I’m a bit high this morning. BC and I had a great talk last night, after seeing the incredible Wallace and Grommit: The Curse of the Wererabbit with Reese and laughing our furry white tails off. It seems that we’ve both been a bit down, he from not working, me from lack of forward momentum and the tedium of having to spread the cost of production of the work for my New York and San Francisco shows next year over months and months to avoid going into debt. We tend to shift responsibility for each other’s happiness on the other, and neglect looking after ourselves and then get resentful when things get frustrating. Is that codependence? Avoidance therapy? Anyway, we reached a new level of communication and have squeezed our way past another barrier to a deeper commitment. Realizing that Chris wasn’t the one who was making me unhappy, it occured to me that I haven’t produced anything new this year, well, of substance, and maybe that had something to do with it. Well, it’s like I fell into the pot and am floating in delicious stew of ideas. I feel a need to work with the single image. I’ve printed four new single-image works for the New York show, and really like them and want to do more. I have a great idea that won’t get me into any man trouble, that addresses the male form directly and abstractly, but with no abstract imagery, or the male form either. Puzzled? Stay tuned.
Cracks
BC and I headed over to the park today to check out the new deYoung Museum, the outside, that is–we’re going to preview the inside on Thursday afternoon. I’ve been hesitant to embrace it because the previous grouping of the old deYoung, the Academy of Sciences, and the bandshell created one of the most harmonious public spaces in the city. Now the Academy is just a big pile of dirt, but the Renzo Piano design looks like it will relate quite splendidly to the new deYoung, although the bandshell is going to look kind of silly all by itself and with completely no more relation to the other buildings. My other apprehension was about the tower. I felt like the only reason Herzog and de Meuron created a tower was because the old structure had a tower. The tower was smack dab in the middle of the previous building, and echoed, emphasized, and grounded the formal qualities of the site. The new tower is off to the back and side, and twists, seemingly with no reason or relation to anything. Well, I let myself be seduced by the building. It has a skin of copper panels that have been perforated here and there, and with convex and concave circles creating a relief of patina and shadow. There is no repeating pattern, and the whole building reads as if it were sculpted to interact with light and the weather. The flat front of the building gives way to a landscape in the rear of berms and wooded hillocks, and the twisted helix of the tower. The top of the tower twists away from the base so that the upper part is aligned parallel to the surrounding street grid, thus bringing the city into relation with the building. The whole site reads like a Mayan temple, if the Maya had settled down in Silicon Valley and invented the microchip instead of us. I’ve let go of my desire for harmony and completely embrace the dynamic interaction with the elements and stimulation of the eye and mind. Yippee that we’ve finally attracted some major architecture to our little town.
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One enters the museum by following a meandering crack made by Andy Goldsworthy in the stone walkway in the front of the building that leads to an open inner courtyard and is interrupted here and there by large flat stones that are also cracked, and that continue the line. BC felt compelled to interact more personally with Goldsworthy’s sculpture, and created an impromptu performance piece with the working titled Untitled/Crack.
Proposing and Itching
I applied for a huge grant today that I will never get, but feel that my proposal so completely encompasses my interests as a photographer, homosexual, and aesthete, that I’m going to just contain my triumph in fantasy, and imagine the fabulous work, many adventures, and visits to faraway places that would come out of actually getting it. I won’t know until next year, and maybe by then I will have forgotten about it anyway and actually figured out a way to make this project happen without things like money or 3 meals/day.
I’m going through the itchy-face faze of growing my beard back. Why does beauty have to be so difficult? BC says that I now have back hair, too. I can’t see it, but he can–something to do with the angle of view. Only a month and 10 days before turning 40. What else is going to sprout, turn gray, or fall off by then?
Great Show
Last night BC and I schlepped over to the east bay to visit Michale Damm’s temporary Remote Satellite Gallery. Michael collaborated with 2 other artists, Léonie Guyer and Kyle Knobel, each of whom activated the space in very different but complementary ways. Approaching the gallery, we first encountered Michael’s video work projected onto a scrim seamlessly stretched across the storefront of the space, with dreamy images of reflections in water, pigeons, and of various crumbling rusted details of his neighborhood. Inside the gallery, Kyle installed a linear series of small drawings, each of the same pair of handlebars, but each slightly different. I thought of the exercise of trying to draw a perfect circle, and then of something found in the neighborhood, and connected the film still-like quality of his installation to Michael’s moving imagery. Léonie penciled in barely visible outlines of her various little organic-y feminine-y shapes on the surface of one of the walls. A tiny 1/2 inch shape was painted red, and a few of the pencil shapes were drawn on paper that moved slightly, like little breaths, up and down with the passage of people. Her work drew attention to the sploches on the gallery floor and stains on the ceiling as if her work were a natural extension of the building’s own markings, just more delicate and refined. Everything, actually, seemed like an extension of the building’s own expression, and its locale. Altogether, a completely elegant and thought-provoking show.
