PDX Art: "Look a like" by Richard Schemmerer

Look alike or don’t like the look

The suit makes the man the condom size makes the modern day Romeo. Myths are like falling stars they fall from high above into an endless far below bottomless pit of gravity simply called “No men’s land”;an old saying for a frontier which cannot be inhabitated by eager human settlers who don’t settle for a little piece of earth but want the whole earthy cake.
Why is nobody giving their children Native American language lessons and Native American names outside a reservation maybe because shame has no place or culture or style but is universal.
Even shame has been done before. There is nothing new under the sun who’s is just one sun under many even Sun has been done before maybe even better.
What’s really genuine besides Denim? Denim was invented by the French it was the beginning of a style revolution and like all revolutions it fringed out into main stream territory.
Everything has a territory even the brain processes different psychological aspects in various chambers of thought.
It’s all a game about power which faculties supersedes the other.
Molecules don’t care they just like to congregate with like. Even if we strive for control we want to be liked by and be alike others.
The scent of power spreads around like perfume it either attracts or disturbs but everything we do is to impress our own idea onto as many as possible.

We enter the world as competitors even the succeeding sperm had already a fight for survival behind him. It never ends as we weigh ourselves against the minions that form our zone of interaction.
Masculinity needs an adversary to constantly reassert itself to not feel castrated to proof that it still got the scent of irresistibility.
The idea of Sex is craving constant attention because at the base of our brains deep in the olfactory we are just like animals. Sure we are amazing animals but we are also have a killer instinct which triggers feelings, of positive and negative of yours or mine, at its own leisure.
They can turn as on and off from loving to hate like a faulty light switch before we even know it before we even able to finish our thought process and follow up on a logical decision instead of a lightening quick impulse.
That’s why we do things that we regret shortly after.

We are talking, living our dream but we are living based on our memory which serves as a filter and a mold at the same time.
Everybody wants to be like John Lennon – just imagine — maybe not with Yoko Ono in tow but that’s just preference based on preconditioned stigma.
We collect smells and emotions combined with color coded visual snippets to build our mini empire by using our artistic freedom to arrange all this accumulated information into a designer world designed by our brain to the specification of our upbringing and our psychological needs.
If we are forced off our course by outside modalities we become depressed or self or otherwise distractive.
We constantly want to be someone else following cultural trends like a hound dog following rabbit tracks and are always searching for looking for social role models that promise short term satisfaction to our ADD Ego.
Our inner workings are like a Hollywood dream factory script constantly being rewritten weighing our impact and marketability against our handicaps.

Dress for success has been a cool advertising slogan because it plays into our insecurities to show us how naked we are never enough not compatible or just an unworthy opponent.
Big lips, boobs or penis are never enough to set us apart or get us ahead but packaging can do this trick.
A name can be perceived as a handicap like you never going to be a star with this name or we change it to hide a tainted cultural heritage we ourselves perceive as inferior.
Broad shoulders are back emphasizing a need in dramatic times to lean on something lean on images which emulate what we are not.
We copy anything we perceive off as an advantage that could advance our agenda get us a head get us the starring role in our own lives.

“I am a winner Baby why don’t you love me” is the theme song; manipulation is the games name to get to the front line of the action is the drawing force.
The shadow never sleeps it just lingers waiting to follow you with your every move.

Moments are like time bombs going off changing the course of history personal and otherwise.
Who’s your daddy becomes “who’s your Hero now”.

We fucked our brains by never being really who we are suppose to be. When we say we are in the present moment it means nothing because the present is not constant but is constantly marching on as our past.
When we dock in the past we don’t even know what’s around us as we lose context like a piece missing from a film; the same counts for the future the difference is that we add extra footage to the memory bank when we fantasize and mix past and present into it.
What’s left is an artificial state of mind which is not able to see its true reality but is binging on wishful thinking.

Life is like an island and we are lost on it not alone but lost together and nobody knows where we are nobody can find us because we are all here.
The beggar and the iconic star and the dead heroes, the war crimes and the holy sacrificed, the new born and the long dead, the saved and the exiled all are right here becoming or disintegrating with free or against their will, solid and transient because it is build into our system.
Tradition that has no counterweight even rebellion has become tradition is just a phase helping us to reprocess our desires while we are trying to find an escape from this prison of the body and the mind.

And the dog keeps humping the old leg keeps on barking at flying gravity defying leaves and I must be still alive because I can smell the spirit of youth, smell something familiar even though the sand of time feels gritty between my teeth I can taste pleasure.
I bite into the ripples of my soul full with expectations of its filling, bite into the apple of fame to suck its juice and eat the marrow of the forbidden fruit just to know what it’s like to be someone else.
Now that I know I can’t go back because it is impossible to unknow once you do you can’t forget. Sure you can pretend but it is stored away in the vault and any one can crack it.
I can’t forget that I am just like you even if I don’t like your look you are my mirror image.
Knowledge has this sordid life in us; it keeps accumulating and creates a hybrid world that lives in us as an alternative while we keep on admiring what can’t be acquired.
Images float by like balloons ripping with wafts of air rising into the mile high sky to fornicate with Gods atmosphere the one we crave the most.

PDX Art: "A hole in the Earth" by Richard Schemmerer

A hole in the Earth
Or I am just not that into me anymore.

Suddenly there was a window like a hole in the earth an escalator or elevator that went own into a crusty menagerie of rotating crimson colored collages of elements like a funnel of mixed media sucking on my cortex and then it was blackened dark again.
Than a sign flickered hanging from a mental beam spelling it out in greenish hues
“Dimensions Variable” than a crazy strafing beam took over the scenery like a lightning bolt the evening sky.
Escape seemed not possible from this frame of reference all one could do was wait for the presentation to end.
The last decade is not dead yet; one more translucent year to go. Sure I am rushing it a little I am ready for 2011 where is Prince when you need him to write a song. I thought “1999” was brilliant and “2011” would catapult him passed the hip hop clowns back to the top of the charts now that M.J> disqualified himself by zombiing out way to early and took a pass on the future.
Suddenly I realize how indoctrinated I am like as if my skin is glowing with a symbol like a branded logo dating me tying me to a time frame, a fashion epoch, a cultural taste, a sexual preference, an art school category and I feel like the stale breath like as if the long dead from cancer Marlboro man is breathing right back up from the hell hole called my past.
I am shocked about what I am still carrying around in my mental cavity as if it were some expensive Louis Vinton language not the cheap K-Mart stuff I grew up with.
I have to listen to white noise now to be able to sleep because part of me is still like a Zombie rummaging through past encounters of the loving sucking un-kind type.
They say we have a symbiotic relationship with our past and everything led to where we are now and who we are now.
“What the fuck” I say this is neo- spiritual garbage and I wish I had this huge eraser that could wipe out every single encounter delete it from the book of death, the Arkashic record and the not so secret CIA files. The past is like an Albatross and right now I forgot why having an Albatross around ones neck is such a bad thing. Bjork was wearing a swan to the Oscars and it looked quite fetching.

