Petah Coyne

Years ago a few art friends gave me a Petah Coyne book. They gave it to me thinking that I had a similar aesthetic. Although mine is not as developed, I agree. I was going through the book today and also looking for further reading and images on Coyne online. As you can see, there was a plethera of images I was drawn to -- and really each of them I wanted to put up here. No one represented her work to an extent that satisfied me. I didn't feel repetitious in showing multiple images... I think it is because I'm really into her work.

The book shows the bottom images here + the third row down (white) images. They contain waxed flowers, taxidermy, ribbon, tassles, curly branches, feathers etc. The information in the book covered Coyne's fascination with Japanese culture and mentions the color vermilion at the very beginning. Vermilion is a color used in Japanese buddhist temples. I thought it was a purplish hue - given much of the work in the book - but it is actually a red - A vivid red to reddish orange. It is the color on the first page of the book...

That means nothing really - to my inquiry into Coyne's work - well, maybe it affects the mood. Even though parts of her work are white, I am drawn to the darkness felt in these pieces...and a purplish black embodies that mood. Vermilion - not directly about death, but with the right mix of colors... it is a passionate color. It is red and that can mean life and death.

The book also states that there are literary references and cinema references in her subtitles...that reminds me of how I have been considering bring storyline/narrative references into my work as a guiding point - maybe a story will help me to put my work together in a more cohesive manner.

When looking online, I noticed she does photography as well. Her b/w photo at the top of monks is GORGEOUS. I will have to think further on how her photography and sculpture work go together, yet are so different... I need to find more of her photography work.

I was just reading a Bomb Magazine interview of hers - in addition to Japanese and Chinese culture - she also speaks of Catholicism which I'm assuming she grew up with. Now I see where our paths may cross!

From the Bomb interview with Lynn Tillman :

"LT You’re often referred to as a lapsed Catholic.

PC Very much so.

LT I wonder what lapsed means. It’s one thing not to be a practicing Catholic, but to lapse is something else, to disconnect, not be involved.

PC You can’t disconnect.

LT Bataille writes sex scenes on altars; only someone still connected would care.

PC But that is what Catholicism is about. You’re kneeling in front of this naked man up on a crucifix."

WHOA! YES! 1. that you can't disconnect. 2. sexuality in catholicism. She doesn't say so, but I suddenly wonder about the connection between ornate decoration and sexuality!! Oh my- why have I not thought of that before?! How interesting! I do think of femininity and decoration - in luring someone in...and there is also a luring into a cathedral - into a place of worship. I will never forget the inside decor of the church I was raised in. It is a major part of ME. I spent so many hours gazing at the kalaidescope of colors, patterns and statuary within the church. I always knew it was special to me - always thought it was so beautiful and unique.

In grad school, i was just beginning to figure out my aesthetic with my sculptures. It was a time of experimentation - I knew I was working on embryos - that I hadn't even begun to get into the meat of it - I still don't fully KNOW it - I am working on it but it is still embryonic, I'd say. I remember in grad. school having a hard time fully acknowledging what I was and was not attracted to aesthetically. I am attracted to the clean, white spaces of a modern room - for instance. But, damn, I love decoration and admire many antiques and ornateness. I am probably still not resolved in what it is my specific aesthetic is - I do like art decor for the way it sat between the two: modern line and form with decor and intricacy still playing a role -- I like that a negotiation was going on between the two. TO DO: look more at art deco in order to flesh some more of that out.

From Bomb article:

"PC: But I could tell who would and who wouldn’t. Often I could do it by smell. It’s so animal in a way. You could usually know two days before. The physician said that at that point, a patient’s system begins to break down, so I was probably sensing that. At times the odor was so sweet, like when you smell babies’ heads. My brother, before he died, smelled glorious. When he died, he turned bright yellow because of all the toxins."

The article states that she worked with people that were dying - as a job - for awhile. There is so much death in her work - in the darkness, the taxidermy, the falling 'blobs', the sculptures writhing on the ground - yet there is so much beauty as well. The book states that showing the beauty in death is a japanese idea - it definitely isn't American! But I am sure that other cultures have looked at death with beauty as well - I will have to look at that further.

