everything is words and things

stephanie syjuco's booth



thought provoking figures



provocative words (+ intervention) . click image for large view

london times

transcribed from journal:

" everywhere is sufficient. i mean it's probably possible to call anywhere 'home' as long as you leave often enough. the alternative perhaps would be to just never settle in anywhere. to be constantly on your toes and invigorated by, but enervated by your environs. that's really no way to live. and so we venture out every once in a while. clearly, the impulse to travel is manifold, for everyone. and i'll not be one to assume i know your motives, or anyone's... or quite frankly my own really. however, perhaps it's possible to simplify it into two impulses: on the one hand, we leave to fortify our connection to whatever place that is (or person, or emotion, etc) we call 'home.' on the other hand, traveling, leaving one's comfort zone is also perhaps a good test of one's wits. (as noted in previous blog entry) to expand on that, i think i meant that it's part of testing our selves (whomever we are at home) out in a non-familiar environment. and concomittantly the inverse--the non-familiar environment offers souvenirs {i'd always imagined this as getting stuck in brambles, or rolling down grassy hills...you bring all sorts of surprises back with you}.

everyone gets a souvenir! like it or not. your time away from 'home' will have a residual effect on your future interactions with 'home.' the very first time i went to California was in 1998. i distinctly remember wanting to maintain that California-ness {i think i'd called it the glow} upon my return to Pittsburgh. having visited half a dozen times since, and coming down from three years living there, i'm still quite sure there's no word to describe 'having been psychically affected by living in California.' and i was. and i remember after returning to pittsburg, how in the days and weeks that followed, something died...or faded rather. the light. and. because i could never figure out what it was, it remained impossibly irresurrectible.

i don't intend to suggest that one would ever think to venture off to some alien environ in hopes of becoming affected--though maybe this happens too--i'm just reflecting.

in the end, i was correct in presuming that a trip out of Paris might do me some good. getting there, or rather, getting together the means to get there, was in itself a day of traveling and tribulation. after a day and a half (literally 15 hours) of scouring ticket websites, kelbillet, and similar sites, i found the facebook-eurostar ticket exchange group and hooked up with two brits living in France, who'd found themselves stuck with extra passes. all told, the extra effort saved me a few hundred euro, though planning a month in advance would have done just as well. i'll spare you the gory details of waking up at too-too early & spending hours, cell-phone-less, attempting to rendez-vous with this chick.


friday night, around 8:30, i linked up with a dear friend from Philly days. you can see his blog at thevanities.org. a charming and brilliant cabbie gave me a lift from the station to Tottenhamcourt, where Will'd hunkered down for the moment. we had some drinks, caught up, and rounded out the evening at some norwegan metal pub.

saturday at the frieze fair: my eyeballs ache just to think of it. what is it about convention hall lights? that dry out the eyes, induce headaches, and wash out everyone's skin? the booths' rubber carpeting was pleasant: grey, cushioned, non-slip.









about the art:

if you have the means, i highly recommend going to marianne boesky gallery to see the Barnaby Furnas'. or buy one--they'd sold out the booth by saturday though.


claire fontaine . (period)

i'd like to propose an open forum on the works of Turner-Prize nominee Roger Hiorns. while i'm fairly certain i could fabricate some cleverly construed criticism of this work, i'm not entirely convinced by it. i mean, because i could argue either way--in 20 directions really--and truly believe my own words. by far, the most beautiful aspect of the piece on exhibit was it's ghostly remains on the gallery floor. briefly, the Hiorns involved a soap bubble extruding compressor and wire. the bubbles, extruded vertically, from a 4" diam. tube, tower precariously above the viewer. they eventually topple over--when they do, the bubbles leave behind a sea green residue on the carpet. here's a much larger version:

Bill Woodrow's Electric Fire with Yellow Fish
it's hard to see here, but the fish is cut from the heater itself. every once in a great long while you come across a work of art like this. one that reminds you why you got into this racket in the first place.

later, much later, i went with some friends to a gallery party at le moustache II, where i drank a bit (much) whiskey and apparently professed my love for Matthew Higgs (in the way that i love, say, Cyndi Lauper, or SpongeBob...as a fan). anyway, the gaggle of curator-ladies i arrived with and i danced the night away and had a grand old time."

hibernating and so...

