www.Augengallery.com
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
PDX ART: Cycles of Life
Unbound or the Cycles of Life
Unbound like a book from the twine of limitation free from the confinement of my own conditioning released from prison of condemnation the shackles cut off by relentless craving for freedom.
I step onto the path of the liberated from fear.
My soul has risen my consciousness is in full bloom spreading its aroma into an unbridled present.
I live in the exhuberation of the uncircumcised future and lay my bare heart on the door steps of circumference.
I am the empty page looking for an author a creator of word logarithms that rhyme with joy and mate with the pleasure of ink and pen.
I am the megaphone the voice of the world that is penetrating the eardrums of the willing.
The alphabet does not exist so we can proof that we can spell but is there to spell out the urgency which each moment emanates like our desire to congregate.
Channels of ideocyncrocy co-exist with the sound of reason.
America has stepped back into the spotlight after a bout with the dark ages of the mind to reclaim its place as a beacon of inspiration.
Every idea has potential even if it is a bad idea to be materialized every limitation has as consequence the imprisonment of thought.
The perplexity of life is a lousy excuse to succumb to protectionism.
The old America is dead and the new one doesn’t exist yet doesn’t know itself yet has not fully accepted the change yet doesn’t know the new language of engagement yet has not adjusted to the new reality yet to be ready to harvest the new crop of possibilities.
We peaked long time ago and coasted on that declining peak and we are still holding on to lofty ideas like a bubble that has long fallen to the ground and doesn’t realize it had burst already. We are hanging on in desperation not realizing that desperation is what is holding us back.
The spirit of adventure has lain dormant for too long and smells musky but the only way ahead is downhill back to solid ground.
We have cheated on our forefathers not upheld the highest thought misused equality as a wretch and used religion as a weapon of distraction used money as a barrier used education as a means to exalt.
We have cheated on others by stepping over them on the way up the ladder of success and ignored our oneness by claiming to be born better than others to be born again into superiority thinking.
We have cheated ourselves by inhaling our own smoke screen buying into the wrong things misusing our own trust into ourselves sold our ability for compassion to reality TV producers and other over the counter gimmicks and neglected our potential but stooped to every lowest denominator that crossed our path and promised a quick salvation from our short comings.
The idea of the individual is brilliant but only productive if it serves a greater societal good otherwise its
just like a Dog eating its own tale.
The American Dream has never been on sound ground and this untimely earthquake has shaken its soft foundation to its compromised core.
America is a young country and like every teenager it doesn’t like to learn its lessons but runs stubbornly head banging freewheeling into very next best wall just to proof that it can and to show its unruly strength which craves praise and attention like an ant craves the sugar bowl.
The American Dream has to become an inward journey a dream of a better you and me and us.
A land of plenty in a world of scarcity is not sustainable and a collective mind stimulated by pollutants won’t be able to keep the force alive.
Civilisation is on a brink a new horizon either it will became more civil or it will become extinct.
Ego growth is not exponential but loving is.
We pushed life expectancy way ahead on our biological clock but turned back time on stable morals and ethics. Behavior is becoming less and less civilized and crime has taken on more hues of color then there are class systems.
Define hero and I don’t mean war hero and then step into your own blue print. Make it happen and start with a smile as a chain reaction.
It’s not enough to have an idea to proclaim a dream it has to be built and maintained with vigilance because we are weak at heart and unstable in mind and depleted in spirit.
This dream, idea, concept is sick and needs a makeover an update a rebirth and a readjustment of priorities a realignment to higher principles.
This is the time to show that we care about who we are what we think and what results our actions produce.
We harbor weapons of mass distraction right in our brains we house thoughts that terrorize ourselves and others and we keep feeding them.
Words are either like a fountain that spews deceit and gossip or like a spring that can nourish and replenish a nation.
What is it going to be a destiny that is heroic but void of vision or heroics which are illuminating a visionary path.
Destiny has not been written yet but the layout of the chapters promise drama mixed with humility and a possibility for a happy ending but not for all.
