Sometimes Still by Darren Almond

Although some might praise photographer and filmmaker Darren Almond for withstanding the test of time during his all-night exposure shoots, the social and political barriers of obtaining rights to document rare footage in foreign countries, and the challenges of producing his works in difficult-to-reach locations, his accomplishments are still somewhat unimpressive compared to the awe-inspiring activities and rituals of his subjects. In Sometimes Still, a six-screen video installation on view at Matthew Marks, Almond’s camera follows a monk through dark mountain trails as he trains to complete the process of Kaihōgyō.

Although Kaihōgyō is a seven-year process where the monk trains to ultimately gain Buddhahood and discover a higher state of consciousness, the camera follows one of these “marathon monks” as he performs a central ritual that involves walking extraordinary distances for hundreds of days at a time. Upon entering the gallery, one must take a few moments to adjust to the overwhelming darkness of the gallery and the contrast of the five large screens. The screens are overlapping each other in such a way that all five are viewed at once, both allowing the viewer to experience the videos fully (as the screens overcome the viewer and seem to wrap around panoramically), and also distracting the viewer (as one cannot possibly watch each screen at the same time since one will always remain in the periphery). The screens are taller than the average viewer, and rest on the ground, further bringing the viewer’s body into the video. This strange effect transports the viewer into the video; one is soon on the mountain trail following the monk on his surreal quest in the moonlight.

Uneasy at first by the darkness and imposing size of the screens, one might build up the courage to venture back behind the main screens to see what else the dark gallery might hold. In the rear, another smaller screen reveals to us a black and white video of a more mature — perhaps enlightened— Buddhist monk tending to a fire in a temple. Do not be surprised if you suddenly feel more at ease in the darkness of the gallery, or perhaps more courageous than the new arrivals who are sheepishly standing near the entrance/exit of the gallery.

Amanda Schmitt begins this interview series with a highly intellectual conversation with Egan Frantz, whose first New York solo exhibition is currently on view at Cueto Project.

Revision 1: All Quiet on the Western Front. What a heavy exhibition title! It is loaded with various allusions and pre-conceived connotations, yet the “Revision 1″ addition leaves everything open and unexplained. Now, to be honest, I have never read the novel nor seen the film adaptation, and my knowledge of this story extends to what Wikipedia and imdb.com have provided me with. Can you please give me, in your words, a brief, objective summary of this novel?

Most people I have spoken with, having read the book/seen the film(s) or not, come to the exhibition knowing there is this war story. In this regard the title carries a kind of automatic weight which I hoped to set against certain lightness. The exhibition is situated on the western front of Manhattan, or, almost, it’s up against the West Side Highway. Before anything, one feels a breeze of speeding vehicles… I find a certain humor in this. As metaphor the title might suggest a certain silence in the history of western thought, and it is important for me that all this can all happen before opening the door or having never opened the book. Inside, the music sounding from the back room of the gallery is always present, perhaps to the point of being aggressive. If you really want to sink your teeth into the footnotes, the introduction of ’silence’ came only through the novel’s subsequent translation into English. The original German title, “Im Westen nichts Neues,” makes no mention of silence. There is then this idea of a continuous project, rephrasing or translation in “Revision…” The title points both inward and outward, locating the textual and the ‘non-textual’. Or you can just walk in you know?

I really want to make work that can be read on its own terms at the same time offering itself to some potential, persistent reader. The novel itself is a kind of educational shoe… me and my friends read it growing up… My good friend Luca Dellaverson can recite the preface off the cuff:

“This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even thoughthey may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”-Erich Maria Remarque (1928)

This exhibition is very visual…it requires a lot of effort on the eyes. There is one section that blasts club music, yet, because of the bright lighting and lack of other bodies, doesn’t make me feel like dancing at all. How do you feel this noise may or may not affect the way the viewer interacts with the framed pieces on the wall? For me it was unsettling, and made it difficult to concentrate on what I was looking at. In fact, I felt a little confused. What are these numbers? Why am I not able to discern any recognizable figure within this field? Did the bass from the amp jumble up the printed numbers on the paper so that they are now scattered and crooked? Are these two separate pieces that happen to be in the same room, or is this a cohesive installation?