From Bomb article again:

"PC I think it’s about pretense, all the work is pretense. They’re hanging from the ceiling, seemingly very delicate and easily breakable. Instead, what they really are is a threat. They’re extremely heavy, and if they fell on you, they’d crush you. So the work has all these dimensions. I’m interested in the bride who is really the bride past. I’m so far from a bride at this point that my white hair could be the bridal gown. I love Charles Dickens’s Miss Havisham, who was left at the altar. Time stopped for her, everything in the house stopped, nothing changed. The wedding cake stayed on the table for 30 years, uneaten. She lived in that bridal dress, withered like grave clothing.

LT Maybe that’s incorporated into the bride. She’s an image representing time standing still. The bride’s always new, always loved, always true. Fifty percent of marriages break up; but the bride is permanence, love, being forever young. She’s almost like the cross, having withstood reality. Reality tells us being the bride isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. We know there’s an emptiness.

PC There’s the beauty of not knowing. Brides have that. I just photographed all these debutantes and brides; they were beautiful, even when they were at their most self-conscious and showing signs of awkwardness. I’m really not interested in the fresh, new bride. From my vantage point, I’m much more interested in being past your prime. All these wax pieces are the parties afterward, the residue that’s left. It’s not about fresh, new. It’s about a type of beauty that’s long after, which is more beautiful than what’s promised to the bride. But it’s not a beauty we’re accustomed to looking at.

LT But how do we see that in the brides, that it’s afterward, say, in the wax sculptures?

PC Because the wax pieces are half-melted, the images don’t read sharply anymore. The big floor pieces shown in the middle of Galerie Lelong were two “virgins” sharing one arm. Most people thought that arm was just a lump of wax, they didn’t see that the two brides were each holding a baby; actually, it’s my sister holding the perfect baby, I’m holding a headless one. Everything was melted into what looked like the floor. If I had made them fresh and new, you would read everything as softer."

I like what both women are saying about brides...what Lynn is saying about the NEW FOREVER YOUNG and what Petah is saying about it aging and the half-melted image that doesn't read sharply anymore -- It's funny but I'd also say that at the beginning things are also not sharp. Dreams aren't sharp - they are hazy themselves. The truth of the dream is sharper and more fine tuned.

From Bomb again:

'Petah Coyne It’s all the associations that I make with the work. I don’t know if it’s important that the general audience see it, but many of my associations come from Japanese literature and culture. You wouldn’t recognize those associations unless you had read a tremendous amount about Japanese culture or were familiar with it. Recently, Martha Schwendener mentioned that my last exhibition was about obscuring objects by continually adding layer upon layer of white wax. Although the work was made before September 11, she felt it was quite reminiscent of the chalky dust and ash that blanketed the buildings and occupants of lower Manhattan with a premature “snow.” Her description reminded me of Butoh, the sixties Japanese dance movement, which was drawn from both the energy of death or a life consumed in both sorrow and joy. Butoh is also referred to as the dance of the dark soul. I was dealing with Hiroshima, catastrophes and almost panic.

LT Almost panic?

PC The way in which people panic afterward and then are filled with rage. Right after Hiroshima is when Japanese artists started doing Gutai.

LT What is Gutai?

PC It’s a post—World War II art movement. It isn’t exhibited much, because the ideas are more captivating than the work. It seems the conceptual intentions were to purge all formal painting of its traditionally rigid scope. It was about making work and destroying it. They’d hang large sheets of paper from trees and drive motorcycles through them. My impression was that everything was about rage.'

Rage, panic - I see that in her work. The motorcycle/paper work sounds fascinating and beautiful.

Damn. I know there was a quote in this piece about catholicism sitting on your head. Now I can't find it for the life of me... I could have sworn I read that. And I love it.

Luc Tuymans - who the hell knew i'd become a fan in one afternoon?

I am basically going to take everything seen and written about Luc Tuyman's work from saatchi-gallery.com. It is a direct steal of part of this blog section and then comment and muse on it kind of thing...

