Weekend Edition 21

Wassily Kandinsky

 

Composition VIII, 1923

This is ambitions. This is an inernal drive to be better, different than others. It pushes you up. It makes you do better (the blue angle in the upper left center and the white angle in the upper center). the more you improve yourself the further you go(mast-like structure on the top of the blue angle). Sometimes it looks like a race, you see a structure similar to tic-tac-toe board on the middle right and a clock in the center. Some people get filled with negative feelings (angles with squares especially with black squares). Those people instead of improving themlseves are trying to get ahead by interfering with the progress of others. It would take them far (the angles are pointing to the sides if not straight down).The single lines are the obstacles that you have to overcome. The cirles are people or events that influence your movement.

Jean Pierre Lafrance

Thompson Landry Gallery

Abstrait 26

 This is a love relationship with a woman. Love is a very complex relationship It consist of very broad spectrum of feelings. I would say almost all of them.You can see here everything: novelty(green), lust(red), hope(blue), jealousy(yellow), naivety(white), warmth(orange), despair(black), wisdom(violet), fear(beige). It seems that those feelings are building a framework, a skeleton. But it is actually flames. That is the nature of feelings. They are very unstable, constantly changing and easily dying. You need to put fuel into the fire all the time, if you want to see the flames.

Wade Edwards

Wade Edwards

Untitled

Flowers are beautiful. They are so gentle, bright and amazing.People use them as adornments. They are like small matches that light up the darkness of the night.But similar to the matches they do not last long. Same goes to art. There are temporary artworks and there are timeless ones. The "flower" art is decorative or political. They both have a limited time frame when they work. The former art is going out of fashion, the latter lights up the political/ social problems that would be forgotten after some time.The time can not retire the art that talks about the timeless values.

Sandra Blow Ra

Sandra Blow Ra at The Fine Art Society (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Selva Oscura, 1993

Sometimes the dreams are more real than the reality. The dream is remarkably vivid with bright colors and "bold scenes". It is in the contrast to the real life which moves from gray to black. The dream is not a continuous movie, but a series of short episodes some of which are continuation of others.When you try to analyze the dream after you woke up, you realize that the dream is a weird mix of things that happened to you in reality multiplied by your feelings and divided into small episodes.

Joan Mirò

Joan Mirò at Brame and Lorenceau (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Composition au visage, 1965

This is human memory. It is like a fishing net. It catches some events(the blue stain or the red stain in lower right corner) or persons(red-green circle or yellow-black one). And some things slip through with water(time) as  the black dots or pink background stains here. The things that memory catches are changing your memories. They create new associations. They bend the memory to accommodate the events and rationalize them.

Ton Frenken

Ton Frenken at Borzo Kunsthandel BV (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Dyptique, 2002

 Two persons. Two lonely souls. They are looking for someone to be in their lives. They look pretty hard. Each constructed a lighthouse to signal other where to find them( the vertical black-and-white line at the edge). The soul-mate searching experience is mostly a negative one for them. That's why the lighthouse became more black than white over time. Or maybe the search criteria they use is too stringent, too black-and-white, so the others keep away from them. There is another possibility that they are too tender, too gentle, too subtle and the lighthouse is their defending mechanism. Anyway, somehow they found each other. Finally they align one to the other. And now the game can be started! (black and white squares in the center).

Weekend Edition 20

Juan Gris

Guitar and Pipe, 1913

The guitar is a simple object. Nothing special. You are sitting in a cafe, smoking a pipe. The pipe brings you into a philosophical mood. Then you hear the magical sounds of a guitar. It creates a mystery from vibrating air(the black guitar silhouette). It changes your plain white reality into much more deep colorful being. Together with the philosophical mood, it makes you think about art. You start drawing a new draft of your new art project.

Hermann Max Pechstein

Hermann Max Pechstein at Beck & Eggeling(TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Das gelbe Haus, Waldausgang mit Hochsommerdüne, 1919

At first, you are full of energy. You think you can walk on water and climb vertical walls(the yellow stain in the lower right  corner). You try to take a shortcut through the wilderness, storming up the hill. It is logical because the shortest distance to your goal is a straight line. Then you meet the reality(the brown line - earth layer above the yellow stain in the lower right corner). You get smarter (the violet line above the brown one). You realize that this approach will not take you even to the green grass of the forest, not mentioning the nice house in the field behind the forest. You back off and reassess your position (the mix of violet and brown spots in the lower center). You take the road that leads to the house you so desire to get to. The road is a slow route taking much more time, turning and running to the sides and over the hills. But eventually and surely you will get to the goal of your journey.

