To be Exceptional

To be exceptional and view the exceptional has varied meanings:

1. to be considered exceptional is to be considered - someone else has to consider you, someone else has to be looking and gauging in the first place.
2. to be considered exceptional is to be placed within a hierarchy - towards the 'top' in this case -only because exceptional is a word with positive connotations.
3. to be considered exceptional is to be unique or different within a group of people - there has to be a norm for there to be an exception.
4. It has to be lonely. It is separated from everyone else at least to some degree
5. ego inflating - depending on the person
6. When someone is pointed out as exceptional, it is usually presented as if the exceptional person can't help it - their exceptional-ism is beyond their control.
7. It seems as if - because it is just the way the person is naturally - that to be exceptional is easy for this particular person and hard for everyone else in the group - whether this is true or not
My guess is that it is not because usually to be exceptional takes a large amount of extra work.
8. Being viewed as exceptional is being viewed from a skewed angle - it does not encompass all parts of a group of people or individual person...it is only looking at particular parts of a situation or person.
9. To view someone as exceptional is to be surprised - at least to some degree.

Polly Apfelbaum

I first learned of Polly Apfelbaum's work in grad. school. It was the floor piece with the bandaids... I can't find an image of it online right now...but someone had showed a slide of it during a class. Most of her work is bright, poppy colors like the images above, but the bandaid piece was that wonderfuly strange synthetic flesh color (Caucasian).

I remember liking the piece - the bandaids placed in perfect spacing-- circling, and building on each other similar to the spiral piece above (I believe I remember it that way).

Writing about it now conjures up the smell of bandaids out of the thin air.

At the time, I remember thinking how it would get on my nerves that it would be difficult to keep clean - think of how bandaids build up dirty gunk around the edges after one day of wearing one... I imagined this art piece collecting this gunk around its individual band aid edges and it made me really upset!

Other than the wall paintings above, her work does seem to have a temporary and fragile feel to it. I don't think people are allowed to walk on it - but it is a thin material on the ground where our dirty shoes roam.

Oh, and the pink reflection above is so delicious!

Kai Althoff at Gladstone Gallery "Punkt, Absatz, Bluemli"

Which means "period, paragraph, Bluemli"

He had shown at the ICA in Boston - but I didn't see it. Gigi said he had paid a homeless person to come in and sleep in the gallery - so she didn't like his work and felt tainted by his probably using the homeless guy for his own benefit - so she wasn't into this show (yellow images above).

I, on the other hand, was into the show. It took me a second because at first sight, I was seeing gestural aspects as sloppy - which only works for me in a particular context. If it seems too non-art, too trying to get away with something... I don't know. There is a lot of crap out there that gets put over in a maschismo, young guy, brash kind of way....and to me it is overdone and maybe too easy.

But this show came over me in a subtle way.... the choice of colors together, the textures and lines...and the smell. The smell definitely drew me in.

It was probably the yellow paint covering the floors...the smell made me think of playdoh though. The texture and hues of colors in the show remind me of playdoh too - now that I think back on it. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that every color chosen for the show was based on official playdoh colors.

There was a wall of mugs that could have actually been made of playdoh instead of clay. But the smell was powerful (not quite overwhelming but not subtle) so I'm guessing it was the paint that covered the floor. The paint job was sloppy - it showed the black floor underneath in areas where the paint was thin or was unevenly distributed. It was sinister and curious in the way it bled from underneath the red velvet curtains when you first walked into the gallery.

I was especially moved when I saw the sculpture of the woman with the bowtie around her neck. (2nd row above). The colors, textures, lines, flatness mixed with pattern were extraordinary! She was like a half blown up doll or a half deflated human or a cartoon morphing into a human...you can get some of this from the photographs above - but not as much as being in her presence. Yes, I definitely love her. There is something dirty and scary about her (maybe use of material with that yellow smudgy ground)...

Here is a little bit of the press release that really struck me:

"With sycophantic excitement they conduct every modern day sacrament - murder, construction, commerce and hygiene (among others). Yet their tangled wills act not in the name of altruism or holiness, but from their everlasting yearning for life's sweet spots and the age-old wish to dissociate from (or marry) all carnal cravings. "

Modern day sacraments all being grouped into one - putting hygiene and commerce and murder together into the same group - and then calling them sacraments! That is just delicious.

From Wikipedia:

A sacrament, as defined in Hexam's Concise Dictionary of Religion, is what Roman Catholics believe to be "a rite in which God is uniquely active."

In taking these words and applying it to his work - I am enthralled but also don't know what to say beyond this...

I took the other (non-yellow) images from around the web - they weren't part of this show. I wanted to show some of his line and color in his paintings...

Jerry Saltz , in a review he wrote of Kai's work in 2001, stated his obvious influence of Egon Schiele. Also from Saltz's article 'History Painting' in the Village Voice:

"Althoff has a lyrical gift for depicting what Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, director of the 1980 epic Our Hitler, speaking of Germanness, called "the monstrousness from which we are made." Dealing in the cultish and something very male, Althoff uses nostalgia, fairy tale, irony, and sentimentality as levers to update the past. Foregoing the clean, urban, German cosmopolitanism of Gursky & Co., Althoff depicts a mysterious, demonic past."

Charles LeDray at Whitney: workworkworkwork

I love the title of his show! workworkworkworkwork

There are no spaces between the words, leaving no room for rest. I am pretty sure I saw the title in all lower case at some point and with a capitalized 'W' as well... I like the lower case version: it makes the work less important and, therefore, feel more redundant.

