The Bartender Never Gets Killed

One of the (few) advantages about being an autodidact in the art world, is that you come across people already established and you’ve never heard of them! Always a nice surprise. One such is Calum Colvin

Calum projects paintings onto room surfaces to create a still/life montage.

In one project he reinterpreted the work of the masters in this way.

I must admit to being totally overwhelmed by these – definitely in the ‘I would buy it if I could afford it’ category.

From the website

Colvin’s triumph is to have reclaimed these apparently dusty objects for the late 20th century. His apparent blasphemy is their resurrection as he opens our eyes to the universality of the old masters. It is not by chance that his figures twine around the very fabric of his room-sets. The implication is that their personae are locked within the human psyche, as deeply embedded in the spirit of the post-modern world as the geegaws with which they share house room. Thus Venus is painted across the drawers and mirror of a dressing table and Diana the huntress becomes a languid housewife, her attendant nymphs like so many bimbos at some weird, nude, suburban coffee morning. Her bower is hung, not with swags of velveteen but with the trappings of our own baroque age – Madonna and Club 18-30 T-shirts. Actaeon shields himself, not from the stag’s skull, symbol of his ultimate transformation and death, but from its post-modern equivalent. His punishment for the crime of pornographic voyeurism is to be fettered to an ironing board. It’s a cunning piece of post-feminist visual rhetoric.

Rinko Kawauchi has two new books out, Diary 1 and Diary 2

All the images are taken with a camera phone. I’m a big fan of hers, my images are very unlike these and the sheer simplicity is something I envy.

The use of the camera phone reminds me of the work of Michal Daniels, who made this medium his own a few years ago.

Another new photographer for me is Michael Reisch.

It is quite obvious that he is aligned with what has been termed the ‘German’ school. But there is an interesting twist to the tale.

Reisch works with motifs photographed with a large-format camera. His original contact with reality is the point of departure. He then digitizes his negatives and processes them on a computer, isolating found structures and exposing their underlying features. In this way, the artist radicalizes the entire image. Above all, these interventions redefine the relationship between inside and outside. In “Architectures,” the concern is with the relationship between building interiors and outdoor surroundings; in “Landscapes,” the focus is on the question of how settings that fulfill people’s longings are constituted and concentrated within the context of vegetation and topographic modulation.

By digitally isolating elements of the scenes he photographs and removing evidence of people, Reisch seems to be reaching for something I was looking for in my Urplace project, a sense of archetypical landscape, although he goes further and seems to be suggesting, or intending to suggest, a moral component

Why does Michael Reisch transform the world of human life into a world of inanimate structures? There are two different answers to this question. The first relates to the massive changes in our living environment that took place during the late nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies, changes which were originally envisioned as a means of realizing the utopias of the modern age for society at large. The second answer involves an assessment of this project of the modern age: Can universal happiness be achieved through responsible action?

Reisch’s photographs present a world without resistance and a world without observers. Although their format is comparable in scale to that of the viewer, their subjects make it clear that they have evolved into alien species that increasingly evade the viewer’s control. The presence of structure in the buildings is intensified into something uncanny. In the landscapes, topographic modulation and green growth are transformed into the auto-dynamics of biomass. Both are aloof from human intervention and involved in a process of constant subliminal growth—an autonomous process of formation in which the world no longer offers a point of reference. It is a totalized world in itself in which it is no longer possible to observe the effects or consequences of events precisely.

I kinda like the idea of shooting LF and then making digital pics out of it!

I’ve mentioned Uta Barth before, but I’ve recently tracked down some images I’ve not seen before, so without any unnecessary commentary from me…

Catching up on Harvey Benge’s blog, I came across a link to Andre’s work.

I especially like this series about loss of memory.

From the website…

An essay about the loss of memory. Once coherent scenes with a common thread through time and geography fall apart. Images of people, places and situations – the document of actual events – are not lost, they become displaced within our memory and reassembled into a different order, a different logic.

Another photographer I got to see recently was Hans van der Meer. He has a project I like a lot called ‘The Landscape of Lower League Football’.

This idea of treating a sporting event in terms of its effect on the landscape is an interesting one. Unfortunately his site is all flash so I can’t link to the pics I want to (am I the only one who really HATES flash sites?)

But the site is definitely worth putting up with the presentation.

I got to see some work by Christopher Muller recently. The montages I found interesting, as you could probably guess. These end up being printed life-size, presented on diasec so they are intended to function more as a ‘window’ than an aesthetic object surrounded by a frame.

Each piece is a complete work, no series for him.

He is interested almost solely in the still life, despite the various sections his work is presented in on his site. His found object work is not the result of careful search in the environment, but of meticulous construction in-situ

From an essay on his site…

“The viewing process reflects moments of self-awareness – as emotional content is inevitably linked to the responses and projections of the viewer.”

 

I really need to find out more about his process, as the formation of psychological resonance is something I’m very interested in. The essay on his site is a good read.

Just got back from my holidays. Had a good time and managed to see some great art.

First up was some recent work by Chema Madoz (o en castellano) . His webby is out of date and I really prefer the work from 2000 onwards – there is much more bite to it, including a series on flags as nationalist symbols which I liked.

A lot of his recent work would fit in the ‘I’d buy it if I could afford it’ category.

I also took a trip to the Wurth museum in Logroño.

A great place to view art. All this group’s museums are set in industrial parts and form part of the working environment for the employees as well as the public. Favourite of the show – as always when I see one – was a Caro piece…

I especially like his table top sculptures, I’ve never seen anything so physically heavy that gives the impression of grace and airiness

I’ve been wanting to see some of Rinko Kawuchi’s Aila work for a while, prints are so different from books…

and I like it. Simple, well ‘drawn’ images that have a consistent naivety I like. Couldn’t make these images for love nor money!

The work of Luisa Lambri was new to me.

as was the work of Jorg Sasse

I also got to see some ‘old’ friends,

I’ll be posting more links later, together with some work from the trip. Happy New Year!

I’ve posted about Keith before, but I’ve just had an email from him regarding the Crane Silver Rag paper, and he tells me he helped with its development and is a consultant for Crane. Really nice when you find a product you like has an input from a photographer you like!

Keith has some new work up too. I can’t insert these images into the blog as Keith has a roll-over presentation (Update: of course I can put these into the blog! and if Tim on a Mac can do it…!). But some of the extended are very nice indeed.

I first came across Rob when I still lived in the UK but I lost touch after I moved to Spain. His blog is here and you can get to his webpage from there.

Rob gave me lots of help when I was trying to learn how to load an M6 (put the base plate in your mouth, throw the camera high, pull the leader out of the cassette, catch the camera, throw the film etc etc), as well as helping persuade me to do the Charlie Harbutt course at Duckspool.

Rob has been earning his living as a wedding photographer, a very brave thing to do! I’m glad he’s still doing his personal work.