We have become slave owners and slaves to thoughts which bring out the worst in us but bold steps can lead us towards a better stewardship. Together we can preserver alone we will fail.
Let our ideas be fruitful and multiply let them be unbound and free of stale dogma let our ideas awaken us from our slumber let the populous be enlightened and the dreams be real foe all.
Courage is easy amongst friends. Let life be easy let your mind be easy on yourself. Go out and make friends out of enemies because your future depends on it and it really feels good.
Let’s not just dream like Americans but like the French the Russians or the Kenyans because no one’s dream is more important then another’s.
Together we can and will make them come true let it be the good ones.
There is not my country or yours there is only our world. Life is only worth it if we uphold some fundamental truths that are worth dying for.
If we think infringements on the freedoms and rights are worth the price for a false security we will die in vain and in support of the wrong regimented ideologies.
We are not born unequal anymore but we still learn by doing things in new ways not by repeating old patterns.
The pursuit of happiness is passé and it’s time to return to the pursuit of wisdom once more because it is time to revise the old saying “only the ignorant know true happiness” and it’s time to change it to “only the wise can know what the purpose of happiness is.”
Don’t oppress but press on to ensure that freedom keeps fresh and keeps expanding in peace and in its time.
Strength without humility leads to arrogance leads to weakness enforces sacrifice returns you to humility.
Unbound I flow with the cycles of life to return like a new born to my own beginnings
Monday, April 27, 2009
PDX ART: "Grids" by Richard Schemmerer
VIDEO
"GRID 10"
by Richard Schemmerer
"Ray Solar Concepts"
contact
Launchitnow@aol.com
sound/musik
Michael LuecknerGuitar / Digital Jockey / Computerjockeys
www.sunkiss.de
http://www.myspace.com/guitarsunkissed
skype: luecknermichael
germany
mobile 0160-8237395
michael@sunkiss.de
PDX ART interview with "SRO Video: Guys Doing Guy Things" at Marylhurst Art Gym
SRO Video: Guys Doing Guy Things
April 7 - May 14, 2009
SRO Video: Guys Doing Guy Things
Oregon Artists: Mike Bray, Dan Gilsdorf, Mack McFarland and Stephen Slappe.
more info at
http://www.marylhurst.edu/theartgym/2009srovideo.php
SRO Video features work that goes beyond single channel video - it is video that combines projected images, installation and sculpture. You explore on your feet, rather than view from a seat. Stephen Slappe is creating a four-channel, four-wall projection of travelers on a remote road in rural Oregon. Mack McFarland is interested in ideas of utopia and dystopia and has been conducting and recording interviews in supermarket parking lots and street corners around the state. Dan Gilsdorf's works include a tiny video camera and model train, and burning trees as seen on stacked televisions. Mike Bray's installations use a combination of video and sculpture to conflate real and cinematic space.
Interview with Dan Gilsdorf
This is an all male show
How was that experience? Like how do you deal with sharing the spot light
and do you think working with female artists would be different and if yes in which way?
First of all, I should state that the curator, Terri Hopkins, did not have an all male show in mind when she started out. She intended to put together a group of works that related to the Sesquicentennial Film Festival and, as it turned out, all the works she chose were by men. The exhibition was not collaborative and all the installations were in progress before they were selected for the show. None of our work would have been any different had there been any other exhibitors (female or otherwise). As for the spotlight, Terri has put together a strong and cohesive show and I am very proud to be included.
If you had to introduce your artistic practice to a greater public how would you describe it?
Generally I see myself as a sculptor, that is; one who makes objects. I am interested in the relations between mass, space, time, and content, so I try to create works that relate to all of these realms.
Video has become the darling of the art world the last few years. Is it financially a sustainable medium and what does the future hold for it?
I’d say that video is pretty solidly within the canon of the fine arts at this point. In western culture video images are inundating the visual landscape at every level, and video technology, like all technology, is getting cheaper and cheaper. All things considered, I feel pretty comfortable stating that it is now cheaper to be a video artist than it is to be a painter. At the same time, considering the environmental impact of the technology and industrial infrastructure that video requires this may change.
