Category: Marjorie Wood Gallery

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Tuttle, Emily and Amanda

Did anyone else see the Richard Tuttle show at SFMoMA? I’m sure it’ll be over before you know it and we can all get on with ourselves as if it never happened. If anyone was moved by it, please engage me in some dialogue. I am open to being enlightened. On second thought, there were plenty of artists who pushed boundaries–Giotto, Masaccio, Duchamp, etc…—whose works continue to appeal beyond their context. But Tuttle’s work, which I’ve only experienced in little pieces here and there and have liked at times for its relation to its time, here in its entirety, left me numb, feeling like there’s nothing beyond its relation to its time, nothing intrinsically appealing aesthetically or conceptually. The guy’s a little clever, but really… I don’t think I’ve ever been to a museum show before and felt so, just, bereft. If I can convince myself that it’s really about that, I’ll be okay.

But you don’t have to leave town, my friends, not even your comfy chairs, to be aesthetically and conceptually challenged tonight. If you really want to see some exciting new work, just click this way people, to the extraordinary collaboration between observatrix Emily Wilson and fabulist Amanda Davidson, now on view through eternity, at the Marjorie Wood Gallery: Chlorine.

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Shows

I’m growing fond of Mr. Twentysomething Chelsea Dealer, and his fast New York pitch. It’s also encouraging to have someone so excited about what I’m doing. We’ve set a date for my New York show, March, 2006, and I’m going to show grids from the past few years, as well as some single image works and sound and video pieces that I’ve never exhibited before. The viewer is going to be showered gently in testosterone. The show is going to be called Spring.

Okay, time to put on my second hat, and invite you all to preview the next show at Marjorie Wood Gallery–a project by Nina Zurier, called Ham Balls. The essay about her piece isn’t ready yet, but here’s a little something in Nina’s words about her work:

When I take a photograph, I choose an object, usually for its color, point a digital camera at it, adjust the settings in a way that challenges the auto mode’s ability to take a “good” picture, and then click the shutter. I engage chance, to some extent, in the process; the purposeful part happens when I choose what to print.

By setting up a sort of mechanical system or routine, and taking advantage of the digital processors in the camera that have been programmed to adjust to a wide range of conditions in terms of light and focus, I’m experimenting with an old medium that has been given new technology. In choosing images I am considering the formal qualities of photography and abstraction, and in some instances I am also looking for social content.

I do my own printing. I don’t really do much image manipulation in Photoshop, just to get the color to print to what I remember shooting. I might crop a little, but usually not even that. The way it gets a little darker in the corners of the image is important, because that is how you can tell that the image was made through a lens.

Enjoy!

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Can’t Sleep

I can’t sleep. I immediately think of that awful trailer for the new Christian Bale movie, where if he were any skinnier he’d be a ghost, the trailer that relates the entire story in 10 gruelling minutes, and then tells you again that if he were any skinnier he’d be a ghost. I’ll try to do that.

I had dinner with Rocco Pizzoferrato tonight at Delfina. It was an amazing meal. Actually it was the equivalent of an amazing two meals. An all-too brief sensual highlight was the tagliatelle in a butter and cream sauce with truffles shaved over the top. The beauty for me of Italian food is the melding of a few simple ingredients to stimulate the senses into an awareness of the joy and wonder of the coming together of those ingredients. The truffles were like the musty underwear of some beautiful and tragic Greek hero. I wanted to lick my plate, and shed a silent tear as they tore it away from me.

There’s a new show that I put up a few days ago at Marjorie Wood–a wacky video by Connie Harris, accompanied by a short story by On Our Back editor Diana Cage. Coco says check it out, culture vultures. You can look at art, and don’t have to leave your laptops!

Speaking of laptops, remember that I broke mine a while ago? Well, instead of paying Apple $1,400 to fix it (the Apple Associate told me on the phone, “Honey, just buy a new one”), or buying a new one (my idea of selling things on eBay to finance the transaction ended up in me acquiring all sorts of expensive new decorative items for the house–give me the cow and I’ll buy expensive beans, every time), I’ve decided to fix it myself! I bought the hinges for $90 (eBay), have accumulated enough advice about how to do it from people who have done it, and as soon as the hinges arrive, I’m Coco, Powerbook Repairman! Evidently these hinge breaks are common in the G4 Titanium Powerbooks, so if yours breaks, give me a jingle, and I’ll share my conquest of the hinge!

