So, what did you think about Gean’s presentation last night?
4 comments:
Dominic Halley-Roarke
said...
Well, Gean was certainly more articulate than the last time I heard him speak, but hardly more convincing.... I see a pattern here starting between Gean and Charo: both leave the production of highly detailed, well designed (even when not following traditional design rules), colorful pieces (her early representational paintings/his collages) and go into the productions of assemblages that give the impression of chaos. Charo doesn't really explain her new direction; Gean offers that some people had labeled these "spiritual", a term he doesn't like for reasons he doesn't specify, although he does seem to have an aversion to traditionally positive evaluative terms being applied to his work. (They certainly did seem to have a mandala-like effect.) Gean offered at least one attempt to justify his work in aesthetic terms; he referenced that they have "multiple points of focus" and therefore they should not be viewed as chaotic or random. I did not see this in the pieces, at all, unless one wants to make a circulur definition of this by defining a point of focus as anywhere anyone's eye happens to linger beyond a split second. The collages though, did have what I would call a moving point of focus. with a sort of catchy rhythm; I think that's one reason why were so successful, and had a distinctive resonance to them. And I have probably just offended him with that last sentence--I called them successful! This was the worst part of his talk (or maybe just the most revealing): this convulated, tortured explanation as to why he taped over some of the paintings. If I recall correctly its because they were too sucessful, and the idea here was his belief that if a work is bought because its attractive either aesthetically or socially, people forget that it was paid for with money, but if its nasty stuff, they talk about the fact that money changed hands. This implies that he feels the concept of money is evil, and wants people reminded of this. Why I don't know, and am not sure he does either. Gean gets away with this sloppy reasoning on the basis that he just doesn't know HOW to say what he means. Could there not also be another explanation?--that he knows he is not on good intellectual/psychological ground, and so you get, in that sense, a rather truthfully disjointed verbal expression of his similarly disjointed ideas. In that sense, his discourse is at least honest. I can't help but wonder if somewhere in his personal history he was taught that the ego is evil (or observed persons who poorly handled their success), and as he is now in a field of work that involves a public display of the ego, he is trying to rationalize his fear of it. I wonder were he will be in ten years from now...
I had already put a lengthy post under the conceptual art section but more thoughts have come to mind on the topic I brought up of "what is an artist". In the movie Ghost World, the main character saw the artist who would take anything, put it together, and make up some BS to justify it. In that movie the object was a tampon in a teacup. So does articulation rather than the execution makes the post modern artist?
If an artist creates something and no one "gets it" are they still an artist. I guess according to the conceptual school of thought they would be because the concept is the ultimate creation - not the final object.
An interesting thing about Gean Moreno is his wide range of influences: politics, literature, culture, and philosophy. He admits to being a commodity, but still manages to poke fun at the capitalist market. It’s difficult to be ironic when a big part of your concept is the money trail that it forges. And when your exhibit is set up to maximize “the peddling of the wares.” And when focal points of your collages are commercial logos. I admire his attempt to put a positive spin on things (“make mistakes go places”), but why make mistakes? Why not show your best? Moreno’s genius lies in this obscure and probably misunderstood tenet, which I realized when he mentioned that the artist in him is the destructive one. A fresh and valid concept.
I also appreciate what he termed “irreverence.” Many artists subsist on illusions. Few can laugh and cleverly note, “Everybody is the butt of the joke.” It’s refreshing to meet an artist—in this fundamentally commercial business—who believes that it’s more important to make art than to sell it, particularly because selling out is so easy. Here is a man who admits satisfaction when his collector is asked, “Why the fuck did you buy that?” Then again, Moreno’s isn’t showing his work on street corners… he’s showing at one of the most reputable galleries in town. Would true resistance mean refusing to show at Snitzer? The validation would be hard for even the most renegade artist to resist. “It’s impossible to be contradiction-free in a contradicting world” (a contradicting statement in itself, but that debate is infinitely regressive); if we’re flawed by default, then maybe Moreno’s “marginal mistakes” make more sense than striving impossibly for perfection.
