a lot of things happened this week.

• visited Keith Mayerson at his studio/apartment in Chelsea. 
• went to see Wendy White's show for the second time and she talked to us about her new (i mean NEW) work. 
• went to the Jeff Bailey Galley to see Jackie Gendel and listen to her speak, this was my second time hearing her speak and I was seeing a lot of the same work only finished. 
• Had a studio visit with Cameron Martin and saw these beautiful paintings. 

Also I guess after having a small seminar on the ideas and readings about Wendy White and Gerhard Richter's show I am starting to understand why these things that are made by computers are sticking by so loyally to painting. I feel like this is all a little too hip for me to understand but I do like the idea of physically using these things as paintings. The physical experience of going up to something, examining it, sitting back and trying to figure out the material is really important. 

I also read an interview that I wish I had read four years ago-- Brooklyn Rail with Matthew Day Jackson. His attitude about art in general is really brilliant. He's super open and honest, also he's starting to rely heavily on assistants  doing work for him. I'm still trying to decide whether I'm okay with that or not.  

These are a few of the paintings I saw 

Cameron Martin. Breach Stage, 2012, 40×30, inches, acrylic on canvas

Wendy White. El Rocko Lounge. 2012

Acrylic on canvas, digital print on vinyl over metal frame

Keith Mayerson, "Louise Bourgeois at her Salon," 2008. Oil on Canvas 

I'm feeling a little confused because there's not one thing describing painting right now. A lot of things are being produced digitally and things that are not made digitally are made by hand with a deliberate aid from a digital program. I'm just really confused about what is painting and what is not painting. Are these things being called painting when they shouldn't be? Painting is starting to be more than painting or less than painting? Still thinking//////////////////////////

conceptual abstraction at the hunter college show

this show held at the gallery at hunter college was the last stop on my trip to the city this weekend. my shoes were killing my feet but i made it to this show that was only two avenues from port authority basically out of curiosity. it was really nice to have this remind me about painting, and the reasons why I love painting. I love seeing work that makes me feel at home, something familiar and refreshing. I saw paintings by Mary Heilman, David Reed, Jonathan Lasker, Tom Nozkowski, Stephen Westfall, Peter Halley, John Zinsser, Phillip Taaffe, Rich Kalina. I love re-bonding with these paintings that I love, that made me want to paint in the first place. Also I have never seen Jonathan Lasker's work in person and it was so much more amazing than in books and on the internet.

Also another memorable show in the opposite way was Gerhard Richter's "strips" which pissed me the fuck off, which I assume is what he wants the typical painter to feel. The paintings have of course no sense of touch because they are printed and then glass is put over them. Looking at the overwhelmingly large set of colored thin stripes can easily vibrate enough to irritate your eyes and yet for some reason you cannot look away. These paintings are made for rich people to buy which is all apart of the underlying meaning. This is what painting may come to, which is frightening. I really loved the sculpture in the show, in the same way that the paintings are technical and mechanical so is this sculpture and it also showcases the paintings in different worlds.

I need to understand, but for now I can just say that I share a love hate relationship with these paintings as does the rest of the world who has seen these. 

Gracious PIC of myself~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's October 3rd

I can read, so I read some things lately I've read an interview with Jeff Wall who is a photographer who took two years to produce one single image, "The Flooded Grave". Most of his photography has a sense of documentation and spontaneity, as if he is catching a beautiful moment or a strange moment and illuminating it to be a cinematic image. In reality he is putting an obsessive amount of work into stitching multiple sites and photos together to create a spontaneous looking site. This photo can be divided into three sections, the cemetery can be divided in two, while the hole in the ground dug from a grave is multiple shots that were taken in his studio with marine life specialists who helped create the perfect image. I love photography, but sometimes its hard to understand the technical means of creating the photograph. I love the way that this seems easy, but its not. The labor goes unnoticed without prior knowledge of the piece. It looks effortless. I thought this piece was worth sharing, it relates to my current struggle which is my cake painting. It is going by so slowly and I am not working on anything else right now, and if I continue to not work on anything else I'm going to lose my mind and only care about the cake. So I'm giving the cake a break so I can go back to my normal paintings. Poor Jeff Wall must have lost his mind thinking about the same thing everyday. 

He speaks really nicely about the process of making it, he seems really excited about making it rather than talking about the ideas behind it. He has these wonderful ideas about the versatility of a single image and how many realities it can contain.  A small snippet from the interview :

Jan Tumlir: Thomas Crow described your use of digital technology as opening up the "occult potential" of, I suppose, representation. How do you understand that word, "occult," in regard to what you're doing here?

Jeff Wall: I think it has to do with the fact that, before photography, the coexistence of separate domains in pictures was taken for granted. Paintings showed angels or demons interacting with humans, for example, as a routine matter, because it is routine within the nature of the medium. Painting and drawing make no demand as to the ontological consistency of the things being depicted; they don't have any means to do so, and that's one of the main reasons they've been so significant in the history of the imagination. Photography seemed to be something quite different, at the beginning; it seemed to prove that there was only one world, not many-one visible world, anyway. But I think that is only a suggestion made by photography, not a conclusion. And the suggestion can be taken in so many different ways. I think photography, by nature, does have artistically legitimate routes of access into the aesthetic of "multiple worlds," of "imaginary ontologies." 

Definitely worth a read if you get a chance.