Artist Jeanne-Claude of Jeanne-Claude and Christo has passed away at 74. I didn't get to see THE GATES or any of their works, but I do have a piece of fabric from The Gates tucked away in my box of treasures. It's like having a little piece of her hair.
Read more on NYTIMES.COM.
Labels: ART, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 11/19/2009 -
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This is a video by artist KOKI TANAKA from the 2008 Taipei Biennale. It was on College Humor. I think I like that but I'm not sure yet.
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 11/19/2009 -
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I finally saw Fassbinder's final film, Querelle, today. I watched it after class in the media library at school. Maybe not the most appropriate place to watch a murderous sailor gay porno. However, I think I got the eye from the fellow sitting across from me. So apropos getting cruised while watching such a cruisey movie.
I'm interested in the film's philosophy - is Querelle such a despicable character/emotional sociopath because faggots had to be monsters back in 1966 (when the book was written)? Or is it a self-loathing thing? Or is his behaviour not meant to be connected to his sex? His desires seem to change so rapidly and whimsically in contrast to Seblon's devotion. Obviously Seblon is a good gay, so they existed, just not in leading roles.
I am gonna go look up some reviews of the film to find out more...
Labels: ART, FILM, REALLY FUCKING GAY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 9/16/2009 -
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Hollis Frampton's 1971 film Nostalgia is a recording of 12 photographs being burned on a stovetop one at a time while a description of each photograph is read. The descriptions, however, are not of the photograph we are watching as it burns, but rather of the next photograph that we will see. By the time we see the photograph that has already been described all we have is the memory of the story of this image. We somewhat desperately try to remember the description while listening to the description of the next image. Nostalgia (from the Latin nost meaning home and algia meaning pain) has us doing the same - desperately remembering in an achy way the lives we have lived while trying to pay attention to what is coming next. It's easy to get confused.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 8/06/2009 -
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POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 8/06/2009 -
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I had seen, but nearly forgotten about, GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN'S self-portraits from the 1980s (above). So perfect. I had not, however, seen his paintings (below). I've been drawing lately. I really suck. But I'm making improvements. Every drawing I do comes out looking like a picture made by the fat quiet girl in the back seat of math class obsessing about the quarterback sitting in front of her. Not far off, really...
Labels: ART, JEALOUSY, PHOTOGRAPHY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/31/2009 -
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Labels: ART, JEALOUSY, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/28/2009 -
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Upon entering the room housing Katie Paterson's installation, Earth-Moon-Earth, my first understanding of the piece was that a ghost was supposed to have been playing Moonlight Sonata, badly. I then though that the player-piano had been programmed incorrectly on purpose to mimic the endearing qualities of human error. Finally I wandered to the wall where there was a pair of headphones next to the score of the piece. In the headphones a crackly morse code was being tapped out. Beside the score was an explanation:
E.M.E (Earth-Moon-Earth) is a form of radio transmission whereby messages are sent in Morse code from earth, reflected from the surface of the moon, and then received back on earth.
The moon reflects only part of the information back - some is absorbed in its shadows, "lost" in its craters.
For this work, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata has been translated into Morse code
and sent to the moon via E.M.E. Returning to earth "fragmented" by the moon's surface, it has been re-translated into a new score, the gaps and absences becoming intervals and rests.
In the exhibition space the new "moon-altered" score plays on a Disklavier grand piano.
Such an elegant and tightly realized installation. Earth-Moon-Earth is on display as a part of the UNIVERSAL CODE exhibition at The Power Plant in Toronto until August 30th.
See a video and more images from the installation on KATIE PATERSON'S WEBSITE.
Labels: ART
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/26/2009 -
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As promised, I am now selling DVDs from the NEW RITUALS series:
New Rituals - 2009 - 9:00
DVD of 9 animated images on a loop. Plays in any standard DVD player. Each DVD is hand-stamped with the New Rituals insignia and comes packaged in a sacrificial refuse bag. A lock of the artist's hair is sparkled to the front of each package.
To order a DVD please send $30 via Paypal to graydon@graydonsheppard.com. An address request will follow. If you are ordering from the United States, the cost is $30USD including shipping. If you are ordering from Canada the cost is $30CAD including shipping. Please inquire for international rates.
