What is an Image (JT)

This is a Forgery (JT)

It was really very hard for me to decide which painting I would steal and forge because I was being torn in two different directions. On was about the love of painting and the other about a killer prize I would get for the painting. For both paintings I would approach the forgery in the very same way. I would steal the painting from the museum. I would hire Pierce Brosnan from the movies “The Thomas Crown Affair” and let him do his magic. Nobody can compete with this slick handsome robber. Once in my possession somewhere hidden in the middle of Poland's unattractive countryside I would go to work and try my very best to learn the technique the painters used to make their masterpieces. I would make the forgeries which would probably take me a good portion of my life. Once they looked identical I would sell the the Van Gogh to a rich man that would not care that it had been stolen. I would return the forgery to the museum, maybe my only chance to have a Julia original hang in the MoMa and ask the rich man to pay many, many, many millions of dollars. The other piece by Francis Bacon I would keep forever in my own home and cherish it every signle day. The beautifully done forgery I would return to the Tate. Lets hope I was brilliant enough that both museums would never know that they received forgeries. This way my work would hang in NY and London. I would also be very rich at this point and unfortunately very old since it took me forever to paint my forgeries. So I say a life well spent...? In hindsight I realize that if I could paint as perfectly as Van Gogh and Francis Bacon I should have been able to have my very own career...

MANIFESTO 2012

To follow are 139 statements towards a working Manifesto by the members of Eye & Idea 2012.

PAY ATTENTION MOTHERFUCKERS

1. Curiosity is my inspiration. The class is the reason I took this class.
2. My work is about the suspense that comes with the loss of balance, and the resulting tales that come with the process of regaining equilibrium.
3. Balance is:
4. …About things in moderation.
5. …Things in various perspectives.
6. …Expensive Jordans and an unassuming gait on Erie Ave.
7. …Understanding nature, yet avoiding animals.
8. …Using both experience and knowledge to inform lines.
9. …Knowing when to hang it up.
10. Art is for the birds, flamboyant types, but I couldn’t stand to let it go, the craft, the gaggle, so they kept flappin’ until I ended up in Manhattan where all of the artists live.
11. Was it better the way it used to be,
12. When we could all speak telepathically,
13. With no need for science, religion, or math,
14. Because we knew everything, and knew not to ask?
15. «We are circling around in the night and are devoured by fire » : I have no time, I have no more time, I am the burn, and I am elsewhere. We do not have enough of one life to taste what this entire universe harbors, every opportunity must be ceased.
16. get it out of your head
17. look
18. digest
19. execute
20. mock
21. be kind
22. primal
23. artificial
24. mislead
25. misunderstand
26. misrepresent
27. not always a wall
28. multiple
29. Everyone interprets truth differently.
30. Believe in something.
31. Love someone.
32. Love something.
33. Eat healthy.
34. There are people who manipulate. Avoid these people.
35. Treat people with respect.
36. Everything ok?
37. Hey, are you back yet?
38. What’s up?
39. Are you alive?
40. What do you want to do?
41. What’s going on?
42. Where are you?
43. What do you mean, “I’m not sure?”
44. Why?
45. What is your reasoning?
46. What’re you doing tonight?
47. What the FUCK?
48. Where are you?
49. What do you want out of this?
50. Pay attention
51. Frustration is an opportunity
52. Become a ninja
53. Be ruthless about your intentions
54. Embarrass yourself
55. Wax
56. Notice what keeps you up at night
57. Appropriate the accident for your own intention
58. emancipation
59. alien
60. memory
61. mythology
62. Are you doing art work to satisfy yourself or please others?
63. One day, I’m angry at the world and decide to do whatever pleases me, weird, exotic, odd, and random.
64. Strangers pass by, cold, numb, without looking at me, without answering any questions, until I finally find out that word, that password, for any reaction----Pick a random one, say “I love you”, say “Je t’aime”, say “Te amo”.
65. Open the third door, I fell into the gap between times and places, a journey begins, different scenes are altering in front of me, until I catch the real one, the concrete one, something not an illusion.
66. Feel it.
67. I WANT TO MAKE THE KIND OF ART I WANT TO INHABIT. I WANT TO STOP STUMBLING OVER CONCEPTS I WANT TO MAKE A SPACE FOR CONCEPTS TO BREED AND MULTIPLY AND DISSOLVE.
68. I WANT TO MAKE ART TO GET STUCK IN. I WANT TO STICK YOU.
69. I WANT YOU FORGET I WAS EVER THERE AND GET LOST IN YOURSELF. I WANT YOU TO PUT YOUR EAR TO STONE & OPEN YOUR HEART TO THE SKY EXCEPT NOT AS ANNOYING.
70. Language is death. Art points beyond itself.
71. THAT BLIND FARMER ONCE TOLD SKI THAT CHORE BIGGEST CRIME STUCK
A RAISIN IN THE SHADE MY BRAVE LIT TIL ENGINE [TH] AT COULD [STOP] THE PARTY UP HIS RALLY [ING] HAND EDUCATION
TO FRUITION ON MY PARTION BE TWEENS LIKE TO SUCKLE AND CU DDLEPUDDLEPU BURP SNEEZE NO
72. The history of the present institution is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these artistic minds. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. The Academy has refused enough freedom, the most wholesome and necessary for the artistic good.
73. Her Majesty
74. Trying to Not fall off of the back of bicycles..
75. This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2OdPDEG6aQ
76. Also This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHf7TD4qwjk
77. Also This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELxeSadruMI
78. Being Hilarious
79. Being Super F*cking Hilarious
80. Being Quiet. Chocolate Jesus. The Jerk. "You mean I'm gonna stay this color"
81. ONE LINERS
82. Everything about this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI8NuFAETMQ
83. It takes courage to follow one’s intuition and creativity but the rewards tend to be great. I like the sense of experimentation and collaboration in art. You can try something and fail or succeed, and look at the work of someone who had the same idea, and what they did with it: you’re never alone in your explorations.
84. Just need to learn to see it.
85. Photos - camera is eye.
86. No significant alterations though. (Where is the line drawn? Is there one?)
87. We all see things differently anyway. Who’s to say someone doesn’t already see it that way?
88. Closeups.
89. Me. For me.
90. Not creating - altering.
91. an event that is different from real life makes you think about "real life"
92. the opening as a performance, the exhibition is its afterlife and the objects are the artifacts
93. artist as producer, organizer, catalyst of object-making environment
94. MAKE 1 GOOD PAINTING
95. The object carries the story of how it was made but it is also beautiful, it can travel independently. The value of how it came to be is now inextricable from an object. So the object is a story.
96. the audience came freely but now they are trapped
97. CHOICE
98. lead me by the hand, spoon-feed it to me
99. "Trooping into her apartment as individuals, her subjects nonetheless left behind likenesses that formed groups along its walls and ultimately a crowd"
100. and then THAT happened
101. The way that you show it relates to the initial experience: if you were there, you know. if not you're still cool
102. אותי זה מעניין אז אותך זה יעניין
לא -- רק אותי זה מעניין. ואם אני רוצה שזה יעניין אותך אני צריכה לעניין אותך
103. Debris/piles of stuff/leftovers
104. Thigh Masters
105. Consumer Culture
106. Fabio, spokesman for fake butter
107. Reality TV
108. Disposable pop culture
109. Contradiction
110. Sweating to the Oldies
111. Amish livestock auctions
112. Interchanging Vowel Sounds
113. Whoever designs the packaging for generic laundry detergent
114. Plastic Surgery=New Media
115. Departures without arrivals
116. Unreal/ uncomfortable/ untrue
117. Eye sore
118. Eyeball
119. Delineate conditions of the seen
120. Absent arrivals
121. Looking and seeing
122. Modes of seeing
123. Is color that important?
124. Non-color dreams:
125. The continuous life span of found objects: object-hood
126. Found identity
127. Sexuality in excess
128. To Do / To Don’t Do:
129. Overanalyze
130. Overreact
131. Be stubborn
132. It’s not my fault
133. Learn to drive
134. Repeat mistakes
135. Be pissed
136. Forgive
137. Judge
138. Read literature
139. Let it go

