Zoe Beloff studio visit

I presented only one body of work - the smiles. Zoe could not get it but in the same time was intrigued, her work also deals with mental states and exaggeration. What she was missing in my work is narrative. We spent about 15-20 minutes talking about that, she added that she does not like photography - photographs only show something and their meaning ends with representation. Really? I did not agree and replied that photographs transform rather than represent, each photographic image is removed from the thing it documented. Objective photo documents can actually create very subjective meaning and it does not have to be a story. She agreed and 30 seconds of silence followed. Isn't that what she does - appropriated images constructing her own reality? During the last 10 minutes Zoe talked about the smile as a historic phenomenon and whether I can incorporate that history in my work.

I don't particularly like her work, however, really respect her. There is plenty to learn and I have been thinking of playing with narrative. What is "history"? A real thing or whatever we want to read/see? I keep thinking to what extent history is created to please the public. Is history fact or myth? Or maybe every fact has become a myth in the instant it was put down on paper. There is a huge power to Zoe's work because of that, making history the way she wants it to be.

I should keep this in mind: a great French TV film I saw long ago about the US moon landings with plenty of facts that they were fake only to discover at the end that the film itself is fake and all the facts fabricated.

I began putting down ideas about fabricating past events. Would anything interesting come out of that?

Artist Review 12: Zed Nelson

Significance: I feel that with my current work, the smiling, I don't engage political topics. Its a shame as there are so many things happening in the world that need attention and many things that concern me personally. How effectively can I address them through fine art and in particular photography and video? This is why I keep coming back to photojournalism and documentary. With their limitations they don't save the world but do something, and this is better than nothing.
Zed Nelson's work really fascinates me with its relevance, sincere humanism and curiosity. His work has been published as books, periodicals as well as exhibited in museums and galleries.

Bio: http://www.zednelson.com/?Biography

Quotes:

1) "Collectively, Mr. Nelson’s photos show a small world, bound together by insecurity, with an almost pathological will to “improve.” In his portfolio, a furry beach-goer in Rio becomes an unwitting rebel. Among the waxed, buttressed and bandaged forms, he looks fearless and free."

2) “Love Me,” too, shows a paradox. The things people do to be judged more kindly can be so hard to look at.
Nadia Sussman http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/showcase-145/

Work:

Lecture: Lecture at HOST gallery, 19 February, 2010
http://www.zednelson.com/?LoveMeHostTalk

Review: British Journal of Photography for "Love Me":
http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/profile/1645433/truth-beauty

Representation:
http://www.instituteartistmanagement.com
http://www.morganlockyer.com/

Web site: http://www.zednelson.com

Topic 11: Invention of the Hot Water

Why make art if everything has been done already?
Option one: be about new media and technologies and how they affect human interactions. I found myself helpless against computer programmers or engineers who have the knowledge. I don't have money to hire professionals so my only chance is mock ups of projects.
Option two: be about ideas and put technology secondary. As an artist I need to find a common language with the audience, maybe not anything new but what the audience wants to consume. Alexandre Singh talked about artwork as a recognizable and pleasant encounter bearing a subversive message. This leads to option three
Option Three: the agenda work. Sometimes an easy to describe agenda is unattractive, people want poetry rather than journalism. There are so many issues in the world that deserve attention but how accurately or attractively can art engage the public in them?

Quotes:
1) "Painting, or all art, has now become completely a game by which man distract himself... and the artist must really deepen the game to be any good at all." Francis Bacon, Sarah Thornton, Seven Days In the Art World.

2) "They want a total disaster, lots of blood and to yell, "Drag him off!" Or they want record prices, great excitement, lots of laughs - a happy night at the theater." Christopher Burge, Sarah Thornton, Seven Days In the Art World.

Sarah Thornton, Seven Days In the Art World.

