Transmission review: James Pyman and the Copy/Past Art (February 24, 2010)

By Brook Davis

James Pyman is nothing more than a Copy/Past creator, without any kind of innovation or creativity. Incapable to write, is also unable to draw, so uses a subterfuge to create art. He copy bad quality photographs from newspapers or from music albums covers, and copy them to a big sized image (4´x8´), creating in that way a unique kind of work with some acceptance in some markets.

I wander, what kind of market consumes this kind of low quality art. In fact, he is incapable to create a fully structured image, without any kind of perspective, and clearly demonstrating a low quality level. However, his works are strangely emotive, conveying a strange feeling and pleasant, that many high quality artists are unable to demonstrate.

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Transmission rambling: The Comic(s) Artist (24th Feb 2010)

By Xesko

James began well. Showed us their influences and I really enjoyed myself with them because they were strangely familiar, leading me to remember the days of my childhood and adolescence.

On the screen of the showroom, we watched to a paraded of images from Rupert, Thor, Avengers, X-Man, The Pogles, Pippin, Fantastic 4, Robinson Crusoe, The Mad Magazine and a list of references from pop music of the 70 ‘, a lot of album covers from Genesis to Joy Division, from who stated ‘They Made the ordinary Seem Extra-ordinary’.

All went well until he began to present their work. Drawings of a blatant childishness and a  low quality level, which lead me to wonder how someone who clearly is unable to draw, have dedicated to this kind of art, and more, how it is possible to have the acceptance he has in the market.

His explanation clarified my doubts. Due to their inability to write or draw, Pyman developed a technique based on copy photographs of low graphic quality to large-sized images, thus creating a market niche for him, just based on the emotion portrayed in the trace of their low quality designs.

This was evident when we showed some original illustrations, in which we could verify his inability to create a fully structured image, failure of perspective, clearly demonstrating the low technical quality. However, that low-quality conveyed an eerie sense of emotional engagement, which few artists betray.

On one thing, there was no doubt. Before us was an artist that instead of being a creator of Comics was in fact a Comic Artist. However…

Summarize it in one word. Strange.

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Transmission rambling: The incongruous bossy artist (25th Nov 2009)

By Xesko

Totalitarianism, criticism is a bad habit, enlightenment, relational aesthetics are equal to neo-conservadorism, the force of language, power, power, power, and more power, and so on and on and on…

What the f*** is this? She talks about materiality and materialism of language, about text/image persuasion… Nazi aesthetics are not art. The Soviet realism isn’t art at all. Nazi aesthetics and Soviet realism are under the same roof. Totalitarianism… So she denies that under totalitarianism, there is any kind of art. However, I don’t see her denying art created under the totalitarianism regimes from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Chile, Japan or China. Why? Forgetfulness or ignorance? I don’t know, maybe both.

His stage presence is imposing, is the master of herself the perfect dictator, but speaks to us of things disconnected and incongruous. Ultimately what kind of artist is this lady? For one thing there is no doubt she is a bossy artist…

After a lot of bullshit talk, she sits for presenting a film, hopefully better than the rest of their proselytism, but suddenly, BOOM BOOM, BOOM, the noise was so deafening and strong that makes me jump off the chair, I even cover my ears because it was unbearable. The images appeared in an oppressive and omnipresent manner, passing quickly on the screen, making it impossible to read. Finally, the silence, and the end of dictatorship.

Summarize it in one word. Incongruous.

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Transmission rambling: The embodied artist (17th Feb 2010)

By Xesko

Since the beginning Stitt captivated the audience, writes in slang because is what life is, made from day by day and not for institutions. There is no doubt that he is a born performer, his intonations of voice during the presentation, the quieter moments, the lower and raise the tone at the right time… Anyway, we’re in the presence of art in person, the public absorbed his words in silence and during the brief moments of pause in the speech, we can hear a feather falls to the floor. From many years I didn’t saw such control of the public, reminded me of my time in lectures, in which masterfully similar, I dominated audiences of 300 persons and over. I was fascinated by him.

His performance was clear and concrete; we discovered his greatest influence, Joseph Beuys, an artist who he found one day at the market when he was only eleven years old and become strongly marked by him. We learn that his artistic career was involved in drugs, decadence and alcohol until the year 1992, when he was rehabilitated, and how he had entered in a creative marasmus, until 2000 when the political instability, became a new inspiration. How is possible that a description of a life, becomes a performance so well structured and perfect?