Triangles everywhere, everything is made from triangles cut from card board boxes which once where used to ship green bananas from some African country to our westerns supermarkets so they can ripen under special lights to our specifications; ripen like under a high volutend lense that burns scars all over my future.
I stopped dating all together but also stopped dating my paintings long time ago and every show I have has always brand new art work because I just paint over it.
I remember seeing an x-ray of a Rembrandt and he had a whole different scenery underneath the shiny surface.
That’s how I feel about my present; you see one thing but there are thousands of other layers underneath which have built up my being. So I am laughing already imagining when someone in the distant future is going to x-ray my paintings, should they become an object of value, he’ll find a whole movie underneath it.
Movies sure have come a long way from the silent phase to the block buster filling theater phase in our days. I wonder if the catastrophes Nostradamus envisioned ,the glimpses he got of the future where actual Hollywood productions like the newest apocalyptic adventures titled simply “2012” that is hitting our mega-plexes right now with its catastrophic imagery staring John Cusack.
I sure would be terrible confused if I had this gift of sight of predicting the future to differentiate but this is just one of my crazy thoughts that only lead me to regret my past that failed to fit me out with any special gifts.
Of course I don’t regret anything especially not being alive but I am not getting anywhere. I don’t have a library named after me or a statue placed in the center of a town not even a billboard commercial that sports my visage and the history books that have not been written yet don’t know that I even exist.
I am just not that important and I am beginning to be just not that into me anymore.
My eyes are straying my mind is wandering inhabitating other peoples bodies playing role play trying on their skin and I am seriously contemplating to become a body snatcher and invade George Clooney’s body for a change in nervous system.
I am on nobodies radar thanks to my uneventful past with my mediocre predisposition handed down to me by my average parents with their lack of education and c-list gene stock.
I don’t despise them for it but it doesn’t make me want to celebrate or being proud of myself or wanting to spread my genetically inferior sperm.
Everything seems so flat in retrospect just like most of my new paintings that nobody wants they just try to trick you to make you think they are fresh and unique but there is no depth in it.
Maybe sculptor is more palatable it sure is more pliable just like my memory is more like a sculptor just standing there in the middle of my head and I can go around and around it like a mule in a mill for thoughts.
Is a memory a thought that lost its momentum and is now stored away so I can call it up or so it can pop up by itself at every inconvenient moment to torment me; calls itself up when I need to be reminded that what I thought ages ago but still hasn’t gone away.
Ages don’t go away they morph into newer ages lose their footing and become something we did in the past but are like pillars of our board walk we still continue to walk on while we keep to looking back as if something is stalking us.
Nobody wants to look back only painters like to look back at what others have painted before but the view is kind of obscured because taste has fogged up true vision.
I am not a specialist in any way or any of this but I am ambidextrous on my good days juggling as many tasks as I can while projecting, imagining that I am free of my past even though without it I wouldn’t exist.
It’s like my proof to somebody if they ask me who I am and I tell them about all the things I have done everything I did as far back as I can remember and I am surprised that I remember and dumbfounded because I didn’t know that I had it all stored away and it makes me feel like an idiot because I don’t really know where it is stored but it moves with me wherever I go and is ready when somebody asks.
I regurgitate my past like a penguin mother to feed its young chick sitting on an icy knoll in the nowhere where things don’t ever change unless we change them and the past melts away melts together with the waiting future just like icebergs melt during climate change creating a new climate and not many will be able to remember how it had been before the big melt.
Just as we don’t remember the past truly but it is more like Atlantis only a vague myths resurfaces but the good things is that we have the power in the present to flesh out what ‘s been lost in the translation.
I still recall vividly how vegetables tasted before they where radiated for consumption before we treated them like they needed to be artificially enhanced and genetically modified so that in the future our food supply can be sustained and we will never run out of cheap “Hamburgers” to eat.
My first memory of a Hamburger was horrible and I spit it out immediately. I was 2 years old and my mother had been too lazy to cook so she gave me one of these pre-processed delicacies but maybe it was the pickle they say Babies don’t like pickles and that the taste buds of Babies are not that sophisticate yet and still in a developmental stage that can be manipulated into liking Hamburgers in a later stage when one starts early and keep feeding them with lots of sugary ketchup.
There are so many stages we have to go through until you can look back and say “wow, that was it”.
If you are lucky you can still throw in a universal prayer to make sure everyone is going to welcome you on the other side where time is ticking ahead of itself but never looks back.

PDX Art: "D Squared what" by Richard Schemmerer

D Squared what? Or why wearing shoes in the sand deprives you of an essential experience.

Sculls are back in sure they never went away but they were un- cool since the obvious death of Rock Roll.
I see them everywhere on little babies t-shirts mostly with wings behind them, yeah wings are back too so are vampires.
When you combine them all and throw in the enormous success of the Harry Potter franchise and the 50 millions who bought into Left Behind quatsch myth you realize that they have also shaved their balls and tattooed their soul while we were asleep in the theater of our life.
The back stage antics have moved to frontal public nudity exposure staged with daily news shows/briefs and other turts thrown our way on I am a Comedian Central.
Gossip is channeled on media channels everyday life into our personal households.
We don’t need Shirley McClain anymore to know what it feels like to be out on the limb with the paranormal as we watch ghost hunters, the medium and James Van Prack talking to the dead while we cook 30 minute meals.
We have Extra, E and the inside edition to our exposal and Perez Hilton as cultural garbage disposal, semi hard reality shows, the soup, dirty Harry jobs, home buyers virgins and who can top that top model running us 24/7 inspiring to create our own home channel with having a camera taped to our head like one of these pure creatures on the Nature channel.
Orwell was right and wrong sure there are GOV cameras everywhere but they are harmless compared to the video revolution. I sure the KGB would have been proud of us we too make excellent agents as we spy on each other for fuck ups to be presented and rewarded with price money on Funniest Video crap.
Everyone is a videographer filming private moments to b exploited as fun fodder.
Food is art as giant cakes are built up like dysneyfied theme parks with parts and glass like sugar figurines then there is nothing is bigger than craft Martha Stuart empire with its glue guns and razor sharp succors cutting through the old house wife mentality and taking over new territories of creativity like on a mission from the craft god.
Curating , designing, staging have become expressive ways to unleashing the inner tiger as art and has shape shifted like origami refolding itself into ever new demographics.
Toilets have become self cleaning and shower heads mimic the down poor in the rain forest as we built our home spas with an expert’s eye.
The underground has been redecorated with Velvet, Satin, Bamboo and manmade Stone that is sprinkled with recycled bottled glass.
The formative years are presented color coded in magazine layouts or on R. M’s evilish empire My Space or your Space but fancy but overpriced sneakers are still the rage.
Silhouettes are barely audible as the move disappearing in slim looking black studded water and metal proof materials to prevail at the school yard and to project invincibility.
Life is a cat walk for still domesticated but working house wife’s who are not too sexy for their body but have it cut and sucked to shape getting extra credit for wearing wonder bras underneath perfectly organized portfolios quilted and hand stitched to specification to make you feel right at home in the home office.
Shopping channels are run over by celebrities who also have become merchants of various product lines hawking with smiles on lifted faces oversized bracelets and lifestyle accessories.
It takes a huge diamond in our days to convince your bride that you love her more than it takes to complete a one night stand; a few decades ago it took a herd of cattle’s.
Well suited we move through business parks trying to keep up with constant change.
Carriers are calculated on lab tops and analyzed by on-line services for best impact on a specified demographic.
Stock options are promised to the elite in their field with a key to the corporate kingdom while everyone else is kept on one degree above poverty level to keep the flow a small change going and keep them as a homegrown cheap labor force to keep competitive with foreign market regimes.
Everyone is so happy to secure minimum wage that they have 2 or 3 jobs on that level and freed of the burden of healthcare everyone has become their own doctor creating home remedies like in the middle Ages. Retirement funds have been eliminate because nobody is expected to retire anyway and because life is not fair never was never will be.
Pop culture is still like the vulture it’s always been scavenging the best parts from previous culture kills.
Pop culture is there to entertain the masses on welfare and to make us all forget the big cheese dream because we can have a reproduction of it for much less in “Dress and live for less but you don’t even feel like less outlet stores.”
It is not that Art or painting is dead but that our understanding of it has been deadened.
Artists have turned themselves into polymaths because that was the next best thing to being an oligarch or a barista for the Star B. chain which doesn’t give the same feeling of self graduations.
Artist’s messages are becoming so oblique as to not offend a potential buyers market while subject matter is spun off like syndicated sitcoms from previous epochs just like episodes of the new soaps seem identical with old story lines.
As the world turns the world seems to have become more complex and everyone once to be its decoder for financial and capital gain but really it is the same old place just more under a media magnifying glass and more access outlets to watch it.
If you unplug yourself it is still the same old world with the same dictators of governments, religious dogmatist and taste manipulators and century old conflicts are still played out just the weapon systems seem to change.
We still have the same desires the same needs and the same shortcomings.

