David Lynch’s new project, Interview Project, is assumingly as simple as it gets: travel across the US. Interview people.
Here is the first episode.
First impressions? It’s… nice. Potentially fascinating. Not quite yet. For the moment, it’s too early to say.

This might seem like something very unfocused, as if it lacked a form, a formula, a format to support it. Compare this first episode to Kie?lowski’s (amazing, amazing) Talking Heads (1980):

Kie?lowski has a format and sticks to it.
Seen from this perspective, Lynch’s project might appear as amateurish.
But then, it goes so well with the spirit of our times, with the thirst for simple, everyday stories…
After all, we can still feel quite a heavy dose of humanist ideals and pathos in Kie?lowski’s approach. Even the way he films his subjects is dramatic, often painting-like.
Lynch has this capacity too, as we know so well. Yet he chooses a very different approach, different texture. Different proximity.

One small, hardly noticeable element is similar in the two projects: the music. It is heavy, dramatic, as if contradicting the simplicity of the protagonists.
Is it nostalgia for the great narratives?

Oh, and one more thing. We can only get that far asking constantly the most basic questions. After a while, I get tired. I want more. The essential stops being essential. It becomes annoyingly abstract, unaccessible. That’s one reason to go beyond the existential questions, and one reason to ask other questions. One way of dealing with this is moving away from the person-as-biography to the person-as-projection. Take the famous work by Sophie Calle called Blind, where she asked people who were born blind about what is their image of beauty.

The pathos is still quite present. Yet the projection, the sensibility of the imagination, makes us… dance with empathy.

Master, placid are
All the hours
We lose,
If, in losing them,
Like in a vase,
We put flowers.

(fragment of a poem by Ricardo Reis, aka Fernando Pessoa)

Tommi Toija, the author of the above sculptures, has an exhibition at the Institut Finlandais in Paris until the end of June.

Brian from MyArtSpace has asked some interesting questions on his Spiritual Side of Art post..

“Has a specific work of art touched your soul? Can you recall a specific work of art that helped your through a difficult time or defined a time of joy for you? I know that some people suggest that there is no longer room for the spiritual in the art of today– do you agree? Or would you say that the spiritual aspects of art surround us just as they did in other periods of time? In your opinion, why does visual art have this power– why do viewers establish these personal connections?” My ArtSpace

I think most of the spirituality in art is in the making of art, with the artwork simply being the byproduct. So a painting can be of something unspiritual, if there is such a word, but the artist may have felt that he/she was touching god while painting it.

I have never seen an artwork that has “touched my soul” or moved me to tears, even though I have looked at lots of art and think of myself as a reasonably sensitive person. Installations and moving images have come close as they have more tools to play with. A painting or sculpture has to work harder to affect the viewer as it simply sits there with no movement or sound, so we have to do all the work ourselves if we are to end up in tears. Film on the other hand has more tools available to press our emotional buttons at will.

Art affects us on a more subtle level, it seeps into our soul rather than blows our mind on the spot. Good art will linger, it will hang around for weeks and months after viewing it, but it probably won’t make you cry or save your life. I think the viewer has to be content with knowing that the artwork is just the waste byproduct of something spiritual, which doesn’t necessarily make the finished piece spiritual. Sometimes that waste product works as a mirror or points to something greater and it affects a person deeply, but usually it just ends up as something pretty hanging a wall.

Artists and galleries seem to be further apart than I thought. The recent art galleries and Internet post created comments that were anti artist or art gallery. A comment by “anonymous” on Starting an Art Gallery (who usually has something controversial to say) said this..

“..here is the KEY.. own your building… this proves your loyalty to art and separates yourself from the others.. so wonderful! then don’t listen to what artists have to say about them having to bear the burden of the costs.. 2 reasons… first. artists (especially abstract painters) are a dime a dozen. second.. it is an artists job to spend money on their lifestyle… so if you were a full time snowboarder, it would cost you equipment, lift tickets,gas to get there, lifestyle clothing, etc..so, being an artist costs, frames, paint, entry fees and The Burden of dealing with art gallery divas like myself.”

