6 Quotes

“jiz laden”, ollestad 2010

Distortion is a constant and our eyes are easily deceived.
- Taryn Simon, TED Global 2009

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice. “Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!”
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Macmillam, 1865

Embracing the diversity of human beings is the only way we will find our way to happiness.
- Malcolm Gladwell, TED TALK 2004

Thousands of lights are beautiful.
One light lets you imagine the person who’s there.
- Fujii Tamotsu, “Akari”, 2005, ISBN4-89815-150-7

Rather than laugh-out-loud funny, the humor they put into play tends to be quietly corosive. A vein of nullity and nihilism runs through it.
- Ralph Rugof, “Liquid Humor” I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time, Hatje Cantz, 2004

Humor can provide information about oneself that one would rather not have. It reminds one that one is a person that one would rather not be.
- Simon Critchley, “Laughing at Foreigners: A Peculiar Defence of Ethnic Humour”, Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Publishing, 2008, 978 1 85332 266 2

Admittedly, these quotes seem quite disparate. From humor, to zen, to realistic cynicism, to Gladwell’s very “Miss America” diversity = happiness; these quotes touch the the current tips of my interests and directions. I feel that I’m currently being washed about in the tsunami of information and data that innundates me. I can’t make heads or tails of current issues, the truth behind corporate/government policy, the moral/culture clash of the west and the middle east. The Wars on Terror and Climate Change. I’m drowning in an ever-deepening sea of highly specific buzzwords and activist slogans, not to mention the ever-escalating bombardment of advertising I wade through almost zombie-like.

These quotes represent the shards of a fragmented core; the possible paths I might take through the mire - corrosive humor? Medidative peacefulness? Equal opportunity embracing? Cynical realism?

I’m sure diferent pieces will move in different directions, but at the moment, these quotes are arrows on a sign post in the muck.

Stephanie Brooks

Stephanie Brooks hits my funny bone, while not going light on the conceptual. Language is something that I've been interested in for a long time, but have shied away from using in my work. Social behaviour begins in language- the halt of work at Tower of Babel due to confused tongues being a classic illustration- and my interest in social perception/awareness is essentially based in word play.

Her formalist approach entices my attraction to clean, orderly design. The humorous side of the work gives it life, air, approachability. Like much humours work, the funny of it allows the viewer to draw near to the work, to let down their guard, and ultimately allows the piece to speak more clearly and effectively. This kind of wit, balanced with depth, is something i'd like to achieve.

An American artist, born 1970, Her work uses written word, stripping down the comedic gesture to linguistic games and turns of phrase, offering subtle infiltrations into the signs and devices that sructure our everyday life as well as language in general.

"[Brooks's] witty representation of an instinctually unconscious thought process as a simple visual equation prompts a unique consideration of how language and socialized behaviour interrelate."
Comedy is not Pretty, Molon & Rooks, Independent Curators International, 2005, ISBN 0916365727

"I'm as concerned with the formal properties of the work, scale especially, that I have to insist that they are both formally and conceptually driven. Formalism is the vehicle that drives the idea home, pardon the auto metaphor. In the academy, there seems to be this notion that the two terms, formal and conceptual, are oppositional. I've been discouraging this way of thinking for years, but recently in my work I've begun to recognize just how important the formal aspects of my work are and I'm trying to pay more attention to them in studio practice and discourse."
-Stephanie Brooks, interview with Beverly Rauenberg, fnews magazine, November 2004






Link to an interview with the artist.

Link to gallery representing artist - Rhona Hoffman Gallery

Link to artist website

Playful

“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”
Tom Robbins, American author

“It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Italian philosopher and theologian

“Comedy is not Pretty”, Dominic Molon & MIchael Rooks
Situation Comedy: Humor in Recent Art, Independent Curators International, NY 2005

I chose “playful” because I've grown tired of the grim and grotesque in art. The world is an ugly place, and the light-heartedness of Erwin Wurm and Keith Boadwee revealed to me that not all need to be doom and gloom in the art world. As Wurm puts it, "If you approach things with a sense of humor, people immediately assume you're not to be taken seriously. But I think truths about society and human existence can be approached in different ways. You don't always have to be deadly serious. Sarcasm and humor can help you see things in a lighter vein."

I agree. I think that humor and playfulness can disarm viewers, or catch us with our guard or prejudices down, and allow the message in the work to be understood more clearly.

Of course, humor and playfulness are just as subjective and dependent on taste and opinion as all art.

Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm's work strikes me as being light, humurous, and deftly clever. There's a wit beneath the sarcasm that holds me. I laugh to myself on seeing his work, but below the initial layer of light-heartedness, there's a stab of intelligence that would evade all other than the sensitive viewer.

Wurm cocks a snook at the gallery establishment but is not disrespectful of the gallery. His use of materials is impressive, from common household objects, to sculpted foam & dust, and most of all his execution. His "Dust" series is incredible, and reminds me of the Wolfgang Laib pollen pieces. The care and precision rivals the labor an oiler painter, the calculations of a darkroom photographer, but Wurm's handling dust! And fashioning it into evidence of something, not the thing itself. The ability to cleverly point at something that once was, but is no longer (in this case with a flare of cynicism) is a difficult balance to achieve- Wurm delivers.

I'm curious what happens at the end of the installation- does the gallery just blow away the remaining dust? does Wurm vacuum it up for the next piece? is he particular about what kind of dust he uses? is he stopped at airports with suspicious bags of dust?

Artist Biography
Austrian, born 1954, currently lives and works in Vienna and Limburg, Austria.

Wurm is quoted as saying: "I am interested in the everyday life. All the materials that surrounded me could be useful, as well as the objects, topics involved in contemporary society. My work speaks about the whole entity of a human being: the physical, the spiritual, the psychological and the political."

Erwin Wurm is known for his humorous approach to formalism. About the use of humor in his work, Wurm says in an interview: "If you approach things with a sense of humor, people immediately assume you're not to be taken seriously. But I think truths about society and human existence can be approached in different ways. You don't always have to be deadly serious. Sarcasm and humor can help you see things in a lighter vein."

Quotes
1. "dear erwin, are your box statues anatomically correct? if not, how do you tell the male boxes from the female? I tried looking under their clothes, but it was really, really hard to tell." -name withheld

"at the moment, there are just male boxes, no female boxes. don't ask me why - I have no idea. an inner voice told me just to make male boxes."- erwin wrum
- letters to the artist - erwin wrum: narrow mist, ullens center for contemporary art (UCCA), beijing, july 17th to september 15th, 2010

2. "I am interested in the everyday life. All the materials that surrounded me could be useful, as well as the objects, topics involved in contemporary society. My work speaks about the whole entity of a human being: the physical, the spiritual, the psychological and the political."
- erwin wurm, Erwin Wurm: The Artist Who Swallowed the World, Davila, Fleck, Kunde, Pfaller, Waspe, MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst; Hatje Cantz 2007, ISBN-10: 3775718664


Narrow House


Narrow House, bathroom


Instructions on How to Be Politically Incorrect


Looking for a Bomb

Link to an interview with the artist
Link to gallery representing artist
Link to artist website