin Gignac's New York City Garbage

6. César Saez' Banana Over Texas work.

7. Scott Wade's Dirty Car Art

8.Tim Knowles tree drawings.

9. Steven J. Backman's toothpick art.

10. and finally, George Vlosich's work.

Please feel free to post your opinion on any of these artist's works in the comment section:

Heidi Aishman at PEM

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:18:26 PDT

Click to Play

Heidi Aishman views her work at Peabody Essex Museum for the "Trash Menagerie" exhibtion

Interview with Jane Winchell

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:02:36 PDT

August is the cruellest month.

The doldrums of the art world where half of the galleries are closed or not showing new work. Most of the artists are at the beach. August is an annual promise of new life that is coming with September openings. A false hope to those who believe that the art world is like a battery that needs the sun soaked summer to recharge. I don’t see solar panels on the roofs of any museums, quietly trickle charging for a fall explosion of human creative endeavors that will draw crowds in out of the cold. I look at the MFA Boston’s calendar and see nothing opening in the fall. Damián Ortega opens at the ICA in mid-September, how eagerly should wait to see how he takes apart familiar consumer culture and suspends it? Samson Projects opens Michael Phelanin in September, so I guess I’m excited to see how he re-contextualizes mundane consumer culture. (It seems like September will mostly be going out to see what I already have, but arranged differently.) A few galleries will open shows that sound truly interesting like Howard Yezerski who will open Rona Pondick in September or the Mills Gallery who will open its 21st Drawing Show - always a treat. But for the most part, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be waiting for. August is a pregnant pause with no release. No wonder most wars begin in August. People are hot and edgy, waiting for fall, but with no guarantee that anything will pan out. Empty promises make people irritable.

What are you looking forward to for fall? Maybe a trip to MOMA to see “Monet's Water Lilies” that opens in Sept.? (I doubt anyone’s booking a flight.) But there must be something out there … anyone? A show they are looking forward to seeing? Please leave info in the comment section.

Claude Monet at MOMA

Michael Phelanin who will open at Samson

Damián Ortega at who will open at the ICA Boston

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:22:48 PDT

Dear movie industry liars,

Why have you decided that it is easier to make a bad movie with good advertising than to just make a good movie? You should hire the guys who make your ads to make your movies because they must be super-creative to make your crap look interesting. Almost everyone I know shows up at the movies early to watch the previews because they are actually exciting! Usually the movie is a huge disappointment where people leaving saying things like “all the good scenes were in the ads” or “that is not at all what the ads made it look like”.

(I should probably say spoiler-alter here, but you are probably well aware that all of your movies are more spoiled than Madonna’s baby in a Gap store. Ok I’ll say it any way.)

Spoiler Alert!

Take for example the ads for “Orphan” which make the movie look scary and they actually say it has a twist, well it turns out the movie is a comedy because a) the parents are named John and Kate (ha!) b) you can see a microphone boom in a number of shots and c) the adopted girl is a midget. (Seriously, that’s the twist! How funny is that!)

The “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” ads make it look like a new movie, but most of it was stolen from other movies. The temple scenes were from Indiana Jones, the Terminatrix was from Terminator 3, the scene in the Matrix where Smith implants Neo with a bug was just completely ripped off, the battle in the Smithsonian was like “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”, and even parts of “Team America” were put into the plot of the Transformers! Why are you stealing from bad movies! How can you not be creative enough to steal from good movies?

Recipe for Crap Cake:
INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)
* 2 teenage love triangles
* 1 hour of character development followed by nothing
* 22 year old actors trying to play 16
* the ability to do magic, but no action scenes
* a PG rating
Bake 2.5 hours, makes one “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” crap cake.

In order to help you tell the truth about your movies, we recommend developing a whole new rating system. Since most the previous rating systems like the PG scale, thumbs-up/thumbs-down or the “how many” stars system appear to be arbitrary, completely political, or have no meaning at all, we have developed a new system for you. Feel free to implement it as you see fit.

