The Impossibility of Crime in the Context of Art

Here is a picture of the alleged Art Basel Miami stabber.

It's impossible to commit a crime in the context of art because art is artifice not reality.  In other words, everything is make-believe in the land of art.

Art Basil LA Has Basil, Art Basel Miami Has No Basel

This is a picture of a booth at Art Basil LA 2015.

Art Basel Miami will happen December 3 - 6 in Miami Beach Florida, and gallerists can get a booth there for $50,000.00 or more.  It's a trade show relevant to wealth, and it might be prestigious and important and cultural and smart and elevated and highbrow and elite and inspired and beautiful and lofty and highfalutin' and full of what everybody loves about art,  the fame, prestige and money.

Art Basil LA will also happen December 3 - 6 in Los Angeles in John Kilduff's backyard, and gallerists can get a booth there for $50.00, or the event organizers can waive the fee if exhibitors can't afford it.  As the CEO of Art Basel LA, Kilduff says, "It's gonna be fun!  It's a no-brainer.  Which fair would you do?  You're not going to go bankrupt doing Art Basil."  And it will be streamed 24/7. 

Each gallery will get a 12" x 12" x 10" booth and they can fill it up full of art, although one New York City gallery will be digging into the earth 18 inches in homage to Urs Fischer's concept piece, "You," at the Gavin Brown Gallery in 2007.

It's a truly international event with two galleries coming from Canada and one from Greece.  Galleries from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Ohio, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Brooklyn and Oakland will also attend, bringing the total number of exhibitors to over 20.

Eight healthy, young basil plants will perfume the air with their inimitable basil fragrance, and some of the exhibitors will bring their own basil.  So Art Basel Miami won't have Basel, but Art Basil LA will have basil!

The semi-private VIP party is Thursday December 3rd, and VIP's will be attending.

Art Basil LA

Here is a picture of a possum.

The official mascot of Art Basil LA is the possum, and it will be running around at night checking out the art when all the convention attendees are still up partying.

We Love Letters at the Oakland Terminal

Last night I went to We Love Letters at the Oakland Terminal, a show of Graffiti/Street Art, except the art was hung on the wall, not painted on an exterior building wall.

So it was like going to a zoo because these animals are normally seen out in the wild, and there they were, in a gallery, in miniature.

My favorite works were photos of MUGRE's art on a building wall, on a train, on a building wall, and on a building wall.  MUGRE is from Columbia, the land of Columbians.

I made this drawing of a MUGRE burn.

Some woman was there from Nepal, and her tag is Imagine.  I watched her writing it for somebody in a sketchbook, and it was kind of neat to watch.

There was a big, blank gallery partition, about 8 feet tall, and people who attended the show wrote their tags on the partition.  I put my tag, "Side BUSTR" on the wall, but some weenie wrote over mine and 3 other people's tags.  I was deeply hurt and started to cry and vowed revenge on my own terms.  I saw this lack of tagging room as analogous to the lack of affordable housing in the bay area. 

All of the art was made by women, so it was clearly superior to the art of men.

Everybody who attended was beautiful.

My friends like letters and typography, and their appreciation of and interest in letters helped me to appreciate this show.

The James Gobel and Maysha Mohamedi Show Called Gift a Feast

 James Gobel is a man and Maysha Mohamedi is a woman, and their show, "Gift a Feast," was in a storefront in San Francisco in the year 2015 on planet earth.

I met Mr. Gobel in front of the storefront, at the storefront front, and he was talking with two women and then I said hi to him and he said hi to me. 

I went inside and looked at the rectangular 2d art and the ceramic collaborations between James and Maysha. 

I was mostly interested in the 2d art because I like to paint on 2d surfaces and give the illusion of 3 dimensions.

I only noticed two 2d pieces, one made from textiles and another made using paint probably.  My favorite part of the painted one was a shape that looked like half of a woman.

Artists rendering of half of a woman.
 

It was kind of hard to see the big 2d works because the room was small and they were on the ground and there was a crowd, so you had to stand close to them mostly.

James' art was good, but it wasn't as good as a woman's, and Maysha's art was fantastic even though they were collaborating because she's a woman.

I met Maysha inside the storefront, and she was nice and had a magenta colored bandage on her hand. 

After I was finished looking at the art, I said goodbye and left.

Potentially Atemporal at Turpentine Gallery in Oakland, California

James Pederson painted this painting.

There were only two women in a show of ten people, or there were only two people with traditionally women's names anyhow, so it could have been much improved had there been no men in the show.  And the curator was a man, but he did a pretty good job considering his gender.