My words: At first I was looking at images of Tuyman's work, remembering having seen them before and recognizing their muted color palette. I wasn't very interested in what I was seeing - which is the same way that I felt the first time I glanced at his work - emphasis on glance. I had never paid attention to his work for several reasons: He is very much a painter - many painter friend's of mine had referenced or at least better knew his work. Also, his subject matter didn't draw me in, his painting style/brush didn't draw me in, his muted color didn't draw me in.
Then I read on saatchi what his work was about, where it came from, and what was really going on. I then became interested. And in reference to what is said on the saatchi site - I can now see that in his work. I don't know if I didn't take the time to see more in his work or if his work requires one to know more of the background.

From Saatchi:

'Exposing the gap between represented image and historical event, Luc Tuymans's paintings delve into the inner workings of how mythology is created. The reality of Luc Tuymans's work is almost 'twee', pleasing images of a lampshade or leopard-skin rug pass quite comfortably as aesthetic totems; it's only their cognitive association with the Holocaust, or atrocities of the Belgian Congo, that encapsulates the true banality of evil - the unspeakable horror in a teacup, the monstrous potential of an empty bath. Luc Tuymans's paintings consciously fall desperately short of the iconic, becoming vestiges posed as counterfeit emblems for that which cannot be conveyed.'

My words:

Uh, wow. I see it. (Elsewhere I read that a relative of his was a nazi soldier that died and he had a mentally challenged aunt who was in the camps. ) The banality of evil is definitely something i've found myself preoccupied with at various times in my life (and to varying degrees) - I grew up wondering how in the hell such a thing as the holocaust could have happened (like the rest of the world). This is quite silly, but I remember feeling guilty or at least "my direct relatives weren't there" kind of feeling while growing up in a small Texas German Catholic community. I read, my namesake, Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil and understood what she was searching for. It (evil) is still mysterious. One still can't put your finger on it...I like that Tuyman's work deals with this elusive and very human subject matter--and he deals with the elusiveness at that.

From Saatchi:

"Still Life is a monument to this inadequacy of language. Made initially for the 2002 Documenta, Luc Tuymans was expected to present paintings of images relating to 9/11 to coincide with the exhibition's theme of political and social engagement. What he decided to show was a giant still life. The sheer scale makes the contemplation of this painting almost impossible: a vast canvas representing an absolute nothingness. Luc Tuymans chose the subject of still life precisely because it was utterly unremarkable; a generic 'brand' of 'object' rendered to immense scale; it is banality expanded to the extreme. The simplicity of Luc Tuymans's composition alludes to a pure and uninterrupted world order; the ephemeral light, with which the canvas seems to glow, places it as an epic masterpiece of metaphysical and spiritual contemplation. In response to unimaginable horror, Luc Tuymans offers the sublime. A gaping magnitude of impotency, which neither words nor paintings could ever express."

My Words:

Oh my god, I am in love with the words above. I am in love with what Luc is doing....I'm still not attracted to his work visually....although i haven't seen it in person (that i remember) -- but it is purposely unremarkable and i respect that. With the above words of "In response to unimaginable horror, Luc Tuymans offers the sublime." -- I wonder if the sublime is the aesthetic way to deal with the unimaginable - the result or the tactic? I am thinking of my previous post about Eve Sussman and my video piece, Ave maria. I couldn't talk about something directly, or thought i couldn't, and the work ended up being sublime. I don't even know if it was purposeful or not... But it does make sense that those things that are unimaginable can only be spoken of in terms of something else unimaginable (or only imaginable to a degree) and that would be that definition of sublime I had mentioned before via Gina: the moment of peacefulness when confronting death - that split second...

Saatchi:

If media images inadequately depict the horrors of reality, then Luc Tuymans's paintings are even more disturbingly detached. Often taking his imagery from published photos (of war, violence, subjugation), the paintings are the antithesis of this historic iconography: dull tones, vague, nondescript scenes, stripped of emotional propaganda.

"Maypole suggests only the mistiest remnants of a memory: men in lederhosen raising a mast (Cross?), with flags waving in the distance, they could be scouts, pioneers, morris dancers or Hitler Youth. Though it's painted with the faded language of nostalgia, Maypole is strangely empty: void of sympathy or moral, Luc Tuymans renders a scene twice-removed, making it impulsively human. Without context of history or source, the viewer is left to engage with the painting on a purely instinctive level; being drawn into the evils of history, he adopts his own role as a silent and willing observer."