Works

Georgi Ivanov, 2010

Artist Review 11: Joseph Schulz

Significance:

Another typologies Becher style, yet I was really captivated by this series. Sculptural and abstracted from their real meaning, the objects and spaces on the photographs are charged politically and emotionally to the fullest extent. The power comes from my personal experience with traveling through borders. 1990s was a time when Bulgarians could not travel freely in Europe and I had pretty negative experience with that. Late 1990s up till 2007 it was possible to travel in Europe without visa, just passport. Once pass the Hungary/Austria border, the language on the road signs and store fronts is the only giveaway where you are. After 2007 I don't even need a passport to travel in the EU as Bulgaria is a part of it.

Such a huge change in 10 years!

These images are about time more than places.

Bio: http://www.josefschulz.de/html/cv.html

Quotes:

1) "In present-day Europe, internal borders are losing their political and economical function of demarcation. But border posts are much easier to abolish than mental barriers, and thus we continue to be conscious of former borders."

2) "The theme of my work is that of former border stations at inner-European frontiers. In working with these images, what was primarily subject to modification was the background. Landscape contexts are no longer recognizable. Border landscapes become unspecific and exchangeable. Documentary-style sequencing and de-contextualisation reduce the border posts to a model." http://www.josefschulz.de/html/uebergang_js_eng.html

Work:

Review: http://www.yossimilo.com/exhibitions/2008_12-jose_schu/

Representation:

http://www.galerie-weigand.de/

http://www.fiebach-minninger.com/

http://www.yossimilo.com/

Web site: http://www.josefschulz.de

Topic 10: Funny

It is easy to reach people by making them laugh or ... smile. The making is what interests me, humor is about power. Who makes fun, who is being made a fool and who is laughing. It may sound as something sweet and light but humor is a weapon.People don't think why something is funny. Humor could be very refreshing, offensive or manipulative. And the one who laughs is taking the manipulation without any resistance.

Quotes

1) Married or widowed, and he appears to be both, Borat loves women, including his sister, the “No. 4 prostitute” in Kazakhstan, with whom he shares lusty face time in the film’s opener. He’s a misogynist (a woman’s place is in the cage), which tends to go unnoticed because he’s also casually anti-Semitic.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/movies/03bora.html

2) The comic is the outward and visible form that nature’s bounty has attached to everything unreasonable, so that we should see, and avoid, it. To know the comic we must know the rational, of which it denotes the absence and we must see wherein the rational consists . . . incongruity is the heart of the comic . . . it follows that all lying, disguise, cheating, dissimulation, all outward show different from the reality, all contradiction in fact between actions that proceed from a single source, all this is in essence comic.

Lean Baptiste Moliere from a letter responding to criticism of Tartuffe.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/388302/Moliere

Book: Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, first published 1859.

excerpt from In de Gloria, Belgian TV series by Jan Eelen, 2000-2002.

The satirical TV series targeted TV itself, its values and absurdities.

One Word 2: Facelifting

Definition:
1) plastic surgery to remove wrinkles and other signs of aging from your face; an incision is made near the hair line and skin is pulled back and excess tissue is excised;
2) a renovation that improves the outward appearance (as of a building) but usually does not involve major changes; "give your home a facelift"; "more than a facelift, the new model marks a fundamental change of direction"

Quote:

1) Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing, 'Self Portrait as My Grandmother Nancy Gregory', 2006
framed bromide print, 60 x 48 3/8 inches

"Self Portrait as My Uncle"

2) Alexandre Farto

Lifting off the surface to expose a face. Usual images become unusual due to the materials and places they are put in.

3) JR and Marco

Photos of silly faces work because of their context - places. If smiles and attitude captured on photographs are imposing power then what if these photographs are communicating to certain group of people, outside of a gallery.





4) Sascha Mordmeyer
Exaggeration through physical devises. A designer's project that relates to my smiles. Fakeness is forced by a device instead by talking.
Maybe a one liner or just an idea but not a finished piece, I really like this project.