Our new movie rating system is based on the award winning 1980’s television series “The Golden Girls.” As everyone knows, the best part of the series was old women saying inappropriate things. So from now on, movie ads should not say things like “Movie of the decade – New York Times” or “A real popcorn flick – the Boston Globe” and instead they should quote from the “Golden Girls” like:

”Fasten your seatbelt, slut puppy. This ain't gonna be no cakewalk.”-Sophia
“I hope you like it, Dorothy said you would like something crotchless.”-Rose
“I'm not patronizing you I'm mocking you.” - Dorothy
“Eat dirt and die trash.“ –Blanche
“Funny, touching and with a surprise twist ending. I wonder if it was true. Damn that stroke.” - Sophia
“It looks like the road company of Cocoon.” - Dorothy
“I haven't seen that much face-eating since Silence of the Lambs.” - Sophia
“I thought since you look like Yoda you were also wise.” - Blanche
“Try kissing my behind. It's a real peach!” –Sophia

Using "Golden Girls" quotes in movie ads will be just about as accurate as current movie ads, but they will also be funny. Or you could try making good movies, but I doubt that will happen.

Concerned Citizens,
The Aishman

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:34:20 PDT

I pull over into a gas station that has a fruit stand set-up in the parking lot. You know, one of those stands under a tent with a huge hand painted sign that looks like a Walker Evans photo. Everything is the size of something else. Oranges the size of grapefruit. Grapefruit the size of watermelon.

“It’s all organic. 100% natural.” Says the teenage girl behind the counter without lifting her head to look at me. Bored. Hot. Tired. She looks like she’s been sitting in the Georgia sun all day. Rotting. Or maybe ripening …

“How can this food be organic? It’s unnaturally huge …” I ask.

“I dunno. I’m just supposed to say that or no one will buy it. Everything’s all organic, all natural, all the time at this market. I guess it’s just our culture now.” She replies. “You know that’s true for everything …” She looks off to the side and then back down, as if testing me. Seeing if I’ll take the bait.

So, I do.

“What do you mean?” I ask, knowing I’ve sprung the trap. She’s been waiting all day to talk to someone. Sitting at a boring job can either be mind numbing or time for contemplation. The difference between a roadside fruit stand and a monastery is attitude. I think I’m standing in front of a monk who is just pretending to be bored …

“See people don’t understand that this isn’t simply a “market”.” She says without looking up. ” This is our culture. It’s the culture of the 21st century where the economy dominates everything, particularly the way people think. For food, people want things to be “all natural”; the fact that nature makes the deadliest substances around does not seem to matter. I bet if I told some people who stop through here that arsenic or cyanide are 100% natural (which they are) they’d eat some! Our culture is the manifestation of the ideas that drive the economy. Like what do you do?”

“I’m an artist.” I reply.

“Well the art market is just like this stand. It’s not just a market, it is culture. People have a hard time understanding this because we have no distance from it. It’s easier to look back in time at artists like Michelangelo. The church was the culture of his time, so he painted the Sistine Chapel. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Mikey resented the commission, because his feelings and intentions are not important. All that is left the expression of the culture of the time. All that will be left of this time is the market, unless something changes, which it always does. So what type of artist are you? Do you make work for the market, about the market, or something else?”

“You speak like you’re an artist …” I dodge the question.

She smiles. “Everyone needs a summer job.” She still hasn’t made eye contact. I finally see why. She’s been looking down because she’s been drawing on a pad I could not see behind all of the huge fruit. She’s been drawing me since I walked up. There are stacks of journals and drawing pads behind the tables.

“Do you sell those?” I ask.

“I sell fruit.” She puts the pad down, stands up and makes eye contact. “So are you going to buy some or what?”

Looks like I failed the test. Everything else was all business after that. I ask if I can take a picture and she says no.

So, I buy some 100% natural, all organic apples the size of softballs and drive off.

I don’t know why I bought the apples.

I’m allergic to fruit.

Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near Birmingham,1936

Massive apples by a regular apple.