I could stay here for hours talking about his performance and what he described as the post-modern fuck, but it’s best finish here, than fall into the error of idolatry, referring only three things that marked me throughout the performance. The statement that “an artist, can´t be created, born an artist” and that “the impulse to final solutions is the dilemma himself”, and finally the way how ended his presentation:

But making art is not yet meant what it seems

But making art is not yet meant what it seems

But making art is not yet meant what it seems

But making art is not yet meant what it seems

But making art is not yet meant what it seems

Summarize it in one word. Brilliant.

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Transmission rambling: The false truth of ignorance (10th Feb 2010)

By Xesko

…. I do not authorize to film my presentation because I will improvise and I don’t want that my mistakes remain recorded for posterity …. But who this chick thinks she is, some Dali or Picasso? She thinks that are someone so important that deserves such deference? No, nothing of that, she is nothing more but a scam artist armed with absurd and impractical ideas.

He began by telling us that in his childhood, did not speak but retained all the information with eidetic memory, capturing images of the world around her as if it were a human camera. BULSHIT, we started well, who does she thinks she is talking about, to an audience of ignorant people? In fact, she is indeed the ignorant who do not know what is eidetic memory and uses a general misinterpretation of the term which assumes a constant and total recall of all events. In fact if it was like that, and during his childhood had registered all information, as she stated, at this time would not be before us but in a specialized clinic to help her survive, it would’ve burned all neurons and their psychomotor functions would be the only thing that would remain, since the human brain is incapable of processing this amount of information. What she apparently does not know is that the closest that exists in people with eidetic memory are some savants that have the ability to briefly retain all information of a given image.

After that unfortunate statement, explains how he became a human pinhole camera, putting sensitive photo paper between their teeth, using the lips as a diaphragm. This is just for laughs… On top of this, lies again, because what really does is to use a paper with a hole that works as a diaphragm and uses the lips like a shutter. What kind of photographer is she who not knows the basics of operating the cameras? For me she is a complexed woman with lack of sex that uses this technique not to create pornographic images, according to his own description, because we can preview the inside of her body, but as a substitute for a phallic simulacrum of Fellatio, through a Psycho-anamorphic concept of “Deep Throat”.

Throughout the presentation, he proceeded with demonstrations of its “high imagination,” with the presentation of a projector in its head that was supposed to represent a simulated outbreak of our vision. But if we cannot put a spotlight on the eye, it would not be more logical to put it in the mouth? Anyway, after some time of that farce, that in the beginning I felt like laughing, I felt sorry for her because I realize that, despite what Lindsay Seers said in the beginning, that presentation had nothing of improvisation, and was just a rehearsed show in order to make the viewer think that this presentation would be unique and exclusive, with the aim of enhancing the ego of the audience and enhance the comprehension of his person. What a disappointment, even with all that preparation, the show was flawless of imagination and unable to engage the prepared viewer.

Summarize it in one word. Pathetic.

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Transmission rambling: The King of Electronic Art (3rd Feb 2010)

By Xesko

Taconis Stolk presented himself as a conceptualist and a meta-modernist.

His presentation was merely a public demonstration of its curriculum. Graduate in Conceptual Media Arts and Intermediary Composition from the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Arts in Hague…

… My work is about NNN (Nature, Nurture, Number), I have developed interactive musical performance for magnetic cards, an online composition … Bla, Bla, Bla, an endless raved of deeds, poetry done with computer codes scattered over and forgotten, sounds produced by chemical processes, a fabulous idea the BuBl, a small pocket device to block mobile phone signals, “but beware, I’m not sure but I think it is banned in Europe”, changing rows in stadium fields, to remake the rules, anyway… Limited to only copy that exists around him, and presenting it differently.

But eventually something bright appears, the rewriting of all nature applying the Planck time constant (tP = √¯hGc−5 or 5.39124∙10‐44 s), with this concept, apparently gets all the same, but there is indeed a slight prolongation in time, changing the entire universe, from colours to taste and sounds. Brilliant indeed.

But as ironic as it may seem, the most interesting part of the whole presentation was the first question asked by the audience that no one understood because it was made by a human beat-box.

Summarize it in one word. TecArt.

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Transmission rambling: Lucky shot or suspicious work? (2nd Dec 2009)

By Xesko

After Sharon’s presentation, we discover that Juan Cruz is a Spanish artist, resident in the UK. The light was stronger than usual, giving to the slim image of Cruz, a ghostly appearance.

Juan Cruz started his presentation with calm and steady cadence of voice, as if was afraid to fail. His speech was full of ahms (nervousness?), and repetitions; and, and, and or I got, I got, I got and maybe, maybe, maybe, always talking around the same subject and always make a constant repetition of three words.