My sincerest apologies to my fans, both of you, for my absence in the past few days. i've been reading, nesting, meditating on this new place.

what is it that happens exactly when a place transforms from 'strange and new' to something more akin to 'home?' it doesn't happen so suddenly i suppose--not overnight anyway. i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm not yelling "I OWN THIS TOWN" from the rooftops or anything. not yet, anyway. but you know what i mean. at some point, you stop getting lost all the time. it's easier to spot the tourists, not to get bowled over in foot-traffic in the metro, and you feel ok about the bakery lady being brusque... 'cause she's just like that. nothing personal. exact change makes her day.

but at the same time, that transition from alien-to-home, there's something discomfiting about it. it's perhaps why residencies are generally a month or so. just enough time for one to be wildly thrown off course and, while regrouping, sort some things out in the studio. that "fight or flight" gene kicks in and you make stuff of pure gut. the newness of place puts a good fear in you, i think.
..and you might guess from my tone here that i'm fearful of it wearing off in the coming weeks. but, quite the contrary! it's cold outside! i'm pleased to have found a home in my studio surrounded by books i've been dying to read! i swear to you.

tomorrow, i'm hoping to make it to london for frieze art fair. i naïvly imagined the eurostar train was something like amtrak: not inexpensive, yet not wildly overpriced. it's unfortunately the latter. and, as both of you know by now, there is no Chinatown bus to London. who knew? that said, we'll see.
plan b means going to la Closerie Falbala, which is arguably Jean Dubuffet's magnum opus. it's a private site about an hour and a half out of Paris. there are some photos of the site here. I'm also hoping to visit the Tiffany Lamps exhibition here in town, as well as the graffiti photography exhibition at the Cartier Foundation. but, we'll see how the chips fall. stay tuned...

michel thévoz : synthesizing notes

these are just fragments for writing coming...later :

on children's drawings: it's noted that although there may be some preconception of a piece at the onset, it's likely that it'll be changed if the actual execution (an exact rendering) hinders the speed or joy of mark-making and discovery.

thévoz references the malapropism! i wish i'd read this ages ago. i have a long-standing crush on mrs. malaprop. she was brilliant! anyway, he suggests that the art-brutist creates the intentional malapropism and that while not able to entirely ignore spoken/written language, she takes liberty in using existing symbols to create her own mutant language.

Francis Ponge says (my translation) : "language (words) are all made and express themselves: they do not ever express me. there is where i choke (on them). it is then that to teach the art of resisting language would be useful--the art only says what one wants to say, the art of power and of the subject... so, let us ridicule words with a catastrophe!! it's a simple abuse of language."

art brut intends to mettre en cause (jeopardize) the location or the meaning or the territory of art-propre. it was born as an outsider, but is not diametrically opposed to "art culturel." Dubuffet compares it to a strange wind blowing against culture--challenging it to mutate and perhaps dry up before our very eyes.

Paul Klée dit que "l'acte d'écrire et l'acte de représenter sont à la bas une seule et même chose"
I agree. (the act of writing and the act of representing are at base one in the same thing)

"le fou serait un homme qui n'a pas su refouler ses instincts normaux et se conforme à une société anormale" . I agree here too. (the madman is the man who hasn't doubled back his normal instincts and conformed himself to an abnormal society)

contradicting Dubuffet's argument for individualisme, Thévoz suggests that in order to be considered individual there must be a society present to make such a claim. the art brutists are too far gone to be considered alongside "normal". they're not other than . they're outside of .
art brut "implicates us intimately" in the neutralization of le Moi (ego) // l'autre and reveals that the uncanny / exotic are also familiar within each of us.

rouge ciel + michel thévoz

What sort of nerd carries along a (library) copy of Michel Thévoz' "Art Brut, psychose, et médiumnité" to a movie screening about art brut? You know, just in case the man himself made an appearance...not to ask for an autograph, clearly, just in case I needed to quote him.. to him... you know ? "Michel, the way you cite Sartre's notion of serial alterity and the idea of recurrence in reference to Dubuffet's motives... on page 28.. that was really brilliant. I also notice Sara Koffman in your references, I'm surprised Nietzsche doesn't rear his ugly little head more often. Or are you more interested in what she's got to say about Deleuze?..." you know.. just in case.

Unfortunately, M. Thévoz was either not present or for all my efforts, I couldn't find him. And, alas, neither was Mme. Peiry, the new-er director of the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne.