Mikey’s Chapel painting

A Report from the Phamtom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:15:51 PDT

“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.” - Marshall McLuhan

For a lot of people, myself included, summer has always been a time of extracurricular study. This desire to learn in the summer seems to have developed when I was in grade school and my parents would send me to places like computer camp or wilderness “adventures” or twice to Space Camp. (That’s right I went twice.) What my parents instilled in me was that it did not matter what subject I was studying because all learning made my life richer. This desire to learn virtually any subject has continued into my adult life where I’ve spent my summer months learning how to rock climb, getting my pilot’s license, living in Argentina to speak Spanish, etc. Several years ago I decide to spend a summer in the south of France at cooking school. Like all of my endeavors, if I was going to make the investment to study cooking, I wasn’t going to waste my time, so I enrolled at a professional cooking school. I had no intention of becoming a professional chef, but then again, I had no intention of becoming a professional artist when I enrolled in art school either.

As a whole, the time I spent in France was a fantastic experience, but one instructor at the school nearly ruined the whole thing for me. The fact of the matter is that I am not a very good chef and this one instructor felt it was his job to inform me of this every day. He would constantly berate and belittle me, saying that I was wasting my money at cooking school because I would never become a professional chef. He would go on long tirades about how the school was a sham because it was just taking money from people who did not really have a chance at becoming a world-renowned chef. He would then turn on the other instructors, calling them hypocrites who were just there for a check because they would actually try to help the students improve their skills even though they knew that most of the students would not go on to be top chefs. Of course, the other instructors tried to speak calmly to him and explain that it was ridiculously arrogant for them to assume they understood the reasons why any one student was at school and it was equally impossible for them to ever really know what any student was getting out of the educational experience. They would try to explain that their job was not to just inform that students that they would be failures as professional chefs and then belittle them into quitting but rather their job as a teacher was to simply help students improve their skills no matter what. The problem was that this instructor was so arrogant that he could not see that sometimes people have different goals for their education that might not be the same as the reasons he had for going to school. He could not see that he was not being helpful and honest by "telling the truth"; he was just not smart enough to see that there can be many truths, all of which are equally valid.

Take my experience at cooking school, for example. Except for that one instructor, I got more than I expected from my experience at cooking school. I may not be a master chef employed at a top restaurant in Paris, but now I can taste the ingredients and skill put into a master level meal. My life is totally and completely enriched by the experience because the school has changed how I interact with every meal I eat (and I can cook a few meals really well.) But, according to that one instructor, I wasted my money and all of the instructors who helped me enrich my life were nothing but liars and hypocrites because they didn’t tell me over and over again that I was a failure. The notion that people can enrich their lives through the learning process was completely missed by that instructor and I see now how that was his limitation and his loss.

In fact, cooking school is one of the reasons that I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I saw how fulfilled the other instructors were with their jobs. Everyday, people would go to them and ask for help at making something and by the end of each class, everyone’s life was a little bit richer. I can’t think of a better job than one where people come to me for help making something. I love teaching art and I don’t care if my students go on to become top artists because that’s not my job.

I’m not sure what I will spend this summer learning, but I’m sure it will make my life richer and I’m reasonably sure that I will not going on to be a professional at it (but I’ve been wrong about that many times before.) I highly recommend that everyone take some time and study something this summer. If it’s art school, that’s great. Just don’t let anyone tell you that education is a waste of time if you don’t go on to be a professional. Education is always enriching.

If you are learning or doing something interesting this summer, please share it in the comments section.

I spent one whole week just making omelets.

My wife and I teaching photography in the “summer” to underprivileged students in the “Ciudad Oculta” or Hidden City of Buenos Aires.
For info on what my wife and I teach in the summers, click here.