Supply is limited!
Labels: ART, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/20/2009 -
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Danish artist MADS LYNNERUP (maybe the best name of an artist I've ever heard) did his MFA at Columbia University:
Lynnerup's work is often diverse, but has remained consistent and recognizable in its approach throughout his career as an artist. Many of the themes in Lynnerup's work has roots in his constant interest in the everyday and his surroundings, whether it's the influence of billboards and advertisement texts, that inspired him to make the poster series "If you see anything interesting, please let someone know immediately," that are based on anti-terrorist posters in the subway of New York City.
I also see the series as a jab at the way we exchange information today. I have a blog, a website, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. I don't need all of this, obviously, but I've always seen them as a way to increase traffic to my site. I post things I find interesting as a way of sharing them with other people I think might like them, but they're also like little trophies on my blog. I feel like I score points if I find something original to put up. That's why I called this blog This is a Race. One can't really just sit by and hope for people to discover their work anymore - an active involvement in the online world greatly increases your chance of circulation. So, I won't pretend this isn't mostly a selfish endeavour, but I do hope that the people I blog about and link to get something out of it, too.
Thanks to Sparkles for showing me this.
Labels: ART
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/20/2009 -
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Every once in a while I break up with myself. It's painful, but it has to happen. For the dumper side of me it's a relief and I look forward to moving on to bigger and better stuff. For the dumped side of me, I go down the rabbit-hole and am forced to painstakingly analyze everything I've done wrong. I'm like a Mini Wheat. A soggy Mini Wheat.
I was once told by someone who I thought mattered that the most interesting thing about my photographs was seeing my discomfort as a photographer reflected in the expressions of my subjects. I clung to this deduction like it was the only thing that made me unique, and I've just realized that it's something I've been hiding behind.
Ever since I began making images seriously I've bounced back and forth from using just my camera and the sun to making HIGHLY CONTRIVED and constructed work. My struggle for the past few years has been trying to define myself as an artist. How do I reconcile my aesthetic and thematic disparities?
I've often blamed my eclecticism for my difficulties in getting shows with my own work or for failing to get grant money for short films I've written and photo series I've proposed. I thought having done ad work made people think of me less as an artist. I got a big head and thought I was too big for Toronto. But recently I came to the realization that maybe it's not them, it's me (see, it really is like breaking up with myself). And, although I have to keep doing what interests and excites me, maybe I need to grow up a bit, too.
I admit that I like the look of distrust in my photographs, but it's gotten me into trouble. I've always found it more interesting and engaging when my subject doesn't look pretty. I've never been interested in making the people who sit for me look good; I've been interested in making a compelling image. Avedon's images of a despondent Marilyn Monroe are more interesting to me than any other image of her. I've never requested "fierce" from someone I was photographing. It just doesn't thrill me. I find it so disposable. But I've often been unfair to my subjects. I've objectified them because I believed it was more interesting. While I stand by my photographs, while I think they say as much about my insecurities as they do about the subject's, I now understand how cruel I can be.
After spending a couple weeks in San Francisco with photographers at different stages of their careers I was thrown for a loop. Of course I have been around photographers I think are amazing for years, but I mostly went to school with them. I saw them do crap and I saw them do great things and I saw their insecurities and their strengths grow and change as they did. And they saw mine. Being around Parker, Ryan, and Luke changed my mind about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I'm sure they all have their insecurities, but unlike my colleagues in Toronto, I didn't see them grow, I just see them now, and I'm humbled in different ways.
PARKER is a brash young thing heading into his first year at California College of the Arts. He's one of those photographers who loves having a camera in his hand and takes it everywhere. He's going to kick my ass big time and he's going to do so well in school. I'm so excited for him and can't wait to see what he'll do. It makes me remember how people who had taken time between high school and university did so much better in the photo program because they really knew they wanted to be there. Parker's really unselfconscious with his camera, he trusts that people want to be photographed and want to be photographed by him, as well they should. I've never had that confidence. I always felt like my subjects were doing me a favour rather than getting anything out of the experience themselves. Watching Parker shoot with such excitement for the medium was both inspiring and disconcerting. I felt like I didn't get nearly as much out of my education as he will. The lucky thing is that I'll get to go back to school this fall. I can't wait to approach my film education with a fervor and understanding that I lacked in my undergraduate experience.
