Thomas Duncan Gallery, Los Angeles
Sean Kennedy is not a great painter. His brushwork is hesitant, his mark-making is sloppy and inconsistent, and his colouration, though vivid, seems uninterested in harmony. Against these odds, however, he has created a suite of great paintings. If indeed paintings is what they are. Read the rest of this entry »
JONATHAN GRIFFIN Is the scanner a photographic tool for you, or is it more to do with collage?
LUCIE STAHL I’m quite an impatient person so the immediacy of working with a scanner is nice. It is of course a bit like making photograms but without the inconvenience of having to stand around in a darkroom full of chemicals all day. It gives me time to do a lot of stuff I’d rather be doing than making art. I’m often asked about the process and presentation of photography in relation to my work and my use of the scanner, but my work is not necessarily about photography. Of course it is unavoidable but it’s just not something I think about. I think more about the stuff that surrounds us in general. Photography is one of those things. I don’t really distinguish between the frame and the content. Read the rest of this entry »
“What is this? This is me writing.”
So begins a text Frances Stark wrote in 2002, part of a handmade publication titled The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work of Art. For two decades Stark has been writing about writing, and making art about the vexing processes of artistic production. If that sounds limited in scope or overly solipsistic, then consider the range of themes that this activity has, in Stark’s hands, enlisted. From performance anxiety and creative block to exhibitionism (peacocking, as she often characterizes it), to the art market and artist community, to pedagogy, her favorite music and books, her sexuality, and her family, the Los Angeles–based Stark has never lacked for material. Everything in her life has the potential to be incorporated into her art. Her collage Push, 2006, shows exhibition invitation cards flying through her mail slot like a horizontal tornado. Read the rest of this entry »
These days, websites have trailers. The ‘teaser’ video on YouTube for the Google Art Project opens, sedately enough, with a painting hanging on a wall. From middle distance, Pieter Breughel the Elder’s The Tower of Babel (1563) looks as if the colossal edifice is collapsing rather than growing. But then the camera zooms in, drawing closer and closer to the painting, eventually coming so close that it bursts through a tiny dark window in the tower. Whammo! Read the rest of this entry »
Jonathan Griffin 