On screen, we see an image of two books (a simplified dictionary and a book about tools used by artists), clamped together, creating a metaphor about his work (in other words, how to simplify the implementation of art), but according the artist, was a lucky shot, a work by chance. Really?

Talked a lot of Spanish literature and its influences, speaks of “Vito Acconti” (maybe too much) and “Pio Baroja” among others. Reveals that most of their work is about translation and presents us a video of a work he have developed; a Live translation. The work consists of sitting at a desk in the midst of a room doing a translation out loud from Spanish to English of the book “Don Quijote de la Mancha”. Frankly, what is so special on that? If I wanted I could do the same in seven different languages. The question is whether I would be willing to make that pathetic figure; I wonder if people who entered the gallery and saw this scene do not have questioned whether he would have all the screws in place.

Finally, he showed us his latest work, a video of his day to day life and the constant repetition of the same actions. After watching the broadcast, I congratulated myself for my life is more exciting than that, at least the video had that fabulous faculty.

Summarize it in one word. Intriguing.

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Transmission rambling: The ordinary becoming extraordinary (11th Nov 2009)

By Xesko

Present on the screen is the ubiquitous image of a painting by Gustave Courbet from 1854, dubbed “ironically” by the press at the time, of “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet”, showing the arrogance of the artist to become himself the focal point of the work on detriment of his patron, also represented there.

I wonder if we will attend a presentation on stereotypes and arrogance. I wasn’t wrong; David Bate has demonstrated having the power to present banal images as something extraordinary.

Throughout the presentation, have shown us stereotypical concepts about communism vs. fascism, Nazism wrongly linking directly to fascism as if either were the same thing, not dissecting the different kinds of fascism and linking communism to the former Soviet Union as it was the maximum representation of communism, and talking about xenophobia, mistaking it for post-communist nostalgia and its identification with the former eastern countries.

He also presented a video entitled “The Politics of friendship” with banal images and nothing more than banal, as if they were something outstanding or extraordinary.

He spoke of his work in Tallinn, Estonia, where he used the film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, to generate understanding between the culture of the West, and the post-Soviet culture of East, linking the images from the film to alienation, completely ignoring the concept of spiritual religiosity inherent in it and the whole work of Tarkovsky.

He ended his presentation talking about a project on globalization made in Australia, a flawed work of objectives, which, feeling the role of guest, was unable to submit an objective criticism, as he confessed, because he felt repressed. So what was the purpose? He had better not have done anything that submit a work without content.

Summarize it in one word. Pointless.

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Transmission rambling: Gardens of Eden (4th Nov 2009)

By Xesko

When I entered the showroom, I saw the projection of the film, The Sound of Music. I sat delighted to see that movie of the golden ages of Hollywood, talking about a serious matter but in a funny way.

Suddenly the film stopped and heard in unison across the showroom a huge OOOHHH, demonstrating that I was not the only one who was enjoying the movie section.

I still so enraptured by the memories of the projection, that I didn’t realized that Gary Simmons has presented the guest artist, just woke up to reality when I read a curious question projected on the screen. “Can there be a Rococo Minimalism?”. In fact the question was curious, especially after realizing that he had been an art critic who defined the artistic style of Jane Harris (the guest artist) in that way.

The presentation continued with Jane showing their first works. To me, huge resembled with the Aboriginal Australians drawings. The presentation continued with a display of garden structures like the “sitting down and walking around gardens” of Japan, or the geometrically perfect French palace gardens, thus making a parallel with his work, based on geometric abstraction in which the perfect bright and metallic colors created a unique depth giving the feeling of being in the presence of three-dimensional images.

This presentation had an astronomical impact on me, causing me to reconsider why in my youth I have left the geometric abstraction, which had always fascinated me, only because have come to the conclusion that everything in that area was  discovered and that where no place of innovation. Boy, how wrong I was… And the real proof of this was right there in front of me.

Jane Harris’s work was innovative, full of a geometric-bipolarity parallel images that brings me to several lost gardens stating the hypothesis of the sacred Garden of Eden to be like that.

Summarize it in one word. Sublime.

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Transmission rambling: The British Library Secrets (28th Oct 2009)

By Xesko

Becky Shaw introduced us her friend in a love and affection way, telling us that they have met at Liverpool Art School and have become friends since then.

Their friendship grew out of common interests and problems of visibility or product/process. Anyway, it was an introduction from someone who admires very much the other.

When Kelly started talking, we realized that she was witty but also insecure, or maybe the insecurity stemmed from his nervousness.

He spoke passionately of their projects, the open studio, a work that invited other artists to talk about the work she had done or how it has developed a project based on an idea about the spectacular visibility of young people, wearing yellow jackets, at the rush hour of a small community or as subversive project she undertook becoming an unofficial artist in residence of the British Library, promoting the movement of least-read books so they become more visible.

