Saturday, April 19, 2008

2008: New Life + My Rules As The Artist's Audit

Hello,

Thought it was time to give some news.
I presume no one ever looks up here
anymore and that's totally logic.


My interests have shifted from the visual arts
recently and so there is not much reason for
me to be here either. I do think this is only
temporal and I will be back into arts within
a year or two. But more likely I would attempt
to communicate by simply making art moreso than keep
on with blogging which the artworld has never
really shown much interest for (apart a couple
exceptions).


One thing is for sure: I have settled
new personal rules for my future art visits
and intend to follow them religiously.

It is very simple. In the future I will
only indulge in visiting art shows that
follow these precise criterias:


I will only visit art exhibits where:


1. The visitor is allowed to photograph
or videotape any work that they like.

And/Or

2. The gallery offers a full checklist and catalog
of every work shown in the exhibit, either in a publication
form or on the web (most important international galleries
are already set up like this, so it is perfect).

And/Or

3. The artist exhibited owns a website where each of their works
are titled and thoroughly documented (including generous video extracts
in the case of video art, not just photographs).


I will let you ponder why I decided to set these rules,
but the big clue I can give you is that going recently through
all the exhibit PRs I had amassed throughout the years, I realized
how ridicule it was that so many things I have seen in my life
was lost to memory for being merely described in text, and how much
of a chunk of my time now feels like it was completely wasted.

I also came to the realization that the most important works
I have seen in the past are often the most well documented, so my
presomption is that if you art counts, than it gets documented.

The same goes for films and music: I am always able to acquire the
pieces that I enjoy the most. It is never bereft from me to access
that information like it has been in so many art circles, especially
art centres, small galleries, and middle-level contemporary art museums.
This is all going into the loot: sorry. I am not interested in collecting
blank PRs anymore. I'm not interested in having to write in notebooks
titles of favorite works in exhibits (when gallerists allowed me, I've
been known to photograph title cards in the past). I'm not interested in
ephemerality eitheir, except in the case of performance art
(ephemeral performances don't have to abide to the rules above).


So those are my rules, from now on. Take it or leave it.
Artists too paranoid about their copyrights: go to hell.
Or leave your art in the ivory towers of the few who
can afford them. That's fine by me.


VoilĂ  ! That's settled.

I think I have just reduced by about half the shows that I
will visit from now on, especially in Canada.


Other news: my health is going mighty fine. The doctors
aren't calling me anymore. I thank the good Lord for that.


I think I'm going to see a few major museum shows soon.
Recently seen Geoffrey Farmer and Yannick Pouliot (in Montreal).
I'm sorry but I hated Farmer. There is one great piece,
the now famous installation "The Last Two Millions years"
(sort of "ok-documented" by Farmer's gallerist and the publication,
though it could be better), which indeed propose, like every journalists
described, a great monument to vulnerability.

But apart from that, Farmer imposes too much of his personal
sentimentality onto every stack of rubbish he can amass.
Do you remember that old album by the band The Cure called
"Three Imagnary Boys"? It had that sleeve art featuring 3 mundane
domestic objects representing human characters. Back then, this was
just a cute image. Farmer got obsessed by this concept X 10 times.
Plus in the retro, all the in-situ poetry of the original art
was completely lost. A retro of photo documents of the original
installations would have made more sense than trying to level up
the rubbish on sets of pedestals (be them facto or imaginary).

Yannick Pouliot is very opposite to Farmer: his elegant "siamese"
furnitures and stencils are very museal and it's no wonder he was picked
at such a young start by museum curators. The man already looks like a dilettante
(ref, the cover of Hour weekly), and so does his art retain the necessary
campy fetishistic luxure that goes well with that. Surreal furniture
is nothing new in art but his pieces follow the one from the next, and the
thesis for them is proposed in a spectacular architectural installation
which mixes Nauman's "Corridors" psychologic claustrophobia with unapologetic
rococo aesthetic. It's like being in the Twilight Zone of period sets at the Metropolitan for a few walking steps. The best art piece seen in 2008 yet. Not bad for a starter.



I don't know if I'll ever come around to complete my 2007 Montreal Biennial
piece which I see here as half-written in the draft folder.



Allright, that is all for now. I'll let this blog know if I encounter
any major art events (as long as it's not ridiculous prices reached by
baubbles in pretentious art fairs), but keep in mind that these days I'm
hanging in geek places where art has little to do, or spending a lot of time
away from cities. I think I finally came to grasp how to enjoy being
a cultural nuisance: someone utterly insignificant and uninteresting. Is that
what people define as complacency ? Ah well, it's just a phase. I'm sure
I'll be back with my pretentious BS soon enough. ;D !


Cheers !

Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com