Painting is still a romantic notion even if it is a portrait of a dead animal ripped open with its gut hanging out painstakingly painted in photorealistic style and lucid oils.
We are trying to reach the future but are constantly harking back to the past. The woods are still calling into our genetic jungle reminding us that at the stem of our brain you still find the basics of a reptile encoded as we go higher up we find the constructs of all previous evolutionary cross roads still sitting there ready with their desires and their instincts to jump us into high gear and take us on a wild ride back down the evolutionary ladder.
Our brain is earths treasure chest its conscious memory bank and just because we learned to walk upright and developed a frontal lobe we are able to self reflect and think that we are understanding abstract concepts like Art and Mathematics.
Aesthetic is acquired eroticism preferred over bruit behavior. Storms of emotional upheaval are calmed with logic and meditation to keep the amygdale from firing up neurons like in an imagined battle field.
Knowledge rules the roost of vices tapping deep into mythology and religion.
Cross pollination is spreading across cultural barriers inseminating our brains with fresh wish lists for old traditions.
Nothing equals the advent of modern science but our ancient human equation is still waiting to be expanded on.

PDX Art: "Purpose' by Richard Schemmerer

PURPOSE
Pur- Pose
What if you don’t have one and do you really need one


Mostly I sit in book stores to research some subject like “ 12 ways to boost profit” or “Sculptural Pursuits” others just sit around me to more or less kill time , to refill their bodies with caffeine like a car on a gas station but that’s not what I want to write about.

I am staring at a Dolce & Cabbana advertising in one of the “Glossies”, which seem to be always in arms reach no matter where you go and it’s all about the body and the flesh and how one can drape fabric around it so it still keeps its sexual allure, still entices us to unwrap them with spying eyes by selling us a photo-shopped phantasm.

Nature built us to function on multiple levels and added a brain to it so we can reinvent it.
No, of course not even if we behave like as if, nature gave us a brain to use it for survival because on the
other hand it had created us really weak made us a creature with no built in self defense system.
We can’t even change skin color to blend into a terrain and every wild cat can outrun us in a minute.
So what did we do we staked out a strategy and started with passive aggressive behavior to be proactive and we invented traps and weapons and we documented the process on cave walls for future generations so they didn’t have to invent the wheel twice or slay their dragons with bare hands.
To make a billion year story quick time short and adobe reader friendly after a long evolutionary process we ended up in coffee shops not knowing what to do with ourselves.

Almost nothing what I see now all around me is in its original substance but manipulated in shape, color, structure , form, chemical elements you name it we did it to it.
We never seem to wonder if that was the purpose of why we have a brain while we basically altered the universe without having a specific purpose; for god’s sake we just bombed the Moon just because we can and maybe to proof that there is water in some form up there and if there is it now also has been altered.
But we did it mostly because the people at NASA are so bored that they don’t know what to do with themselves so they came up with this attention grabbing but not so ingenious idea to blow some more stuff up and see where it might fall.
David Hockney is painting landscapes that represent this kind of nature game where everything looks artificially touched up by human hand but stays in the familiar but uncomfortable zone.
When he painted his beloved Wiener dogs I was painfully made aware that they once roamed the wild now urbanized landscape as wolfs hunting in packs for food keeping the eco-system in balance.
Now these dogs wear little designer outfits to protect them from the rain and are served precooked stuff in cans.
Andy Warhol experimented with cans and stacked them up unopened in a pyramid like an object worth of worship. They were filled with reprocessed tomato soup but didn’t trigger the taste buds but confused our senses of perception and judgment.
At some point Art and artists had started to take things out of context; a context that had already been shaped by its artificial content but now assumed a new philosophical role maybe referencing to a pre-historic area like maybe the first Art paraphernalia like a bone, a bone that had belonged to an animal that was eaten, a bone that was boiled like in a soup and gnawed on then preserved polished used as a tool until it became an object of veneration that could be adorned bringing attention to its owner providing purpose to an alien life style and elevating the ordinary into the higher realm of admiration and worship; to become god like and finally to embody God.
Anish Kapoor cuts our world up into little mirrored hexagons to show us that we are made of unconceivable amounts of little pieces reflecting behavior back to the observer while Ghada Amer blurs the lines between solid and watery substance that dances on the surface of perception like droplets of blood on a hunted down deer.
Glenn Brown takes our brain and dips it in a bucket of creamy paint and uses it like a sponge to make his marks on a stretched out to its limits world canvas.
Ed Ruscha follows down a road stalking other people’s words to reflect meaning like the moon does the sun to a glowing effect
Anselm Kiefer turns the “White Cube” inside out to find values in the valleys of hidden pain and to lead us back out to a fertile crescent.
Baselitz just plays with himself like a little boy that just found out how much pleasure can be had by spinning one’s own wheels.
Mapplethorn shows us that there are good and bad seasons by taking us into the season of hell with frogs on a chalky white plate waiting to return to a bio laboratory or being dropped into a pot of hot boiling water.

Kevin Yates draws our attention to the greedy roots of forests while cut down or replanted having an orgy underneath our sidewalks and the basements of our houses.

