More Miami: Chuck Close lecture

Chuck Close spoke to a large crowd at Art Basel on Thursday Morning. The lecture was moitored by Richard Flood, cheif curator for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. For those of you who are not familiar with the story of Close, he was a successful painter and photography who had a disastrous spinal artery collapse in 1988. The doctors said he would never be a fully functioning artist again.

Over the hour that Chuck spoke, it became very clear that what he has not allowed refers to as "the Event" to destroy his life, though it strongly affects his work. He said confidently that "Art saved my life." Creating art is what keeps him moving forward. He said that "every aspect of my work "is totally determined by my disability." Chuck continues to paint, but in a totally different way than before his accident. He straps a brush to his hand (he refers to painting as "taking a stick with some hairs glued on the end, rubbing it in some colored dirt, and smearing it on a cloth"). He carefully copies photographs onto a gridded canvas, dot by dot, so that up close, his paintings appear pi elated, but from afar, they are unbelievably photorealistic.

Close spoke about moving beyond undergraduate & graduate work, and coming into one's own habits and freedom. "When your a good student, you make shapes that look like art...but it must look like some one else's art." In an effort to move into this freedom Close got rid of all his tools and all color, sticking to black paint only.

lastly, Close explained how his disability informs his work: he described himself as having a short attention span, not having a memory for the three dimmensional, but a nearly photographic memory for the two dimmensional. His work takes an enormous amount of dedication, to which he commented that "if you get an idea, you just have to be there long enough to resolve it."

More Miami: inspiration

Here are the photos I promised. Art basel wouldn't allo cameras, so these are mostly from Scope & Photo Miami. also, they were taken on my sanyo point & shoot so don't judge the quality :)

More Miami: Vik Muniz lecture

Vik Muniz spoke to a full house that spilled into an overflow room on December 8th at Art Basel. He spoke with a great sense of humor and poise about the progressions of his career, and what is work means to him. Muniz began creating sculpture, but eventually became far more interested in photographer. He was fascinated by the photo shoots that took place to document the objects in galleries; the light, the photographer and all the assistants; Muniz said the procedure made it seem as if the "object was made to be photographed". The irony is that if a viewer only sees the photograph, he only see's the object from the photographers way of looking, and sometimes the photograph even makes the subject look better than it really is. "As we grow old, we lose the ability to rotate objects in our minds" said Muiz.

These were the beginings of Muniz's reason for photography as means of distribution (his sculptures are never exhibited in person); he also uses the theory of photography to his advanteage. "I rely on the photograph to create that critical distance...it's my pixie dust." Munix feels the photograph seperates the viewer from the process. He spoke about watching people look at paintings in a gallery, how they walk up to a certain point in front of the canvas and then lean in, step back and repeat. He wants to find that exact moment when the viewer crosses the boundary, that moving out to see the image versus moving in to see the process. Muniz tries to "extend that tranformation" because "magic is where art meets science."

Vik then spoke with a morbid sense of humor about the state of the photo industry: ave something depressing to say......"Photography is useless. Being a photographer today is like being a painter when photography was invented."

The moderator asked Muniz to talk about his materials (ketchup, ciggerate ashes, chocolate syrup, wire, thread, etc). Muniz said that he "mistcasts all of his actors". Elaborating, he explained "It's just material. It's just stuff, it's what you make of it. People in the renessaince use mummy powder. I've never used dead people!"

Miami Trip: Photo Miami & more

Allison and I just returned from Miami: the art was incredible. We visited PhotoMiami, SCOPE, Aqua & Art Basel. I took photos at the first two, cameras weren't allowed inside of Art Basel. I'll be posting some various photos & writeups from the two lectures, (Chuck Close & Vick Muniz). Meanwhile, here are links to photogographers I discovered on the trip (mostly at Photo Miami). Their work is new to me, very inspirational, and worth checking out.

http://www.adadhannah.com/ does mainly movie stills: her museum stills are escpecially interesting pieces.

http://www.alanburjohnson.com/ breathtaking, delicate instiallations created with transperancies. see below, and be sure to look at his project, "Swarm"

http://www.abdelnnortt.com/ This artist does sculpture, videos and photorealistic paintings (below, "I never worry" oil on canvas) but his work was at Photo Miami via the Stephen Cohen Gallery. Read his artist statement, which is under "a freindly reminder". Its toungue in cheek and very quirky.

http://www.alexprager.com/ She's a young photographer from california. Vibrant colors, and something unsettling about her compositions, as seen below. She's one of my new favorites!

http://www.elzajo.com/ Her work seems to be a playfully morbid take on female sexuality. The pieces at Photo Miami were 3-dimmensional, including the one below which I can't locate a title for.