Has our reality become more artificial and will lead this to an evolution of the Human experience or to it's demise?
Reality by definition is not artificial. However, in the western world the human experience has come to be dominated by mediated information. Information comes to us by means of communications technology that acts as a filter. For the purpose of dissemination, content is translated into a medium and translated back into human experience at the receiving end. This is not a new phenomenon. The written word--indeed language itself--is a communications technology, just the same as a video streaming over a high-speed wireless internet connection. As such, there are sacrifices to its use; i.e., the breach of meaning between a thought and a word. But, as any reader of fiction knows, these language technologies also allow the communication of profound subtleties. An example is metaphor, a device that cannot exist without language. In this case it is the technology of language that allows for a more profound expression of meaning.
Since now the technologies of communication (digital technology in specific) are also generative, maybe the human experience is becoming LESS artificial. The message at the receiving end has NOT been translated; it is EXACTLY like the original in every way or, more accurately, it is a de facto original!
Using technology seems a logical way of presenting a subject. What attracted you to it and do you see it necessary to convey your message?
For me it is about the image. I am a sculptor, but my work tends to incorporate images, and video is one way of doing so. Image technologies relay information, but they also contain their own content that they add to a work.
Do you expect the audience to play a participatory role?
I really consider viewing artwork as a participatory act in general. I don’t believe an artwork can be complete solely within its own corpus. Art finds its true completion in relation to the subjectivity that is the consciousness of a viewer, by engaging a viewer’s memories, emotions, intellect, etc. Therefore, in any work of art, be it a painting, film, or piece of music, the viewers’ charge is to consider, and thereby realize the artwork.
What is your goal or and message?
In this show, my goal was to use video images to evoke mass within space and time along with a certain sense of place. My hope was that viewers might experience these images in a visceral way, similar to the way one experiences mass and time out in the world. My thinking on this is related to my conception of the sublime. If the sublime can be defined as a situation in which one experiences both the perceptible and the incomprehensible simultaneously, I was trying to create a situation where the perception of an image would be analogous to real experience in three dimensions.
Also, of course, the content of the images I used relates to a kind of visual regionalism, a reference to a particular landscape and culture.
The films deal and play here in OR. What makes this region so original to live in and for an artist?
I am not a native and the reasons I came here had nothing to do with my being an artist so it’s hard for me to say. But, I can say that it is a great place to be an artist and a great place to live. Many of the regional or cultural themes that my work has always dealt with apply here, so it seems like a good fit.
Are you aspirations to be a film makers or conceptual artists which label would you feel most comfortable?
See above.
Would you do another collaboration and what is next for you?
This show was not a collaborative endeavor. However, I’m very happy to be among these artists. They are very skilled and I consider them my friends.
Anything else you want to share?
No, gracias.
Interview with Mike Bray
This is an all male show. How was that experience? Like how do you deal
with sharing the spot light and do you think working with female artists would be different and if yes in which way?
I enjoy working with other artist, male or female, and am always
fascinated to see how the work interacts. A group show acts as more of an
ensemble cast of work where different elements of your work can arise
because of the interaction between pieces. You get to know your work in a
new way so it is really challenging and eye opening.
If you had to introduce your artistic practice to a greater public how
would you describe it?
My work investigates our relationship with cinema. I move between single
channel video, video installation, photo, and objects, but the common
thread is an exploration of the cinematic as a spectacle. I grew up as
kind of a film buff and started making work to find out what made
cinematic moments such a big part of me.
Video has become the darling of the art world the last few years. Is it
financially a sustainable medium and what does the future hold for it?
As long as there are questions that video can ask that painting, drawing,
or another medium can’t, it is an important medium and has room for
critical inquiry. As a medium, video installation has been commercially
viable since the 60s and I believe it will continue to do so. I am not
sure that I think financial sustainability is an appropriate way to give
it value as a discipline though. Screens are omnipresent and it would be
disheartening to think that we would stop asking questions because of
commerce.