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:50:57 PDT

I don’t know a single artist who if you ask them why they make art will say that their primary goal is for people to say nice things about them and their work. Artists, of course, have a wide range of motivations for making work that usually change from day to day and project to project. Some typical motivations for making art that I have heard recently include self-expression, need to make political commentary, desire to contribute to culture, etc. As we all learned when we were children, the reasons for making art are virtually endless and are entirely based on the individual. Regardless of motivation, it appears that art making is a relatively safe venture and the worst thing that can happen is that someone might say something mean spirited about a piece or perhaps even write a nasty article that misrepresents the work or artist. Strangely though, I have noticed that many artists become disproportionately caught up in what other people say about them or their practice. One bad review or spiteful comment and an artist’s practice can be severely derailed, even though exterior validation was never a primary goal for making work in the first place. Well, things have been placed in perspective for me recently as two of my close friends have become sick from making art. Suddenly, caring if someone else makes an offhanded or malicious comment about a piece of art seems ridiculous. One of my friends may die and that’s not a joke.

I’m sure all artists have heard anecdotal stories about artists who have been injured while making art, like Karl Zerbe. Zerbe was an artist in the 1940’s who fled the Nazi’s, had his work destroyed as “degenerative” art, became the head of the Department of Painting at the SMFA, but then had to stop painting because the toxic fumes from his encaustic paintings were killing him. I also know many photographers who have developed severe reactions to darkroom chemistry and can no longer be around the chemistry, but I don’t know anyone who has died. It was shocking to me that one of my friends has developed cancer from paint fumes and another is permanently injured. One of my friends, artist Michael David, is bravely open about how toxic gases released while he was painting have destroyed 70% of the nerves in his feet and 30% of the nerves in his right hand. Painting nearly killed him. Do you think he cares what someone says about him or his work any more?

My other friend who has just had surgery to remove the cancer caused by paint fumes would prefer to remain anonymous, but not because she is afraid of what people will think. In fact, she has entered a phase of art making that I believe most artists would be jealous of. She truly does not care what other people think about her or her work. She continues to make artwork because it adds meaning to her own life and part of that meaning is allowing other people to share in her life by displaying the work. If someone else likes it or doesn’t like it, she doesn’t care. It’s not for them; it’s for her.

She is in the place where I want to be when I make work. Whether it’s artwork or writing or anything else in my life, I want to be in a place where people are welcome to say whatever they want because I don’t care. From now on, every time I make something that I allow other people to participate in, I will think of my friend and her unbelievably positive and wholly freeing attitude of not caring what anyone else thinks. Well, I guess that’s not quite true. I wrote this article in particular because I know my friend with cancer will read it and I hope she’ll know that I have nothing but love, respect and support for her. Anyone else can comment whatever they want about me, my writing, my artwork, whatever. Believe me, I don’t care. A snide comment is not the worst thing that can happen.

Michael David, “Atlantic”, 2001-2002, Oil and wax on wood, 30”x26”
Michael David’s work is available through Lowe Gallery

Karl Zerbe, “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife”, 1945, Encaustic on Canvas, 47”x36”
Karl Zerbe’s work is available at Mercury Galllery

There is an article on how to safely use encaustics here.

Interview with Julian Cox about Richard Misrach

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:39:26 PDT

Richard Misrach’s “On the Beach” opens at the High Museum tonight and runs through August 23.

Heidi Aishman

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:25:24 PDT

Click to Play

Heidi Aishman making work for the Peabody Essex Museum exhibition "Trash Menagerie"

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:52:26 PDT

The recent economic slow down has hit the entire global arts community extremely hard, but strangely, I have not seen many artists using the current state of affairs as the central dialog of their work. This could be because the changes in our economy occurred so recently and quickly, but in general it seems that making art about crisis is one of the fastest and most fundamental ways that people process and respond to any set of circumstances. I have even heard of an artist who collected pieces of debris and was making sculpture while in the Superdome in 2005. The American Red Cross reports that some 275,000 homes were lost during Katrina, and, rightfully, that loss has become the nexus of thousands of artists work. Same with 9/11, same with the wars, or any other large cultural crisis. Artists usually take pride in being cultural first responders that help society gain perspective and work through a crisis through the act of making art. Many estimates expect unemployment to top 30,000,000 by the end of 2009. By the end of 2009, RealtyTrac estimates there will be some 2,000,000 families who have their homes in foreclosure. And that’s just in the US. Where’s the work on those losses?