The film itself was directed and produced by M. Bruno Descharme, director and founder of the Collection abcd-artbrut, with the assistance of scores of people in production, and of course the gallery director, Barbara Safrova. A preview of the film is online, HERE, and pretty much sums up everything that was aesthetically masterful and abysmal about it. A friend of mine from Stanford, who's just graduated from the documentary film program came along and offered the following criticism: in short it's the problem with all movies about art... or really about all documentaries about art, the directors aren't really interested in painting an accurate portrait of the subject. Instead they take the subject matter and bury it under their filmic aesthetic. It's more about making a beautiful film than telling a story. We agreed that we hadn't really learned anything from the movie and that it was really difficult to see the work of the artists represented. Clearly, this is problematic....as far as documentaries go. But beyond that, with the limited number of films on art brut out there, I suspect this'll be the one that circulates the widest in the coming years. And the one that tells us nothing about the work really at all. Nothing that one couldn't find out by doing a bit of reading on the subject, or visiting a gallery. The most offensive bits, which are toward the end of the online preview, are the animated narratives of Jean Dubuffet's life. It's cute. I wondered what Jean would think. He seems to have had a pretty good sense of humor, but most definitely was a grumpy old man when he passed. It seemed disrespectful and entirely unnecessary.

The film did have it's shining moments. The interviews with Michel Thèvoz and Randall Morris (of Cavin Morris Gallery in New York), and Barbara Safrova were really heart-felt testaments. What I mean to say is that it was clear that these individuals are actively engaged in reevaluating their cause, the "meaning of art brut," its significance, and how to explain these things. That sense of urgency and of delight in their testimonies... I mean, that's how you want to talk about art. That's how you want to talk about your passions. Every time they'd appear on screen, I'd get a bit giddy. I'm writing this blog, and reading, and meditating on this work because I feel that passionately about it. I hope you understand.

On the bus ride over to the gallery abcd-artbrut (clear across town from the movie house), Nick and I talked about life, film, food, monsters, and madness. You know, the usual. He's making a monster movie and is trying to figure out how to go about figuring out what we modern people are afraid of, collectively. Are we afraid of change in general, of failure (and in what form), of technology, of untimely death, ourselves? Emmanuel Dayan & Nicholas (same Nick) Berger made a documentary together recently, interviewing women with rare chemical allergies. Apparently there's an institution/research center for people, the canaries in the coal mine they call themselves, who have become allergic to contact with common place things, to the air, to tap water and so on. They're convinced that modern life is toxic, and that one day we'll all be allergic to everything.

At gallerie abcdartbrut, the food and wine were very good and in abundance. The show... I think deserves a second pass. It's online in bits here.

Please forgive the abbreviated account of last night's film. I think I'm still processing. In short, I wish it'd been less like the "documentary" on the life of Henry Darger, out recently, and more like "how to draw a bunny" on the life of Ray Johnson---brilliant .

nuit blanche deux

a few projects of note from nuit blanche include :


Nathan Coley's "THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE"



Rune Guneriussen's "Don't Leave the Light On"


Noël Dolla's Chauds Les Marrons aux Buttes Chaumont"


Eric Duyckaerts "Vidéastique et performanciel" (it should be noted that the artist also lectured at 3:30am!!)

Eric Duyckaerts, Kant (Part 1) from Argosy on Vimeo.

nuit blanche

from my journal, written with a pen i'd borrowed from a kind parisienne:
" 5000-10000 red umbrellas, unlit, on a hillside-somewhere between Mariko Mori and Yayoi Kusama...less garish (guerre-ish), more modestly poetic. but somehow, for all it's static-ness, not un-lively." i believe i meant, there were no flashing lights, no looky-loos milling around, nothing automated... but the way they were poised on the hillside there, they seemed to be hiding thousands of little children. they were alive in that we anticipated their animation...
"paired with the pond-strobe lighting, flickering away across the pat, and the general hum of life-swarms of parisians abound- they were elevated to something of the staid, elegant spectator--maybe not unlike the woman in red (from 90210) at the Vivienne Westwood show last night.
and up the hill, in the fields, sprouted several hundred desk lamps. strange autumn daffodils? they're terrifically awkward, unsightly almost, with the Paris skyline backdrop and the park's evergreens in the nearer background. i'm thrilled for the moment to be here alone (surrounded by thousands). ..as a quiet observer of couples necking, screaming babies, foreign exchange students, the Japanese tourists.
my front tire fell off on the way over. apparently, the bolts had come loose...by some strange miracle though, i happened upon a cell phone repair shop (still open at 10pm) staffed by avid bike enthusiasts. they just happened to have a repair kit, tool box...