Imi Knoebel

Imi Knoebel at Von Bartha (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Lina-Liza-Strasse 4, 2000

The human brain always looks for patterns and logical explanation of the world. If you glance at the picture, you will try subconsciously to arrange the rectangles into a straight grid. But they are not straight. Some go this way, some stick out. Yes, Nature has its own laws, but it has so many exceptions that the exceptions become the new law. There is no justice in the nature, only a chance. You can draw a yellow card, you can get lucky and draw a white card (or no card at all). But there are cases when you get the black card. It is not fair, it is random.

Camille Bryen

 Camille Bryen at Applicat-Prazan (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

New York, 1955

New York is a very vibrant and diverse city. There is so much to do and to see(All those small stains and figures). The place is filled with energy(blue tones). People are hustling around.You are getting charged with the surrounding energy(the white stain in the center with blue inlets). You want to hurry somewhere and do something. But there are so many things you can do, you freeze in the middle unsure what is your next move is. You feel alienated, rejected and unwelcome. You reflect your feelings onto the city. You are starting to dislike it(black stains and yellow-green background).

Charles Biederman

Charles Biederman at Menconi and Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC (The Armory Show 2012)

Untitled, 1935

This is the birth of a great idea.It is started to crystallize seemingly from thin air (the blue figure in the left center).  But actually you are filling the empty carcass of the idea with your previous experience, common sense and logic (lower greenish gray part of the painting). And the second source of inspiration is your passion, your feelings. The idea is changing forms, it is flexible as you progress with your thinking. You have your doubts whether it is something worthy(the waves from the center to the lower right corner). Now you are pretty advanced in developing the idea, so you are starting to think about a real implementation(the rectangles with black border).

Steven Bindernagel

Steven Bindernagel at CRG Gallery

Untitled, 2010

This is Humor. It always grabs something out of the dark and puts a light spot on this thing. And this is funny. But to do it right you need to be a philosopher. You need think pretty serious about a vast amount of stuff. So the great comics are sad and possibly depressed deep inside. That is the contrast that make us laugh.

Weekend Edition 19

Franz Marc

Tierschicksale (also known as Animal Destinies or Fate of the Animals), 1913

The fittest survives. You always have to run in order to keep yourself alive. The moment you stop, you become a foundation for others to continue moving ahead. And this process is not pretty - blood, agony, death. No time  to think, no time to analyze. No way you can organize things in advance, to prepare a strategy for a couple of moves ahead. People who are degraded to this situation, are very easily manipulated and managed. This is what Nazis did when they rushed people to the death in concentration camps.

Suzan Frecon

Suzan Frecon at David Zwirner (The Armory Show 2012)

Arched Blue, 200

This is a woman. She is seducing you. Her flag is blue satin. Or is it eye blinder? You take the cover off your eyes, but it is too late. You are inside her energy field(the background lines). It works like a spell. You are on the slippery slope, because it looks like you are stepping on polished wood.

Nina Pohl

Nina Pohl at Sprüth Magers Berlin London (The Armory Show 2012)

Untitled, 2008

People always try to hide the nature that inside them. They hide their bodies in clothes, they change their appearance, they modify their behavior. They have been doing everything in the name of high ideal. Just to show that a man is not an animal.But you cannot fight your own nature. You can't change what you are. Your attempts at best will look like a poorly designed tree house in which you are trying to live permanently. But usually it is just a hurricane wreck. 

Ulla von Brandenburg

Ulla von Brandenburg at Pilar Corrias (The Armory Show 2012)

Kulisy, 2010

 This is the Theater. The backstage. It reminds you a ship: a wooden deck, ropes, curtains(sails). It is a magical ship that is ready to take you to the sea of imagination. It is a mysterious place. Each curtain partially opens the next space. This partial uncovering lures you. You want to find behind every curtain something interesting, new and exciting.But if you get all the curtains up you will see that this is only your imagination.You will realize that it's only big empty space.

Jacco Olivier

Jacco Olivier at Marianne Boesky Gallery(The Armory Show 2012)

Landscape, 2010

When you see a beautiful landscape, you feel the energy of Nature.You can almost touch unbreakable hope made of steel (the blue line all over). You can smell the freedom. You feel being a part of Nature.You are dissolving into a breeze. Then it returns to what it is - a small sunny Sunday picnic with your family in the park on outskirts of the town where you live.

David Urban

David Urban at Corkin Gallery (The Armory Show)

Untitled 5, 2011

You(the blue rectangle) are on the paved road(beige rectangles on the left side). The millions used this road before you, and more will use it after you are gone. You are full of dreams, hopes and energy. You are thinking about going off the road, into the uncharted territory. And what the heck, you could break beyond the red border. But you are smart and experienced enough  to not do it on the impulse. The best spontaneity is prepared well beforehand. You are measuring when to do the plunge. You don't want to repeat the fate of those that left only the white splashes after crashing into the fence.