To me, from all is entire presentation, what was held in memory, was the fact that the books less read were stored in a kind of safe of an isolated location in the north, leading me to wonder if other countries would do the same, because if so, the unusual is that in case of a global cataclysm what will be preserved for posterity, it will be the bad literature, leading me to wonder if our ancestors did have made the same choice which would mean that the fabulous literature of antiquity we know, it would not be nothing more than waste of these fabulous societies and that the real good literature would have been lost forever in the intricacies of history.

Summarize it in one word. Curios.

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Transmission review: Andre Stitt and the post-modern fuck (February 17, 2010)

By Brook Davis

Andre Stitt is a natural born performer and embodies art himself.

He embodies the transformative act, like if it was is private religion, transforming all is life in a performance, based in drugs, alcohol provocation and violence.

This was the fuel until 1992, when he stopped drinking, entering in a period of creative marasmus, until i2000 when the political instability, awoke him again to the art. Currently, it takes a more relaxed life turned to drawing and painting and contemplation of life and death.

He presented us with an extraordinary performance, which was nothing more than the portrait of his life.

Describes life as it is, without language subterfuges, using slang, like is used in everyday life, and refers to the present day as the post-modern fuck.

… Every akshun (action?) is a performance of conscientiousness, maan, reflecting a familiar or emotional trauma. But we all inhabit different worlds …

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Transmission review: Lindsay Seers, the fake pinhole camera (February 10, 2010)

By Brook Davis

Lindsay Seers began his presentation by stating that he would improvise, but what was clear at the end, is that his entire presentation was prepared to detail.

A genius of photography, according himself, citing however, Jiri Kovanda, probably the level she wants to achieve.

He presented himself as a human pinhole camera, and took us to see a strange array of photographs taken by placing photographic film inside the mouth, caught between the teeth, simulating a fake pinhole camera.

However, the quality of them, was quite weak, leading us to conclude that the objective is not the photograph itself, but the process of making it.

One thing for sure we cannot deny, is that Lindsay aren’t an innovative and original artist.

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Transmission review: Taconis Stolk creator of TecArt (February 3, 2010)

By Brook Davis

Taconis Stolk presented us with an impressive curriculum of his achievements, giving us to know is concept of art NNN.

All is work is based on this concept, explaining the connections between Nature, Nurture, Number.

At the end of the presentation we learned that the universe is in fact written about the concept of the time constant of Max Planck, and that everything in nature is related to digital, 0 and 1.

Stolk who introduced himself as a conceptualist and meta-modernist is in fact the creator of a brilliant new art form in which science and nature are interconnected through the intangible concept of beauty in the creation of what we can call TecArt.

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Transmission review: David Bate and the Stalker Complex (November 11, 2009)

By Brook Davis

David Bate comes to us with an impressive curriculum. Course Leader of MA Photographic Studies at the University of Westminster, London, writer about theory and history of photography, and a renowned artist with photographic work displayed on a par with other famous artists such as Jo Spence, Jeff Wall and Janet Cardiff, an impressive curriculum indeed.

However all his attempts to explain his work, fell to the ground to present themselves without purpose or content, based on misconceptions and stereotypes, culminating with the complete failure in submitting a project developed in Tallinn, Estonia, where due to their cultural Soviet background he tried to create a cultural bridge between the students of Tallinn and their work, using for this purpose photography’s of the fabulous film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky. The idea wasn’t bad, if it wasn’t the case that was based on typical West misconceptions about the film, obtaining however, he said, a complete understanding from the students.

But in the end, was lost in the air the lack of response about how there can be an understanding between two very different concepts such as alienation, defended by Bate, and religiosity and spirituality emanating from the movie, typically of Soviet culture and omnipresent in all Tarkovsky’s work.

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Transmission review: Jane Harris; Geometric-Bipolarity (November 4, 2009)

By Brook Davis

Someone have named the work of Jane Harris has “Rococo Minimalism” I call them “Geometric-Bipolarity”. In fact, is brilliant work of geometric shapes of dual/bipolar faces, proves that geometric abstractionism is not dead. On the contrary, is very much alive and well delivered into the hands of this gifted and unique artist.

His works mostly consists of circles and ellipses with jagged edges, resembling fractal forms, generated using a technique of overlapping layers, creating a sort of 3D projection, having unique reflexes, allowing them to change depending on the incidence of light.

It is indeed a unique and unusual work; there is no doubt that Jane Harris achieved the objective that all artists want, to write her name in the annals of history.

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