It was a fantastic and charming show. I use the word charming probably because of the smallness of all the objects.... All the objects were well made and smaller in scale than their human counterparts. All clothing was made by the artist and many of the clothes were probably in a scale slightly smaller than that of a little girl's baby doll or as small as a Barbie or Ken doll. Other objects were delicately carved of human bone - doll house scale. The tiny pottery that was thrown on a wheel (made traditionally somehow) was also in doll house scale.

Thoughts on the show:

1. (Well made) small objects create a feeling of tenderness in the viewer - just me? I don't think so... I think there is something human about being moved by small clothing. Its like a child's clothing and speaks to a vulnerability of sorts...it also makes the viewer aware of their own size as they lord over the small clothing...

2. While viewing the show, it occurred to me that LeDray was talking about humans and society through clothing and iconography (patches sewn onto handsewn denim pieces).

3. I wondered why he only went small. Wanting to change the size of the sculptures simply to make them obviously handmade is one thing --- but I am wondering about his choice to only go smaller...and how did he choose his particular chosen sizes?

4. I liked the purposeful, well-crafted wear and tear on the carpets, clothes, and drop ceilings in the sculptures ...including dust(!) that was obviously purposeful (based on its size and perfect placement) as it was balled into corners of the top of the drop ceiling. Carpet was worn down in a recognizable way - i've seen shoddy carpet like that before in some second hand shop in some small town!

5. Multiplicity: There are many, many little clothes...each hand made, each well made, with different patterns, colors, cuts. He would make an entire rack of men's clothing in miniature size - perfectly and exactly as it would be seen on Main street. If he only made one or a few....that is one thing....but there is an obsession here(?) - which many admire and marvel at - just for that.

From Wikipedia:

"LeDray has been described as “the best-kept secret of the contemporary art world, labouring away for years before completing a sculpture.”^[3] He does not often discuss the meaning of his work, leaving pieces open to interpretation. According to Alan Artner of the Chicago Tribune, “at a time when contemporary art is often wholly dependent on words, the silent, apparently simple but persistently elusive work of LeDray is akin to a blessing.”^[4] LeDray is perhaps best known for his small, though correctly proportioned sculptures of everyday objects, which "refrain from feeling precious or adorable.” ^[5]"

My thoughts:
It's funny. I used to be so cool with words...with describing my own work. I do get into theory and the conceptual end of work at times - I am not uncomfortable with it. Yet the wiki words above give me a feeling of relief. I think that maybe that is because I am having a hard time feeling out the conceptual side of my work and trajectory right now... plus there are things that i don't really want to say in words --- maybe some things are unspeakable and can only be 'heard' in other languages.

From wbur.org "The Power of Tiny" for ICA version of the same show as at Whitney:

"....“Mens Suits” is a pint-sized second-hand clothing shop in a human-sized art gallery. The little store’s three rooms are only about about shin-high. The colorful, textured garments — little button down shirts and jackets suspended from minute hangers — might fit a Ken doll, or maybe G.I. Joe.

The suits evoke the memories and associations we have with the beloved, well-worn fabrics we wear day in, day out, close against our skin. But again, they’re so small, displayed on racks right up against the miniature used clothing of imagined strangers.

Seeing the work from above creates a curious response in the viewer, as curator Hopkins explained it. “Suddenly towering over things gives a strange new position in relation to them, so that we can scrutinize them and imagine exerting a new kind of control over them,” Hopkins said....

And that’s the fun of it reflecting on the “power of tiny,” as Hopkins puts it. “(Little things) seemingly harmless in scale activate our imagination in an immediate way we know from childhood, drawing us in,” Hopkins said.

But it should be pointed out that artist LeDray’s vast body of work is too rich with humanity to be viewed as simply adorable. It conjures the passing of time, and even our own identities.

Also, there’s a touch of the macabre in LeDray’s aesthetic that perhaps might temper viewers from gushing too wistfully over his lovely little works. Some of his miniature sculptures are made of hand-carved human bone. A ladder, a chair, a door — and even that little model of the solar system."

Keith Tyson

I bought a Keith Tyson deck of cards at Pace the other week. I originally got it for my husband because it had one NASA card inside the deck and he loves NASA. But that was stupid - I later realized - because I'm sure NASA has a whole deck of their own cards in some gift shop and having Nasa as a part of his deck was clearly not that important to Tyson -- it was one of many cultural symbols mixed with patterned cards that were reminiscent of the patterns on the back of cards without matching exactly.

The deck of cards went with the exhibition that was up which included large (30x40?) 'paintings' of cards. They were very well done (almost sleek but still not quite machine???? or maybe still machine but not too shiny??) They obviously referenced playing cards and were displayed on a dark green wall that helped reinforce this idea of a card playing table. They lined the walls and contained different images that ranged from a girl with a ball gag in her mouth to a kitschy kitten to the NASA symbol. They had a presence about them - esp. with the green wall drawing you in from outside in the street. I liked them.

In looking Tyson up, I found other images like the ones above of a previous Pace show. I wish I would have seen that one! It has a similar feel of a collector or maker of multiples that are the similar yet different.

from Haunch of Venison:

"Keith Tyson (b 1969, England) has an interest in the way the world works, our place in it as individual human beings and the interconnected-ness of every aspect of the universe....In the late '90s, after years of working with machines and methods based on randomness..."

from Wikipedia:

"His work is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and an embrace of the complexity and interconnectedness of existence. Philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, the roles of probability and design in human experience, and the limits and possibilities of human knowledge, animate much of his work. Tyson works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing and installation."

Wow. Wikipedia! ...interesting ...