Has our reality become more artificial and will lead this to an evolution
of the Human experience or to it's demise?
I’m not sure if I would categorize it as an evolution or demise, but I do
see it as move towards an artificial. I believe that screen culture, or
media experience through cinema, television, or the Internet is in some
sense reprogramming us. It is why I think it is important to explore how
they operate and create desire in the viewer.
Using technology seems a logical way of presenting a subject. What
attracted you to it and do you see it necessary to convey your message?
My subject attracted me to the use of technology. I’m interested in films
and memories and where the lines start to blur. In order to explore the
blurring it is a necessary evil that I use screens, the moving image,
sound, and so on.
Do you expect the audience to play a participatory role?
Not necessarily participatory, but I hope that my work is challenging and
raises questions.
What is your goal or and message?
To create critical viewers
The films deal and play here in OR. What makes this region so original to
live in and for an artist?
My work is not Oregon specific, but I think the Northwest is a great place
to make work. The proximity of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and
Vancouver means that you are bound to find an audience for your work.
Are you aspirations to be a filmmakers or conceptual artists which label
would you feel most comfortable?
Conceptual artist.
Would you do another collaboration and what is next for you?
I didn’t feel that this show was necessarily a collaboration but I would
be interested in doing one in the future.
April 7 - May 14, 2009
SRO Video: Guys Doing Guy Things
Oregon Artists: Mike Bray, Dan Gilsdorf, Mack McFarland and Stephen Slappe.
more info at
http://www.marylhurst.edu/theartgym/2009srovideo.php
SRO Video features work that goes beyond single channel video - it is video that combines projected images, installation and sculpture. You explore on your feet, rather than view from a seat. Stephen Slappe is creating a four-channel, four-wall projection of travelers on a remote road in rural Oregon. Mack McFarland is interested in ideas of utopia and dystopia and has been conducting and recording interviews in supermarket parking lots and street corners around the state. Dan Gilsdorf's works include a tiny video camera and model train, and burning trees as seen on stacked televisions. Mike Bray's installations use a combination of video and sculpture to conflate real and cinematic space.
Interview with Dan Gilsdorf
This is an all male show
How was that experience? Like how do you deal with sharing the spot light
and do you think working with female artists would be different and if yes in which way?
First of all, I should state that the curator, Terri Hopkins, did not have an all male show in mind when she started out. She intended to put together a group of works that related to the Sesquicentennial Film Festival and, as it turned out, all the works she chose were by men. The exhibition was not collaborative and all the installations were in progress before they were selected for the show. None of our work would have been any different had there been any other exhibitors (female or otherwise). As for the spotlight, Terri has put together a strong and cohesive show and I am very proud to be included.
If you had to introduce your artistic practice to a greater public how would you describe it?
Generally I see myself as a sculptor, that is; one who makes objects. I am interested in the relations between mass, space, time, and content, so I try to create works that relate to all of these realms.
Video has become the darling of the art world the last few years. Is it financially a sustainable medium and what does the future hold for it?
I’d say that video is pretty solidly within the canon of the fine arts at this point. In western culture video images are inundating the visual landscape at every level, and video technology, like all technology, is getting cheaper and cheaper. All things considered, I feel pretty comfortable stating that it is now cheaper to be a video artist than it is to be a painter. At the same time, considering the environmental impact of the technology and industrial infrastructure that video requires this may change.
Has our reality become more artificial and will lead this to an evolution of the Human experience or to it's demise?
Reality by definition is not artificial. However, in the western world the human experience has come to be dominated by mediated information. Information comes to us by means of communications technology that acts as a filter. For the purpose of dissemination, content is translated into a medium and translated back into human experience at the receiving end. This is not a new phenomenon. The written word--indeed language itself--is a communications technology, just the same as a video streaming over a high-speed wireless internet connection. As such, there are sacrifices to its use; i.e., the breach of meaning between a thought and a word. But, as any reader of fiction knows, these language technologies also allow the communication of profound subtleties. An example is metaphor, a device that cannot exist without language. In this case it is the technology of language that allows for a more profound expression of meaning.