"communication prosthesis is a unique object designed by sascha nordmeyer which aims to communicate
for its user. the object is a small, rigid red circle which is inserted into a user’s mouth. once installed,
the prosthesis holds the mouth open and forms strange expressions. nordmeyer describes the project
as a research concept that is ‘the ultimate communication tool’. in addition to the device itself,
nordmeyer also created this series of photographs featuring various professionals such as a politician,
a midwife, a craftsman and an actress wearing the prosthesis. the pictures and the prosthesis are both
available in limited editions. "
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/11590/sascha-nordmeyer-communication-prosthesis.html

5) Howard Greenhalgh and Soundgarden

Some coleagues expressed concern that my work derives from 1990's music videos and the trend of mocking middle class suburbia. I can only remember with nostalgia the commercial pop music from that period which was so different than the 2000's. And mocking commercialism was as intense in the 60's as it was in the 90's, example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSpJeJvdu0

stills from Black Hole Sun (1995), Soundgarden

6) Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Exaggeration through maximum face expressions. Clown or child like movies that explore the topic of the "small person", people who are not heroic, don't posses super powers, pretty common and unusual in the same time. Everything is exaggerated of course facial expressions too. His work reminds me of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton who focus on the marginals of society and through their use of humor criticize social dogmas.

7) Aki Kaurismäki

Exaggeration through minimum face expressions. The idea behind his movies seems to be doing everything in the most non Hollywood way. That means of course no happy ends and no pronounced facial expressions.

8) Marina Abramovich
Photos of silly faces work because of their context - who makes them. A conceptual piece in the MoMA, 2016, by Georgi Ivanov who hired 7 people for $7/hour to confront with their gazes the visitors of the museum for 7 hours a day. The face lifting topic fits with her affection of plastic surgery.






9) Britta Thie

A professional model with MFA making videos. I like the idea. Also you cannot go wrong when showing pretty females.

Shooting from britta thie on Vimeo.

liquify from britta thie on Vimeo.

10) Erik Kessels and Joep Eljkens, In Almost Every Picture #7

I like these series without reading the review, the images themselves made me spend 10 minutes trying to figure out what is going on. One person whose face changes slightly compared to the "face" of 20th century decades changing one after another another.





"In almost every picture #7 tells the story of a Dutch woman whose life is seen from the point of view of a fairground shooting gallery. The chronological series begins in 1936, when a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg in Holland picks up a gun and shoots at the target in a shooting gallery. Every time she hits the target, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize." http://www.lensculture.com/kessels.html?thisPic=1

Artist Review 10: Petur Thompsen

Significance:

Back to environmental photography. This is what I want to do sometime in the future when I have the means to. I discovered Thompsen's photographs in the context of fine art. His images are very abstract and aesthetic although, based on his statement, are about a specific environmental issue. As their narrative is pushed to the background, do they work as documentary or fine art? Much more in the real of fine art although they retain their specific agenda. This is my problem - how much of narrative I want in my field work. And maybe "documentary" is a no-no term to use even if the work is.

Bio: Lives and works in Sólheimar Iceland

CV here: http://www.peturthomsen.is/resume

Quotes:

1) In the year 2003 The National Power Company of Iceland started the building of the 700 MW Kárahnjúkar Hydroelectric Project in eastern Iceland. The project consists of three dams, one of them being the highest in Europe, and a hydroelectric power plant. The dams block among others the big glacial river Jökulá á Dal, creating the 57km2 artificial lake Hálslón. The power plant is primarily being constructed to supply electricity to a new Aluminum smelter built by Alcoa of USA in the fjord of Reyðarfjörður on the east coast of Iceland.

2) Umhverfing is an Icelandic word for the state between nature and environment. When nature is being transformed in to environment.

Work:

Press release for "Imported Landscapes":

http://www.artfacts.net/pdf-files/inst/petur%20thomsen-imported%20landscape-prenss-en.pdf

Representation: http://www.camaraoscura.net/

Web site: http://www.peturthomsen.is