New York Apartment Swap
Nuevo Yorkers! I am looking to maybe swap apartments with someone for the first two weeks of March next year. If you are interested, send me an e-mail, or if you know of anyone else who might be interested, please pass on my e-mail address to them. It’s a great time to be in San Francisco, as that’s when the city’s flowering plum and cherry trees will be blossoming, and my own garden will be a tranquil oasis from the bustle of New York city. I live just a block above the main drag of Castro Street, and one block from the geographic center of the city, so it’s easy to get anywhere from Casa Coco. Plus, there’s a big friendly bear staying downstairs in my studio who could help with getting you settled.
Building Stories
Chris Ware’s Building Stories in the New York Times’ new “Funny Pages” section is just great. He continues to astound me with his originality. There’s often an almost mathematical precision to his drawings and layouts accompanied by a lyrical thematic scheme or narrative. Always a delight.
COCO
Spinning
Did anbody read Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetralogy? Do you remember, having made your way through those four tomes, getting to the last book, and how completely devastated you were to realize that reality was an illusion? Tonight, after tucking little Reesie into bed, I settled down to fill out some mindless online quiz, and D walked in, excited to tell me about his date with someone who seemed on the outside to be interested more in just the outside of D, which half of the Castro seems interested in at the moment. He sort of went on and on, and on and on, and on and on, and then mentioned that this guy knew him from when he was with his last lover, years ago, but D had no recollection of him. After a while, and when an interjection was possible, I asked, “D, do you remember our affair?” Now, before I tell you his response, let me preface it with the fact that D was the only witness to acts that my body had never before or since been able to perform, muscles contracting that I didn’t even know about, my head constantly spinning from the blood being diverted from it…
“Well,” he said, “I think I remember.”
I imagined myself not being in the scene, but recalling it as I accepted my Academy Award. Masterfully hiding my complete devastation, I turned the subject back to his date, a few more moments of interaction, and then I excused myself to sleep.
So one of the most intense and real and life-changing encounters with another human being is now contained almost entirely in my recollection of it, and the few neurons left in my head. What was so real, so intense, so dramatic, the affair that destroyed my relationship with Bob, that stirred my artistic soul, that woke my sexuality, that made me feel complete as a man, that mattered more to me than monogamy or my vows or the trust that I had spent 10 years building… “I think I remember.”
What do we do when we not only see, but understand, that it’s all an illusion, that we’re all alone, that none of it matters, that none of it is even remembered?
“Postponed,” My New Favorite Word
What is happening with Scorpio this week? Is there something abysmal and obstructive moving into my career house? My studio visit was postponed again today, this after postponing yesterday’s visit, too. As I’ll be in sunny super hot why-on-earth-am-I-going Florida next week, we’ve rescheduled for two Tuesdays from now. It’s no problem, though, really, as I had a very long lunch with my neighbor Arnie and am a bit fatigued, if not slightly inebriated. After another great chat on the phone with Ms. Dream Dealer, I’m quite sure that we’ll be working together. Now, do I say things that I’m not sure of? (Don’t answer that.) I just adore her. She awakens in me some filial obligation to please. I really can’t wait to show her what I have in mind for her space. Okay, I’d better take a nap and then hop on my exercycle to burn away that white chocolate cheesecake off my thighs.
Pitching the Woo
Tomorrow a prospective dealer is coming over to look at my new work. I’ve put together a dvd of all the images that I’d like to show in the gallery, including juxtapositions and wall arrangements.
In looking at the compilation, I thought about being a kid, when every brief glimpse of human flesh or body hair was accompanied by a thrill of discovery, flesh finally unveiled. With all the access that the internet, TV, film, and street fairs have provided to the male body, a lot of the mystery and intimacy of the body, for me, has been lost. I think I’m trying to find visual experiences of the body that are intimate yet unfamiliar; sometimes wierd, as bodies are, and revealed in ways that approximate my engagement with the terrain—Busby Berkeley orchestrating a chorus of hairy shoulders through the prism of a single-lens reflex, teetering between abstraction and spectacle.
I adore this dealer, and would love to show in this space. Keep your fingers crossed for me.