Process: kristi engle show

Showing posts with label kristi engle show. Show all posts

June 04, 2008

June Gloom

You can even wiki it.
It started on June 1st. Creepy how accurate it was. Thank heavens we're a few miles off the coast, so it tends to lift around noon over here in scenic Culver City, but that may explain the seasonal malaise I'm experiencing now. Even as I type.

Matt just flew off to New York for his 3rd degree black belt test in Karate. I tried to practice Karate. Twice. I'd be okay if some troglodyte tried to attack me, because I learned enough to get some self-defense moves down, plus I also took a self-defense class after a break-in— but physical bodily grace in the form of sport posturing does not become me. I tried ballet as a kid and thanks to Fort Nightly when I was in 7th grade, I know how to fake a waltz. But I have some slight Left-Right dyslexia and I get dizzy and confused if I try to move too many limbs rapidly all at once.

It's also the last week for my show at Kristi Engle. It comes down this Saturday. I think it was a good run. People genuinely seemed to enjoy it and I got a review that, as much as I'd like to pretend I've no interest in petty things like reviews, made me feel pretty effing fantastic. It was kind of like getting a promotion for doing my job really well. Though I'm not really sure what I got promoted to. Maybe the corner studio with the keys to the private slop sink. Oh wait, already got that. But windows, maybe a studio with windows one day....

OK. Back to work. June Gloom has almost lifted.

May 17, 2008

Well, that was a nice way to start my day-

Around the Galleries
By Christopher Knight
Times Art Critic
May 16, 2008

Visual feast of color, technique

There's an easygoing charm to Mary Addison Hackett's abstract paintings, a simple acknowledgment that, hey, this is art, not rocket science or a cure for cancer. Painting is tough enough to pull off on its own distinctive, seductive terms without adding demands for the impossible.

Six large recent paintings, five vertical and one square, in Hackett's fine debut solo show at Kristi Engle Gallery mostly succeed by marshaling a virtual anthology of modern painting techniques. Oil, acrylic and spray paint is scuffed, smeared, brushed, poured, dribbled, stained, shaded and drawn. Rulers and other hard edges seem to have been employed in places, along with templates or rudimentary stencils.

In one a linear web of blue marks creates structural scaffolding, built in concert with the painting's lexicon of colorful marks. The sturdy structure contrasts with the evanescent shimmer of silver spray paint. Appropriately titled "Linking Room," the painting carves a visual space in which seemingly incompatible colors, forms and styles all manage to connect. It's large enough (at 6 feet by 5 feet) to engage a viewer's body rather than just the eye.

Comic-book footprints seen from below seem to march across the top of "Fast Acting Mr. Electric Sunshine," flipping the spatial orientation in the elastic manner of a cartoon. "The Highest Mountain" is composed of elements that should not cohere side by side but nevertheless do, and they get there by rhyming a shape, transforming the path of a dribble into an intentional line or making a brush stroke do a sudden U-turn to avoid collision with another mark.

Hackett has titled her show "I forget now what this is all about . . .," quoting the 19th century critic John Ruskin, champion of all things pagan and fierce enemy of standardization. These are paintings drunk on painting, and gimlet-eyed to boot.

Kristi Engle Gallery, 5002 York Ave., Highland Park, (323) 472-6237, through June 7. Closed Sundays through Wednesdays. www.kristienglegallery.com.

May 16, 2008

Anticipation

An enthusiastic friend called me at 6:30 this morning to tell me I had a nice review in the Los Angeles Times. I was going to postpone reading it until sometime this summer, but Matt pulled it in and started laughing, giving Christopher Knight big props for his use of language and perception, (duh) so I ended up reading it before summertime. Will post a link later.

May 14, 2008

Heads Up: Art Talk at Kristi Engle, This Sunday May 18

May 04, 2008

Nice turnout. Work looked great.