One installation I saw at the Contemporary in Atlanta had an installation by Detroit native and conceptual sculptor Mark Wentzel called “Morale Hazard”. Wentzel’s installation deals directly with the current economic climate and the traumatic loss felt over the transformation of the auto industry. For his installation, Wentzel has suspended a 1965 Ford Mustang (a classic Detroit muscle car) from the ceiling of the Contemporary in front of a wall drawing of a mustang running head long off of a cliff/graph of economic indicators. Crawling away from the hanging Mustang is an anthropomorphized V-8 engine that appears to have evolved its’ own legs and corporate necktie as if the engine itself is desperately trying to abandon the discarded husk of the previous generation’s concept of the automobile for something new, organic and unknown. Wentzel’s work is able to provoke conceptual questions about our teetering auto industry while simultaneously producing visceral awe at seeing a 3000 pound machine hanging from the ceiling. His work challenges icons of masculinity, freedom, and independence while raising questions about our dependence on the previous century’s social and financial structures. Mark Wentzel’s installation is a fascinating example of work that has multiple modes of entry and directions for interpretation. Subsequently, his gallery talk was filled with people who had hugely diverse interests, like people who were interested in art, people who only wanted to talk about the economy and some people who were just interested muscles cars.
If you have a chance and are Atlanta, go to the Contemporary and check it out. If you see any interesting art about the current economic crisis, please leave a link to it in the comments section.

Installation shot of Mark Wentzel's "Morale Hazard"

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Preview discussion with Mark Wentzel before his gallery talk at the Contemporary in Atlanta, May 23, 2009

Interview by: Steve Aishman

Printology Atlanta 2009

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:05:45 PDT

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Printology Atlanta 2009

Steve Aishman

Mattress Factory Open Studios 2009

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:17:29 PDT

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Mattress Factory Open Studios 2009

Atlanta, GA

Interviews by: Steve Aishman

YouTube version

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 10 May 2009 08:50:38 PDT

A Report from the Phantom Zone:
Why I love abstract art and think it is getting better.

“The eye is the natural master of pattern recognition. The eye demands satisfaction by invoking in us strong feelings of puzzlement.”
- John Whitney (IBM’s first Artist in Residence in 1966)

As a science, pattern recognition seems like a simple to understand statistical model of machine learning where raw data is observed and then classified. However, there are some fascinating philosophical implications to pattern recognition as the science is applied to human cognition. Most people are taught that perception functions like Johannes Mueller's notion that nerves telegraph messages to the brain where perception occurs. Others like J. J. Gibson propose different models like ecological psychology where Gibson writes, “The very idea of a retinal pattern-sensation that can be impressed on the neural tissue of the brain is a misconception, for the neural pattern never even existed in the retinal mosaic.”(1) Essentially, Gibson promoted Thomas Reid’s concept of direct realism and rejected the notion that all of perception is in the mind. Gibson’s concepts had a large influence on designers like Donald Norman who wrote "Things That Make Us Smart”, which talks about how humans create visual tools like diagrams to "overcome the limitations of brainpower."

As an artist, this is where things get very interesting. The Flynn Effect seems to document that average IQ points seem to be rising about 3 points a decade. While this may not mean that people are getting more intelligent, it certainly means more people are able to achieve higher scores on a test that fundamentally times people on various types of pattern recognition. Have you ever seen an IQ test? How many questions are of the form “Which these best completes the following sequence?” or something conceptually similar like analogy questions, etc.? Our society defines intelligence as pattern recognition. The implications of this are massive and simple at the same time.

Artist throughout history have used pattern recognition in their work for centuries, but perhaps none more than abstract artists like Kandinsky who developed his aesthetic using a specific geometric vocabulary. Kandinsky famously said, "There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression." But what happens when the viewer’s vocabulary of geometry has changed? Kandinsky’s abstract images are fundamentally constructed out of a vocabulary of lines and basic shapes such as triangles and circles. Today’s viewing public has a much more extensive geometric vocabulary and has become used to seeing and identifying geometric objects that Kandinsky had never heard of, like fractals or patterns from chaos theory. On a fundamental level, the Flynn Effect illustrates that viewers today are much better at pattern recognition and can recognize far more complex patterns than people in the 1940’s.

