Weekend Edition 34

Arthur Dove

Clouds and Water, 1930

Dreams they are like clouds. With a wind, they easily move in any direction and cover any distances. Some dreamy white-blue fulfills into down-to-earth brown. But most of blues don't survive the collision with rocks of reality. The dreams are turned into a rain of depression and desperation. The leaves of lost hope are sinking in the puddle.

Liu Wei

at Long March Space (Art 43 Basel 2012)

Beyond the Sky Limits, 2012

Sky is the dream. Your life is gray, dull and depressing(the lower gray ribbon). Then you have a clearing in your thinking(a small white line). You have to act on your impulse. You start working hard(the reddish ribbon). And when you think you are almost broke and you don't have strength to go on, you get a break-through(the white ribbon). You are in the vacuum. You left your old comfortable life, but you haven't get to your destination. It is scary to be in the vacuum, but you know where you are heading and this gives you power to continue. Then you hit the jackpot(the blue ribbon). You have arrived to your dream. You are almost blacked out of the ecstasy (the black ribbon). When you gain back the conscience, you found yourself in a new unknown reality(the white ribbon with burgundy hue). You need to do something. You start working hard(the burgundy ribbon). It leads to a gray, dull and depressing life(the upper gray ribbon). You need a dream, now!

Weekend Edition 32

Lyonel Feininger at Galerie Thomas ( Art 43 Basel 2012)

The Anglers (Black Bridge), 1942

You have dreams. Then there are dreams based on the previous dreams. And you are dreaming about something that is derived from those dreams. At some point, you have started implementing your dreams. You build something concrete that spans your dreams - a bridge. It didn't come out exactly as you dreamed. When you are implementing your dream, you are losing a dream, but you are gaining reality.

Weekend edition 29

Frantisek Kupka

Etude pour la montée, 1920

To grow something you need some soil (black figures in the bottom) and some water (whitish blue figures stretching from the bottom to the middle). All of the sudden your plant is growing. You need to feed it small portions of sun and water (red figures with blue border) That is how you make your idea-dream into the reality. the soil is your creativity. The water is your resources. and the sun is the exposure to the bigger environment. If the idea is good enough, it will get only stronger with the critique and the competition.

Armin Boehm

 at Harris Lieberman (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Aliya, 2012

Aliya is the Jewish immigration to Israel. It comes from the verb lealot - to raise. You need to move when you feel that you don't belong to your current place. You have to raise above the deep roots that you have, because you are drying out(the trees). You have to overcome the burdens of  the journey (the desert behind the trees). Your previous experience and background will help you to establish in the new place (the small town near the mountains). The life there would not be easy, those are pretty dangerous mountains surrounding this small place.But when a man has an ideal, a dream, he can move everything, even mountains.

Victoria Morton

at Sadie Coles HQ (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Figurine, 2011

The person's life consists of myriads of small dot-sized tasks. There is a lot of commotion that fills up all your space/time/soul. They are necessary things to do. But because you are busy you are postponing your big things - your dreams. "When I grow up". "When I get rich". "When I graduate". "When I retire". "As soon as I turn 30/40/50....". People think that the time is unlimited resource. When they get to the point where they suppose to start implementing their dreams, they find other more urgent things to do. So they move from a checkpoint to a checkpoint in their life, but their dreams are left out. The dreams are only frames to dot-filled pictures of their life.

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.

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 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).

Caragh Thuring

Caragh Thuring at Thomas Dane Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Untitled

This is how the artist's imagination works. From a simple entrance room with tiles, you build a stairs. That takes beyond the shut doors. You can "see" things that you are not supposed to see.From there, your imagination and associations give a multitude of "stairs" to jump on. Because you can put only so much into one painting, you have to divide the dream into several pieces. Each piece become a separate artwork.

Alexis Marguerite Teplin

Alexis Marguerite Teplin at Gavlak (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Boy Untitled 1 (Mallorca)

The boy is very innocent(lots of pink). He is very passionate(reds). He is full of dreams and hopes(blues). He imagines wild adventures.He dreams about boats flying under a strong wind with full sail. He is absolutely sure that there are no problems or difficulties  that he can't overcome with his extraordinary abilities.But sometimes his ship of dreams crashes against the concrete of reality(the lower right corner) and the fog of imagination opens up(the white stain).

Alex Smusiak

Alex Smusiak

The Brick House

It could look dull. But in the openings and cracks there is so much action.The brick house looks heavy and solid, but actually it is full of dreams and hopes. It has a nice fireplace, where everyone gathers when it's cold and snowy outside.

Weekend Edition 11

Pablo Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guitar and Clarinet on a Mantelpiece

The brown background is the earthiness of common life, where most of the time you are occupied with material needs. The mantelpiece is a decoration for a fireplace, where the fire of life is flaming. But when the fire is out, what is left are black smoke, ash and emptiness.The place is pretty gruesome. But you fell a fresh breeze (light blue at center bottom). It is a mantelpiece(blue figure in the center). It makes your fireplace prettier. Human beings have this urge to beatify the life, to invent artificial things that decorates the nature of life. The guitar and clarinet represent art as the most purified decoration of all. The art makes you dream(the white figure). And even that they are very fragile (the upper right corner of the blue figure), they make you see life much more bright (the white dotted corner).

Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler at Metro Pictures (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Red, White and Blue

The first (from the left) brown line is common sense. It is depended on steel-sharp logic(the grey lines). The rightmost dark brown line is your inner desires.They are mixed with small amount of common sense and dreams(blue line). Only bold, even somewhat rough insertion of Will can turn those dreams and desires into the victory red carpet.The will spans over the logic and the common sense. The fulfillment satisfies you more than before, but the dream has gone.

Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger at Moeller Fine Art (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Kleine Hafenstadt [Small Harbour Town]

Small Town. Everything is nearby, everything is on the view. The town is clean, boring and washed out. The harbor is the base of town and a thorn in its side(the dark brown boat in the lower middle). The town has a well-hidden secret. It has a source of energy and dreams(a dark green structure in the middle left). This source prepares the Town for something big, it pushes the Town to move on. The Town is ready. It is to sail to high seas any minute now (the ship-like structure in the upper middle and the sea-like skies in the upper half).

Helmut Federle

Helmut Federle at Peter Blum Gallery

Die Passage der Prismen (for FurutaOribe)

You are in a depression. Everything looks grey or black. You have one bright spot. This is your dream.This is your salvation. But to get you need to break out of your depression and get into a pragmatic, practical layer of actions (the brownish middle). Only then you could reach your nirvana.

Chu Teh-Chun

Chu Teh-Chun at Marlborough Gallery

MAR 08 No 14

Those big black/grey blocks is your fear. Fear to follow your dream that lies beyond this solid stone fence. The obstacle  is your rationalization not to make the jump. It's your love for stability and your dependence on familiar things that you can't stand any more.And out there lies your dream - airy, magical. It's a castle built on tree branches. The branches themselves are flying in the air. But you are imaging it very vividly. It's a new world full of wonderful things and pleasant surprises.You are not a fool, you know that new world is not perfect (grey blobs in the upper left). Your dream slowly sips through the border fence(Turquoise and red spots on the grey blocks).