So barrring some unforseen event, I am going to be going to Europe this June for some of the art fairs. I will be going to the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, Documenta, and skulptur projekte muenster. I will be going with my dean, Okwui Enwezor, who curated Documenta 11, and so we will be meeting with a lot of the artists and curators as we go to these different places. I am very excited about this, and it looks like it’s going be a lot of fun.

Reappropriating video advertising
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Nick Cave has always impressed me with the volume of his creative output, especially considering the personal demons that he has had to deal with.

Here is a collection of some videos, in no particular order.

I have been thinking of Walter Benjamin a lot of late, owning to the the fact that I have been dividing my time between painting and drawing, and purely digital work. Working with this binary set of media I have been thinking about Benjamin’s “aura of the original” in terms of the work that I have been producing, and how, despite my initial rejection of his ideas, I have come around to agree, at least in part, with what he was saying.

In my own egalitarian belief system, art and knowledge should be open to everyone, and reproducibility allows for that. Through the means of books and the internet, information is passed from the few to the many. Although, in terms of art, the passing of pure information can be enlightening, we loose the “aura of the original.”

For Benjamin however, the loss of the aura does not necessarily have negative connotations, as it is tied to art’s fetishistic impulses, and to primitive, feudal or bourgeois power structures; reproduction brings art to the view and control of the masses, leading to the shattering of it’s aura.

While I can agree that the creation of an original creates in it a value that leaves it susceptible to fetish and ritual, there is something to be said for an original where the hand of its creator is visible. As not only its aura, but its connection to the artist are in intact, in a way that is not possible with digital work, original pieces create a connection with the viewer, an immediacy, that is not possible with reproduction.

In the end, I can see a duality setting in, where artists work in two modes: the first, where artist work in traditional, tightly controlled originals. In the second, artists give up that control over their work for reproducible work that is easily disseminated among the masses.

If you happen to be in SF some time before March 31st, I would recommend checking out the Lonesome Lover show at the Grey Area Gallery there.  I went to the opening on Saturday, and was quite impressed with it, not only with the space itself (which is quite nice and spacious, including a small storefront and studios in back) but also with the curation of the show.  In talking with some of the people that work there, they have a different curator for each show, and with this show, they were able to have five different artists with a similar style and voice in the same show, but without stepping on each other’s feet.  Very impressive.  Check it out if you get the chance.

Jean Baudrillard died yesterday.  He was a great thinker and a great intellectual inspiration of mine.  There is a quote of his that has stayed with me, and changed my thinking about the creative process:

“There are thousands of ways to express the same idea, but if you do not find the ideal compression between a form and an idea, then you have nothing.”