blast from the past

a picture of the past 4

Warships watching two whales mating.

A picture of today 4

I look so proud  in this picture, almost like a soldier. I didn't spot the small swastikas on the fabric behind me untill I looked at the picture on the computer. I guess they are the sort of indian swastikas that we need not worry ourselves about, but with my arian apearance I find myself worrying just the same.

a picture of today 3

The remnants of a bird trampled into the pavement. Personally I cant imagine ever stepping on dead animal, but maybe after trucks had ground it down a bit people stopped noticing it. I like that about myself, that I sometimes notice the hidden things in plain sight, that I can see things most other people are too busy to spot. I'm also happy that I can notice the beauty even in grizzly things like this, that I find a poetry here, in the angle of the little foot and what's left of the wing.

a picture of the past 3

The sadness and loneliness I felt when I took this picture is still alive in my mind, but times are very different now three years after. I called the picture torturous embrace and added this text to it: " No words can express the pain of your loving." It implies that somebody is holding on to me, but the truth is that I'm only holding on to myself.

A picture of today 2

Autumn things, flat autumn things.

a picture of the past 2

At one point I would like to know the name of all trees, but I don't know this one yet. The colors reminded me of christmas, the texture did too I think, sort of like marsipan.

A picture of today

Do things still matter after they fade away? The (important?) message is still discernible on the eroded sign, but for how long? Is it the elements that claimed it? Or is it the dogs themselves that have nipped and licked at it while their owners looked away?

A picture of the past

A piece of broken glass in the sand.
I no longer remember why I took this pic.

That subtle thing

Subtle, literal, direct, focused, insightful, superficial, sensational, dull, certain, sincere, faltering, rambling, obscure, cliché, lost, confident.

That is how I feel about what I'm doing at the moment, it shines with certainty in my minds eye, but slips through my fingers like jelly when I grasp for it.

There is something inside of me.

There is something true and real.

But there are layers of different languages between it and me. Norwegian, English, philosophy, material, tradition, semiotics, empirics, emotion, memory and poetry. They are all languages that must be mastered, and even if they might rely on each other from time to time they are varying degrees separate and they don't always cooperate with each other.

That subtle slip of a notion that swirls so deceptively between my depts and my surfaces, it speaks to me in all these languages at the same time. It evokes so much so deftly, I might as well trace the steps of a prima ballerina as try to speak its truth with all of its gradients and variations.

But grasp at it I must.

I must reach out my clumsy hands.

Feel the contours of it as they shift beneath my touch.

I remind myself that I might be too stubborn yet. I might be too fixed by my own infatuation with what's easy and quick. Cheap tricks and clever fixes. I feel like a flea circus, I make the kids squeal with wonder, but the feeling doesn't linger and the memory fades under the shine of too much of the similar too soon after.

I don't want to be a cheap fix. The cheap fix is jut a parody of the truth, it amuses, but it lies as well, obscures the real and shifts the focus to the self gratification of pleasure and amusement. Shifts the focus away from that subtle thing.

Oh, this blog has really been suffering in lonelyness this semester :(

Maybe it's time to grasp the reins again and get documenting.

Curators are just people too, and by people I mean...

I've been going to a lot of exhibitions lately and it's been a lot of fun since I never used to do that much before I came to England. I've gained a bit of interest in curation and I think my essay this semester will be about 'critical curation', even though I missed that lecture. I mised it for a good reason though. Yeah, partying in Norway ;)

Thinking more about curation and all the things it entails and all the things it is tied up in pisses me off a bit, I must admit. It's a lot like all other things in life, you start of thinking that if you just work really hard and make something good then somehow it will be picked up on and you'll get your work out there. But alas, the gallery is not an abstract all knowing entity that just senses your greatness and sends you a nice letter about how it would be delighted to give you an opportunity. First of all you have to do all the hard work yourself getting to know who to talk to and how to talk to them and all that smuck, and then after all that, no matter how good you are there is going to be one person or a group of them sitting there looking at your work discussing whether they think it will be relevant to society and the art world and their personal philosophy in two years time when they have their next vacant spot on the schedule.

And now I'm not even mentioning politics and inside dealins. And yeah, even if you get into the gallery they'll probably place it all stupid and right next to something you wouldn't even poke with a stick.

So when I saw this video couple of days ago it got me thinking about other possibilities.

Dan Colen - Peanuts, at Astrup Fearnley Museum of mdern art in Oslo

As impressed as I got with Hlobo I got somewhat underwhelmed with Colen, it should be mentioned that I saw the Colen exhibition before the Hlobo one.



Maybe because this one was the piece that met me and it gave me serious expectations for similar things, things someting inside me really wanted to see more of. But alas, it was more like a visual cacophony. You can decide for yourself.

When I think about it this kind of reminds me of my initial reaction to Orozco, except it didn't fade. It's a bit difficult to say whether this is simply because I like the artist Orozco better than Colen or because when all came to all Tate is better at putting shit together than Astrup Fearnley.

Maybe it's like they said in Norwegain newspaper Aftenposten "You have to be a young man, living in New York, preferably with a lot of drug use behind you to exhibit at Astrup Fearnley". I mean, maybe there is a deep conection and a thoughtfullness I'm not trained enough to see, but then again maybe it's just a whole lot of shit that people bought because everybody else did? It all seems so superficial and uninvolved to me.

