Sam Freeman Gallery Images

This one is an installation shot. The wallpaper eventually filled in that wall, and the bright packing materials through the doorway became an elegant installation of Masami Teraoka's work from the 80's. A remarkable exhibition.

Sam Freeman Gallery Show

I have been away from home for almost three months, so I've not been very attentive to blogging. My last show went up entirely without me. The installation was designed by my good friend, the curator and frequent collaborator Darin Klein. Tim Butler did his usual fantastic job installing my wallpaper and Sam Freeman and his assistant Katrina Mohn kept everything rolling along. Sam and Katrina were also kind enough to host the launch of my third book: Budget Decadence. Sam ordered his own stock of the book, so if you're out near Santa Monica and are looking for something to read stop by and pick up a copy. (They will soon be available in the usual 2nd Cannons locations.)

There is a limited edition of the book which includes a print. It's called "Decorate Your Own Room" and is an 8x10 image of an empty domestic interior with detachable suggestions for how one might choose to decorate the room. There are only three remaining as of this writing, and they are available through 2nd Cannons for $75. (this is about 90% less than a comparable edition would cost at, so a good opportunity for art on a budget.)

A Short Documentary About My Work

This video was made by a local documentarian, Steve Coiffi. Steve has worked in Hollywood, most notably on the TV series ALF (which I loved as a boy!) He started making videos of LA performance art in the 90's, and has archived some of the most important moments of that discipline during the time period. Steve is currently creating a series of short documentaries of LA based artists in association with Artillery Magazine. He followed me through three separate shows and interviewed me with my gallerist, John Knuth. My dogs, Edgar and Clara also feature prominently!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZBfAYkV88

A continuation of the previous post. More images!

Armory Installation

These are pics of my current installation at the Armory in Pasadena, CA. It's in the old Ammunition vault, so it has thick concrete walls, and a heavy steel door hanging open. I tried to make it creepier with middle gray walls, and light bulbs hanging from cords. The room is only about 5-6 feet wide, so photographing the individual groupings of images was difficult, and is why they were all taken at an angle. (They probably would have looked worse if I had a wide enough lens!) It's a shame that I don't have better documentation of that, because Darin Klein designed the hanging arrangement, and it was really spectacular (in the sense that spectacular applies to a dark creepy little room)

David Burns recently curated me into a show at the Armory Center in Pasadena, "The Drama of the Gifted Child," which takes a look at artists who are still active 5 or so years out of grad school, a milestone generally accompanied by an enormous attrition rate. I'm actually intimidated to be in such good company, Julie Lequin, and especially Kelly Sears. For this show, I was offered the ammunition room in the armory, a long, narrow room with ragged cement walls, electric panels taking up wall space and a heavy metal door hanging open at the entrance. It really is my kind of place!

The physical space of the gallery got me thinking about secrets and compartmentalization. The images in this post are some of what came from that thought process.

I blew up an image of a little boy from a black and white school photograph. The boy was pushed to the farthest edge of the frame, and the enlargement shows the space where the original image ends, and the backing board begins. I then decided to manipulate the image in as many ways as I could come up with, and frame the pictures in found frames of different sizes.

Some of the interventions are fairly simple, spraying the figure with glow in the dark paint, so that he'll take on a ghastly green glow at nighttime. Other images have more elaborate and detailed drawings scratched into the surface of the print. I tried a new technique in which I scratch an image into the plexiglass so that the print remains intact, but it the photograph is disrupted by something that alleges protection.

While making this work I was thinking about ghosts - as a concept. Ghosts are ultimately psychological disturbances that are so profound they take on a supernatural life. They are inseparable from human psychology, devices that obfuscate the personage, acting from the deepest corners of the subconscious. (I think that's something photographs do inheretly, but that's a much longer posting than this!) My goal was to create an installation that references the psychological space of the Gothic Novel, the space where the corporeal and the imagination fight. But to frame that fight in visual terms - much like literary tricks of shadow, the figure is overcome, by the symbolic order, again and again.

These are the text wallpapers mentioned in the previous posting. There was difficulty uploading them the other night, but this is what they look like.

Circus Gallery, April 11 2009

My show at The Hammer comes down on the 12th of April. The museum sends me weekly attendance records which are as comforting as they are daunting. I haven't kept up with the tally but I think 6-8,000 people will have eventually seen that work. Knowing that it's had a good run tends to cut that anxious deflation I get when a show comes down.

But I've also been busy with my next solo show, opening on 11 April (7-9pm) in the mezzanine gallery at Circus, (7065 Lexington Avenue, Los Angeles 90038.) There will be an assortment of new images: drawings scratched into photographs, images destroyed - repeatedly run over by a car, folded at odd angles and mounted, etc.

For those familiar with how I draw on the photographs, you know that the resin surfice of the image is scraped away until the paper substrate appears bright white and fuzzy, so there's a contrast of textures as well as the stark white of the paper against the muddy color of the photograph. I've started to 'flay' the prints, peeling away the photographic image rather than scratching at it, so there is another type of texture in this new work.

The thing that I'm the most proud of in this show is a new edition of my text-wallpaper patterns. Each of the 4 have been redesigned as 22x28 inch swatches, signed, numbered and deliberately sized to fit pre-made frames. These will be available at a reasonable price, so that they'll be accessable to a larger audience. These prints are still a lot more than 'zines, but they cost 90% less than one of the photos in the show. (I find the price of art a little embarrassing.)

In other related news, I'm going through old lectures, trying to decide on a text to accompany each of the galleries on my web site. These should be updated with images from recent shows in the next 6 or so weeks. Steve Cioffi will be making a video tracing the progression of my work from The Hammer show through my installation in Drama of the Gifted Child: The Five Year Plan at the Armory Center in Pasadena, curated by David Burns this summer. If you regret missing my talk at the Hammer back in January you can now catch the video at the following link: http://hammer.ucla.edu/watchlisten/watchlisten/show_id/70760/show_type/video?browse=none&category=0&search=

Hammer Install

I've been meaning to post pictures of the Hammer installation, but time has gotten the better of me. Between my efforts on the LACE Benefit Auction and shows coming up in March and April, I've been too swamped to blog. (Probably a good thing!)

Nearly 2,000 people saw my show in its first three weeks, but I wanted to post images from the install. Franky Kong, Nick Kramer and Tim Butler did an incredible job putting it all together. Since the wallpaper is comprised of nearly 100 tiles, getting them all into place without obvious seams is very difficult, but these guys were determined!This was taken in the museum's storage. This is the biggest piece I've ever made, and it's completely overshadowed by the Matisse.
And curator Darin Klein taking a first look at the completed installation...