My Words:

oh my god again. The comparison of his work to that of propaganda and media's depiction of war (horror)!!!!! Yes! I am excited about this! It is so pertinent. Once again, an image and even words cannot - CANNOT - depict what it really is - the horror, the humanness-- (only touch it slightly here and there in a partial and removed way in good art). I like that Tuyman's is talking about that impossibility - that failure of ours to not be able to fully express something from our lives.

From Saatchi:

Luc Tuymans paints the indescribable. His dark muted scenes seem vaguely familiar, distant, like haunting memories. Drawing his inspiration from grand themes, Luc Tuymans taps into a universal social guilt: from the Holocaust, or imperialism, to child abuse. By minimalizing his images, he creates a raw emotion through paint; each painting linking spiritually, somehow instinctively, to the rest.

Within is a tranquil vermin metaphor for contamination and disease. A close-up detail of a birdcage, this painting more than conveys feelings of hopelessness and isolation: through its sheer size and potency, it literally traps the viewer, swallowing him into a prison of collective consciousness.

My words:
I am going to have to go see his work in person - i think there is something up in Chelsea right now... I wonder if i'll be as moved by viewing his work as I have been about the IDEA behind his work. I may not.... It is difficult since his work is purposely about the failure to express something...it makes it purposely 'unappealing' in some kind of way 0--- i mean it isn't going to grab me, is it? Maybe i can still be a fan of his work and not be attracted to it aesthetically... We'll see.

Richard Tuttle - An artist's artist

I have never really looked at him before - not in depth anyway - i threw his work into a grouping of post minimalist work that simply focused on color, line etc. And I emphasize the word simply because that is the way that I have, with a small sense of dismissal, viewed anything associated with modernism and minimalism in general.

His work didn't speak to me to the same degree as the work of other artists ... I have definitely had more of a focus in post modernism and have always been more interested in work from the 80s and beyond - plus some of the feminist art of the 70s. Artists whose work is rooted in a strict and formal study of art making still only interests me to a degree. Art made about art is less interesting to me than art made about human beings, psychology, social situations etc.

But now I want to look at him a little for some reason. There is actually a playfulness that I am attracted to now that I sit down and really look at images of his work. I realize in this moment that I need to be more mindful and let an artist's work sit with me a little longer before placing their work into a category and forgetting about it. I am losing out by doing that. There is nuance and intricacies that I am not fully taking in as a result of my rash, always moving and categorizing, way of viewing some art.

From SFMoma - SF Station website:

"Barely perceptible they teeter on the edge of being and nothingness. Richard Tuttle is not a master craftsmen or virtuoso painter. He wills his works into being. His personality can be felt in each one of his pieces......

Tuttle investigates shape, color and line but abandoned the hard-edged geometry of minimalism of the previous generation of artists. The edges of his plywood wall reliefs from the mid-1960s curve and undulate. No attempt is made emulate the perfection of the mass-produced object. You are constantly aware of a human hand at work.....

Much is said about Tuttle's democratic use of materials and no better example of this exists than his shaped canvases from 1967. He dyed canvases, cut and sewed them into geometric shapes and nailed them to the wall. The color is uneven and the fabric is worn, they in no way resemble the perfectly taut, gessoed canvases a painter prepares. Tuttle transgressed the sanctity of the canvas and in the process created these remarkably beautiful abstract banners. Tuttle pushes the limits of what an artwork is without being an ideologue. His works are inquisitive. They ask "what is sculpture," "what is painting," but are not divisive. If the question is "what is art" his work answers with the question, "well, is this art?" Even his most controversial pieces seem non-confrontational. For example, "3rd Rope Piece", 1974, consists of approximately three inches of rope nailed to the wall. It is exhibited at below waist level and literally not-in-your-face. The artist means to challenge an audience's preconceived notions but not without a bit of humor......