Marylin Minter spits out images like pearls of vomit; frozen like sorbet at the moment of cold shock and exposure to light.
Franaine Siegel uses idyllic cocketry that claims that we came from mud and survive on mother’s milk.
Guillermo Kuitca frames it all in sharp lines which create an unnatural divide between black and white segments while Bill Voila brings back the body into the picture but as a fractured substance barely holding our attention with tiny dots of grayish matter.
Elizabeth Neel blurs all the previous lines letting it swirl and drip becoming the uncalculated but tamed on tight rectangle surfaces of limitation and William Cordova celebrates infinity with his labyrinths of infinity until we begin to realize that we have returned to the origin of our story and that this life is cyclic until we decide it is otherwise and begin the long slog again to find new purpose in old ways and new ways for old purposes or we just decide that we are as happy or unhappy with or without a purpose to guide us through life.

PDX Art: "Content 09" fashion & art event at Ace Hotel Portland

The It Factor

I remember standing in line as a teenager trying to get into the in In-clubs in Europe being part off and being accepted by something that seemed bigger than what I could envision for myself.
A few years later I was a designer with my own runway shows and people would have to stand in line to get into my shows trying to get by an ugly body guard to get in to feel like they belong to for a few hours an upper class and than just to return to their ordinary lives.
What had mattered years ago was that it had humbled me but it also had inspired me to reach deep into me and find my own creative burst.
I t was funny to see a huge line of the young & restless going around the blog waiting patiently to be let into the hot event of the night.
It cost only $ 12 to buy entry to this elusive world of fashion design.
It probably took 1 ½ hours working as a barista to make that but now the deck had turned and it was up to the populous to ogle and judge as the designers stood around feeling a bit insecure themselves.

I was not going to wait in line for 2 hours after all I was a pro so instead I went directly to the front entry and as my look would have it Kim the event marketing manager for the “Ace” walked out and I sized the opportunity to do what we all did in Europe posturing and throwing a couple of names around.
She immediately led me to the magic gate and asked if I was on one of the designer’s lists but I said not really but that I was here to photograph the event for my blog.
She said sorry but then I can’t help you just have to wait in line like everyone else an she left me their
and humbled I contemplated how and when it happened that I had fallen out of the designer heaven.
and I remembered that while I was Art hopping in Europe three of my main Portland boutiques had folded and left me stranded with my ueber cool designs which were now worthless.
Rather than feeling sorry and letting the designer blues get to me I remembered that after all it was me that had runway shows in Paris who lived in London and sold the hottest stuff all over Europe during the glorious 80ties fashion boom.
With all my mustered arrogance I moved past the crowd and walked right into the lobby as if I owned the fucking place and minutes later after doling out $ 12 bucks I was upstairs strolling in the narrow hall way with hundreds of other fashionistas.
Okay I realized that I might have lost my “It factor” but not my street smarts


All in all the first “Content” fashion event at the Ace Hotel was a big success for Portland.
The rooms looked like little marvels with their David Lynch meets IKEA sensibility and the fashion designs had borrowed safely from previous outputs and other decades of style.
This was not haute couture by any means but clever elegance mingling with a little Berlin of the 20ties 30ties and 40ties very reminiscent of something Marlene Dietrich would have been happy to sport.
Portland designers are sticking with what they know best and kept this event very urban practical.
One thing for sure you wont ever look like an overdressed fashion victim in these designs and that is worth alot.

organized by
Gretchen Jones, Anna Korte, Ada Myer

participating designer were:
AK Vintage, Andy Lifschutz, Barbara Seipp, Bridge & Burn, Chelsea Erhart, Church & State, Claire La Faye, Dawn Sharp, Dayna Pinkham, Duchess, Dust, Elizabeth Dye, Emily Baker, Emily Katz, Factory, Gatsby, Genevieve Dellinger, Hazel Cox, Holly Stalder, IDOM, Im:mortal, Janeane Marie, Jayme Hansen, Jess Beebe, John Blasioli, Liza Rietz, Luxury Jones, Moonwoods, MothLove, Paper Doll, Portland Garment, Reif, Sarah Seven, Smith & Bybee, Stone & Honey, Tanner Goods & Adam Arnold
more info at
www.content-portland.com
http://howwedevelope.blogspot.com
contact
www.acehotel/portland.com

PDX Art: Gary Wiseman interview about his show at Appendix project space & more

Hi Gary thanks for the interview


What is you back round and your inspiration in Art?

I started drawing when I was three.


Who or what motivated you to become and artist?

survival


You did a piece awhile ago called "A CONVERSATION PIECE".

What does conversation include for you?

That piece was for the 2007 Reed Arts Week. I was thinking about the camera focusing exclusively on my face while I engaged in intimate conversations with people I didn't know very well but wanted to be friends with.

I let the subject lead the conversation so the piece didn't really have anything to do with my thoughts about conversation. The subject led the conversation and talked about whatever was on their mind. The improvisational collaborative process of casual conversation is compelling to me. Nobody knows what is going to happen. People are so unpredictable.

We see endless scripted conversations on the screen. A lot of energy is expended attempting to make these conversations look like real life. "Why not just record real life?" I thought to myself, "it is far more interesting than what I could make up by myself". This collaborative attitude has informed much of my practice.


I was also wondering what happens when the camera focuses exclusively on the listener rather than cutting back and forth between speakers which is what usually happens. We focus on the linearity of the conversation.


What developed in the piece was a sense that I was interacting with a disembodied voice that could have been in my imagination. May be I was hearing "Voices". There was no visual information to connect the voice to. It could have been a person speaking but the viewer is forced to collaborate in developing an image for the other speaker based on the limited information available to them. When one watches the video the other voice gains more clarity because there is no visual distraction. Its almost like watching a radio and a TV talk to each other.

You can see it all here


http://gary-conversation-piece.blogspot.com


How would you label your work?


Mine.








What is the importance of Art in your opinion?



I don't know. They say its good for business.





Does it always have to include an audience?


No.






You built an elaborate installation for Manor of Art,

What was it all about and has a piece like this an afterlife?



There are some nice pictures of Palace Of Ashes. online. Sam Adams interviewed me inside of it because you said he should. He made a nice little video about it for his web site sam's video.

http://hungryeyeball.com/2009/09/pdx-mayor-sam-adams-video-on-manor-of-art/

The Manor piece is still there actually. I have yet to kill it, if in fact it was alive. It was mostly made up of dead trees, paint, mirrors and dirt. The living part was the people who saw it. I suppose it lives in their memory. May be I will make a memorial for it. Will you come to the funeral?


Palace also lives on my resume. Hopefully it will get me more work.





Currently you are exhibiting at Appendix project Space.

What can you tell us about it?



I spent three days digging rock infested dirt for Inside, Outside. I sweated profusely. I have been enjoying the process of making. The physical WORK it takes to make it. Inside, Outside was certainly a departure for me and builds on what we did with Palace. I have been working almost exclusively with objects, materials and built environments. My origins are in material based work. The last five years have been a rigorous investigation into a participatory performance model of work. It seems I am returning to materials.

I have always been intrigued by relationships - between people, between objects, between people and objects...the list goes on. I did one project a long time ago in Australia called Decadence. It involved digging a grave that I buried a bunch of meat in. I made little sculptures out of the meat. They began to rot so I conducted a funeral for them.


You can see documentation of Inside, Outside on my blog if you are willing to look at other stuff too. I have a lot of work on there. I wish more people would look at it

Gar'y Blog

http://garywiseman.tumblr.com



You also work in tandem with your partner.