LUKE, who I didn't get to spend a lot of time with but hope to get to know better in New York, is fresh out of UCLA and blowing up the photo world. His work is really fantastic and beautiful and original and varied but coherent - something I aspire to but take too far in some ways.
RYAN is a well-known young photographer who did his MFA at SVA and watching him photograph was so fascinating for me. We use the same camera, but not in the same way. I am sure that in some ways the style of my university education gave me this complex that I have to have a set or a gimmick going on in my photographs in order for people to be interested in them. I've felt like just having my camera wasn't enough, and I felt that from the people who asked me to take photographs of them. I didn't think anyone would trust that my photograph was going to be interesting unless I had a stylist and an elephant on hand and we were going to a treetop village in the Amazon. Watching Ryan trust himself and trust that a camera was all he needed was fascinating. And when I sat for Ryan I suddenly understood how unfair I could be with my subjects. I totally trusted Ryan because I knew his photographs and I knew he would not be unkind to me. It was when I was sitting for him that I understand why people might have been reticent to let me photograph them knowing that my photographs were all about what I wanted them to be, not about who or what they really are.
I have not been a subject for anyone for about six years. I didn't really understand what it was like to be in front of the lens, which I now realize is something a photographer must experience seriously. I thought I knew what it was like to be a subject, and I had disdain for subjects who (I assumed) wanted to "look hot". Both Parker and Ryan photographed me, and while I'll never ask them to retouch an image of me or have the delusion that I'm a model, I see how vulnerable it can make someone feel to be photographed.
So, moving forward, my overarching modus operandi is becoming clearer. When editing my photographs from San Francisco I went down the rabbit-hole because I was afraid others would think them boring landscape photos. But, for once, I'm going ahead with what I believe in rather than what I want people to think is exciting and fresh. I resisted the urge to hide behind digital gimmicks or design tricks and just edited the straight images from an intuitive place.
I see these images as a continuation and purification of what I began in London. London was an accidental beginning to a theme that carried through the photographs in Are We Having Fun Yet? When I went to Mexico I expected this theme to continue, but I mostly just found good people genuinely wanting to enjoy themselves with their families and getting along and having a good time, so the focus shifted. My own solitude began to leak through as I felt on the outside of this group of people I didn't want to judge anymore. This came out as well as a methodical and almost meditative way of photographing. A centre-heavy, Bernd & Hilla Becher informed framing of the subject emerged. I was compelled and excited by this somewhat boring regimented style of photographing. This style reappears in the San Francisco photographs and is even more methodical and unapologetic in its wistful prettiness. I think this way I'm photographing is a foil to the gimmicky pictures I do. It is the most consistently recurrent style of photograph I have taken over any period of time. And it's not to say that I won't have fun with photography and image-making ever again, but I'm really trying to pay attention to what these are and why I'm doing them.
Parker told me that when we went to photograph together that he felt he totally was not a part of my process, that I was working alone. It's true. It needs to be a solitary act for me. I need to get lost in it, I need to feel uninhibited and not judged or scrutinized.
In the end I still haven't been able to pin down what I'm going for, but this way of photographing is leading me by the hand to somewhere I want to be. It's taking me back to the photograph and the medium itself. Kind of purifying it. And it's still me. There are themes that I've always imbued in my work - loneliness, smallness, boredom, apathy, bleached or faded vibrancy, existentialism, and a kind of hush and stillness or stasis beyond the obvious stillness of the photographic medium. I think these themes are not hiding behind anything else anymore. I hope they're not so earnest, that maybe they're a little more natural.
Though all this was a tricky mind-trap to navigate I feel better, lighter, and ready to move forward. I'm still proud of the things I've done. Some things more so than others, but it's all brought me here. And though my work may sometimes be schticky and sloppy, I'm glad to say that I've never approached it from the side of irony.
So for now this Mini Wheat is floating alone, but sugar-side-up in a warm bowl of milk.
