yellow and orange, 2006 by Mitzi Pederson
DIAMOND HEART WHORE
Monday, October 8, 2012
image bones
yellow and orange, 2006 by Mitzi Pederson
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Theo Michael Archives: Beyond Immaterialism
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Turning The Corner That Never Comes
Turning The Corner That Never Comes (studio shot). 110 paintings from the Altes Nationalgalerie photographed from the side and collaged onto Plexiglass foil with laser-cut magnifying sheets. 50 x 200 cm installed into corner.
--- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - ----
____I will be participating in the 21st International Istanbul Art Fair http://www.
in participation with the non-profit German-Turkish artist group
--- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - ----.
"When we look at a painting we take the frame to be part of the wall, yet when we look at the wall the frame is taken to be part of the painting."
From the essay Parergon in The Truth in Painting p. 61, Jacques Derrida.
Short Artist Statement Regarding the Work:
Of the 110 photographs of paintings I took at the Altes Nationalegalerie principally only the frames are visible. The standpoint of the camera is perpendicular to the face of the painting, bringing the liminal (the frame) to the fore. I chose to take these photographs in the Altes Nationalgalerie for purely pragmatic reasons. The architectural layout of the museum allows one to photograph a large number of paintings in the collection from an almost perfect perpendicular angle by standing in the entrances in between the small circular galleries. This "side view" reveals the mechanisms of hanging these valuable paintings: alarm-wires, hanging wires, foam cubes and bits of wood to correctly position the paintings, hooks, nails, bolts, masking tape to neatly arrange all the wires and some type of plastic boarding.
My personal and honest impetus for Turning The Corner That Never Comes was to play with a certain denial of vision and doubt regarding the hope of art.
Doubt: I was repeatedly told as a child that "Jesus was right around the corner," a corner I suppose he has been turning for the last 2000 years. This
Nonsensical statement "turning the corner that never comes" connotes two simultaneous physical states, continual turning and secondly something akin to standing still—the engagement in a futile action that leads to nothing (beating a dead horse), a ‘nothingness action’ e.g. "art making." Like I said, this is just a play with these ideas, these fears, which occasionally occupy my mind. Lastly, by bringing the frames and mechanisms of their hanging to the fore, these great works of art by Adolph Menzel and others are reduced to mere wares denying their vision.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Mirrored Future: Mirrored Past
Divisione e moltiplicazione dello specchio, 1978
Monday, July 11, 2011
Inside Mountain Looking Out: The dizzying art of folding representations of corners into corners.
The dizzying art of folding representations of corners into corners.
Something that failed to come to words in my conversation with you was the works relationship to shame, perhaps due to a sense of embarrassment itself or a fear that it would be too heavy for comfort. This relationship to shame is in fact the main reason for being drawn into the corner.
I have been interested in shame, in particular shame in relationship to the construction of a homosexual identity. Didier Eribon wrote a book entitled Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. I found this book to be an endless source of inspiration and enlightenment. My senior thesis at the University of California Berkeley for the Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major, my second major after Practice of Art, was entitled Participation of Shame and the "Feminine Stigmata" in Gender Surveillance of the "Male Invert." It was a deeply personal and cathartic text that I believe is still playing out in my work today.
The physical act of shoving ones nose into the corner connotes punishment and it puts the actor into a severely vulnerably state where one's sense of sight is rendered useless to void off what may be coming from behind to breathe down your neck: one is “cornered”. I use to have this fear that the devil was constantly behind me breathing down my neck, and when I would turn he would turn in sequence with me, always right behind me almost kissing the back of my ear.
Horse Blinders
Whereas Mountain Base was about repudiating or severely limiting vision by means of zooming in so close that vital periphery information is denied, a sort of "blinder" vision, Inside Mountain Looking Out antithetically imbues the viewer with a supernatural vision. If one is to take the title for its word: Inside Mountain Looking Out, then the viewer finds themselves in the inside of a mountain looking out through stone and dirt. This is really what the work is all about, a sort of naive child's triumphant over being forced to stick their nose into the corner,
and having the walls simply evaporate to reveal the world outside both thrilling and blissful, and where there should be an absence of sight one finds deep perspective, in which one must squint to make out the birds far in the distance.