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Connie Bostic at the Flood Gallery

Connie Bostic’s exhibition comes at a particularly interesting time when the conversation about gun control has been rekindled by the violent events of the past couple years, especially the school shootings and mass murders in places like Connecticut and Colorado and the craziness of violent outbursts by right wing extremism in Norway, punctuated and/or capped off by the obscene pronouncements and gestures by the NRA. It is not surprising that the spokespeople for the NRA issued such crazy platitudes like “the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. This is the pinnacle to which their own ideological fortitude extends. Let us not for a second forget that the ideological underpinnings of such a pronouncement lies in the mythology laid down at the dawn of the American revolution. America is the only place that has actually codified its mythology in a legislative document, the constitution and its amendments. Mythology begat as law. Figures like Mit

The Modern Anxiety, Buzludzha and the American Superhero

I will try and piggyback a little bit on what I thought was the most asked question, or at least what I felt was the most perplexing image or idea, during the night of the opening of my latest solo show “apotheosis”. The image is that of the Buzludzha monument and I have described the piece this way “On a lone mountaintop in a Bulgarian national park sits one of the most perplexing and perhaps ironic monuments to late 20th century socialism. Built in the waning years of Eastern European socialism, when the writing on the walls was already running out of walls, this monument celebrated the revolutionary spirit in such a way as if the sheer spectacle would be able to carry through the intended ideology, that everything is just great the way it is. The hyperinflated ego of such a project constitutes the dramatization of what occurs naturally in every culture faced with its own impending doom. Instead of reflection and reassessment, we get bombastic displays of confidence in the exist

Defining the Undefinable (part 2)

Let us turn to some philosophical and perhaps metaphysical underpinnings that drive the creation of art. On the one hand we have the monetized system of art, which says that ultimately what is of greater value must by the same virtue be a greater work of art. This is the contemporary formula of the market system. The flaws are inherent and one does not have to go too far to see and understand that flaw, because not every artwork that commands a bigger price is necessarily better than another of lesser or no value at all. Value in dollars does not equal value of importance or value of meaning. Damien Hirst can have his assistants work around the clock producing one dimensional paintings and sculptures that will sell at exorbitant prices at commercial galleries and at auctions, (maybe not so much these days) but he cannot imbue those works with an equal amount of meaning when the works and the production of them are itself meaningless. Warhol was much closer to the truth about this

The role of art in the end times - beyond 2012

What role does art serve? Or what role does art serve to the artist and the public? Could we instead ask what role does the artist serve to art? Art is a much greater entity than the artist will ever be, so why does it so often seem to be subservient to the artist and his ego? This inversion is only palpable if we look at the way the media portray art and artists. The relegation of the profession of art, to monetization and therefore to the ranking on the scale of value happens by way of subverted commodification. When the news agencies like MSN or NBC print on their web sites articles about which degrees will get you the least amount of money in the market today, one has to question the motives for printing such material. Of course, topping the list of degrees is Fine Art, Philosophy, Psychology, etc, no one would suspect anything less. The list remains more or less the same every year. What this shows however is not what the agencies propose should be a deterrent to those seek

Defining the Undefinable (in several parts)

“I am an artist”. This single sentence is possibly one of the hardest and also one of the easiest to utter. One the one hand, a person whose values and merits of art mirror those of transcendence beyond physicality or even spirituality, because creativity is neither, might actually have a hard time uttering these words, thinking himself somehow unworthy of the title in the face of his own predetermined image of the artist. On the other hand, another person whose opinion centers around the conception of absolute pluralism, where anything and everything can and therefore must be art, might have a rather easy time pronouncing these words, thinking that his identity as an artist is a given, because of the standard definition he has set upon the word. But things may not be so easy after all. Because what is art? This is an age old question, and we have basically learned not to ask it for fear of appearing naïve, foolish, redundant, cynical, trite, old fashioned, because the contempora

Pat Passlof at WCU's Fine Art Museum and Black Mountain Collge Museum

The world is a hard complex place to navigate. In this respect, the art world is as impenetrable to some, as the Amazon rainforest. Moods and tastes are changing on a seasonal basis, celebrity and spectacle are the ever consuming product churned out by media savvy oligarchs and recycled as yesterdays pop culture by thousands of artists. The word art has been redefined so many times, so as to encompass virtually anything and everything the mind can provide with a reasonable amount of substance. Damien Hirst was heard saying that his medium today is money, a line that would make Warhol blush, and as such he retooled the moral impetus of art and artists everywhere yet again. The art market is the biggest totally unregulated market in the world right now and it shares a spot in the sunlight with student loan debt as being the biggest bubble about to burst any day now, the way it did in the 1980’s. It’s a vicious cycle, one that seems to have no end. But all things must come to an end

A Movie About Robert Wilson

I recently watched this awesome documentary about Robert Wilson.  This is a must see for every artist young and old, contemporary or traditional, kitsch or avant-garde.  Also if you are a fan of Philip Glass, and I most certainly am this movie is for you.  It is a great look at the life and work of one of the premier avant-garde artists of our time and I can only hope that it will inspire others to make some great art.  In these trying times, god only knows we need the inspiration.