The work you are referring to is 13 Figures and K.I.T.T.Y. Jam, an installation which I like to think of as playing “call and response” between this amazing Eddie Def electrofunk mashup and my 13 figures. A “jam” is what we used to call an old school hip-hop track, and it also brings to mind fresh-fruit preserves (FRESHHH – remember that sample?) which are, of course, “mashed up.” Language or ‘that which is received’ is the generator here and always in my work. I might also just say I like the way Eddie works with constraint at the same time keeping things totally wild, in outer space. My decision to make 13 works using only the numbers 1-13 comes from a similar impulse.

Within the larger context of the exhibition the way the audio travels around the space does something very important for me – it’s like seeing through walls – which is to supply a connective tissue between each and every work in the exhibition.

Please tell me more about “MK, PK, LK, LLK, C, M, LC, LM, Y,” a piece that is visually compelling and surprisingly seductive. What printer did you use? What kind of paper is this? I understand that you used CMYK cartridges, correct? What was the exact model? Also, how many cartridges did you have to go through for each piece?

I have an Epson Pro 3800, the smallest version of their large-format printers. It uses the same inks as the big ones but is only 17 inches wide and fits in my little Chinatown studio. The engineers at Epson designed a palette based on CMYK with steps in between. I simply command the printer to print each value, the thing is, the printer mixes nearly all the inks to produce each figure. If it looks like an attempt to deconstruct the inkjet image, it is just that, an attempt. It only feigns its own success as some kind of exercise in purity. They are printed on a paper made by Ilford called Galerie Gold Fibre Silk and I made the entire work without swapping cartridges. If you like the piece formally, props to Epson and Ilford.

I LOVE the piece formally. I am a CMYK-LOVER. Props to Epson and Ilford! Material is clearly important to you. The description of the medium for each piece on the checklist goes on for several lines. Some artists just opt for “mixed media.” Why is your work not just “mixed media”?

Trained as a photographer in school I was led down a particularly Barthesian path. In Camera Lucida Barthes comes to many things, one of these being that every Photograph is a certain proof, “like the delayed rays of a star.” This might not be the case for inkjet prints, which are produced by something more like a painting machine than any assortment of darkroom (chemical / light) processes, but I’m not lost on this. I use materials as proofs towards a kind of mute speech via their associative qualities or the way these things sound or look in language itself. The materialist lists / titles are tools to get into the work. They also make very clear the impossibility of a complete description. Jared Madere has nice way of putting this, “I don’t say whether or not my window was open when I made the work.”

As in Petroleum Pictures, we are told that the plastic parts come from Canal Plastics Center. What if they had been mail ordered? Would it not be the same piece to you? As for the piece in the center of the room, made with 18% reflective middle gray book cloth, how would the piece change if it was 81% reflective?

I have a nice anecdote to get somewhere close to an answer. The nice girls who work at the gallery were getting really tired of the music which plays rather loudly 10am-6pm, 5 days a week. I wanted to make some sort of gesture to express my gratitude to them, so the next day I went to Canal Rubber (just down the block of Canal Plastics), bought some acoustic foam, that I later cut to the same size as this middle grey stage you were describing, before swapping the former for the latter. The Petroleum Pictures room is situated between the 13 Figures… and their respective desks. Of course, they’re still dealing with music, but surely the acoustic foam is sucking up some sound on its way over! I’m especially fond of this move for the way these two rooms, when taken together, present a kind of aporia — one projecting and the other sucking.

The Sidesteps series were made by taking a squeegee to freshly printed digital images, however they very much have a “darkroom” quality to them. They remind me of Wolfgang Tillman’s photographic abstractions, made by manipulated photo chemicals directly onto the paper during the development process. How did you come about making this series? What it a happy accident or a calculated, conceptual process?

For me and many others the word ‘conceptual’ is bound up with a specific historical moment, that is, ‘conceptual art,’ and I think it functions best this way, as descriptive of a moment in time. I make use of systems to get myself out the work and avoid making too many arbitrary decisions, but, when making objects, it becomes increasingly clear how pathos continues to creep in. The late Jack Spicer has this character called Lowghost who is often creeping into his books. I like this idea of logos as a kind of gremlin in his work.