I met Sean Heiser, the curator, and he used some terms I don't remember, terms such as "formally abstract" or "abstractly formal," and he used other terms, but that's the one I mostly remember.  Or maybe he said "formal abstraction."  I wasn't formally distracted, but I didn't remember a lot of what he said.  Or maybe I didn't fully understand it. 

He showed me all the artworks, and told me the show was based on or a play upon the New York MOMMA show, The Forever Now:  Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World.  And I quote the New York MOMMA website ad copy:

"Forever Now presents the work of 17 artists whose paintings reflect a singular approach that characterizes our cultural moment at the beginning of this new millennium: they refuse to allow us to define or even meter our time by them. This phenomenon in culture was first identified by the science fiction writer William Gibson, who used the term “a-temporality” to describe a cultural product of our moment that paradoxically doesn’t represent, through style, through content, or through medium, the time from which it comes. A-temporality, or timelessness, manifests itself in painting as an ahistorical free-for-all, where contemporaneity as an indicator of new form is nowhere to be found, and all eras coexist. This profligate mixing of past styles and genres can be identified as a kind of hallmark for our moment in painting, with artists achieving it by reanimating historical styles or recreating a contemporary version of them, sampling motifs from across the timeline of 20th-century art in a single painting or across an oeuvre, or radically paring their language down to the most archetypal forms."

In my simplistic, obtuse and unsubtle mind, this all means to me that you can do whatever you want to with the work of people from the past.  You can build upon what others have done.  You can take your influences and be an artist with them.  You can be an artist and use your imagination.  Something like that. 

The work in the show was good.  Peter Klett, a man, made a multi-layered framed thing with a framed thing I could see underneath a transparent material, maybe mylar or something like that, and there was what looked to be a print of a romantically styled flower painting under the mylar too.  And then there was a painted shape on top of the mylar.  If I recall correctly, this was somehow referencing computers where you could have tabs open on your browser, tabs with art from different cultures and times all in the same convoluted browser, mixy browser, a mixie uppie browser.  If you don't understand my gibberishy description, maybe go see the f#cking show yourself, wise gal.

Willy Carpenter, most likely a man,  made a designy mostly 2d thing using stuff from Home Depot, and maybe it was designed using a computer.  He also had a paintingish, collagish, decoupagish resiny thing of a beer can floating.  This was maybe my favorite of the men's work because I'd rather not say. 

Brett Flanigan, a man I know,  made a designy thing out of security envelopes which were mostly bluish on a white background.  Brett uses a lot of white backgrounds.  Supposedly, this security envelope thing referenced computers, or I'm out in left field.  He made another thing called "Refraction" or something like that, and I remember this because I kind of know what "refraction" means.   It means when there is light and colors, and that's what I saw in Brett Flanigan's piece, light and colors.  Understanding calmed me down.

Lilia Banrevy painted a canvas with a triangle shape cut out of it, and it looked designy and was kind of fun because of the missing part of the canvas.  I dare her to remove part of the stretcher bar next time.  Most of the time, when I see stretched canvases, they don't have holes in them unless they've been damaged.  So this instance of a canvas with a hole in it was unusual because Lilia intended it to have a hole in it.

Andrew Luck, a man, had two pieces in the show, and they were as good as a man has ever done, but they were new and different so I was afraid of them because i'm not an adventurer like Amelia Earhart.  I only walk the tried and true path that's more travelled.

James Pederson, a man, made some pieces with big texture, painty with sculptural aspects to them, and I liked them ok.  but I'm sure they have more merit than or deserve more merit than i'm giving them.

Christopher Regner, a man, had one of the longer names of all the artists, and made 2d stuff that wasn't my bag.  I liked it ok, but it didn't suck me in, or I didn't get it.  It might have been too masculine for me.

Sandra Schmidt, a woman, made a strong showing with her emotionally passionate and thoughtfully layered square paintings.

I believe Sean Weber, a man, made the paintings of cars, and those were differently nice.  I don't get out much to see art, so they were different to me.  They have a style, so I'd say they were stylized.  I'm not sure you could say they have a fashion, moreso they have character.

Peter Puskas, yet another man, made what I would consider to be expressionistic paintings.  I consider them to be expressionistic because they are gestural and express the feeling of his arm's movement while it's painting.

The Gaelan Baird Show Called "Fake Hippie"

Gaelan Baird painted this.

Gaelan Baird is not a woman, but he makes pretty good art for a man, and his show, "Fake Hippie", is up now at Turpentine Gallery in Oakland, California until the end of May, 2015.