This has two interesting effects. 1. Visiting a museum is a very different viewing experience for 21st century viewers of abstract art than it was for early 20th century viewers. So, the next time you go to a museum and see a Kandinsky, try to look at it with more complex eyes and see what happens. 2. Contemporary abstract art is continuing to get more and more complex in fascinating ways that many people dismiss because the concepts have been around for over a century.

An examples of this is Yoon Lee who just had work at Pierogi in March. Where Kandinsky’s painting had squares and circles, Lee’s images contain Lorenz attractors and Mandelbrot sets. (While the term “Lorenz attractor” might sound complex, they appear in the graphics shown on the Weather Channel constantly. They are representations of the apparent chaos of a storm that for centuries was thought to be unpredictable, but contemporary scientists can predict the final outcome of storm using chaos theory. Human understanding of math has changed so dramatically over the last 100 years that what used to be viewed as images of abstract and unpredictable storms swirling are now considered useful scientific data.)
I’m very excited by the prospects of more abstract art and how abstract art actually reflects and supports the complexities of our society’s abilities to recognize patterns. In many ways, we can see how abstract art fits in with Donald Norman’s concept of how humans make visual representations to make us smarter. So go look at more abstract art. It will make you smarter.

(1) J. J. Gibson (1966) The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. P. 263

Kandisky
"Composition 8"

Yoon Lee

The Machete @ Aurora Cafe

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:31:14 PDT

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The Machete @ Aurora Cafe Interview by Steve Aishman

A Report from the Phantom Zone: Southern Double Feature

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:30:15 PDT

A Report from the Phantom Zone: Southern Double Feature
First: Artist and Media Theorist, Serene Al-Kawas and I have a dialog about the exhibition:
Atatürk
by Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

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iPod Version

Next, I interview Craig Drennen at his exhibition "Mistresses, Apemantus and Flattering Lords" at Gallery Stokes in Atlanta.

Warning!
* This exhibition contains adult language and imagery that may not be suitable for children or sensitive viewers.*

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iPod Version

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:04:48 PDT

So, this is the problem with language.
I went to a party the other day where I really only knew the host, everyone else was a stranger. This is how my conversation with the first person went:
“Hi, I’m Steve”
“Hi, I’m John. What do you do?”
“I’m a photographer.”
“Oh! Do you do family portraits, because my family could use a new one …”
“No, I’m a fine art photographer. I make photos for display in museums.”
“You mean you take pictures of art for the museum?”
“No, I make pictures that hang in the museum.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that was a job …”
This was followed by John looking at me like I was an idiot.

This is how my second conversation went:
“Hi, I’m Jill.”
“Hi, I’m Steve. What do you do?”
“I’m a painter.”
“Oh cool, I’m an artist too. What do you paint?”
“I paint houses.”
“You mean you make paintings of houses?”
“No, I work for a house painting company. I paint houses …”
“Oh …”
This was followed by Jill looking at me like I was an idiot.

This is how my third conversation went:
“Hi, I’m Steve”
“Hi, I’m Jack. What do you do?”
“I’m an artist.”
“Oh really, me too!”
“Cool, what do you do?”
“I’m a sandwich artist at the Subway downtown.”
“You mean the Subway restaurant?”
“Yah, I’m a sandwich artist there.”
“Oh …”
This was followed by Jack looking at me like I was an idiot.

This how my whole afternoon went and I could not seem to stop it. It was like I was using a different language no matter what I told people I did. What I realized is that our society no longer has any vocabulary for artists because most people simultaneously hate us, want to be us and appreciate us. This means that all of the terms for being an “artist” have been co-opted so that everyone can apply the terms to their own lives on some level. Somehow, everyone is an artist and everything everyone does is an art form. I have no problem with decentering concepts of art, but now when I say I am an artist, it has no meaning.