Exterior (JT)

Interior (JT)

Political Image (JT)

Prompt 4: Change your world (JT)

I try to externalize the internalized. If I get close it makes my day. If I don't I start all over again the next day...

JT: There is Nothing to See So We Look

“There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.”

When I first saw an Ad Reinhardt at MOMA I was pretending that I was perceiving something. I kept looking and tried to make a sincere face giving the impression that I was indeed seeing what he wanted the viewer to see. In fact I didn't see any nuances of three different blacks. I just saw one black. The guard next to the painting obviously noticing that my stern face was just hidden ignorance tried to help: “You need to stand at this angle” pointing to a spot diagonal to the painting “then you will see”. I nodded, embarrassed and took the position. He asked me if I now could see. I nodded again and smiling gave the “oh, yes, thank you...!” But in fact I did not see at all. I watched the tourists passing it by unimpressed with whispering:”Is this really art? Its just black...how?”

But I sat in front of it really wanting to see and the less I saw the more I looked. I still have to experience the “Ahhh” moment but every time I see a black painting by Ad Reinhardt I know I will look extra hard....

What Happens? (JT)

Same color and same brush size but each mark tells a very different story.
Each brings out the quality of the other because they are both so very different from each other.
One is violent and expressive-the other light and gentle.
They both need each other because one relates to the other.
The lightness of the watercolor makes the oil paint fleshier.
The heavy oil paint makes the watercolor a fleeting moment.
They make up the framework in which they live.
In between the empty page becomes filled with a dialog between the two marks.
Is it an oppositional fight ?
Or is the empty space a gradient that mediates between the two?

Prompt 1 (JT)

I have been thinking a lot about old photographs and about the people in them. Especially anonymous ones, people I don't know.The photograph is a fleeting moment in somebody's life. Does the photograph show the truth? Who were the people in them? What kind of lives have they lived? Happy? Horrible? My mind wanders and fills in their stories, the ones I imagine to be the reality behind the lie the image can show. To me that lie is the public persona of the person. This is what we are choosing to display on a regular basis.

I like to fill in the story of that person's life. I am not interested in researching the real truth. Their lives to me are like diaramas we build as children. The mystery needs to prevail for me to remain interested. I keep coming back to the image in hope I can uncover something true. I draw and paint the image because it allows me to intensively look and with each pencil stroke I establish an imaginary relationship. I slip into their story and live in their lives for that time period.