In the 1980s Tuttle became known for a group of wall assemblages that are often flirtations with disaster. Made of scavenged bits of wood, wire, cardboard, even bubble wrap they are physically (and aesthetically) a nose hair away from falling apart. These pieces are trashy, primitive, and sometimes sort of ugly. Overall Tuttle doesn't seem to care much for prettiness. His drawings, the foundation of his practice, are not polished like those of Ellsworth Kelly or other artists. They are working drawings. Tuttle eschews the dead end that occurs when an artist accomplishes complete refinement of his craft. Each piece leaves a thread for the artist to follow to the next piece. Each series is pregnant with the possibility of a new body of work.

I've highlighted the words/sentences that grabbed me from the SF MOMA article. And I agree with the blue sentences in viewing Tuttle's work - they allow me to see into his work in a way that I find interesting: I like that his work is curious and inquisitive. This speaks to the child-like part of me that is enacted and strengthened while making my art. It is very much based on a sense of curiosity and searching.

His flirtations with disaster are wonderful to me in that - as I've said before - I do love art about failure - although in my work I'm not sure if I could do ' trashy, primitive, and sometimes sort of ugly'. I think I have at least one tether attached to beauty at all times - even when I react against it- and even if something seemed like it was about to fall apart - i'd have to make it very apparent that it was purposeful because of my attachment to at least some level of craft.

As for the word primitive, I get scared of primitive - maybe its just the word, actually. I associate it with picasso's work based on primitive cultures - and then the colonialist concerns flow in and I can't even go there. Maybe the SF MOMA author really means an enactment of basics when he says primitive - because the one image of this flirting with disaster above does not seem to speak to native cultures in my opinion. Maybe other pieces do though.

I think it was in a wikipedia article on Tuttle that he was described as an artist's artist. I am going to agree with that. Usually an artist's artist is a painting or sculpture or photography TECH geek - in my mind. And Tuttle is way more playful and less technically deep than that - but his work does seem to focus on the joy of art making and that right there - is an artist's artist.

Haunch of Venison - part 2: Eve Sussman's 'Rape of the Sabine Women'

When I first heard of this piece awhile ago - i kind of dismissed it. I dismissed it because it was directly tied to art history and I'd come across quite a few artists doing this (as they always have done, of course) and I was tired of it for the moment.

Now in seeing 'Rape', I realize how wrong i was. I mean, tying your work to art history doesn't have to be the ploy I thought it was to belong in the in crowd, 'talk' to the art geeks, make one's work within a pointed out instead of found trajectory. (why do i want to plant something to be found instead of going ahead and drawing the line? - feels forced i guess even if its not necessarily so).

First of all, I avoid all films that may depict rape - it is often too much for me to handle emotionally. In the past, i have been traumatized in watching a film and now try to avoid it - even a hollywood film like 'Joan of Arc' where i cried violently for quite some time and carried this boiling anger inside me for days and days...

Maybe that is another reason I avoided this piece.
For some reason I stopped avoiding...and I'm glad I did for I learned a lot about myself and my work in watching her film. I think i liked the film - yes, I like it. I didn't love it, but i did like it. Maybe it was too quiet to love? But I also respect the 'quietness' of the film and do believe it was intentional.

There is a rape scene - one. It isn't too graphic so i could handle it.

From reading around the internet, I learned that the original use of the word 'rape' did not mean physical rape, but meant to take the women - as in a group of women taken from one tribe to another in order to propagate. This seems to me that it would automatically include rape as we define it today - but her depiction of it in the film was an overall taking where the women became a part of their new world and assimilated to some degree.

Sussman stated somewhere that the women turn against the men - i guess in seeing the end of the film it could be viewed that way but it also seemed that in the movement and hustle of bodies they were just as implicated as the men in the hustle - that they were just this swarm of bodies where the women's clothes but not the mens started to come off. the men's clothes did become disheveled though. the women started pulling at the men (is that attacking them?) when they were fighting with the other men of their same clan - so it could read that the women were trying to pull their indiv. men out of the foray. I'm not sure on this point.

What i do know from watching 'rape' is about my own past video work. and that is good - its been awhile since i've been in touch with video work as hard as I might try.