Ouch.. No wonder artists and art galleries don’t get along. I would hate to be an abstract artist exhibiting with this guy! I would quickly start painting cow turds and tell him it was important to you and that you’re confident the public will buy, buy, buy.. lol.

Also, the Australian artist Hazel Dooney replied to the recent Art Gallery and Internet post with the following to say..

“But the power of new media, combined with the accelerating decline of traditional galleries, especially in a drastically deteriorating global economy, is such that even the most persistent and grasping middlemen will lose their grip in the near future. While artists will flourish on the net, only a very few galleries are likely to adapt to it, let alone be able transfer offline success online.
As any geek – or record company – can tell you, the web works against any effort to exert control within it. ” Read her full post here.

It seems that artists and art galleries live on different planets. Personally, my dealings with art galleries have left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I decided to take a route that allowed me to forgo selling art, but still allow me to comfortably pay the bills. I now hate parting with paintings and I paint what I want, but I guess my storage will run out eventually

(via)

Oh were this the universe!
Were it but a combination of lines, a simple picture of perfection, were the universe a set of twigs and seeds with their mathematical omnipotence!
Oh were there nothing else, nothing but the point where everything meets, nothing but the shape it all embodies. And the shadow of the reflection of a shadow of the Work, just to outscore its very depth of space, just to give us the distance we need to be closer.
Oh were it all we need, the joyful meeting of vectors, the unswerving presence of fragility.

Oh were there no shadow in the top left corner, coming from elsewhere.

Both pictures are of sculptures by Christiane Löhr.

The artist going by the name of Above made this stencil in Lisbon. (I actually know the lady sitting on the right – she is one of Lisbon’s classic characters). In a gesture the artist herself admits robinwoodesque, Above is selling prints of this picture and will give all the profits to two charities she has previously selected. More info here.

This is a short fragment of my work called The Actors. The first volume – Reconnaissance lasts 50 minutes. You can see this excerpt in sort-of-HD here.
Any galleries interested in showing this work, write me, and I’ll send you a DVD.

Jerzy Kucia, The Ring (1978)

The young WRO Center, devoted to new/media art, is hosting one of the first serious exhibitions of Nam June Paik’s work since the artist’s death in 2006.
This is not the largest exhibition, and fans of his complex multi-media installations might be disappointed – few of those are present here.
But if the budget did not allow to bring the lasers, projections, and intricate video circuits, the taste and knowledge of the organizers allows for a fascinating and multi-faceted look into Paik’s creation.

Here is an example – Self-Portrait-Head, created in 1982.


On the TV screen, a young Nam June Paik stands facing the camera. His eyes are closed. Very slowly, his hand moves through the surface of his face, up and down. He is feeling his own face. The movement is slow and delicate, and after a while we realize he is not touching the face. The hand seems to know the face so well, this becomes a movement of recognition, as in, re-calling one’s face. This is me. This heat emanating from the surface of my face, this is my boundary.

Facing the TV set is another face.

This one is a sculpture. A metal cast of the artist’s face, made many years later. He is an older man now, and it takes some imagination to become convinced this is the same person. His eyes are closed, and the gesture is similar to the one on the recording.

They are looking at each other with their eyes shut. They are feeling each other – as they are the very same. Time has gone by, and yet stands still, trapped in the matter, the reproduction, the loop.
They/he are/is having a conversation with them/him selves/self.
The young man is moving, as if unable to realize his movement is still. The old man is cast, he is immobile, he is the return of the sculpture, the mimetic power of art, the noble texture of statue. He is the deathmask of the other, his self. And yet, he is life-size, he is freed of the flatness and squareness, he is a real fragment, as if ripped away off the face, a witness. And yet, he is facing the TV, as if watching it, or feeling it with his unmoving gesture.
It is clear, here, that the Narcissus’ myth got it all wrong. The reflection is not a risk – it is a reality we may wish to ignore, but that will remain nonetheless, echoing our past in a loop that designs the warm and uncertain borders of identity.
Watching this installation reminds me of a curious definition of art: art works, to the extent to which it is the opening of poetry.

The exhibition at the WRO Art Center in Wroc?aw, Poland, is open until January 25. I highly recommend a guided tour.