Tell us about those dynamics?





My collaborations with Meredith are a natural extension of our partnership. We talk about everything. Some of our most connected moments are when we


are disc using theoretical frameworks and concepts. We have a very balanced relationship. We try to keep it fair. That is why I always acknowledge her as a collaborator even when she doesn't do much of the physical work. Most of the recent work wouldn't have happened without our discussions. We both have our roles. We compliment each other and work as a unit. A team. It is a very privileged position to be in I know. It is something I have always wanted. A life partner I could collaborate with. It keeps me interested. I have a very short attention span and get into trouble when I am not occupied. This is why I pretty much work all the time. I am easily bored. I need someone who understands this and will play with me. That is what art is for me may be. Playing. Imagining. Making stuff up. Experimenting. Seeing what happens.





What are your interest besides Art?

I like my friends.




And what is next for you and how do you decide on a project and its location?

Matthew Stadler is publishing some books made by Portland artists. He is taking them to the Amsterdam Biennial. I made one of the books. I am quite pleased with it. My book is called I Love Urban Outfitters And Urban Outfitters Loves Me. It is comprised of three Urban Outfitters catalogs and one Anthropologie catalog.

I have made some...lets say alterations. Its too bad that not very many people will see it in Portland. I started working on it awhile ago when I found out that the guy who owns Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People, Richard Hayne made some pretty significant campaign contributions to Rick Santorum. I thought that it was pretty funny and sneaky to take money from young hip liberals and give it to the King of the Neo-Cons.
Its like reverse Robin Hood or something. I also wanted to think about how I am simultaneously attracted to, flabbergasted and repulsed by the content of those publications.


The locations of projects are chosen in two ways:


1. I am invited to do something somewhere. An example of this is the materials based installation work which is generally more of a response to a given environment, such as the Appendix Space piece. I love to be presented with a framework of problems and limitations. I feel these two are the best friends of my creative process. Therefore, I get really excited when someone approaches me about a project and says, "do something here and don't use nails and you have to use this pile of cow shit and it has to be done in three days on one foot".


2. I am from Portland. Many of my recent projects are about growing up here, leaving for Australia, coming back 9 years later and the changes I have encountered since returning. The locations for the performance work are intentionally geographically placed and specific to my narrative experience in this curious place that is Portland.
This was the case with work like Tea Project (Esp. the TBA series), SIXSIXSIX (With the Cooley Gallery) and Coffee Break (at MP5).


thanks
Gary

"Anatomy of a serial lover" by Richard Schemmerer

Revolution in imagination
Or Anatomy of a serial lover

I am always walking past fires of books burning at places of history; I am passing by walls that echo the voices of the exiled from life, the crashed, the lovelorn, the heart beaten.
My brain has feet, which carry me along on their wild goose chases of finding reliance along fields of hope and joyful singing meadows.
I am alone at least alone in human numbers but obviously I am literally engorged by living energy.
The roots of ancient trees give way under my step; the air opens in front of me like a welcoming matrix to let me transgress through time and space.

I don’t have a fly over permit but a walk through ordinance. The habits I have are like the steps repeat themselves like a mechanical doll but there is comfort in the predisposal of predictability.


My steps are like a line up of thoughts with each step I get a little closer to where I think I want to be.
I rummage through my mind like as if it is an old closet with discarded treasures stacked underneath new favorites; I walk through my mind like it is an Amazon forest and expect to find new species underneath the same patterns or a miracle solution to an old problem that plagues humankind.
Around every winding I find myself pausing to catch up with my beating heart pounding with extreme pleasure by being lost in myself.
My toes tingle in anticipation of the virgin ground they are able to step on sending shivers of information up my lax spine like the plant roots sending signals back to the main body to suck up more life energy to blossom with deeper conviction to bust out in brighter blossoms.
My senses are like Chinese fire crackers exploding in silly folly; my senses becoming tentacles that dig deeper into liquid light reflecting pleasure like raindrops so that my skin bubbles with little craters of happiness.

I am a gatherer not of mementos but of moments that are as shy as a spurned deer.
I am a collector of recollections and store them in my limb muscles so that they can become part of my essence, the me that is walking in the midst of Paradise and knows it.

Everything is an encounter of the first degree; the fly that passes by on its way to find a spot to sun bath, the cumulus clouds that drift by like a bunny shaped pillow for no specific reason or the dew that reflects the carved sky, all are building my world.

I step passed the memories that throw themselves in front of me like children in a third world country starved for food and attention like the memories of obituaries about the aborted ideas that never had a chance to prosper or the bits and pieces of headlines that cut little ridges into my awareness or the clever phrase I overheard and still echoes in my brain cavity; all of the above is competing for my attention for my validation reminding me to continue on my quest to remember, to become whom I suppose to be.

I am hoping to become more like me while I am walking past trees that are calling my real name while I follow the wind that leads the way ahead and the birds who with flapping wings remind me not to stray and the gurgling sound of water rushing, falling just to become silent again.
Finally I come to rest on its vibrant shore where somebody had come here before me writing with pebbles in the shiny sand
“ I am a serial lover, why don’t you join me”
and like shocked by a virtual stroke I jump back a leap in time with a smile racing across my face knowing hearing a familiar voice from better days announcing its return bouncing up and down in my head yelling
“ Me too, me too, I am one of you”
and
I don’t even feel my feet dancing and my voice lifting because I am ruptured by the moment of recognition as I become the note the song I am suppose to be.
It is the song I am meant to sing on all of my walks through life because I have become the meaning of my life become the I am.
I walk on embodying the truth that is also my purpose that I am one of the serial lovers and that the revolution in imagination has begun
because love is not some limited experience but
“love is and infinite idea”.

PDX Art: Under a coat of armor or why “Nature” is still a dirty word by Richard Schemmerer

DIY: inclusive – exclusive –
Under a coat of armor or why “Nature” is still a dirty word

A slate, a giant square, a raw piece of rock cut like a human organ from earths body chiseled with tormented labor as a symbol for patience in resistance; an act of futile creation squeezed from a mind that hides its ideology under a coat of armor with its concealed weapons of mass consumption.

Art has not always been seen as an unworthy pursuit but of late is judged as a pursuit of someone with a weak disposition.
It is easy to see why somebody could see Art as an lame escape route from a system that offers mostly creative dead-ends of spirit and mind and indulges in trivial pursuits in avoidance to acknowledge the souls ability to bunchy jump at every corner and leap frog aroung any moral construct.

Life is not as simple as a cup cake eating contest.

The renaissance of men has a resurgance this time in the visual fields as poetic aspects still struggle, still lamenting on the wailing wall of the masses waiting for the people of the world to turn off their silencers.

Artists have to live with the stigmata of being on one hand revered in envy and on the other despised with jealousy. The only escape route is mockery and self flagellation.

Better be eyeless & senseless than mindless because instinct is just a heavy handed whip but intellect is like a wind that can take flight no matter the circumstances.

Synchronicity is only available to a fine tuned mind.

"Too much of a good thing can be a curse" goes the saying but it is easier to reduce and rather difficult to exalt if you don’t have it in the first place.