* I should clarify about the work looking great. Yes, of course, I think the paintings look great, but in my post title, I'm referring to how the show was was hung, the lighting, the space between the paintings etc. - stuff I had nothing to do with. Major thanks to Kristi and Daniel. Oh, and of course the catalog. Quite beautiful with a fabulous essay by Max Presneill.

More over at flickr.

May 03, 2008

Yes. It's here. Welcome to my geekdom.

I've seen a few variations of the show title floating around out there. I'm crossing my fingers the real show title will stand up and be accounted for.

Hello, my name is "I forget now what all this is about...*" and I'm a exhibition title.

So tonight, I will enjoy myself, and next week I will finish shipping out some stuff to Nashville and let the whole thing begin again.

April 29, 2008

Delivered.

This is just a rough idea of placement. We had to eliminate 2 or 3 paintings, and Kristi may pull another one out to go and live in the back room, but I don't think so. I have favorites, so I would hope it's not one of my favorites, but it probably would be. Consistently, my favorites are usually the long shots.

I'm pleased and feel pretty darn good about the whole thing, so I might relax for a day or two.

April 27, 2008

Phase 1 completed

That's it. Will load truck and deliver on Tuesday.

****

It's rather hot here today. 94 degrees. I taught Fang how to eat ice cubes from my iced coffee using a teaspoon. Yep. All I need now is a rocking chair, a front porch and a fly swatter.

April 24, 2008

Excerpts from the catalog

I am so pleased with Max Presneill's essay for the catalog. Max and I talked in the studio on a couple of occasions and he brought up quite a lot that I had been thinking about, using different words and frames of references. The first time Max walked in the studio, within 5 minutes or less he asked if I liked Albert Oehlen. Then he brought up Camus' The Plague and the idea of futility and responsibility. We're two for two at this point, so the rest of the conversation was equally delightful.

From the second visit which was more of an interview, I give you some excerpts from the catalog....

Hackett’s paintings are evolutionary in the sense that each mark, each reactive gestural movement is made in a non-prescribed way and either succeeds or fails according to its suitability in context with the larger organism of the picture plane ...

..... It is the attempt to reconcile the minute-by-minute choices, to fulfill a hidden promise and to transcend the sum of its parts – without reference to spirituality but to ‘fact-ness’ – that grounds these paintings.

There's more, but I'm bleary-eyed right now, and besides, wouldn't it be nicer to read it in print?

April 23, 2008

Of course now I could post images for the group show....

The solo show opens next Friday May 3rd. It's officially titled, "I forget now what all this is about...*" but instead of an asterisk, it's the number 1, like a footnote. The title is a quote from an endnote of John Ruskin's in Modern Painters. I've written about the relevance of the show's title here. I can be pretty obsessive about details.

We will have to edit the paintings after I take them to the gallery. Though the space is fairly big, 12 paintings will probably be too much information. I've had to deal with these paintings practically overlapping each other in the studio, so I imagine they will benefit with more breathing room than less. If I seem a little excited, it's because it's my first solo show here in Los Angeles to feature only large-scale paintings. I'm defining large scale as 60" x 48" up to 84" x 72" and in the case of the diptych 60" x 96".

The paintings I'm sending to Nashville and NYC are smaller, 20" x 16" and 28" x 22". Scale is a funny thing.

I'm sick today, so I'm doing computer stuff. I should be doing important computer stuff instead of rambling, but this is a nice thing to ramble about-

One of my students had emailed me with a really lame excuse of why he wasn't in class the other day- he bought a Hummer and it wouldn't fit in his garage. I gave him a hard time about the gas mileage, saying I'd be riding my 53 mpg motorcycle to work. After I called in sick this morning, I emailed him saying I was sick and the assignment would be due next week. It was also my way of letting him know I wasn't dead from a motorcycle accident. I received a very sweet email from him saying he was glad it was just a cold- he and few other guys in class knew I rode a motorcycle and since I had never been late or absent, they were concerned. People who ride motorcycles are always concerned if someone doesn't show up. It's like there's a huge buddy system out there.