1. sublime. Her film was slow moving, letting the mood and silence with whispers, coughing make things come to a state that felt in between and dream like where you get lost not in the narrative - although you recognize it - but in the static-ness of the film. In comparison, when Barney is sublime in his films - i don't let myself get lost because I'm scared of what will come around the corner - there is a fear instilled in his work. I did not feel fear in watching 'rape' - i was detached more than that - i did feel a movement/arc towards something but i wasn't scared of it. Whereas in Barney's use of sublime - i can't even enjoy it and let it go because it only builds anxiety for me and everyone else, probably. It seems to be his intention.

Definition of SUBLIME

transitive verb

1

: to cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form

2

[French sublimer, from Latin sublimare] a (1) : to elevate or exalt especially in dignity or honor (2) : to render finer (as in purity or excellence) b : to convert (something inferior) into something of higher worth

intransitive verb

: to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state

Sublime in the dictionary is the same and diff. from what i think of when speaking of art. Yes, the sense of sublime being tied to the word vapor seems adequate - but I'm not sure I recognize lower to higher. The other definitions seem to be scientific and chemical and i'm not talking of it in that sense.My friend Gina once said what her definition of sublime was - and I adhere to this - my words/version:

Sublime is that moment when facing death - that moment that can't even be defined by time because it is so small - but it is that moment where you aren't fearing it but are welcoming it - in the split second before you jump in front of a train - that split second when someone makes that decision and doesn't have the fear associated with death.

I've prob. grossly misconstrued what she said - but that is my definition of it after hearing her say that. It is a vapor. It is a passing of realms. It is out of our current state of being in the everyday. How does work become sublime? It is more than just slow moving...it is more than just beautiful...it is psychological...it is an emotion?, is it?

A curator once told me that a video of mine was sublime. I agreed with him but I still don't know what made it that way... exactly. Maybe it was because i was trying to 'talk' about something one couldn't put their finger on. Which has the same 'vapor'-ness as sublime.

2. color and sex
There is this one amazing scene in 'rape'. This woman dressed in a fuchsia 50s suit is making out with a man in a black/white suit. (I do like in her film that all the women were in bright colors and the men all dressed alike in suits - like they were machines and utilitarian and the women were the 'fruit' of their labor - the dessert, the life in what was normally repetitive and mundane. Also - the women were the peacock, the ones that seduced.

The making out scene; she was wearing a striped colored hat that matched her dress + had green stripes? in it. You never saw her face. It was this closeup mix of bright candy colored fuschia and black and white suit. It was awesome. It made me think that i wanted to make a video with two people making out while wearing so much bright color - one could watch the body movement, know and not know what was happening, not see skin but see suggestive movement, you could osscilate between getting lost in the color and figuring out the suggestive movement to see what the couple was doing - what sexual positions/maneuvers they were performing...
I wonder how i'd make that happen as my own piece.. and why the fuck i'd make it - i mean what does it even mean to my work? who the hell knows.

3. While watching 'rape', sitting in the sublime my mind could wander and create some. That was a nice and creative gift. I had this visual of a woman having her hair braided by men's hands. The men's hands were all different colors/ages/textures - but all obviously men. boy's too? I have no idea what that means other than me finding it visceral at this point.... of course, there is a male/female relationship there, there is something sexual, there is something trusting and loving and nurturing... intimate. What else?

That is all i can recall now. It was good seeing that film. It reminded me that my initial attraction to and acceptance of obviously changed movements (edited) was something that was acceptable. if i chose to use it again, that is. it makes a mood and it doesn't matter if anyone can easily tell the technical aspects of doing it... no one is trying to fool anyone. It is accepted?

The film reminded me of my thesis video: "Ave Maria' = it even had a vintage dress/ pattern element...the sublime I mentioned before... getting to something that is not easy to define (Ave maria had religion, power, mother to daughter handed down gender based roles...) - it can be ethereal or literal - maybe not ever in between. "rape', from reading online if i remember correctly, is after that failure of a utopia - of setting something up followed by its demise. But it isn't the literal she is after = it seems as if it is about the HUMAN in that - and that is where the vapor is, the uncategorizable. It exists in stories over humanity's time - but it, itself, is a vapor.