And maybe most of all because the man obviously has a talent when it comes to painting and it makes me wish he'd investigated it deeper or just left it alone insted of teasing me with it.

Nicholas HLOBO at the museum of contemporary art in Oslo

I took a long weekend to go party with my friends in Oslo, and while I was there I decided to check out some exhibitions. A fellow art student recommended that I should check out what they had on at the museum of contemporary art and boy was I glad she did so, Nicholas HLOBO is really something.

It was a bit as if painting wasn't invented yet and then somebody just suddenly mastered it out of nothing, that was how alien it looked to me. Then again, I'm pretty new to the art world and art history, so it might look completely ordinary to somebody else.

It feels sort of cheap to compare him to Dali, maybe because I've been comparing so many other artists to Dali lately, but there's diffidently something surreal about the figures stitched together from black rubber and ribbon into graceful yet nightmarish forms often contemplating the paradoxical about being human that still begs for that comparison. I think this is a grim reminder to myself to read up on my art history. I really don't want to sound like a fawning yokel for ever...

This is the kind of exhibition that I think I would've personally loved to put together. There is so much craziness going on, so much contrast and so much potential harmony. There is even one installation going through one wall going out another yet managing to look interesting in both rooms.



I can't help to think that it must have been a fun job :)

As for making the work I think it must have taken ages and ages and lots of concentration and thinking and awareness. I wonder how it all started? I find I really want to read about this guy. I mean, did he just pick up some ribbon and a slither of black rubber one day and set to it?

Core tutorial with Ann Hulland

I had my first core tutorial for this semester yesterday and it really made an impact on me.

Ann pointed out to me that doing everything at once keeps me from going deeper into anything. I know it sounds like such an obvious thing, but when you're as easily distracted, whimsical and restless as me doing everything at once does superficially seem like the perfect solution. It's just that, it keeps it superficial.

But shaving it down to just doing one thing, does sort of terrify me. I feel like protesting as I did. "It's not my way!" Oh so childish, I know. the truth is, I'm not at uni to play around and amuse myself, I'm here to do a job, a job I'm paying for myself. And it is a job that I'd ideally would like to see pay it self off after I'm done. And jobs are strenuous and challenging and sometimes boring and repetitive. It's through standing these things and persevering that great things happen. It's through those things that art become something of substance and not just something any whimsical kid could have played out on the paper one afternoon.

So maybe it is time to get serious.

And yeah, I really want to play with the router bits and the drill, hell yeah.

Stezaker at Whitchapel Gallery

I caught one more exhibition yesterday. Me and my art group at uni went checking out potensial gallery space for ourselves in the anarcists bookshop and afterwards we walked past Whitechapel gallery and decided to go in. I'm glad we did.

The weirdness of the altered photographs instantly wow'd me, I like things that are pleasing to look at, but at the same time hard to look at I guess.

In retrospect I have come to question how much actual work Sezaker put into this, the initial photos are found and not taken by himself and I tend to be quite sceptical of that kind of thing. On the other hand it is clear to me that he has a good eye for composition and an affinity for the sureal. I thought of Dali, and I overheard other people saying the same. Maybe there are sureal painters that would be better examples, but I don't know about them yet.

Sadly it had been a long day and I was a bit distracted. I think I shall very much like to go back there and have a closer look, maybe on friday.

Orozco at Tate

I missed the class trip to see Gabriel Orozco last Monday, so I figured since I was going into London today anyway I might as well go get it done.

As usual when I can I refrained from reading up on the artist before going. I must admit I even thought he was a woman :) because of the name :) My first impression as I came there was one of indifference, I saw some strange stuff, some weird stuff and then there was some interesting tires and some neat photography. Maybe I was just too distracted today, but the clay stuff seemed so simple and the pieces with th circles, half circles and eclipses just reminded me of discarded christmaspaper after the presents has been opened. I did like the skull though, never could resist primmed up human remains.

But I know I can be overly sceptical and difficult sometimes, so I went for a cup of tea, read the leaflet and had a little think about it before I went back again.

On second glance I was able to appreciate it more and I ended up quite enjoying myself. One of my favourite things was the car and the elevator both cut in three and resealed without the middle piece, the elevator rezised to the same height as Gabriel.
I allso relly enjoyed the phoothographs in the innermost room, and especially among them the watermelons with the cat food tins on them and the roof with the water. I think Orozco shows a playfullness here that I can understand and identify with. He's making beautiful compositions with objects that seem to have been found at the scene or maybe close by. And he allso seems to have an eye for seeing beauty in the mundane, poetry in the impermanent.

But as far as the circle, half circle, ... and so and on and on I still don't connect with it in a way that it makes sense to me. It is playfull though, but it seems too polished and too unaproachable.

And yeah, the lint, I did like it and I immediatly knew what it was when I saw it, I've been facinated with the stuff ever since I was a child :)

oh the shame

From where I'm sitting now the whole video blogging idea seems horrible and embarrasing. I might give it another go, but then I'll have a script and cut away the pauses if they get too long... ahrg X(

Videoblogging "shaddow Catchers: cameraless photography"

A bit mumbly and slow, but hey, I was being lazy anyway...

Floris Neusüss
Pierre Cordier
Susan Derges




And I forgot to mention the leaf man, how silly of me

Garry Fabian Miller