my heroes died of syphilis

Troy Gua + Morris Graves

Continued at the Mystic Sons of Morris Graves exhibit opening this Thursday in multiple galleries in the Tashiro Kaplan building. I am very much looking forward to seeing all the pieces made for this show!

Xanadu: A Stately Pleasure Dome

Erin Shafkind has curated what may be my favorite show of the year so far. Of course, my judgment is clouded by anticipation and the fact that I'm contributing a piece to the show, but there's no denying the compulsive splendor of cacophonous neon lights and roller-skate-glam that also underscores dialogue about utopia and the artistic process. I've previewed a few of the works in person: Troy Gua's ethereal, prismatic portrait of Olivia Newton-John as Kira is breathtaking; I can't wait to see Klara Glosova's crumpled clay skates or the Alpert/Arkley video.

My piece is a drawing called Glory, Utopia (the head of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the body of Terpischore). In a world where there's nothing new under the sun, this may be the world's first ever six foot tall scratch 'n sniff drawing of a hermaphrodite. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The Prime Minister of Poland died in a plane crash the week I began working on this piece. I'd intended to approach the subject of Xanadu with something of an ubuesque, dystopian eye, so when news of the smoldering Prime Minister of Poland (that is to say, Nowhere) arrived, I felt I was perhaps not on the wrong track. This Rubenesque hermaphroditic unicorn is at its worst/best an Ecclesiastical vanitas, at its best/worst the incarnation of a nonsense-spewing hydrocephalic baboon, bubbling over with genital excess and blue areola. In far darker times (Foucault suggests in his preface to Herculine Barbin) real hermaphrodites were summarily executed for their duplicitous, shifting identities, grotesque sexualities, and ineffectual reproductive organs. The blue-nippled fantasies of societies and artists alike are less frequently executed, but perhaps as consistently ineffectual at producing mature, virile fruit (having short vaginal cul-de-sacs that lead to Nowhere).

Superior felt

First off, let me express how sorry I am to people who arrive at this site searching for answers to such conundrums as "my boss has syphilis" or "how much will it cost me if my rabbit has syphalis [sic]". I can't help you. Nevertheless I'm going to ramble about syphilis again in a way that will further frustrate google searches.

One of my favorite syphilis-related curios is an illustration of a woman seated over a mercury pot. Sitting under a cloak to trap mercury vapors was one early type of treatment for the disease, and the curious pyramid-shaped diagram of a woman seated on a stool over a small, toxic steaming pot is as precious as it is weird. As would be expected, mercury treatments caused as much physical harm as they did good, but the tradeoff was considered worthwhile to a majority of people suffering from lesions.

When I'm in my studio figuratively reiterating the woman seated over the mercury pot, my mind always eventually substitutes "mercy seat" for "mercury seat". The amusement of the original Hebrew word used to describe the biblical mercy seat, kapporeth, meaning "thing of wiping out/thing of cleansing", is not lost on me.

(click to enlarge)

Going back to rabbits: yes, they can transmit syphilis (the culprit being Treponema cuniculi, a kissing cousin of Treponema pallidum, but exclusive to rabbits). Despite the slight variation between species, the symptoms produced in rabbits are similar to those present in humans...which raises a question about relations between mad hatters and march hares.

In the 19th century, hatters were notoriously racked with hallucinations and shakes brought on by prolonged exposure to mercury used in the felting process. Mercury was originally discovered to be useful for felting thus: once upon a time in Turkey someone discovered that camel urine applied to camel hair sped up and improved the quality of the felting process, so the use of camel urine to cure pelts became standard practice. In France, with their dearth of camels, workmen used their own urine. Eventually, a Frenchman who was being treated for syphilis with mercury discovered that his urine was producing superior felt. Thenceforth, mercury was the new urine. That mercury intoxication and late stage syphilis produced some twin symptoms is suggestive: I suggest the March Hare was a late stage syphilitic.