it took an hour to bike to Theatre Châtelet, or rather where i thought the theatre was. after milling around the station area behind Pompidou and realizing nothing good could possibly come of being there (it's akin to Old City Philadelphia, or the Marina or SOMA in SF), i set off to see the Janet Cardiff installation at Eglise Saint Severen (c.1495). The choir in Cathedral architecture is generally located in the western part of the nave, seperated by the nave itself by a wood or stone screen. And of course a choir sings in union, in harmony to or with the mass/es, creating one voice. In Cardiff's installation, the viewer/listener is surrounded by speakers--in the space where there would be pews--projecting the individual choir membors voices."
when i've sung in church, i'm aware first of my own voice, of my neighbors' voices, and then the harmony of the choir's voice as it merges with that of the mass. although, in Baptist Church, growing up, i do recall this one older woman who had a remarkably high and warbly voice. i don't know why it always stuck out to me...it wasn't unpleasantly shrill or anything, just distinct.
"and that we are free to roam around the space insists we find a new relationship to the Eglise itself," and to the individual voices.
from the entrance, and from the exit, the choir is just that--one harmonious voice. Cardiff's vocal isolation technique individuates the members of that choral body and offers us the chance
to really know those singers. i was clearly moved by the experience. listening for meaning in so many individual voices is overwhelming and exhilerating . i imagine it's that sort of ecstatic experience that inspired such grand cathedrals. and i think it's what one seeks out, in going to church in the first place.

all told, Nuit Blanche was like an art fair or biennial on opening day + new orleans mardi gras + "two street" around new years, in french . from 7pm-6am special projects are open throughout the entire city, and the museums are open for free . mostly, the projects are oasise from the street/bar mania, and are worth the trek . however, if you can imagine art basel miami happening during ...i dunno... spring break, you've got the picture .

and... speaking of which, my camera died early on last night . however, i'm sure there's no shortage of images online and movies on youtube by now.

oh miss westwood.

Please, laugh all you want, but I honestly thought it might be possible to gain access to the Vivienne Westwood prêt-a-porte show this afternoon. I mean, this is a democracy...one should be able to talk one's way in...or at least it's a capitalist culture, so tickets should be for sale. Or I could play the punk-card "Vivienne, it is highly un-punk to leave us all standing out there in the street like that. Sneaking in should be encouraged!!" Seriously. All the same, it was quite the spectacle. Though I'll have to wait to find out if Pamela Anderson (dis?)graced the runway again this fall. Here's a view of the mayhem earlier-on (at 4:30...showtime)
I eventually ended up sharing a perch with UC Berkeley students (below), who offered some hilarious commentary, pointed out a 90210 starlet passing, and were quintessentially Cali-girls.

The blond with the earpiece
and the bad attitude (not pictured)
eventually called for final passes, tickets,
and for us those without move on out.
Ms Westwood showed up fashionably late
(45 minutes)
in an enormous, tinted-windowed, suv.
Here's the aftermath

les galeries

1. i visited the following galleries today:

Galerie KerotArt
Galerie Anne Barrault : solo show by Jochen Gerner
this image is from a series entitled Branches. it's one of an impossibly immense series of drawings done between 2002-08, while the artist was talking on the telephone.
while it's a rather banal premise for what is presented as the masterwork of an exhibition, it was certainly the most honest, humorous and personal. Gerner's other works on display can be seen online & are definitely worth the look.











Galerie TAISS : the exhibition is titled "back to the cave." of one piece, entitled "Temptation of Intelligence," the artist writes:
"I discover sensuality and perceive a world of fantasy through a veil of black silk. On a table, a game of chess. Hands speak to me, but I hear nothing. Do these signs really mean anything, or is it just a choreography of HR's or a cunning indecipherable lure?"
maybe it reads better in French?

Galerie Polka :

(photo by Marc Ribold of statue of Mao)

The Brownstone Foundation : is marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution with a stellar exhibition of photography thereof.

Galerie Bernard Bouche
Galerie Baumet Sultana : former Philadelphian, Gavin Perry is exhibiting heavily shellacked, rather sumptuous paintings--which he prefers not to have photographed. the one i loved most wasa kinda shoved behind the director's desk and read (black paint on white canvas) "Jesus is coming! Everyone try and act busy." it felt familiar, you know...like i'd seen it on a tee-shirt somewhere.

Galerie Chez Valentine . I thoroughly enjoyed the curator's statement on "Diversification."

2.tomorrow i'm revisiting La Dame à la licorne... a series of six tapestries woven in the 15ce in Flanders.