Neither hot nor cold nor plant or animal the artist survives as a meat loving hybervore constantly attempting to kill of his inbred common-ness.
The mind-brain-intellect is a creation chamber where nuclear fission breeds with solidified ideas.

What was once forbidden is now in main-stream circulation rushing down commercial media streams like absolute vodka in dainty Martinis.
Life has become a perpetual Happy Hour offering up bits of pieces of our soul in sliders and on skewers.
Religious tensions are artificially inseminated with fanatic fervor and brim stone rhetoric.
Mental health is sacrificed to the highest bidder while E-bay is worshiped like a portal to Gods Kingdom.

Mickey Mouse has outgrown its pre-adolescent comic book character and has grown a pair of fangs while sporting claws on greedy callous paws.
The cross is turned upside down with a female Christ in extasy showing genitalia and breasts.
Actionism has led to new circles. God has come back down to earth and is just a prayer call away.

“Caution: Art” stickers make as aware of what is or is not Art.

Oral traditions have assumed a whole new meaning as the interest in archetypical stories has been weaned out of hipsters bred by Fathers with Viagra pumped up appendixes and being fed on mother’s milk from silicone enhanced breasts.

Painting lives on like a never ending death like a passion play played in a loop on Quick Time.
Visual fields are reduced back to their pixel matter blurring around the edges of surrealism combining urban aesthetic with pop sensibility.

Landscapes seem closer to hallucinations like in a David lynch movie rather than the Judeo Christian idea of a Garden in Eden.

"I paint so I am" has morphed into "I conceptualize so it is".

Nature is still a dirty word; still at fault this time for selling out to our weakness.
We have won, we conquered, we scavenged, peed on every corner of it and now we are whining how easy it was and that Nature never was a worthy formidable opponent and even though we won’t stop until the Universe collapses we are not to blame but Nature and we are never going to be part of it.

We want an Ultra reality that is able to repair itself and can heal all the wounds we are inflicting on it.

We brought sexy back and we melted the ice caps while we binged on hyperbole and over-charged our civilizations future.
As long as it will last we’ll keep sucking out the balloon our fore-fathers inflated for us.
Regrets are for pacifist new ideas are for the next loser generation with their own set of addictions and locker room mentality.

Misogyny is thriving in tattoo parlors with their borrowed images of a kitsch invested past with it’s handed down ship harbor whores logo-ism.
Echo’s of past empires spill out like viruses on a hacked brain infesting by a mind that lingered in safe mode for too long.

Sing me a lullaby play me an I-tune; mix me a media cocktail or slam me a line to remember.
Text me an acronym and tweat me a momento I can cherish and share with my grand children when they ask me when I first knew that I loved my self more than I do you.

Fragile is only of concern for Fed Ex; my body and me are going on a ride on this Earth for what it’s worth.
Life is a performance and my ticket has been pre-paid by my ticket master and charged with my pay pal.
Fatalism and pluralism have banded together to become exploitatioism indicating a trend towards capital idiotism.

Over accelerate the possible and the impossible will blow its lid off exposing a naked ass that smiles with eye popping candor at the metamorphosis of our ignorance we created in the name of Art & Science.

With one megalithic breast stroke the past has become a thing of the past not worth looking at any more like a designer outfit from the 80ties whose only purpose is to remind us how ridicules over-over-sized shoulder pads really looked like on our humble bodies.

Artifacts are housed in save places called Museums where the geeks of Nostalgia congregate to ogle what the hip can Google now into their living rooms.
Instead of living we reference instead of engaging with nature we convert the suburban basement into a designer man-cave.

Instead of being we search the internet for gratification.

“Gravity has lost its pull in a flood of Pathos” these are words that already sound as dated as Dinosaurs and their meaning is none-relevant to us just like Einstein’s theories.
Now that we have spell check we can stop worrying as coming across as stupid and copy, cut and paste is the best tool ever invented.
We Photoshop our future right into our portfolio and airbrush away all the blemishes that could limit our chances on E Harmony dot com.

Survival is not an option.
Fractured pieces don’t create a lucid memory or a healthy whole.

We are still trying to catch a ride on a fractal wave to find the missing link, the key to our worth which will lead us to the answer of the question
“What will keep men-kind alive”.

DIY is the latest hype dug out from grave yards of societies past but we are past that option and are diluting our potential while the planet dies species by species.

Death doesn’t become us no matter what the churches claim but you can proof read me wrong.

When will we finally realize that size doesn’t matter but opinion does.

I wrote this because I care about you

PDX Art: "Unsocial Media" by Richard Schemmerer

Unsocial media or how fiction became my reality

Social media is a hoax!
Social media is the most anti social element in our society it has become the center stage for the individual ego to promote its agenda of ignorance.
It’s the plague of the 21st century as all human interaction is filter through artificial means and no direct contact is possible because everyone is already staging his or her online persona.
There is no need to evaluate experience anymore because we become the reporter of our own life. This detachment to the self has deep psychological ramification.
Instead of spending time to find out who we are we are busy broadcasting who we want to be.
There is this constant inner voice dictating our story to an invisible audience we befriended on a commercial Internet site that scavenges through our trivial pursuits to gain insides into our consumer habits.
As I scroll through the minute-by-minute updates I feel like I am on a bullet speed train instead of trees and vistas snippets of perpetual indulgence fly by like
“Cakes gone wrong”, “Re-etsy”, “ The art of an everyday Joe”, “Porno Bingo”, “ Paint made flesh” in a never ending parade of misuse of creative energy.


Everybody seems to be listening to their inner “Carry Bradshaw” claiming that FBF’s are like a lobotomy: if you got to have it make it worth your while and have everything tucked at the same time.

Where is the Cyber Taste Police, please someone invent it and while we are at it start a Fan Page called “Stop Perez Hilton” because even bad taste should have its’ limits.

We try to have it both ways giving the impression that we are close but nothing could be less true as we are sitting in front of flickering screens separated by miles of cyber space and the truth.
We post our private moments onto Flickr because we are so starved for real contact that we substitute it for anything.
If People are not busy sifting through cyber celebrity garbage or describing their latest bowl movement they are spending valuable social time filming their cat running against a wall while they themselves are banging their head unconscious.
The Internet is as much as an escape as drugs and alcohol and fads like Twitter are quickly becoming the addiction of choice.
We’ve been had again by the preemptive promises of a media obsessed culture that doesn’t even realize anymore that we are part of Nature and not part of some fictional environment that serves us at the click of a mouse while we haven’t thought about real mice in a very long time and have forgotten what their purpose is in the food chain.

I think we have stopped thinking all together because it is so much easier to just forward someone else’s thoughts and it takes so much less time which we than can spend updating our My Space account, writing the daily personal blog, streamline the business web site, give a lift the face book profile, change the Twitter status, upload photos to Flickr, post a video on you Tube, Google for more information and try to navigate our life on a GPS while sending I love you’s to our kids via I Phone.
And all that is only the first hour of the day.
Appriviation are destroying our abilities when we have to have a real conversation and restless ness has become asocial acceptable syndrome
The world is interconnected now and as the violent demonstration in Iran proved our attention span can’t even stay tuned to C-span not to talk about a serious social political upheaval in a far away country even while the plight of their people is live streamed onto our cell phones because we are to busy downloading the latest free release from Cold Play.
Social Media has become a synonym for an out let to grandstand and to promote events, product even if in many cases the product is our self. It is just another tool for advertising just more democratic they say but we mistake capitalistic for democratic.
If you can afford it you can stream your vision of life on high-speed connections if you are not that fortunate you still have to use smoke signals.

