I think I can now finally do some strategic planning... thanks to going to Chicago!
Here's where all the inspiration came from:
The new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago was amazing, reminded me of having the potential of being a mini-Tate museum at one point I walked into a room that had 3 of my favorite painters in one room, Sigmar Polke, Albert Oehlen and Ellen Gallagher, almost crapped my pants. Highlights for me were reading about the meaning behind Robert Gober's pieces, reading about the meaning behind Philip Guston's individual pieces, seeing a whole room dedicated to Gerhard Richter, a gorgeous gigantic tree by Charles Ray that was hand carved out of Cedar by japanese workers based an actual decaying tree that was removed and cast that this artist found in the woods one day.
I fell in love with the color transitions in Claude Monet's Branch of the Seine near Giverny, every time I saw a circle in Max Ernst's work, The cracks in Harold Sohlberg's Fisherman's Cottage, Gino Severini's Centrifrugal Expansion of Color, Matta's Psychological Morphology and I'm totally going to make these stools Konstantin Grcic made out of two tires and a circular piece of wood, and attempt to make his water/wine glasses (you just flip them over to change which one it is) they were totally what minimalist dreams are made of. Also memorable for me were Hella Jongerius embroidered tablecloth and staring at sketches by Louis H. Sullivan. Dear Art Institute of Chicago, please make postcards of all of these pieces, I would buy them right now, I have cash.
Saw a picture of the marble statues made by maurizio cattelan, loved it.
although still a little upset that I missed Cy Twombly, Olafur Eliasson, and Matthew Barney...
Watched the movie 2012 and Red Cliff on the big screen, both movies involved filling up a cup of tea way too much and then explaining a moral lesson while doing so. It reminded me that there's a bare bones screenplay I want to look at again and I really want to exercise daily in order to be able to fight for my life better when the time comes, I'd hate to be one of those people that die just because they weren't constantly fighting for other people to survive.
Visited galleries in the West Loop of Chicago, the best stuff I saw was Casey Riordan Millard's forgettable shark, Ann Worthing's untitled turtle, everything by John Delk in the Robertello Gallery, Deborah Dancy's abstract paintings in G.R. N'namdi and Frank Connet's resist's in the beautifully hidden Douglas Dawson gallery. I also enjoyed a postcard thingy I picked up of Zach Taylor's work from the Linda Warren gallery, and a postcard thingy of Ruijun Shen and Tom Van Eynde, so a word to galleries, you should keep all of your postcards out! Oddly, there were about 5 galleries that weren't even open... it was 3 o'clock on a Saturday, shouldn't they be open? For some reason seeing John Delk's work really struck a chord with me, the gallery reminded me of a place that would show Mike Smith's work, and the gallery owner explained how even very conceptual work is sold, however with a much slower process. He also explained that all the work had the underlying theme of how in this day and age of information, the more information over time, the more everything just kind of greys out, and he also described how John Delk worked in some kind of archiving for Jasper Johns and it probably informed his body of work. For seemingly no good reason, it just hit me that rather than thinking about what the ideal theme of my work would be, I would need to look inward unabashedly about what I actually do most of the time when I make art, not what is the statement I want to make, but where do I come from that informs my art making? It hit me on the ride back home on the Megabus. My work comes down to reacting and collecting... knowing that I can distill my practice to those two words make me so confident, I can't even explain...
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