Sunday 13 December 2009

MINT :the pot the coffee the porn


There's a kind of exposed sensitivity that is always being sought after. The experience of a flash opening-this one burst up in tiny powerful spots- and then disappears as quickly as it has appeared. The work crowds and rubs shoulders just as much as the audience does. All existing for their own reason. We do this on purpose. Looking around makes it evident that for the most part this is a healthy and active participatory event. Crowd seems mostly in the 23_35 range....no real demographic beyond that- other than a sensation that maybe everyone here is a modestly successful graphic designer , living (for now,of course) in one of the nearby loft hip grid matching facades.
I wonder if Brandon Sadler is ever going to finish that Fish mural. It is coming along nicely. I saw one of his cards on the corkboard entrance to this place. Mint Gallery. I recall when they started up and were making their presence known on artnews. This experience tonight made for neat opportunities. People could expose their work,see others work and perhaps even meet each other. All for a capped price range,something that also caps any out- of -control desire to extend the expectations into something more presumptuous-or really even having any expectations at all. The purpose is for the event of it as well. It is something to do to get the evening going. See some cool stuff,have a few warm-up drinks etc...
Im going to have to say the most interesting pieces in the show were somewhere around the work of collab artists andy imm and "eddie" and the work by brandi supratanapongse. Andy /Eddie brings intereactive transparency and a funky touchable neo-grit to techno-found objects, the recording & keeping of fading permanent records,lost children and highschool memories. Made into optical games with strange implications. Brandi's work contrasted flavors in tiny ways. The intent was about the fact that this was a piece to create a fantasy within and then observe with the fantasy extension of the sense of self-that outer shell needed for going into art space,outside of it and observing the self float along...the choices made were tactile and a bit irreverant-ultimately of course conscious of an aesthetic,but spacey,delicate and sarcastic-they were.
i saw moree of ashely anderson. think i noticed when i was buying a piece that mike germon had purchased one as well. I came out here to this experience because of a friend of mine-who also purchased several pieces. I am thankful i was able to see the majority of the work when it wasnt so crowded. crowded in a way is a good trhing. Until it reaches that extent-that law of diminishing returns and the self-fulfilling. In the details people are exposed and sharing.
It is a bitter cold and wet december day-rock out with yr socks on people. now the humidity has final built into the thing itself-rain. I dunno about ol' ashley-ive seen him express his thoughts around the internet and i like where hes coming from. maybe he reminds me of myself too much-cuz when i see the work-i do think of the thoughts i have read and theres an expectation established. I wonder if he is the one doing the jawbreaker looking teeth and mouth square around town. i like that hes embracing an awareness of work i relate to. ive recently discovered bjorn melhus and assume vivid astro focus. ashleys decision to pull from 80's video games like pop art imagery-and in a painterly fashion indicate the pixilation so specific to that time-period-its nostalgic for me as a child of that era. Fine. Cool. I see somebody who-as i have mentioned before in some memory permanently floating out there-shares a like for stuff like banksy,space-invader,paper rad etc....which is fine. Theres other historical awareness sleeved,but all in all...is fine and fun stuff doing nothing beyond what it claims to be.
the Mint experience in general was for me, as an isolated barometer smoothing out like a water ripple,which takes a delicious random purple turn left and is the art sinking to the bottom of a man-made lake. Provenance of mud catfish,yes...the city that people love to reference-like ...pardon me..has anyone heard of a ..,Travis Somerville? Apparently he lived here in Atlanta as a kid for half a second-to parents that were white civil rights activisits. And, oh..the experience he's had living and growing up in the south informs his work to this day. yadda yadda. look at his work. its derivitive,cheesy, contrived, and helps reinforce and perpetuate an expectation of the south he needs to validate his work. is simply untrue and silly in this phase of connectivity through time,experience, education, technology,exploration and cultural interest-variety and curiousity,transfusions of beliefs and walks of life... to still be seeding the thoughts with this same angle on a topic that,true, shldnt be forgotten-but c'mon. yr an artist. get original as an artist -and as a fucking business man, i guess. get relevant to now and stop playing cards that have obligatory responses and not respecting those responses. You use them like a doctor looking for nerve-reflexes. Calculating...a prostitute in a porno with sharks dead eyes- smiling and relaxed. going thru the motions. that is what the art ultimately is.it gave up and decided it was trapped within itself and sat down. and decided to make a living.
but mint ..i went to mint with my girlfriend wendy k lloyd and an old friend from growin up in decatur,ga-michael orr. michael is doing an installation at seven stages in the near future and the postcard pieces he showed are potentially details from this larger project.
In particular-i was happy to have seen brandi's work. Hers had leanings creeping beneath them in spirit. Like no others in this show ,with an unintentional natural regard fro doin', but also significantly shared a feeling with everything in there. Many pieces in the show were stunning in their skill level and that was at least fine and dandy with me. It was cool and fun.
The purist perspective on the entire event would be forced to consider the entire context that the gallery itself is situated in and then consider the perceiced goals and then -if whatever ends are justifying whatever means-if the varying roads to the same essential goal will ever meet. Constructive investment in the value of this community's art scene. To date, it has basically been relying on an existing sense of self. This one really only works to a certain extent,one that is mostly dictated by a need for nodding and getting to know blokes and perpetuate a surface gesture..the real expectation is in the work itself and shared between the artists. challenings and exposing thoughs in a sensitive extended way...as real as possible and aware of the environment that arches around and thru this..the internet.
Shows like this are the constant return to the basics,presuming that that gesture-which is true-one shld never forget the basics-is in itself perpetually insinuating that the rest of showing yr art's value is implicit in its hope for ...running into the ceilings of glass houses.
Atlanta in its lack of audience strives to attract from the face forward. the truth-hugging- also includes the digging of nails and instead of playing rope a dope we now bite off parts of ears and tattoo the mcdonald arches on our faces. whispering secrets about what direction to wipe yr arts memory of the wall so as not to contaminate our private parts

1 comment:

  1. Hello,
    I wanted to tell you I appreciate your posts. I enjoy reading about the art you view. I especially of course enjoyed your thoughts on my pieces at the MINT. They gave me an insight on myself from an outsider. One is often pleased or disappointed by such insights, but in this case I think you are right with your observations. In all of my work no matter how small or random the pieces fit or regardless of seemingly asinine details, I always try to pull out something from within, mixed with sporadic decisions in compositions to create something, well strange and confusing I suppose.

    I think you hit it on the nose when you said, "leanings creeping beneath them in spirit."

    I will have work at the next MINT show, "Not You," a collection of self portraits. Opening 1/16 7-11pm

    http://suprachib.weebly.com/
    http://twitter.com/suprachib

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