That doesn’t change the fact that art IS penthouse décor. Moreno makes a frugal statement with his work, but if I wanted to own a piece, I couldn’t afford it. His pieces resemble the meager decorations of indigent Latin America (their art hangs on the plaited bamboo walls of collapsible homes, while his art hangs in a gallery). I always find it interesting when artists attempt to channel their roots. Authenticity matters. Moreno represents the marginal celebrations of a third world people as his own. Akin to me “borrowing” from Native American culture in an attempt to epitomize its beauty as a reflection of my own substance. I’m not sure what his pieces communicate, but they’d be more compelling in their natural environment. Art is more beautiful when it exists amid unlikelihood and desolation, than when it exists in a glittering gallery. I like the idea that art is relative and that basic beauty can radiate from any economic situation. But acknowledgement isn’t enough. Shantytowns remain poor, while their borrower (theoretically) grows rich. In discussing conceptual art, our class suggested that art is defined by the space in which it is shown (i.e. a bark floating in the ocean is not art, but a bark in a gallery with a rope around it is art). If that’s true, then can a poor person ever really make art? In admitting, “The market runs us all,” the answer, transitively, is no. Without access and means, the market is remote. It’s unclear whether Moreno is using art as a political vehicle (as he said, form vs. words), or simply to channel basic beauty.
Moreno said that he understood Latin American culture, but didn’t feel as if he were a part of it. That’s a big challenge for second generation Latin Americans (myself included), to grapple with the feeling that we’re lost, and to forge a cultural identity. We don’t share our parents’ nationalism, heritage, or nostalgia, but we know that we’re different from Americans (the difference becomes more evident outside Miami). It’s a unique perspective that I would like to see more of in Moreno’s work.
Overall, as a young artist struggling to break into the scene, I benefited from Moreno’s visit. He’s refreshing, down-to-earth, and facetious, and I hope I’m witness to the big joke I foresee him playing on us all in the future.
4 comments:
Well, Gean was certainly more articulate than the last time I heard him speak, but hardly more convincing....
I see a pattern here starting between Gean and Charo: both leave the production of highly detailed, well designed (even when not following traditional design rules), colorful pieces (her early representational paintings/his collages) and go into the productions of assemblages that give the impression of chaos. Charo doesn't really explain her new direction; Gean offers that some people had labeled these "spiritual", a term he doesn't like for reasons he doesn't specify, although he does seem to have an aversion to traditionally positive evaluative terms being applied to his work. (They certainly did seem to have a mandala-like effect.)
Gean offered at least one attempt to justify his work in aesthetic terms; he referenced that they have "multiple points of focus" and therefore they should not be viewed as chaotic or random. I did not see this in the pieces, at all, unless one wants to make a circulur definition of this by defining a point of focus as anywhere anyone's eye happens to linger beyond a split second. The collages though, did have what I would call a moving point of focus. with a sort of catchy rhythm; I think that's one reason why were so successful, and had a distinctive resonance to them.
And I have probably just offended him with that last sentence--I called them successful! This was the worst part of his talk (or maybe just the most revealing): this convulated, tortured explanation as to why he taped over some of the paintings. If I recall correctly its because they were too sucessful, and the idea here was his belief that if a work is bought because its attractive either aesthetically or socially, people forget that it was paid for with money, but if its nasty stuff, they talk about the fact that money changed hands. This implies that he feels the concept of money is evil, and wants people reminded of this. Why I don't know, and am not sure he does either.
Gean gets away with this sloppy reasoning on the basis that he just doesn't know HOW to say what he means. Could there not also be another explanation?--that he knows he is not on good intellectual/psychological ground, and so you get, in that sense, a rather truthfully disjointed verbal expression of his similarly disjointed ideas. In that sense, his discourse is at least honest. I can't help but wonder if somewhere in his personal history he was taught that the ego is evil (or observed persons who poorly handled their success), and as he is now in a field of work that involves a public display of the ego, he is trying to rationalize his fear of it. I wonder were he will be in ten years from now...