Since now the technologies of communication (digital technology in specific) are also generative, maybe the human experience is becoming LESS artificial. The message at the receiving end has NOT been translated; it is EXACTLY like the original in every way or, more accurately, it is a de facto original!
Using technology seems a logical way of presenting a subject. What attracted you to it and do you see it necessary to convey your message?
For me it is about the image. I am a sculptor, but my work tends to incorporate images, and video is one way of doing so. Image technologies relay information, but they also contain their own content that they add to a work.
Do you expect the audience to play a participatory role?
I really consider viewing artwork as a participatory act in general. I don’t believe an artwork can be complete solely within its own corpus. Art finds its true completion in relation to the subjectivity that is the consciousness of a viewer, by engaging a viewer’s memories, emotions, intellect, etc. Therefore, in any work of art, be it a painting, film, or piece of music, the viewers’ charge is to consider, and thereby realize the artwork.
What is your goal or and message?
In this show, my goal was to use video images to evoke mass within space and time along with a certain sense of place. My hope was that viewers might experience these images in a visceral way, similar to the way one experiences mass and time out in the world. My thinking on this is related to my conception of the sublime. If the sublime can be defined as a situation in which one experiences both the perceptible and the incomprehensible simultaneously, I was trying to create a situation where the perception of an image would be analogous to real experience in three dimensions.
Also, of course, the content of the images I used relates to a kind of visual regionalism, a reference to a particular landscape and culture.
The films deal and play here in OR. What makes this region so original to live in and for an artist?
I am not a native and the reasons I came here had nothing to do with my being an artist so it’s hard for me to say. But, I can say that it is a great place to be an artist and a great place to live. Many of the regional or cultural themes that my work has always dealt with apply here, so it seems like a good fit.
Are you aspirations to be a film makers or conceptual artists which label would you feel most comfortable?
See above.
Would you do another collaboration and what is next for you?
This show was not a collaborative endeavor. However, I’m very happy to be among these artists. They are very skilled and I consider them my friends.
Anything else you want to share?
No, gracias.
Interview with Mike Bray
This is an all male show. How was that experience? Like how do you deal
with sharing the spot light and do you think working with female artists would be different and if yes in which way?
I enjoy working with other artist, male or female, and am always
fascinated to see how the work interacts. A group show acts as more of an
ensemble cast of work where different elements of your work can arise
because of the interaction between pieces. You get to know your work in a
new way so it is really challenging and eye opening.
If you had to introduce your artistic practice to a greater public how
would you describe it?
My work investigates our relationship with cinema. I move between single
channel video, video installation, photo, and objects, but the common
thread is an exploration of the cinematic as a spectacle. I grew up as
kind of a film buff and started making work to find out what made
cinematic moments such a big part of me.
Video has become the darling of the art world the last few years. Is it
financially a sustainable medium and what does the future hold for it?
As long as there are questions that video can ask that painting, drawing,
or another medium can’t, it is an important medium and has room for
critical inquiry. As a medium, video installation has been commercially
viable since the 60s and I believe it will continue to do so. I am not
sure that I think financial sustainability is an appropriate way to give
it value as a discipline though. Screens are omnipresent and it would be
disheartening to think that we would stop asking questions because of
commerce.
Has our reality become more artificial and will lead this to an evolution
of the Human experience or to it's demise?
I’m not sure if I would categorize it as an evolution or demise, but I do
see it as move towards an artificial. I believe that screen culture, or
media experience through cinema, television, or the Internet is in some
sense reprogramming us. It is why I think it is important to explore how
they operate and create desire in the viewer.
Using technology seems a logical way of presenting a subject. What
attracted you to it and do you see it necessary to convey your message?
My subject attracted me to the use of technology. I’m interested in films
and memories and where the lines start to blur. In order to explore the
blurring it is a necessary evil that I use screens, the moving image,
sound, and so on.
