Darren Rigo

Is he a heavy influence on our BFA program? Isn't it weird how all these works are similar to what some of us have done?! (I just picked these out of a few series of his)

If I were to curate a show…

Witkin, Arbus, and Mapplethorpe.

I am writing a paper for my curatorial practices class and we are to pick any artists with any budget and plan a show. So fun!

Here are some for the final series..

The title is 'Our Sects' and it is still stemming from the idea of sin from a surveillance perspective. Opinions? I am peppering in the empty spaces because they are so charged with emotion and loaded with expectations. Like Kyle said 'the empty spaces are psychological' so hopefully that is what is read from them.

Olafur Eliasson

'Take Your Time' is a evolving body of work that travels globally. These environments that he creates are visually stimulating and the massive size creates this a sensory experience that just consumes the viewer. His concept (or maybe starting point) is to recreate the the landscape/atmosphere of Iceland. Showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in December- check it out! ha

Progress...

I have spent the past five days shooting and am thankful to have resolved some major issues. I have two to reshoot today, but other than that I think the others work. In the wrap up stages, I have been thinking a lot about my process and why it is so difficult. I feel that I tend to pick issues that I do not completely understand and thus, curious about. So I spend so much time thinking and writing in desperate attempts to understand this huge issue in a semester. I think this is a huge problem because if I do not understand a particular issue, it makes it impossible for me to visually explain it. I can barely explain my thoughts through writing and the way my feelings towards certain issues evolve so often is too much material for one single project. So I have decided that going forward I am going to be working through series on issues I have a better understanding of AND I have already started brainstorming for next semester because I am so annoyed with myself.

Recent Work..

I have been really at a stand still with my project. I feel like every time I go in to reshoot, I end up shooting basically the same thing. I have been writing a lot about it, but I decided I should just shoot and not care or think about anything to maybe perpetuate some creativity. Here is one image and it sparked some great ideas for the next project I will be working on :D Very excited about that, but still freaking out about this project. I am MAKING myself see this through until the end. I cannot abandon another project.

Jacob Ring

21 year old Brisbane-based photographer. Really enjoy the spontaneity and double exposures. The images just seem to have a raw passion about them.

Video raising whale hunting issues..

Heath Ledger helped produce an animated music video for Modest mouse. I believe just released in August. I guess Ledger passed while the video was being made. Quite an important statement. Art that brings awareness to important issues...

mmm yummy eye candy- chomp chomp

The END!

Some reshoots and some editing, but I have exhausted this way of resolving this concept and I am excited for a slightly new direction. I am taking the surveillance to the furthest extent I can bc it feels original and this still feels tired and not snapshot enough.. shooting this weekend and somehow writing a 15 pg law paper- kill me?

Thoughts and Schedule

Upon brainstorming, I am pretty sure I am going to shoot snapshots from a surveillance perspective. I am going to try it out because it may make the images more interesting in the respect that I am talking about issues dealing with our actions under someone/something's judgment. The snapshots will be of moments that are telling of a less ideal partnership from the eyes of a pious being.

For the next month, my schedule will look like this:

November 9 -November 12 shoot

By November 15 have a least three usable images

By November 29 have all reshoots done and be in the process of printing at least three more

By December 7 have all images ready to present

...annnnd go!

Snapshot

Just some found images that pushed me in the direction of snapshots. my test images were straddling between staged and snapshot. I definitely want the snapshot look.

Shooting today.

Bad Sects (new project title- opinions?)

As I am trying to define myself and internalize sin from a rather privileged stance, I cannot escape relating sin and lifestyle to domestic partnerships. The feelings I associate so closely to religion and relationships is powerless, compromising, and defeat. And I think that the demands of both of these ideas are so conformist that they repel me. So bringing the two ideas together is to form something more tangible for me as far as imagery goes. This may be a reach, but I feel that what people tend to bring to relationships almost mirrors their subconscious feelings towards religion (generally speaking about middle class Americans). At first glance I want the couple to seem like they would have a close to healthy relationship by most standards, but the subtleties to set in as a secondary understanding.

This is three images

unedited:

Joshua Hoffine- Horror Series

Man! This first one! doesnt necessarily work with the series in my opinion, but so good. It's gracefully acrobatic and rich with meaning. Like the palette, theatrics, lighting, complimenting important colors, and how the bather's flowing hair beautifully mirrors the grotesquely gushing jugular.
The rest are pretty one-dimensional. I think the lighting is deliberate and successful. I think imagery that is supposed to frighten is difficult because once all is exposed, the unknown factor is eliminated and scare is a much more difficult task. I think Hoffine did a decent job in tackling this risky task. It is my way to have a hard time with images that I don't have a chance to think or use my imagination, therefore I find these fun to look at but unfortunately they have that 'Next!' quality.

Project Description

Project Description

Title: As of the moment, it is ‘Capital Vices’, but this will most likely not be the title of the work. I would like to resolve this title to help guide the viewer into the mental space I want to create without spelling it out for them.

Project Description: I want to create several diptychs within domestic settings, or at least to give the feel of that space. I want the images to be of a psychological and atmospheric capacity. The palette will remain the same as my midterm showing, only I will lighten a bit. The images will be neutral and unsaturated. Each diptych will not clearly state two separate images, but flow together in creating this space. Upon engagement, the images should be thought provoking and each attract the viewer on an aesthetic level, but give a feeling unique to itself. For example, some would make a viewer anxious or angry or disgusted, but it is not immediately obvious why one would feel that way. Just as sin is skewed in principle and perception, so should these images.