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Sarah, Emily, Dean, Two Queens

I met Sarah C today. She and Emily are going to be the next featured artists at the Marjorie Wood Gallery, so they came over for tea and melon and to discuss their project. I had nearly forgotten, as I spent most of the day visiting doctors and phlebotomists with D, who had a spinal tap to determine if there is any neuroligical or organic basis for his depression. Is there any other basis? Anyway, there were Emily and Sarah, on my doorstep. Emily’s writing these days, the layers of her writing not as obscured as her visual work, but fractured and narrative, and raw and melodic, and Sarah’s like Emily and Léonie’s love child, so their collaboration is going to be hot. They’re the third in a series of collaborations between writers and artists in which the writing’s not of a critical nature. Rainey, my favorite girly man, and former lip and butt (see below) model, interrupted our noshing to wisk me away to dinner in the Mission, and we dished and swished our way through all of our recent loves and woes. I love my queeny friends. Like drinking orange juice after brushing my teeth, bitter and sweet.

And I love the complete suspension of reality at that point when one of us eventually says of whom-ev-er, “Oh, girl, she is such a queen.”

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Michelle and Camille

Announcing the opening of Michelle Rollman and Camille Roy’s collaboration at Marjorie Wood Gallery… For those of you who caught the preview earlier in the month, the complete show is now online with Camille’s dazzling prose, and new “pussy” drawings by Michelle. Michelle seems to be directly assaulting the male gaze here–masochists and art lovers, enjoy… Leave Me Alone.

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The Lobster Dude Cometh

Well, the last few days have been fairly uneventful, except for meeting Ted, which was actually quite eventful, stagnant impulses in me significantly stirred after only one afternoon of tea and dog walking. He’s an exceptional person, very inspiring to be around, full of vibrance and direction, wit and delight, intelligence and warmth. I am very excited about getting to know this dynamic young man better.

I’m working on Dean’s exhibition design for Marjorie Wood. Dean’s work is just sublime. The challenge for me here is to create something that mirrors the depth found in the rigorous simplicity of his gestures. Thus far, the “circle.” Tomorrow I’m experimenting with the “rectangle,” a bold departure into horizontality.

Okay, so Monday morning I hear this screaming and then feet running across the floor above my studio. Several more minutes another scream and feet again. After the third scream, I run upstairs, thinking perhaps Albie was having a heart attack and was rolling around in his desk chair trying to dial up an ambulance with his big toe, and there he is, the lobsterdude boyfriend of DM, visiting through Sunday. “The vacuum cleaner, it’s following me everywhere, I can’t get away from it!” “Well, I’m sorry that you’re bothered by it, but the cleaning lady’s here for another hour, maybe you’d like to take a walk or perhaps get out of my house, you’re in San Francisco and there’s a lot of stuff to do other than audibly masturbate all day when I’m right below you and you know that I’m hearing everything and I’m really not getting off like you imagine I am.” He’s the one who left an espresso machine on the stove last time he visited until it burned up (like, all of it), so I’m not too thrilled about him being here again and the promise of more destruction to my little housie. He and DM, whose bedroom is below mine, make love at least five times a night, loudly, thrillingly, sure, but at the expense of my much needed beauty rest. And this after beating off all day. For the last few days, several times a day, whenever he hears the slightest noise–the vacuum cleaner on Monday, a leaf blower on the sidewalk today, he screams, leaps up, runs across the flat, back and forth, and switches on all the TVs and stereos in the house, trying to drown out the sound. He’s like Roderick Usher on crystal meth. Today I rang his bell, “Hello, hello, Mr. Loster Dude…” but no answer, only everything turned on full blast. I turned everything off, didn’t find where he was hiding, and returned to my work. The bad energy in the house is actually cool, it’s so rare, I’m amused by it. Come Monday morning, though, I will talk with DM and suggest that perhaps if his boyfriend were to visit again, a padded cell somewhere might more sufficiently accommodate his desire for city life without city life.