I had already put a lengthy post under the conceptual art section but more thoughts have come to mind on the topic I brought up of "what is an artist". In the movie Ghost World, the main character saw the artist who would take anything, put it together, and make up some BS to justify it. In that movie the object was a tampon in a teacup. So does articulation rather than the execution makes the post modern artist?
If an artist creates something and no one "gets it" are they still an artist. I guess according to the conceptual school of thought they would be because the concept is the ultimate creation - not the final object.
An interesting thing about Gean Moreno is his wide range of influences: politics, literature, culture, and philosophy. He admits to being a commodity, but still manages to poke fun at the capitalist market. It’s difficult to be ironic when a big part of your concept is the money trail that it forges. And when your exhibit is set up to maximize “the peddling of the wares.” And when focal points of your collages are commercial logos. I admire his attempt to put a positive spin on things (“make mistakes go places”), but why make mistakes? Why not show your best? Moreno’s genius lies in this obscure and probably misunderstood tenet, which I realized when he mentioned that the artist in him is the destructive one. A fresh and valid concept.
I also appreciate what he termed “irreverence.” Many artists subsist on illusions. Few can laugh and cleverly note, “Everybody is the butt of the joke.” It’s refreshing to meet an artist—in this fundamentally commercial business—who believes that it’s more important to make art than to sell it, particularly because selling out is so easy. Here is a man who admits satisfaction when his collector is asked, “Why the fuck did you buy that?” Then again, Moreno’s isn’t showing his work on street corners… he’s showing at one of the most reputable galleries in town. Would true resistance mean refusing to show at Snitzer? The validation would be hard for even the most renegade artist to resist. “It’s impossible to be contradiction-free in a contradicting world” (a contradicting statement in itself, but that debate is infinitely regressive); if we’re flawed by default, then maybe Moreno’s “marginal mistakes” make more sense than striving impossibly for perfection.
That doesn’t change the fact that art IS penthouse décor. Moreno makes a frugal statement with his work, but if I wanted to own a piece, I couldn’t afford it. His pieces resemble the meager decorations of indigent Latin America (their art hangs on the plaited bamboo walls of collapsible homes, while his art hangs in a gallery). I always find it interesting when artists attempt to channel their roots. Authenticity matters. Moreno represents the marginal celebrations of a third world people as his own. Akin to me “borrowing” from Native American culture in an attempt to epitomize its beauty as a reflection of my own substance. I’m not sure what his pieces communicate, but they’d be more compelling in their natural environment. Art is more beautiful when it exists amid unlikelihood and desolation, than when it exists in a glittering gallery. I like the idea that art is relative and that basic beauty can radiate from any economic situation. But acknowledgement isn’t enough. Shantytowns remain poor, while their borrower (theoretically) grows rich. In discussing conceptual art, our class suggested that art is defined by the space in which it is shown (i.e. a bark floating in the ocean is not art, but a bark in a gallery with a rope around it is art). If that’s true, then can a poor person ever really make art? In admitting, “The market runs us all,” the answer, transitively, is no. Without access and means, the market is remote. It’s unclear whether Moreno is using art as a political vehicle (as he said, form vs. words), or simply to channel basic beauty.
Moreno said that he understood Latin American culture, but didn’t feel as if he were a part of it. That’s a big challenge for second generation Latin Americans (myself included), to grapple with the feeling that we’re lost, and to forge a cultural identity. We don’t share our parents’ nationalism, heritage, or nostalgia, but we know that we’re different from Americans (the difference becomes more evident outside Miami). It’s a unique perspective that I would like to see more of in Moreno’s work.
Overall, as a young artist struggling to break into the scene, I benefited from Moreno’s visit. He’s refreshing, down-to-earth, and facetious, and I hope I’m witness to the big joke I foresee him playing on us all in the future.
Well put, Steph.
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