The Art Of Living (With An Hernia)

Hello,


Just a couple words to make sure everyone knows I'm still alive.


I'm in Montreal now. I passed my regulatory scans a couple weeks ago.
I'm happy to announce that no traces of cancer were found in my body !!!!!
My next scans are in 6 months but I should be fine. ;-)


On the other hand there is another lesser interesting news: I developed
a large post-incisive hernia. That's kind of a bubble in the shape of a small football that is in the middle of my belly. It's large enough that my clothes don't fit anymore, and to make everyone think I'm fatter than I actually am. I'm unsexy as ever (though mine is half as large as in the picture in the link, + it's more upper-middle the belly).

Is it painful? No. Is it dangerous? We'll need to compare with my future scans
to see if my muscles press against vital organs: if yes, than I need to
be operated again pronto, if not, then my doctor suggests that I wait 2 years
to make sure cancer never show up, so then I can decide to be operated
for aesthetics, but unfortunately with my type of hernia, it can come back
after a failed operation. Whatever, as long as I survive this. ;-)



I am pretty off the artworld these days. I've been kind of in an "all art sucks" mood. I practically haven't visited any exhibit this year apart from the big clusters. I do have a choice for "best artwork seen this year yet" (last year
was Tara Donovan's landscape with plastic cups): I've just seen the Ron Mueck Retrospective in Ottawa and I gotta say that his large sculpture "In Bed"
is some of the most impressive art I've seen in recent years. And it's not
because I suddenly fall for neo-master-hyper-realism, it's because I felt a strong emotional connection with that image of the anxious women in bed. They are just so many women I've known being portrayed through this sculpture. Women being concerned about being pregnant, or worrying about their child, or being abandoned by their lovers, or being concerned by the health of their friends. Or maybe she's in the hospital bed herself? The sensation is "universal" enough that it could also be attributed to man, but somehow, the white bed setting is owned by that woman. It's the quintessential expression of an emotional state: it's a cliche but the true emotional beings I meet, at least the ones whose emotions are transcribed through their bodies and motions, are much more often women than men. Especially young women, before everyone dies around them and they get used to it. I especially love the way that we are meeting "In Bed" from the size of a cat, because I think that its this physical play of gravity that enhance how much the work is marking us. This artwork is simply perfect from every aspect.


Speaking of "emotional beings", one of the thing that has been attracting me a lot lately are "nice people". It's bizarre, I have a hard time finding them among the art people. Usually they work in a cafe or a library, or they picnic on the Mont-Royal, and seem to live very boring lives. Nevertheless, as I've been feeling like I've lost a few brain cells since my last operation (I literally feel more stupid than ever, or have a harder time concentrating in my intellectual activities), I
tend to be less demanding of conversational stimulus. Not like if Rosalind Krauss would have ever found me interesting anyway. ;-)

I think the problem with the art people, just to make sordid generalizations, is that they easily accuse you for being ignorant or naive about the smallest details. Maybe I'm wrong, but there is a social pressure in the artworld that I don't feel a necessity to cope with anymore. Or maybe I've just been unlucky. Since my health problems, I've also realized that so much of art was about surface. In fact I don't think it can easily escape surface, I think that it is its major concern, purpose and pleasure: to explore surface (in the sense that "In Bed" would have left less of an impression if it had been a 12cm sculpture, let's be honest about how superficial we viewers can sometimes be). So I started to think "hey, what's the whole high-heels attitudes about?? You're going to snob me over a Donald Judd??? A Jeff Koons?? A Barry Le Va??? About Ikea simplicity or junk on the floor???". But I don't want to talk about that right now. That's the whole point. I'm living through sort of a non-art year in 2007 to see if I can find like the ugly duckling my space elsewhere, see if I can tumble in places with open, welcoming arms, without self-contemptuously engulf myself in complete nullity.

Basically, I've been attracted by 3D animation a lot lately. I feel extremely deprived from not fully understanding how these systems work and plan to take courses in the matter, if not simply serve coffee and bend in large salutes for any qualified director in this domain. I get the impression that people in the animation world never completely left childhood and that's probably where I fit. Not that I don't reproach a movie like Happy Feet to be awfully mainstream, but I do believe that its 3D design is state-of-the-art, and that they are things I must learn from that before moving anywhere.

That doesn't necessarely mean that I'll ever be a creator myself (I keep pushing my projects back, though I believe some of them could be fun), but for the moment I just need to make sure that I'm playing in the right playground.


Cheers,

Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com




PS (Addendum): Oh BY THE WAY, and to follow with the title of this post, there is an excellent new piece by Annie Thibault standing as part of the "Deconstructions" exhibit of recent canadian art at National Gallery in Ottawa (and which will last until September 3, 2007). I forgot the title for now, but it's mainly two walls filled with agglomerations of thin plastic "cells" (of various sizes) containing a vast array of bacteria cultures (elevated from pieces of rotten fruits, I'm guessing), which makes the whole sort of a "living" painting which change colors over time. The way that the "cells" are spread look rather like the museum is suffering a strange infection, but there is a candy-eye beauty to this installation that envelops it in ambiguity. There is also a small video in a bubbled-shaped monitor that adds motion to the structure. All in all, this exhibit serves to support my claims that the art in Canada (though I don't think Tricia Middleton is canadian, the exception here) is some of the best you'll find anywhere.