Perhaps more importantly, it also implies that what I do has no value.

I don’t have a solution for this, but I believe it is a problem that our community needs to address on some level. Artists are undervalued in our society partly because we refuse to define what we do in a meaningful and distinct way to other people. If we have trouble defining what we do, how can we expect other people to respect our place in society?

One obvious solution is for us to stop using the word “art” or “artist”. As a community, we should admit that we have lost those words forever because they no longer accurately define what we do to the rest of society. It seems logical that we should make up new terms, but when we have tried that in the past it has failed. Terms like “cultural creator” or “image maker” sound Marxist and most of society is afraid of Marx. Saying things like “I make work for museums” just alienates most people because most people have a love/hate relationship with museums.

I don’t have a solution, but I think one of the best parts of Big Red is that it is an artist community where we can bring issues and solutions to light for everyone. So I say we pool our resources and see what we all think about this problem:

What do you say when you meet some? Do you have the same problems articulating what you do? Do you have a solution to this problem?

If so, please leave a comment.

My favorite subway sandwich maker

My Subway Sandwich

Painters working

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:09:34 PDT

A collection of art news from around the globe over the past few years:

1. In 2008, Paul McCarthy’s “Complex Shit”, a giant inflatable dog turd, broke free, destroyed some power lines, and then crashed into a children’s home in Switzerland.

2. In January of 2009, a tattoo artist found a way to tattoo the white part of your eyes. State senators in Oklahoma have already pre-emptively banned the practice.

3. Since I’m writing about eyeballs, artist Xiang Chen paints by holding the brush with his eyeball.

4. In July of 2007, a woman was arrested for kissing a Cy Twombly painting that was worth about $2 million.

The 3x2m (9x6-foot) painting by US artist Cy Twombly is valued at more than $2m (£970,000).

5. In fashion news in 2008, a Swedish clothing company started making two-piece bikinis for girls as young as 2 months old.

6. In 2008, a horse named Cholla entered one of her paintings into a juried exhibition for a galley in Venice and was accepted without the judges knowing she was a horse. Cholla will have her work exhibited at Gallery Giudecca 795 in Venice, Italy in May of this year.

Cholla painting

But for me, the weirdest thing I have heard about this year is that Salander-O’Reilly Galleries was using art as the central commodity in their $88 million Ponzi scheme. Apparently, people like John McEnroe would give Lawrence Salander money to buy art for them and then immediately re-sell it at a higher price. While I realize that art is a commodity that functions in the capital market like most other commodities, art just does not seem like the best choice of commodity to use for a Ponzi scheme. The main reason why it does not seem like the best choice is that art is not a very liquid asset and Ponzi schemes usually thrive on short-term profits that usually need a fast turnaround. Also, most of the pieces of artwork he was using in his Ponzi scheme were unique pieces of physical art, but he was able to sell the same paintings to multiple people. I honestly had no idea that people bought and sold art so quickly that it was possible for the art dealer to actually sell the same painting to two people and neither of them know about it! Apparently, Salander also regularly sold artwork that did not belong to him. I assumed that when someone bought a piece of art at some point they would actually take possession of the art, put it somewhere and look at it. But obviously I’m wrong because none of his clients seemed to catch on even after he would “sell” them a painting for a few million dollars and then “sell” the same painting to someone else and then never deliver the painting to either person. As an artist, this use of art as a Ponzi scheme commodity is truly fascinating and clearly highlights how much weirder the world of art is than I could have ever expected.

Gorky’s “Pirate I” which Salander allegedly sold to multiple people.

