AGENCY OF THE URBAN SUBCONSCIOUS

This morning while walking Audrey and I were talking about the Greenburg/Krause polemic and the idea that there was a limit to the ongoing creation of new art. What can this mean? Who could think that? Like saying there can be no more new pop songs.....
Too too complex....look here!
AGENCY OF THE URBAN SUBCONSCIOUS

and some people say that there is no new art

inchoate

hectorjo

formless in photography

coal dust, oamaru stone dust, newsprint.
Questions are being asked as to these images being fixed/made permanent. I say that it could be done but I'm more interested in photographing them. Their absurd impermanence is a significant point of reflection. The dust is so fine, it behaves like smoke....staining, creating shadows.

seal granite crema

continuing exploration of the formless in photography,
taken at Cape Foulwind, image sharpened a little digitally. Yum yum.

working the surface: stone dust, acrylic on stretched canvas

this is a detail of a metre square and a preparation for drawing (snapse#2)
The process is an extention of the coal dust exploration but here using the oamaru stone dust, sieved super fine, mixed with acrylic white and when dry sanded back with wet/dry. The surface is stunning really, marble like, hard and tight. It also remains a little transparent. this image shows the effect having applied india ink, stone dust and sanded back to the colour.
I've since applied more colour and more stone dust...eventually when this settles I plan to do more non figurative drawing on this support!

65 days to go

'
until the plaster goo gets poured in. Of course a very engaging process, each day making a new mark, like the days before, trying too hard to be original, clever....measurung enthusiasm, asking questions; what am I trying to say? why say anything?how do these marks relate, to each other, to me, to the viewer.....? It's a collapse really, getting out of my own way. The daily ritual rules and ultimately will out/manifest...I'm thinking a lot about negative space and how the plaster will appear, thinking in three dimensions each time I make a mark, relentless.
In a little over two weeks the project will be half way. Each morning I begin thinking about what the mark might be...look like but generally do not act upon any inspiration, leaving the gesture/mark til the late afternoon which usually is completed relatively quickly( a continuous flow/action.) The waxing takes place after ten days ( accumulated tiles)
It is a piece that holds time, genesis and the mundane.

japanese artists I'm looking at now.

By no means exhaustive. Inspiration comes from a great book called: Scream Aginst the Sky, Japanese Art after1945.
I see the non figurative, gestural quality in some of these artist/works. I also feel more free to explore some 'mysterious' traditions/forms that I can only intuite.....this moves me into a new dimension of understanding and history. I find the space more plastic/maleable/open/free.

Kazumi Nakamura http://www.kiaf.org/2004/special/KAZUMI%20NAKAMURA.jpg
Jiro Yoshihara http://www.andipamodern.com/THUMB/3907.JPG
Yoko Matsumoto http://metropolis.japantoday.com/xmg/593/593-A-wilderness.jpg
Sadamasa Motonaga http://galleries.absolutearts.com/galleries/artwork/artu/artu1141885039.jpg
Yoshishige Saito on artnet
Hisao Domotohttp://www.tokyoartbeat.com/media/event/2005/EC86-170
Yayoi Kusama http://www.artseensoho.com/Art/BLUM/kusama98/kusamaGIFS/kusama1.jpeg

plaster cast of smiley face

Beginning to play with the idea of the metre square plaster tiles project, in the sense that I am seeing what the effect will be...so much detail/information caught up in the frame/surface.
This mask works on many levels....mainly in the way that the simple childlike quality of the clay original ultimately produced this mask with it's slightly hideous/grotesque/inverted quality.
There is a death/mask and skull afrtifact feel emerging....where from?