Regarding the Sidesteps, there is a lot of information this work (it is an ongoing project) which I could easily go on listing. Lately, I’ve been interested to see how the sequence functions without my voice all over it. The tools are there in the titles, materials, numbers, sizes, etc. As far as process goes these things are very simple. Using a squeegee has nothing to do with some sort of affinity towards the tool and the result it produces. It’s a matter of treating the inkjet print like its gelatin silver predecessor. Treating one object like another – this is key. In the darkroom one would normally squeegee their prints in kind of final gesture before laying them out to dry. I use this same squeegee and do the same thing when a print comes fresh out of the inkjet printer. Naturally, this produces a distinctly different result every time, so as R.H. Quaytman likes to say, “to pierce the ego of their singularity,” I repeat this process 11 times and display each result.

It was the image I used for the first sequence Sidesteps (source: chaos_and_creation.jpg) that was helpful in determining the system I continue to use. I used a still from a video in which Dali is having an argument with Mondrian about pure ‘painting’ vs ‘corrupted’ painting… I wanted to pull this whole idea to the side. In doing so I ended up making a kind of horizontal move into painting myself.
Let’s talk a little bit about “Untitled…” (the one made out of PMMA). This work can read in many different ways; it is a different piece each time a different person views it. This here is a fact, since the reflection changes with each new body that stands in front of the piece. Now, the viewers can be grouped into two categories: those who look atUntitled… and see through the first layer of PMMA and try to look at the interior of the three-dimensional object (a sculpture), and those who look at the surface of the PMMA, ignoring the side of the box (a quasi-painting). If you had to categorize Untitled…, would it be a painting or a sculpture?

Would it be helpful for you if I categorized it?

No. That wasn’t a good question. In fact I should probably delete, but I like the moxy in your response. And no, it wouldn’t be helpful. I all for the subjective….To me, the piece is open-ended because it can be a piece about materiality, formal compositions, transparent interchanges, self-reflexivity, etc…the list goes on. Is this piece as open-ended to you as it is to me? Or rather, are you trying to communicate something specific to the audience?

Yes it is definitely open ended, at least more overtly than the others. There was a point where I was calling it “a nothing” to my friends but this went into some funky Ray Johnson territory, and I don’t want to step on Ray Johnson.

What are you Mr. Frantz, a photographer a painter? You to seem to fit in between the two. You are not taking images with a camera, or creating them with a brush, but rather a “chooser” and “manipulator” of images. You seem to control how your audience sees an image. As in MK, PK, LK, LLK, C, M, LC, LM, Y, we are looking at pure color, yet that color, or image, could have come from anywhere! The MK could be a microscopic view of someone’s black tuxedo, or a macroscopic view of the night sky. Or perhaps, it is just ink on paper. Or in Remarque, Erich Maria, you present the viewer with a photocopy of a photograph. Would you reject my assumption that you are a curator of images? Are they YOUR photographs, or do they come from somewhere else? Are your manipulated inkjet prints your paintings?

I was recently invited to participate in a book project happening out in LA. Shortly after confirming my participation they sent out of PDF list of participating artists. In that list, it says Egan Frantz – Painter. The function of a curator is so contested these days I’m not sure what you mean when you ask if I consider myself a curator of images. I can tell you that if there is any one object I have a particular affinity towards it is the radio. I would really like to be a radio, to transmit that which comes from the outside, and do this very well!

You know, my brother, a nuclear engineer and an avid logophile (lover of words and definitions), loves the fact that I describe myself as a curator. Before looking it up in a dictionary, he didn’t know what a “curator” was. And now, to him, I am “an ecclesiastic entrusted with the cure of souls.” Basically what I’m trying to say is that although there may be a definition in Webster’s, the term is as you said, highly contested and absurd. ???To wrap things up, how does Revision 1: All Quiet on the Western Frontrelate to All Quiet on the Western Front (your first solo exhibition)? Will there be a Revision 2?

I can’t say if there will be a Revision 2 but surely the next exhibition will function that way – as a continuous revision of what is already out there. I came to Revision 1 for a number of reasons, one being that I had had my undergraduate exhibition at Hampshire College a little less than a year before and still felt that I was sweating out a number of the same problems. A good deal of this show is comprised of things I made in school, which is a nice glance back to this narrative of school boys in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel. It is my hope that through these exhibitions I’ve built something like a solid stage. If this is true, the next thing I should be able to do is walk all over it.