A Report from the Phantom Zone

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:00:41 PDT

When I travel, one of my favorite things to do is to visit smaller, less well-known museums. The reason why I love to visit smaller museums is that I can really enjoy visiting them without any expectations. When I visit MOMA or the Guggenheim, the work had better be good. In fact, the quality of work had better be fantastic if they are going to claim that they are two of the high water marks of exhibiting art in the world. With regional museums, I have absolutely no expectations and that is actually quite freeing. Most regional institutions don’t claim to exhibit the best quality work in the world because they usually exist to support a small community and sometimes they try to positively display local collections or artists. A great example of this is the DeCordova Museum whose mission statement even says that they focus primarily on the art of the New England region. This is not to say that the DeCordova doesn’t show world-class art, but when I visit the DeCordova, I expect them to take more risks and exhibit regional artists whose work may not be as well known outside of New England. By taking on more risk and showing less well known artists, the DeCordova is free to present work that is not as resolved, but that is the best part of the Museum. Regional institutions are able to highlight interesting and valuable work without worrying if they are showing the best quality work in the world because they serve a different function.

Here are a few of my favorite smaller or more regional museums in the Northeast that all show great work and take high risks by showing regional work:

The DeCordova
The Portland Museum of Art
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
The Phillips Collection
Currier Museum of Art
Peabody Essex Museum
The Newark Museum

While I love to visit regional museums that are dedicated to the history or art of a small community, my favorite thing to visit is a museum that is dedicated to exhibiting one niche item. For example, the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto is a huge museum that is dedicated to exhibiting shoes and even has a monthly Podcast about shoes from the assistant curator! The Center for Puppetry Arts, The Computer History Museum and the National Cowboy Museum are all really amazing museums that have active scholarly research while simultaneously seeking to preserve and display important elements of our culture. These are all serious museums, not roadside attractions that are definitely worth visiting and again, the best part is that you can visit them with no expectations because they are museums that are not even trying to compete with the quality of work being shown at large international art museums.

I also love visiting museums that have unusual collections. The Currier Museum in Manchester New Hampshire is a fantastic museum that shows some of the best in contemporary and modern art for a local audience, but they also house the Henry Melville Fuller Paperweight Collection with over 330 glass paperweights. I went to the Currier to see their latest show, the Vergobbi collection, but the fact that they also house a huge paperweight collection proved almost as fascinating as the Modernist collection on display. However, if you live near Boston, then one of the best and most unique museums in the world is housed in Dedham, just outside of the men’s room of the Dedham Community Theatre.

I love the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) because it is exactly what it advertises to be. It does not say that it is competing with MOMA for exhibiting the finest quality work in the world, but the exact opposite. One of the things MOBA has done that MOMA has not is allowed all viewers to see their collection for free. So, if you go, you can’t be that disappointed because it cost you nothing! The MOBA is a great place to visit because it can be viewed so many ways. For me, I think that the existence of the Museum raises fundamental questions about art and museology. It seems to me that unlike most other institutions, MOBA does not to re-enforce previously and arbitrarily created notions of good and bad art, but it challenges the binary itself. What does it mean when a museum validates a piece of art as good or bad? What does it mean when a museum fulfils its mission statement, but that mission statement exists outside of a hierarchy that people are used to? Also, the work on display directly indicts the viewer. Who am I to say if a piece is good or bad? What gives me the right to blatantly laugh at someone else’s work? Why do I feel entitled to judge? I love the museum because while I’m there I am very aware of my own aesthetic prejudices as well as those around me.

So I love smaller or regional institutions because they exist outside of the hierarchy of larger institutions. Places like MOMA and the Tate should be competing against each other for larger global relevancy, but other museums are equally important and frequently, they can bring issues to the table that larger institutions can’t. The real key to enjoying smaller institutions is to remember that not everything should be compared using the same criteria. If smaller institutions are evaluated for their own merits, then they can be really enjoyed for what they are: regional and unique.

Do you know of a good regional or unique museum?
Then please add it in the comment section so that I can go visit too!

The inside of the Peabody Essex Museum

My favorite piece from the Museum of Bad Art
Lucy In the Field With Flowers
Oil on canvas by Unknown
24" x 30"
Acquired from trash in Boston

Amy Freeman @ Gallery Stokes

noreply@blogger.com (saishman) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:45:39 PST

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Amy Freeman

Gallery Stokes

"Wide Awake"

Interview by Steve Aishman