We band together on networks to overcome shortcomings and to line up with like-minded to indulge our phobias.
Sites like Craig’s list have become legal trading house for fetishes of all kinds and leave nothing anymore to our imagination.
Self-promotion is not social it is narcissistic which is the opposite of social.
Time for TLC?
No body has time because we are in constant broadcast mode as we could become the next reality star or have the next best idea for a show because reality has become the show.
We produce our own version of life as we film each other with hand held devices and edit it on Final Cut Pro to our liking with our favorite MP3 songs as ambient back round.

Maybe social media is not that bad after all but I have to see the directors cut first before I post a another comment on sites like “CRITICS R US” or “Culturephile” because I like
the social aspect of it I mean the banter and bickering and name calling I couldn’t do to anyone in person but feel so free to unload on other peoples site.
They say information is power but I find only power is power everything else is like Lady Gaga a construct made to make us believe that creativity is true freedom and not just a marketing ploy to keep us enslaved as a cheap labor force forever who buys into everything that’s served up as new hip and cool but in truth is just the latest PR innovation in like my new book titled fittingly “Packaging and Repackaging for Idiots”.
No insults intended!
Remember this is Fiction with a capitaliced “F… ..” all reference and names are pure fictional and if they sound like a real person or a real companies name it is totally accidental.

PDX Art: 'Tempo" by Richard Schemmerer

Tempo

as in speed in light flickering in front my visual field like frenetic dancers at a White Bird performance.
Speed like a chronic disease that keeps me always just off balance off center.
The chase is on as I act like a ghostwriter in my own life as landscapes fly by like fighter jets on an oversea mission.
I zip by in my safe the planet zippy zip car sipping on a giant never ending soda pop texting while I take pictures of fly by trees and blurry furry horses.
A planet I hardly recognize anymore as part of me or truer more to the point me part of it.
All I see is highways and shortcuts which dictate the tempo in my life.
Environments fly by like stealthy bats on the hunt in murky twight light.
Randomly I focus I pick I give attention too as I constantly reshape my destiny while erasing the memory of yesterdays topography from my brains storage bank and replace it with green screens which enable me to project whatever fantasy back round I dream up onto it.
In reality I am passing toothless earth mounds, sterile designated parking areas, artificial playgrounds,
Industrial zones, shaped men-scaped lands and tree farms with trees fertilized to feed paper mills.
My life has become one long flash back as I watch in shock & awe true nature on beautiful filmed nature programs that are free of the warning that extinction is just around the corner.
Maybe that’s why I don’t look anymore because nature reminds me that I am guilty maybe not with murder but for sure of negligent homicide.
Because I know as well as you do that I could have done much more to save the planet from people like me who know how serious it is but just want to squeeze a little bit more fun out of it before the roller coaster leaves his predestined track and starts to fly back out into to space.
Do you remember what the first astronauts said.
“You got to see it from out of space to realize
that it is worth preserving”.

And so I wait and hope that it will happen soon
while I keep driving by like
an unwelcome visitor
in my own life.

PDX Art: Chang - Ae Song at Chambers @ 916 Gallery, Portland

Mass- Invented Sky
by Chang Ae Song

To me “Mass – invented sky”
is a call to action, to pay attention to the subtleties that get lost on our path towards self fulfillment or our self [propelled quest towards extinction?
At first I got lost in wispy marks that resemble a beautiful pre-storm afternoon with me on the way walking home to safety.
I look good in it because I feel safe and know I’ll make it out of it.
But the imagery is not that simple all of sudden I feel the physical threat and also realize the psychological thread that runs parallel next to my need to be the center piece.
Strange shapes take on forms of bodies floating in murky grays on the horizon like ghost from a war that has still not ended but has but almost disappeared from my psychological radar screen.
As I zoom back out back onto solid ground everything still seems to be the same all my limbs are still there still moving unlike the haunted portraits on crisp white with focused consequence.
I don’t feel like that I still look good in this gallery setting.
Galleries have become my back drop where my need for psychological valuation is satisfied because everyone who shows up there has this air of importance around him and stares at the Art as if they are the only ones who get what life is all about.
Just as I assume this role as the involved critic to write about Chang Ae Songs so is my impression only an assumption that I base on my cultural upbringing and my relationship to current affairs.
Meaning can shift from one second to the next just by a slight movement of one’s psyche or the angle the light exposes a new truth.
Everything we strongly believed in is just a step back and has now become irrelevant.
Slightly annoyed and unstable I leave the place after having engaged with the gallery director in playful banter. A banter that I used like a smoke screen to hide the inconvenient truth that once in awhile a piece of art can surprise ones notion of having everything under control.
The War in Iraq is still on and the body count is still rising and psychologically I am still not able to deal with War at all no matter who started it or who is at fault or who continues it
The only thing I know for sure is that the world is not how it is suppose to be and no matter what your believe is nobody has the right to kill.
So I am left with the question of who invented the sky and who turned it upside down?




























more info at

http://chambersgallery.com

PDX Art: What? China Now again? by Richard Schemmerer

What? China Now again?
Or welcome to an alternate Modernity!

Unless you lived under the proverbial bridge you realize that the newest flash flood of Chinese Art & Culture that has hit Portland like a crazy tsunami has its origin a few years back when clever marketing sharks realized that there is money to be made with selling us on the China idea.
Politically, religious and economical we are already so dependent on China to provide us with things made in China that there would be no Christmas without it.
Never satisfied China has invaded the High art market like the Taliban in Afghanistan just much more subversive.

Don’t get me wrong I love Dim Sum what I don’t love is the dummying down that happens on the way to the altar. I hate to be the one that enriches one of his biggest ecological butchers.

Maybe I am just envies of the millions of dollars the Chinese government pours like honey from under paid worker bees into their socialist structure financed with American money that’s laundered through places like Wal-Mart and ends up on our landfills as garbage toys or is shipped back to them for a fee so they can bury it next to their poisoned child workers bodies.

We’ve been focusing on China as an Art Mecca since the early 00’s mainly because some clever capitalist’s realized that China is the biggest future market for our stuff so why not sell some million dollar Art babies to their freshly stamped out billionaires.

But the ever productive China has reversed the game and is hyping it’s fabricated in toxic factories monumental pieces to us and our museums have nothing better to do than to help glorifying a culture that still commits genocide on humans and exploits the Earth on a SCALE NEVER SEEN BEFORE or maybe only once in America.

For each of its magnificent giant bronze sculptures heaps of dirt have to be excavated and ravaged of its raw metals so we can stand in front of it after paying a price in fees like it’s a God or something worth worshipping.

Fuck the old China and to hell with the new one. I want our museums back for the local artists and their opinions of “how the world turns”.
This donkey show is as old as the Bible and has been repackaged more often than Joan Rivers.

