Prompt #3: Fragmentation

This part of an image is taken from Picasso's "Abstinth Drinker." While it is depicting the chest and arms of a man when viewed as a whole, the fragmented piece portrays a different outlook; it brings forth the image of a mountain, with the rugged hills along the path. The cool blue tint of the jacket also appear to illustrate a river valley, with turbulent waves. Just as Picasso stated that there is no "abstract" art, it is fascinating to see how a certain form quickly turns into a whole new entity, when the piece is broken up or fragmented to pieces.

Prompt #3

I am so sorry--I misread the prompt and thought we were supposed to take pictures of anything, fragmenting it from its place in our world in order to see it differently. I took some pictures on the walk but they turned out ugly so this is a photo that I took the day before. Two buildings side by side. I don't think that the architects meant for the two sets of ironwork on the front of the buildings interact with each other! To me, it looked like the one gate was reaching out for a knob on the building next to it. I know this is weird, but it reminded me of either something sexual or a baby reaching out for its mother's breast. Click the image so you can see it in full detail!

Post 3- Fragmentation

When pressed to say what this image represents, each viewer may have a different answer. But with a similarly zoomed photograph of what this painting represents, there would be a similar result. This is to say, abstraction doesn't just exist in art, a photograph could be equally as unclassifiable and present to us an abstraction of reality. 

This fragment of Raymond Pettibon's work represents the water within a plastic water bottle. But without the context of a zoom level that we are more accustomed to, its features which help us to classify the object are obscured, and we perceive it as abstract. It is this sense of perspective which is applicable to not only art, but so many other realms of life. Once we lose perspective, life can turn on its head, and the big picture is gone. 

Topic 3

The "cropped" (though perhaps more accurately described as a "zoom" here) image finds its origin in the center of one of the mounted record players. The resulting fragment is one that can easily find a comfortable home on a proud parent's fridge, which is what I enjoy about it. Installations can be challenging to the viewer, a tension arising from the natural desire to appraise and classify what we see. The cropped image, reminiscent of childhood afternoons and glossy, toy marbles, became for me a reminder that there is too often this desire to classify. Sometimes a beautiful balance is found in acceptance and appreciation simply for what the eye beholds. I am comfortable in the disconnect, it can be nice to embrace the state of being. 

Fissure (P3)

A fissure on a plaster sculpture.

This tiny part is the element that can reveal the inner structure of the work, but also the element that puts in second line the external part, the sculpture’s appearance.

Showing while hiding and vice versa.

Other than a sexual and organic touch, this split gives to the work an internal, not completely knowable, dimension.   To look at such fragment, strengthen the already existing qualities of the work and add some others. The shapes of the object, austere, fragile, silent, mid-way between rocks and architecture, are confronted to this welcoming and more human space.

Totality and fragment dialogue in the spectator’s experience of the work.

Maybe it is true that we can’t perceive totality, but just a sequence of components that we unify with thought. 

A Gift-Wrapped Presence

I love this show by Elad Lassry at 303 Gallery, and this fragment, above, is taken from my very favorite piece in the exhibition, “Untitled (Bell Peppers)”. I should note that I typically reserve such enthusiasm for painting. I crave good painting like I crave chocolate. That is, viscerally and daily. The difference is that I get to eat chocolate every day. Great painting is a rarer treat, even in New York City. The amazing Charlene von Heyl show at Petzel should sate me until whatever oily excellence appears next at the galleries. Photographs, on the other hand, usually feel like journalism or tricks or one-liners to me. I rarely think of a photograph outside my purview. A great painting stays with me. 

Enough about my ongoing Great Painting Search. Let's discuss the game-changing Elad Lassry. I am drawn to his transformation of photographs of the quotidian -- flowers, a massage in progress -- into crafty objects. The satin wrappers are so unexpected, so inviting, that I could barely contain myself from touching, squeezing, caressing. 

I found our framing assignment particularly difficult with the Lassry pieces because he has done so much framing himself. There is the usual framing that every photographer engages in -- choosing what to photograph, choosing which parts of his chosen image to reveal to the viewer. Then, he takes an unusual third step. With gorgeously tactile swaths of opaque satin, he hides parts of his photographs. 

In “Untitled (Blond Woman)”, below, the expertly folded, steel-blue satin hangs just above the action, poised, like one of those perforated-metal window garages protecting so many NYC storefronts, to further reveal or secret away more lurid detail. 

In “Bell Peppers,” Lassry takes a rather mundane black-and-white of bell peppers and wraps it up, wood frame and all, as one would a parcel. But his parcel string is UPS-standard brown, gussied up in stuffed satin. Now we have four quadrants, plus the complication of the Orly Genger-like knot. This is a lot of tight, advanced framing to deal with, and it's not all straight edges!

I decided to focus on the top right-hand quadrant because I dig how Lassry has arranged the two more obscured peppers to cuddle up against the satin corner, and my own framing could reinforce that idea by cutting out the negative space on the right, thereby making the dominant pepper feel cozier -- or more claustrophobic? -- too. Now the satin is like a comfy reclining hammock for our typically uncoddled, antioxident rich friends. 

Rebecca Cascade

Prompt 4: Destroy Love Sabotage Understand Forget Surprise Change Limit Endure

Destroy All Monsters, 1968

Destroy All Monsters is a 1968 Japanese Scientific Kaiju film featuring 11 well known monsters (including Godzilla) set in a confined area known as Monsterland. In it a newscaster reports:

"The major cities of the world are being destroyed, one-by-one by the monsters: Moscow by Rodan, Peking by Mothra, London by Manda, Paris by Baragon. And, here's a special news bulletin. Godzilla is now in New York City. The city is being invaded by Godzilla!"

Destroy All Monsters

Destroy All Monsters was a highly influential punk band comprised of artists Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Niagara and Cary Loren founded in Detroit, MI. 

Object to be Destroyed, Man Ray, 1923

Object to Be Destroyed is an artwork by Man Ray from 1923. Of it he wrote:

"Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow."

In Fragments Jean Baudrillard wrote, “Everyone hides some measure of cruelty towards their object. There is no point in imputing this cruelty to unconscious motivations or some trite psychology: it is a symbolic rule. Analysis is part of the theatre of cruelty. Destruction is part of the (loving) understanding of the object.”

Charline von Heyl

Sabotage is an artists book by painter Charline von Heyl. Of the project she writes:

“Sabotage provides a weird satisfaction of creation, because you’re not going through it looking for something—you actually create something and then you destroy it. You don’t destroy it by changing it, though; you destroy it by forgetting it. It works through repetition and surprise.”

Sabotage is a 1994 song by the Beastie Boys.  

Michael Berryhill

This week in Red Hook we visit the studio of Michael Berryhill. 

Prompt 4 urges us to make something new by changing, destroying, sabotaging, fragmenting, collaging, altering, cutting up or swinging a hammer in a single blow. 

Own Monsterland: make an image, or an object, or a performance, or a video, or a text, or a song, that reflects your own version of a monster.