The press release states:
subjects:' desire, power, utopia, loss of identity'
and
"Throughout my work I have been investigating ways to imply narrative through gesture, psychological interactions and group dynamics'.

I will have to make some more video. I feel like picking it up again.

Haunch of Venison - part 1- The gallery + Patricia Piccinini

1. haunch/hônCH/Noun

   1. A buttock and thigh considered together, in a human or animal.

   2. The leg and loin of an animal as food.

I noticed Eve Sussman's "Rape of the Sabine Women" was playing at NYs Haunch of Venison. I had never gone to this gallery before nor heard of it. It was a beautiful space and not in the normal location of Chelsea. It was off Ave. of the Americas - right by Fox news and the Rockettes in a highrise with a concierge at the front desk. Their website states they are located in London, Berlin and Zurich as well. As i said before, beautiful space and nice layout of art pieces.

Their name is interesting - and although i've only seen Sussman's piece there along with Patricia Piccinini's sculptures - it seems as if their name is fitting to the art they show. They've reportedly also shown Michael Joo who I can see being there....

Their name bothers me though too - it seems like the collection of art is grouped in old style (or even contemporary) British fox hunting or it makes me think of - not the guys from my small texas town hunting deer in the wild but of wealthy, cigar smoking and overweight men in their suits sipping brandy next to the head of a rhino they caught on an expedition in Africa or something.

Its funny though that - a haunch of venison - would make me picture the wealthy and not the poorer hunters... maybe its me knowing its a gallery or maybe its the word Haunch. Yes, I doubt that my school mates in highschool would use the word haunch...

Back to the appropriate artists: i realize that they show others who wouldn't necessarily be placed into this little analyses of mine, i am looking and picking out those that fit - but i am attracted to those that do fit in the same way i'm attracted to the above definition of the word haunch.

Its this hunk of meat with a frilly name (frilly, now in america, anyway). Its specifically from the butt/loin area which seems to mean something... I'm not a huge meat eater - not a vegetarian but still not a daily eater of meat - and yet my mouth is watering right now.

And I think that that is what i'm attracted to. My mouth is watering not for food, specifically meat, but it is watering because something visceral is in the word haunch. Something visceral is also in Michael Joo's work...something visceral is in Piccinini's work. And the sexuality in Sussman's 'Rape of the Sabine Women' - the act of rape is visceral.

vis·cer·al

1.

of or pertaining to the viscera.

2.

affecting the viscera.

3.

of the nature of or resembling viscera.

4.

characterized by or proceeding from instinct rather than intellect: a visceral reaction.

5.

characterized by or dealing with coarse or base emotions; earthy; crude: a visceral literary style.

I had to look up visceral - just to make sure - and yes, it is accurate. Its funny that i would characterize the word 'haunch' as fancy and thefore not base - and say that it is visceral.
Anyway, I do believe that there is a visceral element in much of my work - I think - I am attracted to it anyway. In my tracking of other's work in order to place and develop my work - I will definitely keep an eye on Haunch of Venison's ny openings.

Patricia Piccinini:
I've seen her work before and been amazed and enthralled yet not impressed all at the same time. The craftsmenship is supurb, yes. The pieces are interesting, yes. But what is it that is missing for me? Her uber realistic alien/animal/human hybrids mixed with human sculptures are captivating - but there is something there that is too easy. There are places she's not going conceptually or emotionally or something... Is it too much of a trick for me? I think of Ron Mueck's work - it does only go so far for me for the same reason... I mean, I'm impressed and could never make a human form that realistic looking -- but after seeing one, you've seen them all. The trick is then visible - it becomes about hollywood magic where many of them have worked - instead of getting at being human in our world. Even when the subject matter is addressed, it isn't addressed thoroughly or seriously - only on the skimming the surface. I feel the same way about Piccinini's glossy painted 'automobile' sculptures. Technology, slickness - love it! But it isn't getting to anything.. it isn't touching a nerve. It is, on the other hand, where i would bring someone who doesn't care about art or like it in order to give them something they'd like..