Right now I’m really excited about the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso. Some of his stories are as short as one sentence as in The Dinosaur, “When I woke up, the dinosaur was still there.” This little structure is endlessly playful. Again, we are dealing with a translation and in this case the “I” is interchangeable with “he” and “she”. I have a pretty intense relationship to sleep (I sleep more than any one I know) and I am still something of a bedroom artist (I share my studio with my bed), so, yes, something along these lines is happening for me…

I wouldn’t say I was a fan of James Nares’ paintings — something about the fact that I can never tell if I’m looking at a painting or a silkscreen print really bothers/annoys me. It could also be the fact that his gallery, Paul Kasmin, in their press releases, tries to describe him as an ‘outsider’ artist, making work unlike any of his contemporaries (although, perhaps this is an annoyance felts towards the gallery and not towards the artist). And perhaps it’s the fact that I feel as though Nares is betraying Roy Lichtenstein through his sloshy, macro-brushstroke paintings; it’s almost as though Lichtenstein should have been ‘referencing’ (as contemporary artists so often do) Nares’ paintings in his benday-dot, “Brushstroke,” from 1965. It seems almost in reverse — as though Nares got to the idea first, and Lichtenstein only had to build upon the idea. Or, maybe Nares is ‘referencing’ “Brushstroke” in reverse. Maybe I feel jealous, or protective. I mean, Lichtenstein has a legacy, but Nares gets the 21st century fame! Either way, I’ll quit my gripin’, because this isn’t about Nares’ paintings, but rather his video works, which absolutely delighted me!

What initially drew me in was the noise of PVC pipes gloriously falling, or being thrown — in spastic rhythm — against a wall in an empty concrete room. First of all, I love the sound of PVC pipes: they are like construction’s conga drums and my haphazard percussion instrument of choice. They produce a pleasing range of high and low notes, and could easily be used as a sort of woodwind instrument if somebody put in the effort. So, what drew me into the viewing room was the pipes, aptly titled “Pipes”; what made me stay was the promise of another amusing, titillating video, “Giotto’s Circle” (1976).

“Giotto’s Circe,” follows a trend of single male artists documenting their silly — yet somehow deeply poignant– studio activities on video. What was different about Nares in this video (as compared to William Wegman’s video from the 70s) is the assistant, or friend, who is holding the camera, rather than a fixed tripod (Nares is not flying solo here).

A shirtless young man walks up to a wall in what appears to be a dilapidated warehouse, but is probably the artist’s dingy, yet fabulous, studio in Manhattan. His back is tanned, his shoulder-length hair is wispy and sun kissed, and his pants are pulled high in disco style (all in all, a fine looking man!). He is holding a long, thin piece of metal horizontally, probably 7-9 feet in length. With his back turned to the camera, he begins to rock the metal pole up and down in a see-saw motion. As he increases the energy of these pendular motions, the viewer begins to wonder where the circle will come into play. Almost immediately after having this thought, I began to notice a faint outline of a perfect circle come into view. Almost like magic, or par with the excitement of mixing Kool-aid with water, the entire wall in front of the man begins to change. The wall slowly, and somehow suddenly, changes color in a miraculous way. The colors do not actually change, but become more obvious and important to the viewer. The wall is a stunning deep turquoise, made all the more dazzling by the dull beige of the concrete showing through the chipped paint. The scratched lines that the metal pole is creating stands out as a bright white. In addition, a burnt-orange haze hangs around the top of the screen, with a fluorescent green hovering just below (evidence that this was shot of faulty film or processed incorrectly).

This piece is titled, “Giotto’s Circle,” a clear homage to Florentine painter, Giotto di Bondone, who is best known for his biblical frescos from the early Italian Renaissance. Story has it that Giotte was up for a possible commission for the Pope, and when asked to deliver an example of his best work, dipped a paintbrush in red and composed a perfect circle on the canvas. The Pope was initially confounded and insulted, but shortly thereafter realized the mastery of Giotto’s technical skill. Why Nares is paying homage to Giotto’s circle is anybody’s guess. With an entirely different strategy, Nares approaches this challenge with ingenuity, but I doubt the pope would be as inspired as I am.