Labels: ART, BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA, EW, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, PHOTOGRAPHY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/16/2009 -
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The great Davida Nemeroff has a new WEBSITE and BLOG. I've been waiting in anticipation to see all her new work from her time in Columbia's MFA Visual Arts program.
Above is Jennifer Castle of CASTLEMUSIC and some girl named Mira.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/07/2009 -
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POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 7/07/2009 -
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Laying With My Father by Ryan Pfluger
Luke Gilford
So I'm in nature now, the crickets are chirping outside my window and I am left in the quiet with my thoughts and still, somehow, a poo-load of work to do. I arrived at my new old home today after seeing both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in one day and then packing and driving all my earthly possessions up here in an overstuffed GMC with a huge iced coffee from McDonald's.
San Francisco was everything I could have hoped for. Such a great place and such a great experience. I managed to escape Pride Day for the most part and go to the beach and Marin Headlands with Parker and Ryan. Ryan Pfluger is a fantastic photographer that I've been following for a long time but for some reason have never linked to him from my own blog before. It was really cool to watch him work and then to be photographed by him on the edge of the ocean and high up on cliffs. I can't wait to see his photos as well as Parker's and mine. Hopefully I'll have my film back by next week. You can see a sneak peek of Ryan's photos HERE and make sure to check out his other work HERE.
I also got to meet another great photographer, LUKE GILFORD, while I was in San Francisco. Luke is a New York based photographer who graduated from UCLA. All around it was a bunch of cute faggots taking pictures in the gayest city on earth. It seemed pretty right.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, REALLY FUCKING GAY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/30/2009 -
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Photos and interview - Olaf Breuning in his studio on THE SELBY.
Via WE CAN'T PAINT.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/08/2009 -
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The Canadians at this year's Venice Bienalle were well-dressed in Jeremy Laing pieces from the FW09 collection. I hope this gets him all the recognition he deserves and more! Yay J!
See Jeremy's work HERE.
Read the full article about the fashion presence in Vencie HERE.
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/07/2009 -
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I like it when the birdy looks in the camera and cacks.
Video by SEMÂ BEKIROVIC who also does some beautiful photography and has made paper prints for gallery display, which is something I really want to do but have not yet tried. I think I'm learning that I am most excited by artists know the rules and walk around them - not so much by the ones who don't learn the rules in the first place or who feel the need to say "Fuck your rules, man!"
From the series Reflections
From the series (edition?) Paperprints
Via WLYS
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/03/2009 -
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One of my favourite photographers, BETTINA HOFFMANN, just had an installation up at the AGO. I think it's down now but you can see the videos on her site - the piece is called ÉMILE.
She is Canadian but I don't think of her as a Canadian artist. I really think her work is so exciting and progressive in how it straddles that line between art directed and believable. It's like Lukas Moodysson's film SHOW ME LOVE or the TV series Big Love - the art direction and casting and styling are so perfect and right and down to the detail but feel effortless and completely untouched - almost to the point of looking tasteless or devoid of aesthetic. I'm not sure how much Hoffmann "art directs" her staged portraits, but from the effort she appears to put into perfectly staging her subjects I would assume that she takes control of the mise-en-scène as well (if I may be a douche-bag and say "mise-en-scène").
I think I like her so much because her aesthetic is so much in opposition to the Canadian aesthetic of faux-awkward, tritely-contrived, flash-lit, over-styled, under-evaluated, over-appreciated photographs that we've all been over-exposed to. I mean, JIN-ME YOON'S series was great but we have to stop trying to recreate that, am I right?
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/01/2009 -
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ALEX MCLEOD is unbelievable. His/her 3D creations are breathtaking. I looked at them for a long time until I realized they weren't actual models, but CG renderings. So fantastic - the fun/frivolous scenes imbued with death or disaster or dripping somethings are really great. Dark without having to scream "Hey look I'm dark!" That's not easy to do.
Just click "art" at the top and use your arrows to scroll through the pieces.
Alex is also showing at Switch Contemporary from June 8-July 5 - opening June 11th 7-10 - 2217 Dundas Street West in Toronto (at Roncesvalles).
Labels: ART, JEALOUSY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/01/2009 -
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