Not There
A few months ago I saw Mark Rothko’s №21 from 1949. I stood in front of this painting for a while. There was something about it. There was also nothing about it. I realized that he had painted something that wasn’t there. He presented that space between things. Beyond anything concrete or useful. Logical or justifiable. A space that doesn’t need like we need. It just is.
Continuation
I’d like to say the concept of nothing is the solution to creativity. That it would liberate all things innovative, taking away the need for understanding, reasoning and justifying. That it would remove the weight of all work, all mediums, all discussions, all proposals, all things would be set off into unconquerable space. But the concept of nothing is, in itself, something.
Maybe the concept of continuation is the solution. The concept of movement, of moving, of change, of impermanence. Maybe it’s here where things can become no things. Where performances will become actual events that are seen or not seen, both of equal importance. Where work will not reach a rational end but continue into further and further reaches of unreasonableness. Maybe it’s here where we can allow ourselves to misunderstand all that is endless.
Art as Object
The problem with art as an identifiable object is that it’s pulled out of the natural flow of life and compromised into an understandable state of utility. Not that useful understanding is a bad thing, but it’s a limitation placed on something unlimited.
Regardless of our attempts to put a cloud in a jar, ideas, which are at the core of art objects, ultimately retain their freedom. Ideas are unconquerable and inseparable from momentum itself. Ideas are separate from art if art is defined in a static sense.
Two Points
Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk” looks unstable. But the two points connect at the most unified part. Connecting is at the highest point. The point of ascension. The point of acceptance, release and consummation.
Donut Shop
For me, art is not art at all but a unified moment. A moment of harmony that happens behind a donut shop on a Tuesday with no one around just as much as it happens in a painter’s studio.
Ambulatory
When left to the nature of awareness, we begin to know in that unknowable sense. We begin to connect with the movement of a state that unifies and connects beyond explanation. Like an ambulatory, awareness becomes the vessel through which we can align ourselves with a broader sense of existence.
Progress
I aim to dodge the limitations of identifiable art making. I aim to deflate preconditions of creativity so as to render ideas as having a life of their own. Ideas that defend anonymity and instigate evolution.
Trees
A tree has no concept of insecurity. It just is. A tree is complete. Not perfect, not imperfect. It’s enough.
Overheard
I have a running tally of conversations I overhear in public. “Little pillows will help”… “I was ashamed of that pizza place”… “If you’re gonna do lion, do lion shit.” That last one sticks with me. We passed each other on the sidewalk as she yelled that into her phone. She was right.
MTA Bus Drivers
While the MTA of NYC is far from perfect, the bus drivers are modern-day stoics. For twenty years, I’ve watched them heroically manage their emotions. Maybe some of them get home and throw all the furniture out the window, but at least while driving that bus, they’re in control of things that, too often, control us.
D.H. Lawrence
While the explanation of a moment is not the moment itself, when I read D.H. Lawrence, moment and recollection agree to disagree. Over the past three months I’ve read The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Sons and Lovers. While The Rainbow was my favorite, all three books bring you right to the point where description ends and experience begins. The happenings of nature, the force of unreasonable emotion, the process of death, and the potential of life. These themes bring you right to the limits of what’s possible for description before it has to become something else. I can’t recommend D.H. Lawrence enough.
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy’s book, What is Art?, asks a question that doesn’t have a logical answer. You can’t harness the wind. Like nature, this unspoken thing is beyond our concept of reason or justification.
Intention is in the Details
Details are the small parts of an art work that don’t stand out but complete the piece. They represent the intention of the maker. They symbolize the time, the discipline, the effort, and the enduring of an idea.
The lack of details has the opposite effect. It represents a lack of belief in one’s capacity to endure. But endurance is like eating, sleeping, walking, and talking. There is no lack of endurance. There’s no lack of belief. They’re both there.
Space is the Place
The title of this comes from a quote by the composer, Sun Ra. It reflects my admiration for John Coltrane. His evolution from Giant Steps, 1960, to Interstellar Space, 1967, shows the uncompromising trajectory of someone reaching further and further into a limitless depth. A kind of path that reveals not only music but intention. His search brought him to something whole. The work of Marcel Duchamp, Hugo Ball, John Cage, Joan Jonas, and Jay Defeo, among others, has this urgency. The kind that reaches beyond the limitations of the identifiable and into the liberation of the unknowable.