The People’s Republic is not a friend of us or the environment but a highly conceptualized apparatus of extortion and it seems that our local leaders are trying too hard to emulate a system that has no value for the individual and cares only about the rights of its elite.

Art is supposed to wake us up from the pipe dreams not to tranquilize us with shots of beauty aimed at us with sculptured finess.

This long slog of a marketing campaign has its roots way back and serves as a smoke screen to rewrite the history from way back until the very recent.

Portland has been turned into a swamp of propaganda that attempts to white wash the permanent gray skies in most of the Chinies cities.
Brutal industrialization is rebranded as “Design from China”.

Events like “The color Jelly generation” as beautifully instegated by W&K as they are blur the landscape of what happened at Tienanmens Square and just had been repeated with the beating and murder of another ethnic minority suppressed by the Chinese government.
Art is not a propaganda tool and should not be misused as such willingly or ignorantly.
Other dictators like H. were brilliant artists them selves and master manipulators and used gorgeous images to distract us from seeing the underbelly of their society.

What I am saying is that exhibits like this should portrait all of the national short comings and shine a light on how to create a more productive interchange between cultures that truly express the needs of the time and not just washes over it with gesso produced again at what cost.

A truly creative point of few has to include failed strategies and offer up new perspectives otherwise it is just regurgitating the status quo and helps regimes in their game to have it both ways.

Happy go lucky, hung far low, the battle lines have been drawn but who drew them and who moved the borders so far into ignorance that we can’t really find them anymore.

In 2004 Richard Vine commented in Art in America that the newness will surprise us and that in 1997 a new imagery emerged out of China.

I guess someone in the upper echelons decided to revamp Chinas image and we are still fed this new China like they feed Guiney pig’s new pharmaceuticals.

All of a sudden “the Authorities” had found a new fondness in Contemporary Art and when the “Peoples Assembly” realized that Chinese artists have been viewed favorable in the West they started to put their Yens on where the new market blossomed.

They must have cracked open like one of these 1000 year old eggs (I know that’s from a different culture) and laughed all the way to the Chinese bank.

Sure Culture is a big equalizer and its exchange has opened borders and minds but critic less glorification has not.
The agents of Western civilization are out played in their own game and our minds have been slowly but surely indoctrinated by eastern concepts & philosophies readily available online or at your B&N on the next corner.

We are owned by China no matter how you twist the disco ball and huge parts of our younger generations have been turned into mushy shallow spiritual window shoppers picking from Lao Tse to Mao Tse Tung ready made doctrines for the lazy Zen mind.

The world has been rapidly assimilated by China and Chinese is now the must language to be learned by the children of the New York upper class.

Chinese roots have dug deep into the earth and come out to pop out on all sides of the planet and sprouting like “Toys for US “ stores and other franchises.

“The forbidden city” has opened its flood gates the dragon has been neutered and sterility is transplanted to new markets shifting world orders with every order we make on Amazon dot com or is E-bayed into our homes.

The forbidden fruit has been auctioned of to the highest bidder and everyone can have a small piece of China now readily available at your neighborhoods dollar store.

It might be the only design you can afford but at least it's also “Made in China”.


Go and make up your own mind before it is remade into a FORTUNE COOKIE.

Don't get me wrong China is not the only one messing with the planets infrastructure but right now it's the only one celebrated in town.


China Design Now at The Portland art Museum

about events go to
http://specialexhibitions.pam.org/chinadesignnow/


White Stag Box
Inspiration China
http://aaa.uoregon.edu/index.cfm?mode=news&page=news&id=945White Box

Goldsmith Gallery
Jellygen.com

PDX Art: "Round me up and send in the clowns" by Richard Schemmerer

Let’er Buck the Re-Cap

“Round Up” no not the weed killer but the yearly hoe down that makes endorphins fuck trends and hormones mate with opposite ideas.
Conjugations fornicate to become one masculinity that exposes its rear end and shows its lower teeth in a twisted smile with tobacco spitting mouths looking for trouble spots on the male psyche.

Horsing around on wildish bulls strapped into chaps with taped trunks and limps of muscled fore arms ready to grip the beast for 10 long seconds.
Catching a cash ride on the back of a cow spitting out price money for the butchest of them all.
Are you man enough to wear pink is scrawled over testosterone soaked hairy chests peaking from underneath starched shirts strutting their bulges in boot cut blue jeans cloned to perfection.

I recently started thinking about men next to men, the team, the hoard, the club, the clique, the fraternities of platonic relations and the plethora of platonophy.
In theory and practice we are just a cut apart parted by desire either classified right or wrong.

Under the belt is off limits but under the skin we are all the same vulnerable entity under the skin boils our insecurity into pseudo personality that competes stoked by like minded pre disposition for the winners buckle.

Power was knowledge based but always ignored emotional tendencies that go on a rampage no matter what the binge like sex in any form or shape.

Will you bottom for me submit to my need of superiority or will you play me like a cowboys guitar and make me soft and tender with nostalgia or are you going to do it like the wind of familiarity patiently waiting for me to surrender to its persistence.

Daddy’s boy dipped into the jar of shame a blemish not to be forgotten.

Symptoms fight off the stranglehold symptoms of unwanted urges forbidden use of power tools meant to plow flesh like the farmer plows the earth’s crust.

Omnipotence masturbates to the beat of the rope wrestled to the ground like the bull calf on a rodeo field. Sweat piling up behind shocked brows posturing becomes as natural as lying pretending as confident as a cup of morning coffee served by the devoted spouse.

The roles are handed down from crippled generations of branded by incestuous thinking interpenetrated by generational cross pollination which never fully articulates what the fear is underneath the macho tent.

Sexual tensions dominate the interactions spitting out drama like the Trevy Fountain murky holy water inflicted with the poisons of condemnation.

It’s natural to hate it’s not natural to act on it.

Horses are racing around in an oval stadium while the pulp like mass covers up with straw hats and roars like Indy race cars.
Beer guzzling couples melt with testosterone heightened fever pitch up the anxiety level while young breeds weight their muscles against bucking genitalia bound S & M animals.

Sadomasochism has not one face but many and all the fringes can’t hide the excitement of the watching of pain received and inflicted.

This is not a Buddhist arena even if the speaker claims that this is the best PETA Safe fun your money can buy.

The Indians are honored in a bare back horse race and a best dance performance while drums beat back the flaccid taste of racism.

But nothing seems at odds with each other in the Romper Room where steamed up cowboys unleash their thirst and their inhibitions while transpiring on a pool of male bonding slapping leather into compliance with Absolute Vodka Shooters.
What happens at the Romper stays at the Romper because memories are like the wild animals they move on to drier ground at times of flood.

Gender is used as the divider between male on male.
What happens between males is still not understood but erections don’t care about the intellect or whats expected but strive to unload the burden into the willing orifice and don’t care about normal but about what feels great between consenting adults.
Like drift wood in a riled up ocean of deceit we are bound up in strange places. Stigmas rub against dogmas to let the wild thing in us buck way beyond any artificial traditional boundaries.
Every ones comfort zone has its own parameters. No two are alike no matter how much we pretend and no two stay a like over a life time.