Do you expect the audience to play a participatory role?
Not necessarily participatory, but I hope that my work is challenging and
raises questions.
What is your goal or and message?
To create critical viewers
The films deal and play here in OR. What makes this region so original to
live in and for an artist?
My work is not Oregon specific, but I think the Northwest is a great place
to make work. The proximity of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and
Vancouver means that you are bound to find an audience for your work.
Are you aspirations to be a filmmakers or conceptual artists which label
would you feel most comfortable?
Conceptual artist.
Would you do another collaboration and what is next for you?
I didn’t feel that this show was necessarily a collaboration but I would
be interested in doing one in the future.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
PDX ART: Gary Wiseman and Meridith Andrews at Milepost 5
Sunday APRIL 26 FROM 7-9PM
Installation & performance by Gary Wiseman & Meredith Andrews
AT Milepost 5
WWW.MILEPOSTFIVE.COM
Installation & performance by Gary Wiseman & Meredith Andrews
AT Milepost 5
WWW.MILEPOSTFIVE.COM
Friday, April 24, 2009
PDX ART: Photo Lucida is in town
Every 2 years an international set of photographers, reviewers and photography enthusiast meet in Portland OR for a week-long in depth engagement with photography. The goal is to increase the interest and understanding of the ordinary observer through photography.
organised by Christopher Rauschenberg of Blue Sky gallery and many others
contact
www.photolucida.org
organised by Christopher Rauschenberg of Blue Sky gallery and many others
contact
www.photolucida.org
Thursday, April 23, 2009
PDX Art: Capturing the Moment
I practice capturing the beauty of the moment.
Every moment is so beautiful if we pay attention.
I find at the bottom of God’s pond images long forgotten like as if I had lived with my third eye blind.
Falling like leaves are the moments I captured but then wasted.
In a blink of a thought passing by my inner eye I missed my own reflection in all the things I perceived.
I use the lens like a target finder and shoot into eternity unfolding to capture the traces of light that turn into shadows on my unwritten page.
All of a sudden emptiness becomes ecstatic and the void in time fills up with experience channeled by images I captured like wild animals now ready observable in my iron caged peripheral vision as if snapped mid birth a “Still” ready for contemplation.
The dream continues to access the heart but as the moment moves on and on the heart has rushed off with every forced heart beat.
We have proof of the event but the actual happening does not exist but in memory. We neither can be sure that it ever existed or that it was just an echo of something totally different.
Even when we think light doesn’t lie we can’t proof it because it only can be observed by the shadow it throws as leftover evidence just as mortality is only recognized in the absence of life force.
The distinctions blur in lucid colors and values like “decorative” float down the drain with other wasteful patterns of thinking.
To rebel is my cause and my weapons are light and love and my message is hiding in the images which realign the ordinary with the divine.
Every moment is so beautiful if we pay attention.
I find at the bottom of God’s pond images long forgotten like as if I had lived with my third eye blind.
Falling like leaves are the moments I captured but then wasted.
In a blink of a thought passing by my inner eye I missed my own reflection in all the things I perceived.
I use the lens like a target finder and shoot into eternity unfolding to capture the traces of light that turn into shadows on my unwritten page.
All of a sudden emptiness becomes ecstatic and the void in time fills up with experience channeled by images I captured like wild animals now ready observable in my iron caged peripheral vision as if snapped mid birth a “Still” ready for contemplation.
The dream continues to access the heart but as the moment moves on and on the heart has rushed off with every forced heart beat.
We have proof of the event but the actual happening does not exist but in memory. We neither can be sure that it ever existed or that it was just an echo of something totally different.
Even when we think light doesn’t lie we can’t proof it because it only can be observed by the shadow it throws as leftover evidence just as mortality is only recognized in the absence of life force.
The distinctions blur in lucid colors and values like “decorative” float down the drain with other wasteful patterns of thinking.
To rebel is my cause and my weapons are light and love and my message is hiding in the images which realign the ordinary with the divine.
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