He's probably Irish because his name is Gaelan Baird, and I'm half Irish, so I'm prejudiced toward his work, and that's why I'm writing about it, because we roll in the same circles, and I expect a favor in the future.

I didn't get a lot of feminine sensuality and imagery from the show, probably because he is a man.

My friend, Marcel, pointed out the orange sun setting on some trees, and after he pointed it out, I liked that particular painting just a little bit more.

I asked Gaelan what his connection to "Fake Hippie" is, and he said something about it being an idea he got when he was about half way through making all the work, and he said it was a phrase that is a little difficult to unpack.  I looked at his Instagram and he likes redwood trees, so I think that partly "Fake Hippie" has something to do with living in the city versus living in a redwood forest like an ewok.

He made a peace sign that spins on a spinner, and somebody said the cat was obsessed by it.  The cat was cute.  Gaelan didn't make the cat, but it was at the show and added ambiance.

There was a hanging painting on thick paper in the storefront gallery's window.  It was hanging from strings attached to the ceiling.  If someone were to cut the strings, the painting would fall and hit the windowbox display area part of the architecture.

Gaelan is from Canyon.  Where the hell is Canyon?  Apparently it's near Piedmont which isn't really a city but a neighborhood that masquerades as a city.

As you walked into the Gallery there were paintings on the left and right sides, but i paid most attention to the ones on the right side.

Gaelan used mostly oil paint to make his paintings, and they were colory, using different colors in a colorful way.

The 100 Degree City by Erin Jane Nelson, Jason Benson and Joel Dean

I went to this show and had fun.  It was fun.  There was art on the ground/floor and some on the walls.  A good portion of it was 3d, and the stuff on the walls was mostly 2d.  I'm pretty sure it addressed some environmental concerns that the human race might have, and I'm a sympathetic ear to those because I like being outside and I like plants and animals other than people.

Erin's stuff was the best because she is a woman, but Joel and Jason did an outstanding job in spite of being men.
 

This was a piece of kinetic art from the art show.

The Kate Klingbeil Interview

Kate Klingbeil is an artist who lives in Oakland, California.

Here is the interview I conducted with her via e-mail.

Q:  What is your favorite piece or one of your favorite pieces of art you've made?

Kate Klingbeil:  Well, I'm pretty pleased with my most recent animated film, Cherry Flip.  It's very short.  A border of shivering ferns unites all of the disparate styles of animation.



 
Q:  Why do you like it?

Kate Klingbeil:  Mostly, I enjoyed people's reactions to this film at the screening when I told them it's a feminist film about foreplay.  I guess I like feeling uncomfortable.
 
Q:  What's your favorite piece of somebody else's art, or one of your favorites?

Kate Klingbeil:  Right now, it's "The Fountain of Youth" by Lucas Cranach the Elder. I saw it at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin last fall.

 Lucas Cranach the Elder's "Fountain of Youth"

Q:  Why do you like it?

Kate Klingbeil:  It's a strange painting.The figures are either very old or very young, there are no middle-aged bathers. It reminds me that as each day passes, I am 24 hours closer to death. The painting's color palette looks like the spotted flesh of an elder. I look at it every day.

Q:  Are you single?

Kate Klingbeil:  Yes.

Kate Klingbeil's Website

The Brett Flanigan Interview

Brett Flanigan is an artist who resides in Oakland, California.  

Here is the interview I conducted with him via e-mail.

Q:  What is your favorite piece or one of your favorite pieces you've made?

Brett Flanigan:  I found this fake greek style pedestal in the trash and scribbled all over with spray paint. It can now display objects in art galleries, such as discarded beer cans. 

Q:  Why do you like it? 

Brett Flanigan:  I like it because it says; “classy but trashy.”

Brett Flanigan painted this pedestal.

Q:  What's your favorite piece of somebody else's art, or one of your favorites? 

Brett Flanigan:  Carl Spitzweg’s “The Poor Poet”.  

 

Q:  Why do you like it? 

Brett Flanigan:  It has a certain enigma since it has been stolen so many times, each time as a very unique and artistic act in itself. But I mostly like it because it is an incredibly accurate portrait of me sitting in my room. The attic beams, the leaky roof, the bed folded up against the wall, etc.

Carl Spitzweig painted this painting called "The Poor Poet"

Here is a picture of Brett Flanigan.

Q:  Do you want anything from the store?

 
Brett Flanigan:  Yes, an ice cream sandwich please.

Brett Flanigan's Website Link