Joey Veltkamp: It Is Happening Again (photo recap)

(top three photos by Brian Cypher - click to enlarge)
Joey Veltkamp recently mentioned that he is "all about motifs right now" and a lot of those motifs are readily apparent to the viewer: nostalgia for 1970's era aesthetics, a predilection for certain animals (which often serve as cultural signifiers), erotic symbols of gay subcultures, hipster fads. That these motifs strongly relate to the artist in a biographical way is obvious if you've ever met him in person (have you ever seen Joey Veltkamp drinking anything but PBR, for starts?). He and I both live on Capitol Hill, the heart and hotbed of local hipsterdom, and the fact that he engages the local culture so directly, with humor and with subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) commentary, is delightful and clever.

Joey's opening at The Living Room last Wednesday was packed to the gills. Thanks to everyone who came out! There are very few pieces left for purchase at the moment, so if you're considering picking one out for your collection, I suggest you get around to it sooner rather than later.

(More reviews and photos by Ryan Molenkamp here and here. Joey also posted a recap of the opening on his blog and a few video stills from the evening can be seen on flickr.)





Erin Frost & Sharon Arnold



Jeffry Mitchell & Yoko Ott

Joey & Ryan Molenkamp

My Inconnue

I am taking a break from lots of intensive tweaking and editing for this project (the install is soon!) to make a note of something: I finally have my own mask of the beautiful Inconnue. I've wanted one for as long as I can remember. This copy looks awfully similar to ones produced by the Goebel Hummel factory in the 30's and 40's, though those didn't have necks. So I'm not sure where this one came from; she has no marks.

Once upon a time, she was the artist's muse, and a paragon of beauty in a pre-Garbo world. In the The Savage God: A Study of Suicide Al Alvarez wrote, "I am told that a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her." Maurice Blanchot had a copy of the mask which he kept always near at hand in his home in Eze. He described her --

“une adolescente aux yeux clos, mais vivante par un sourire si délié, si fortuné, […] qu'on eût pu croire qu'elle s'était noyée dans un instant d'extrême bonheur” (an adolescent with closed eyes, but enlivened by a smile, so relaxed, so rich that one may be led to believe that she died in a moment of extreme happiness)

Etc, etc. Needless to say, my fin-de-sciecle-phile/Francophile self is experiencing a moment of extreme bonheur at the arrival of this object to my studio....

First Thursday July 2010

Platform Gallery, Magicality
(organized by William Powhida & Eric Trosko)













Eric Elliott & Troy Gua at Platform







Trevor Johnson at Zeitgeist

Eroyn Franklin, Detained at Gallery4Culture



SOIL: New Members Show



Cable Griffith (examining one of his pieces at SOIL)



Derrick Jefferies' Anatomy

Hanita Schwartz at SOIL



Jeff McGrath: Bahogkins (in the SOIL Backspace)

Brian Lane at Davidson Galleries

Renee Adams: Poison Pie

Joey Veltkamp & Anna Callahan

a sketch of Sol Hashemi's Object History Awareness


Shaun Kardinal & Erin Frost & Blue Moon

Luke Haynes at the City Arts after party

Joey Veltkamp: It Is Happening Again

As well as looking forward to the opening of this show, I've been giddily anticipating and helping to organize Joey Veltkamp's upcoming show at The Living Room. He's written about it and has offered little glimpses into the development of his concept here and here. But I can't wait for the actual date of the show to arrive (I'm sure he can…as he relentlessly toils in his owl factory to craft the final pieces!) to see the sculptures collected in one space.

When I approached Monika Proffitt, one of the owners of The Living Room, about organizing some installations for the space a few months ago, I had no way of anticipating that such a substantial and intriguing body of work would materialize as a result, but the work (all of it new) that Joey is doing for It Is Happening Again is just that. I wish I could leak some of the photos I've been sent. But I'm trying to be good. (Fair warning: you may want to set aside a few bucks for a purchase.)