Weekend Edition 18

Piet Mondrian at Guggenheim Museum (New York)

Tableau 2, 1922

The big square in the middle is your goal. It is your thing that you are trying to do. The bad feelings, remorse or negative reactions from others (the black rectangle in the upper right corner) are trying to topple you from the course. Your hopes and your believe(the blue rectangle in the lower left) that you are doing the right thing are counterbalancing the negative influence.The pain you have from all of this ( the reddish rectangle in the lower right corner) is feeding your negativity. But at the same time the pain is a feedback that powers up your resourcefulness(the yellowish rectangle at the top). The latter helps you to bend your course to resolve the difficulties but not to loose the target. Your flexibility just gives a leverage to your believes(the blue rectangle).

Mindy Shapero

Mindy Shapero at Marianne Boesky Gallery (The Armory Show 2012)

Mosaic Drawing Circle Vision(Black, Blue, Silver, and Gold), 2010

 The circles are people. Some of them are real persons, some of them are fictional. Some of them are alive, some of them are dead. But all of them influence other people. The lines are relationships. They can extend the radius where the forces of influence work. The small dots are impulses of influence. They are some deeds that you do for people you don't even know, but you know they would appreciate what you have done for them.The circle is a symbol of time. So a person(circle) is a container for time, for the experience that the person had. And all of these are just threads in a great textile, called History.

Jason Fox

Jason Fox at Peter Blum Gallery

Untitled, 2011

 People are afraid of the Unknown. They can't stand it. They have instincts of hunters-gatherers, so they need to explore. They are always in the search for new things. This is the only way people can survive. They have to color all the white spots on the map.You use the common sense and logic to pave the way(the brown rectangles). The next layer is hope, energy and imagination (the green rectangles).

Rosy Keyser

Rosy Keyser at Peter Blum Gallery

Folk Conjugation, 2007

You know how you should proceed. You have a clear path ahead of you(the bright branches from the lower left corner to the upper right middle). You even have an alternative plan. It is more risky, but it looks more interesting (the bright branches from the lower right corner). You know that all. But strangely you are extremely attractive to an unknown way (the bright spots behind the branches in the lower left corner). You don't know how it is going to end. It is scary to go where nobody went before. But the unknown lures you in. The desire is so strong, you can't resist it.

Sarah Walker

Sarah Walker at Pierogi

Coumpound, Blue Haze, 2010

Time is eating our memories(the black strains with yellow border). There is stuff that happened to us, but we don't remember it.Things that we do remember are good, nice things. And we behaved our best. And if we didn't, we rationalized the behavior, so it would look like that in those circumstances it was the best possible outcome(the lower right corner). The reality as we perceive it is very distorted. At the end, the only thing is left to a person is the experience he collected throughout the lifetime. And nobody wants to collect the bad things.

Nabil Nahas

Nabil Nahas at Sperone Westwater

Untitled, 2007

The darker oval in the lower part is an eye of the artist.The artist is different from other people, because s/he sees differently. S/he notices things that other don't see. Even in earthy, brown, dark place s/he always looks for hope(blue) and purity(white). And even when the artist's creation(the tree-like structure in the lower middle) includes pain (burgundy lines), it is used to cure the disease.

Weekend Edition 17

Paul Gauguin

Brittany Landscape The David Mill, 1894

 A man has a house to live in , a business to take care of. But he is dreaming(The mill on the left half). He is dreaming of moving to another place, doing something different(The remote house in the middle). Or he is even dreaming of  something that he does not know exactly what it is or where it is(the remote forest and the cloud in upper right corner). This last dream is most appealing. The man always seeks new experiences. He always dreams of something new. What keeps him from doing dangerous and maybe stupid steps toward his dreams are common sense(the tree in the center) and his family (figures in the lower middle).

Soo Kim

Soo Kim at Angles Gallery (The Armory Show 2012)

She seems to be trying to find the right words, 2011

Women are very detail-oriented. They notice things that men don't realize exist. Women are emotional. When you combine the huge number of details and feelings and moods that come with every detail, you can get distracted very easily. It is like you caught up in the bushes. Even they are not thick and each branch can't distract you from the path,  but the sheer number of them makes you wonder what you wanted to say. The the right words are starting to come up(the black branches).

Brice Marden

Brice Marden at Matthew Marks Gallery

Window Study 3, 1985

A window is a connection with outside world. It is your bridge out. Some bridges you want to build. Some bridges you want to burn. Some bridge you cross because you have to. Every window, every bridge, every connection has two sides. Sometimes the feelings you have while you are spanning the bridge are similar to the party on the other end, but in most cases they are different. Your life is a huge window constructed from myriads of small, big and tiny windows.Each one of those windows has a set of bridges crossed, spanned or burnt.