Xavier Veilhan: Using an Inorganic Language

The work of French Artist, Xavier Veilhan, is growing on me. I was first introduced to his work via Art Observed, when he had the Chateau de Versailles Courtyard and Garden exhibit.

There is an interesting photo spread of the major piece, Le Carrosse on his website. This is a piece that has a strange power in that courtyard - articulating very quickly what it is you need to know. Somehow it's slightly digital language is both contemporary yet fits exactly into a memory of Versailles. It's communicating everything you need to know and using a language that we're all becoming strangely familiar with.

Big & Bold

I'll have a few older pieces up in a show called Big & Bold.

This 1st Thursday, August 5th from 1-8p. Running until August 8th.

at The Match
908 NW 23rd
Portland

Other participating artists:

Justyn Livingston

Annie Meyer

Judson Moore
Cory Hanson

Antonio Villagran

The Match is sort of an art dealer / venue started by some friends. Drop by and support everyone!

Philip Guston: Gaps in (My) Art History

Oh the shame. While browsing C-Monster's SFMOMA photo essay today, I realized I had never yet seen Philip Guston's abstract work. Or maybe I have and instead only remember his once famous art world reversal to stylized figurative paintings in the late 60's. In either case, I've seen lots of Guston's later work and always just understood this to be a complete change for someone originally associated with abstraction. Maybe I wasn't paying attention in class, or it's just more common now to see Guston represented with his figurative work.

But how awesome that his abstract paintings appear to be composed of the same marks, colors and smudges that characterized his figurative work. Suddenly it doesn't seem too weird that his later paintings came about. It's almost as if he untangled these figurative subjects from his messes.

However, knowing Guston as I did for so long, I think it makes seeing his abstract more exciting - rather than had I been paying attention and properly digested him as an abstract painter than a figurative one. Or maybe, painting today, it's still more common for an artist to follow that linear path: figurative loosening into abstraction.

It's really exciting to see Guston's taming of something like abstraction. And then look back and see the same Guston, just distilled.

Something Else

Yesterday I documented and sleeved some other things I've been puttering around with at the studio. These are collaged or cut snapshots. Some of the cities or buildings are random vintage postcards. But the other ones are from Kelsey's family albums. Some of the interiors have led me to think about the positive cut image as one abstract painted shape. Many more after the jump. Click to make larger.

Cinematic

Got out and about with the Tibbles Family a few days ago. Super hot day. We didn't actually want to accomplish anything, and spent more time stopping for tacos in St. Johns than actually hiking.

More photos from our Sauvie Island, Oak Island walk on my Flickr. It was so darn bright. The digital camera likes to make things too clear and clean colored. I intentionally underexposed my shots and desaturated them. I later muddied them back up with more reds.

I thought afterward that these appeared very cinematic. It's not often I have people in my photos! I have been thinking alot about this particular photo lately. And have been trying to duplicate the focus and color. Something still and quick about it that I like.

"Hurting the Cause of Reality"

Years ago I was first introduced to Goddard's Band of Outsiders. Although today I feel oppositely, then it was a new language to me and it made me sleepy. But still my friend tried to explain how Goddard intentionally used editing to interrupt the fictional narrative on screen. In the dancing scene above, music is cut out (probably very simply by using the player's mute switch - Goddard was very resourceful in his production. Like even using a wheelchair) and narration dubbed in, while you can still hear the shuffles and snaps of the actors themselves.

Or, like later, mirrored in Terantino's Pulp Fiction diner dance scene, the narrative already being laid out is interrupted by this very theatric, but almost separate moment. Goddard's ruthless editing also makes his films look intentionally mismatched, with movements jerky or missing. A good example of such editing and (at first take, obnoxious) use of on and off music is the driving scene in Breathless. There's a fictional story being constructed here like any movie, but Goddard is also trying to make that more real by reminding us of how strange it is that these two people are probably driving the same route over and over; pretending.

Goddard would famously edit together documentary like footage (long before this sort of Docu-reality became popular) of his actors on breaks or having a cigarette. And these would be written in, usually on the spot, into the movies story (this is not a post of Goddard's filmmaking prowess, but I will make one more aside: he was also infamous for changing his script daily, even making it up each morning to keep his actors and producers confused).

We're being reminded that these are movies. Artiface. And yet somehow these interruptions make other things feel more real.

When Art Observed posted this story of a found Velazquez painting (above), the chipped and old surface of the painting got me thinking again of interruptions and our sensation of reality. What sorts of imperfections were a part of image making (whether intentional or uncontrollable) that changed the image's narrative and impression on us?