Brooklyn-based artist John Zinsser, whose (highly recommended) New School class on Viewing Art Intelligently I have taken many times, will be giving a lecture this Wednesday on “The Fate of Painting.”  Here’s the info:

The Fate of Painting
A slide lecture by John Zinsser

Wednesday July 2, 2008
6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor
Mid-Manhattan Library — The New York Public Library
40th Street and 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871

Elevators access the 6th floor after 6p.m.
All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.

Contemporary art and its audience are moving into ever new and challenging territory. Yet painting, as a historically-established medium, always remains central to the dialogue. John Zinsser will provide a larger art historical context to frame the current paradigm shift. He argues that we have entered a time of increased “lexical crisis” as artistic practices collide freely with viewer responses. Modernism, and its attendant painting developments-cubism, expressionism, geometric abstraction, pop and minimalism-have launched a hybrid visual genealogy. And its recombinant qualities have only just begun to be explored. The lecture will move forward from the European model of Picasso and Mondrian to the American response of Pollock and Warhol. Now, we see a 21st Century aesthetic forming from the likes of painters Luc Tuymans, Karen Kilimnik, Anselm Reyle and Wade Guyton. What marks this movement? And where will it take us?

I’m happy to report that I have two paintings that will be included in the upcoming TAWA Summer Show at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion, in Cadwalader Park, Trenton.  The show runs from June 28 through July 27, with an opening reception this Saturday, June 28, from 5pm - 8pm.  Hope to see you there!

The two paintings in this show are Phenomenal Character and Strange Loops 4.

I’ve just finished another painting in the “Strange Loops” series.  In this one, I’ve tessellated an overlapping triangular pattern, turned it into a loop, and then painted it with color progressions in such a way that you might detect a slight rotating motion if you look at the painting’s periphery.  (It’s a very weak version of a documented kind of optical illusion called the Peripheral Drift Illusion or the Fraser-Wilcox illusion; for an incredibly strong version of this effect, see Akiyoshi.)

On Saturday I visited the Museum of Modern Art for the stimulating Olafur Eliasson show (up through June 30). The show at MoMA consists of about a dozen separate pieces whose primary medium is light and whose “support” is our perceptual system.  The most memorable piece is called “Room for one color” (1997), which occupies two hallways.  The regular hallway lights have been replaced by monofrequency yellow lights — i.e., rather than give off a spectrum of frequencies like most white lights (and even most colored bulbs), these lights must emit light in a single frequency (or perhaps a very narrow range).  Everything in the hallway — you, your clothes, your bags, etc. — becomes a shade of yellow ranging from nearly white through very saturated yellow through black.  No matter what color surface you bring into the room, the only frequency present and the only one that will be reflected to your eye is yellow.  This has the amazing effect of making it seem like you’ve walked into a sepia photograph!  If you stand just outside the hallway and watch other museum visitors enter or exit the room, you see them suddenly switch from full color to monochrome, and it’s quite a nifty effect.

Another crowd-pleaser in the show is one of the few pieces not directly related to light entitled “Ventillator.” An electric fan dangles on its very long power cord from the ceiling in the middle of the museum’s large 2nd floor atrium.  The fan is its own propulsion device, sometimes causing the fan to accelerate as it swings back and forth but at other times acting like brakes.  As the cord hanging the fan twists around, the fan changes directions chaotically and swoops at times perhaps just seven or eight feet off the floor (watch your head!).  For such a simple idea, it delivers mesmerizing visual fun.

In the multi-piece work “Mirror Door”, spotlights on tripods are aimed at mirrors along the walls at various angles.  The three pieces on display at MoMA — “user”, “spectator”, and “visitor” — perhaps refer to the different vantage points of an art viewer and are related to where the spotlights are aimed (e.g., reflected from the mirror back onto the tripod’s base).  It’s a simple conceptual piece but an effective one.

In “I only see things when they move”, a bright light in the middle of an otherwise dark room shines through rotating planes of color-effect filter glass, producing bands of color along the walls of the room.  As with most of the works in this show, you as the viewer become immersed in the artwork and have to look in all directions to take it in.  Look towards the middle of the room to see the planes of glass reflecting the bright light; look towards the wall to see the bands of light and the shadows of the other museum-goers.

The show includes a piece I had seen at Tate Modern in London a few years ago called “360 degree room for all colors”, in which you enter a small round space whose light-emitting walls vary in color over time.  The show’s brochure explains that “rather than illustrating a particular scene, Eliasson’s installation immerses you in the color spectrum itself.”

A few pieces didn’t keep my attention — “Moss wall” is an entire wall full of thick, plush live moss; it’s supposed to change color and smell over the course of the exhibition, so it’s tough to appreciate it in one visit.  And “Your strange certainty still kept” seems like perhaps it wasn’t quite calibrated correctly:  a strobe light is supposed to freeze falling droplets of water in mid-air, but it didn’t quite seem to do the trick.

In addition to the show at MoMA, another 25 pieces Eliasson’s work are on display at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, which I haven’t seen but hope to catch before it’s over.

A few weeks ago, a massive branch from one of the trees in our backyard fell down.  After going to work with the chainsaw to clear up most of the mess, I was left with a beautiful piece of wood that I thought might be interesting to work with.  I sliced off a few disks of wood with the chainsaw and then used a sanding disc attached to a power drill to smooth one of the surfaces.  I sealed the wood with a couple of layers of clear acrylic gesso and then began work on this painting, “Zentral Park.”  It’s based on a photo I took some years ago in Central Park of a peaceful scene in NYC.  This kind of piece makes for a nice change of pace from my abstract paintings.

I finally managed to take my new French easel outside to do some plein air painting. (Well, I went out last week to give it a go, but when I reached my destination it turned out to be a wind tunnel and much colder than it had seemed when I left my house.)

I set up shop in Mercer County Park and began to work. Rather than using acrylic paints, my normal medium of choice, I worked with Pan Pastels (specifically, the 20-color landscape set). These are super-soft pastel pigments that come in small plastic containers rather than sticks and are applied by using special “soft” sponge-like brushes (or fingers, stomps, paper towels, etc.). I enjoyed working with the Pan Pastels as they are easy to apply and very soft on the page. However, there are a few challenges: the landscape set that I purchased doesn’t come with many darks, so it was difficult to get as much contrast as I would have liked into the image (note to self: next time, bring some charcoal). Also, because the pastels are so soft, getting any kind of a hard edge is a challenge.

I worked for about an hour and a half, until the mosquitoes (or gnats?) found me and I remembered that I forgot to bring the OFF spray!