Also as part of the project, Joey has collaborated with fellow artists Jeffry Mitchell, Gretchen Bennett, and Matt Offenbacher on a handful of the owls.

The show opens on July 14, with a reception that evening from 6-9 pm. The Living Room (via Josh Verse) also hosts intimate showcases of local electronic musicians on Wednesday nights in the upstairs loft area. Inspired by the motifs in It Is Happening Again, Josh has organized a special thematic night of Show & Tell featuring episodes of Twin Peaks with live accompaniment sets from Citizen Mori, The Googly, and Verse. So stick around after the reception if you can!

ACTION (at Ghost Gallery)

One of the projects I've been working on this month has been a video collaboration (with the talented Izzie Klingels, who has a long history of making pretty amazing videos professionally, including producing visuals for music acts such as Death In Vegas) for the upcoming show at Ghost Gallery, which will open on July 8. I consider myself lucky to be included amongst the group of artists presenting new works there: Joseph Patrick Gray & Keith Tilford, Frank Correa & Nick Bartoletti, Tabor Robak, and DUMB EYES. I daresay this exhibit will be an eyeful for even the insatiable visual glutton.

The Klingels/Manitach video promises a buffet of 1920's porn, Brueghel-esque bon-bons, with a generous side of Fernando Arrabal, among other things....

on wounds & female fetishism

stills from a video
(investigating a cow's tongue)


Now what of the little girl, she who is, in Freudian terms, always already castrated, thus impervious to all threats of castration? How does she respond to the evidence of sexual difference, which entails or presupposes her inferiority? A careful reading of Freud's writings on female sexual development strongly suggests that many little and big girls are engaged in a rebellion against the "fact" of castration every bit as energetic as the fetishist's. Indeed, if one takes as one of the hallmarks of fetishism the split in the ego (Ichspaltung) to which the fetish bears testimony, then it becomes possible to speak...of female fetishism, for the little girl's ego can be split along the very same fault lines as the little boy's.

Naomi Schor "Female Fetishism: The Case of George Sand"

Like Barthes's punctum or Lacan's point technique, the superfluous, perplexing, derailing detail operates as the object of one's love, apprehension, hunger, or repulsion. It is the detail that affords a point of entry into the aesthetics of textual appropriation, an aperture or rent proceeding from a small, fixed image. Spots, tattoos, bloodstains, stigmas, scars, abrasions, hairy patches, stained clothing, worn keepsakes, fingered relics--these emerge as those details that stand out as dark symbolic concentrates in the visual field of fetishistic description.

Emily Apter Feminizing the Fetish

Christ's wandering uterus

"[Big] Christ's wandering uterus"
graphite & vellum

I recently finished a new piece that's been gestating in my mind for a while. It hadn't struck me to make a visual depiction of Christ as a hysteric until long after I'd written a handful of "meditations" on Christ's wandering uterus. The concept for the text (as stated in the title) derives primarily from Huysmans' florid description of Grünewald's Crucifixion in his novel Là-Bas, and secondarily from his narrative of Saint Lydwine of Schiedam and his musings on syphilis.

It's hardly a stretch to situate Christ at the center of this decadent pathography - at the center of a triangulation of syphilis, hysteria, and mysticism; it's even quite natural.

Here's a sample; if you want the rest, you can find them here.

Meditations on Christ's wandering uterus (or Christ as hysteric), based on Huysmans' writings concerning Matthias Grünewald's Crucifixion.

mardi
Mardi: On Tuesdays, the Greek physicians believed, the uterus lodged itself in the throat, which accounted for a sense of choking, or globus hystericus. When the doctor pushed a finger into Christ's throat, he could feel the uterine wall pushing back, warm and firm.

(The doctor has placed a fetid herb on his tongue and asked him to swallow it. Supposedly, to inhale the aromas of this plant would effect a movement of the uterus downward from the throat towards its normal position, above the testes.)