Focus back to the male specimen, who at this point stands in as the Etruvian man: handsomely proportioned, fit, clean, creative, and productive, all summed up in the circle which he stands inside of. The idea of an Etruvian man, or rather, the American man? Either way, he’s my new video man, at least until my next date with Wegman.

Andrzej Zielinski at DCKT Armory Show Booth

Dennis Christie and Ken Tyburski of DCKT gallery blew everybody out of the water last week at the Armory Show 2010 on Pier 94. First of all, those guys are amazingly productive, even outside of the Armory Booth: a) since the gallery lies a few doors down from the New Museum on the Bowery, they’re open every day of the week (in order to accommodate both the museum crowd, and the crowd that goes to the museum while it’s closed and turned away), b) Ken and Dennis are die hard and always working it behind the desk (I still have never seen an intern), and finally c) they curate a rigorous schedule of exhibitions, most often including a second project in the back of the gallery. Jumping back to the booth, this last week at the Armory, the dynamic duo planned on 4 different exhibitions in 5 days!

The artists on view this week all share one dominating characteristic: seduction. Seduction through color and texture, through mystery, and through the enticement of a woman. The booth is quaint and handsome, somehow the perfect size to house exhibitions by five of the gallery’s artists. On Wednesday, Cordy Ryman threw his last name out the window with his colorful, densely textured, block paintings – so chunky they might be sculptures. One multi-paneled baby blue piece began as a painting on the wall, and smoothly transitioned out onto the floor. Other works rested firmly on the booth’s wall, or stood coolly in the corner. On Thursday, Andrzej Zielinski’s candy-coated fluorescent paintings assaulted the eye with color. The pieces radiated light, and emitted some sort of happy gas, putting a smile on my face.

On Friday, I was able to access an art fair version of DCKT’s most recent show at the gallery, a photographic essay by Zoe Crosher. The viewer (voyeur) is allowed into the private life of Michelle DuBois during the time while she was living around military bases in the Pacific Rim during the 70s and early 80s. We see Du Bois, a prostitute, posing for pictures taken by unknown photographers (her clients). Evidence that DuBois was a playful prostitute, she dresses up as a cavewoman, a cowgirl, secretary, or anything else that could set her off giggling, as she often is seen doing in the photographs. Most notably, she is consistently confident, sexy, and proud of her womaness, rather than the contemporary idea of a prostitute (the kind most often portrayed on crime dramas) as weak and ashamed. In these various bedroom scenarios (although, she is always full dressed), DuBois comes off as coy, rather than scandalous – an innocent girl rather than a provocative temptress.

On the fourth day, Ted O’Sullivan was introduced to the booth. Throughout the installation of over a dozen dark, sexy paintings, the viewer’s eye jumps from genitalic focal point to genitalic focal point. One canvas looks like a murkier version of a Peter Doig butterfly, floating not in real space, but perhaps through a grey, foggy camera lens. If Tim O’Sullivan’s paintings had a smell, it would be musky. On view throughout the five days of the Armory Show was a table by Ryan Humphrey, a chaotic array of wooden wheels placed under a glass tabletop that proudly shouts their brand of extreme sport: skateboards, BMX, and so on. Accompanied by four fluorescent, exotically patterned chairs, Ken and Dennis were able to sell in style.

On top of the quality of the artwork, the gallerists have installed, destalled, and installed without flaw. There was no evidence of hardware, paint splatters, spackling, or nail holes from missed measurements or hurried installation. One could not even see their tools or packing materials lying around. With the fair running nine hours a day, with various events in between, one wonders if Ken or Dennis slept at all last week! I can imagine them frantic and bustling all night long installing the next day’s show and packing up the previous day’s show, yet still presenting themselves as cool and calm – and stylish might I add – during the course of the day. Now the Armory is over, and I can guarantee that they are back at work, tending to Josh Azzarella’s solo photography exhibition and already planning for the next one.

Zoe Crosher at DCKT Armory Show Booth

Ted O'Sullivan at DCKT Armory Show Booth