Conceptual Concerns: I do certainly need to enter this mental space. I think this will be my greatest challenge. I think I need to push the vulgarity and strangeness. Making these images in my own mental space is going to be very difficult to speak to others in that same language. Somehow I think this could resolve itself when I engage more deeply in the concept of sin and how it relates to me as a human and in relation to Catholicism. I think that resolving one-word solutions will be an issue throughout the project. My main concern is not being afraid to shoot ever idea I have to open the doors for unsuspecting diptychs and relationships I could not otherwise achieve.

Technical Skills Covered: I will be making sure I am printing in the proper color palette because that alone could change the perception of the work, especially in this particular series. I will be tedious and patient in working to get the diptychs to compliment each other. I still would like to bring some sort of distortion into this project because I would like to learn how to master this effectively and I think it would work nicely in this context.

Formal Guidelines: I am shooting digitally and printing 12x18 as of midterms. I would like to print larger, but unfortunately that will be decided upon fiscally.

Artist Reference: Shifting to Andres Serrano, Jenny Saville, Joel-Peter Witkin and Lars Von Trier seeped in there. A great contrast, but also Alex Prager maybe just to keep it light in my head.

Readings: Environmental Law, War Photography, and Curatorial Practices. Unfortunately all very uninspiring, but my dreams have been taking over and just pulling from everywhere to make up for the lack of creative reading.

Due Date: December 7

Ever week I want to shoot at least three to four images. Just rapidly produce many ideas a try different things. This method would be different for me, but I think this goal would be more attainable.

Grade: Should be based upon my final ability to pull it together. As much as I hate to admit, I really struggle with this. I don’t necessarily have a problem committing or engaging, it is more in not being ashamed to talk to others and get feedback so that I am stuck in the same rut for so long. If I could resolve all these issues and pull together a successful, cohesive project that I do not hate, I would be happy.

I want my art to be atmospheric, beautiful, vulgar, playful, limitless, authentic

Andres Serrano

Serrano's work is conceptually in the same ballpark for what I am going for in my 'Vices' work. This does make me think that I could push the graphics and still make seductive work. In this way, my images could read more negatively in a secondary thought as opposed to only thinking in terms of sin with the aid of text. Some images from him that I thought best suited what I should be looking at:

Shit series

Dream Interpretation Series

Antichrist… my thoughts will be a spoiler

Upon attending this film, I was expecting a psychological space in which a couple goes together to survive some sort of tragedy. In this realm that they experience together would be almost romantic in the sense that they drag each other to hell and yet their feelings are authentic. Briefly, the film was about this couple whom loses their son. This tragedy renders the woman incapable to carry on with her daily life. Her husband, being a therapist, tries to help her work through this difficult time. He finds out what her fears are and then they go to this space to work through her fears to get her anxiety and panic to subside. This space is where her demonic ways thrive and the rest of the film is her husband discovering who she is or who she has become. Although, the film was visually stimulating, I was disappointed in the film for several reasons. I feel that Lars Von Trier did not trust his viewer on an intellectual level and that we needed explicit visual to understand the depths of this kind of dark. The visual exploitation was of a thriller's caliber and seemed to be a copout for resolving the film in this beautiful atmospheric, psychological space he had set up in the beginning. The grotesque became more of a gut-wrenching experience and completely jeopardized the surreal potential that the concept of the film had. In theory, this was an intense story and could have absolutely been resolved at the volition in which the film began. I have heard that the first half was supposed to be when man is in control (rational, logical, urban space) and the second half when the woman is in control (irrational, satanic, natural space) and that seems to hold true. This film is undeniably created from a chauvinistic mind space. Woman is the source of evil. She seemed to constantly be using sex in order to gain power and as a distraction tactic. At one point she says "a crying woman is a scheming woman" and at this point the viewer thinks back throughout the film to all the times she was crying and the things she would say were lies. These were her manipulative ways that makes you think that she was just as evil in her daily life, but disguising and suppressing these ways. The thought that we all have evil tendencies and the possibility that we could be suppressing them on a daily basis because we scare ourselves is the most terrifying concept in this film.

Antichrist with Amanda and Mike tonight!

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/antichrist

unforeseeable weight of the obstacle

I was under the impression that the thinking of subjects to shoot would be the greatest challenge. Not undermining that as a challenge, but the dialectic qualities within the diptych has served much more of a challenge. I have all of these almost stock images for what I consider to imply sin, but then merging of two changes everything! So I have come to the conclusion that the best and most efficient way to go about this is to shoot everything I think of (quickly) and devote my time to finding the best possible relationships. Mike really helped me realize all this with his great insight and after 24 hours of really letting that settle in, it has become even more clear.

Thanks to...

Mike!! What would I do without you!!?!?!

T-Tris exhibition in Belgium

Big exhibition that they do every four years. The name of the exhibition refers to the game Tetris and like the game every piece has a certain opposition or relationship to one another. So the whole exhibition is carefully orchestrated so that these relationships between artists make the whole show coherent. Like a giant game of Tetris, to piece them all together is the objective of the game. It is meant to weave many different meanings and be open for interpretation based on the dialogues between the different works. Of course, all work is strategically placed so the institution still is pushing some sort of agenda for interpretation.

A couple artists that are showing:

Chad McCail

Thierry De Cordier

Andrea Fraser, Gilbert & George, Jacques Lizène, and Cindy Sherman will all be showing at this exhibition as well.