Ritual ideas relativety
Only buildings no people prophecy
Timeslide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Space guy fell from the sky
Scratched my head and wondered why
Time slide into time
Across international dateline
Scientist eats bubblegum
Hall of fame baseball
Senators a Hoodlum
Big chiefs in the hall
Ritual ideas relativety
Only buildings no people prophecy
Timeslide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Lyrics from “E=MC2″ by Big Audio Dynamite

Bucky ROYGBIV by Matthew Day Jackson, 2007

Matthew Day Jackson, now playing at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center (May 8th-July 12th, 2009), sets fire to the place.  He knows we know he knows, and he goes there.  For example, in Lonesome Soldier (2008) one is instantly reminded of Charles Ray’s Plank Piece (1973), which was a humanized performance riff on Richard Serra’s Prop (1968), but Jackson’s is not a sheet of lead, or his own body, but rather a felt space man, oh Beuys!  We are in the presence of greatness, all the time.  But, at times it feels a little bit like the Leonardo DiCaprio / Claire Danes version of Romeo and Juliet, in that Jackson brings guns instead of swords, or carbon fiber instead of marble; but is it still Brancusi?  I guess as much as that movie was Shakespeare.  We know, the permission for this work was hard fought, it takes guts to place a Hemi drag racing motor on rod power pyramids (like my parents picked-up at the crystal-hopped new age store when I was a kid) as Jackson does in Heart of Prometheus (2009).  There are themes here (racing, space chasing, atom bombing, geodesics, so on), but I can’t help thinking Jackson’s meta-story is getting thick like another Matthew, Barney.  This is not bad, and in fact maybe the saving grace of Jackson’s work, his earnest sincerity.  For no matter how many layers of great artists (and thinkers, and, and, and) he can stack like a Dagwood, I believe Matthew Day Jackson believes in this work.  And faith goes along way here, even tangled in the miasma of testosterone-fulled modernism on fucking atomic-powered Red Bull.

Go see it before it comes down, and check out Duncan Campbell’s film Bernadette in the other gallery, but bring a hoody it’s cold in there.

Chariot II-I Like America and America Likes Me by Matthew Day Jackson, 2008

P.S. I thought about just leaving the B.A.D. lyric quote as the review, I heard it on the radio on the way home, and thought it summed up the exhibition well.  But, ElPezCore would have none of it!

Last night in Lowell, MA - Something was happening at 119 Gallery, there was cooking smoke, a belly dancer, porn from the advent of moving image, and fuck-an-A, ART!  I cruised by the opening of Seduce Me curated by Setheyny Pen, and featuring the work of: Ebenezer Archer Kling, Anthony Palocci Jr, Christopher Eastwood, Hali Vik, Christine Tuccelli, and Timothy Goguen. And was pleasantly surprised to find an elegant show of thoughtful work by a crew of smart young artists.  Concurrently, was “Improvised Comfort Device (food) (Superhero Action)” a performance by relative old-timer, Jim Jeffers: “as a piece [sic] offering to swine 40 pounds of chicken will be grilled and eaten” (from a flyer at the event).  Where, Jeffers dressed in a red jump suit, and partially covered by a blue tarp strung off the back of a hatch-back, grilled chicken and served it up to the tentative audience.

Standing out were the tightly crafted 40’s (40 oz. beer bottles) with sexy lesbian silhouettes, both clearly celebratory but evoking some sad alcoholic fantasy of lesbian prosthetic copulation, black & white and cracking, by Timothy Goguen.  Also, Ebenezer Archer Kling’s drawings, abstracting images pulled from ukiyo-e Japanese erotica, are quirky, smart, and delightful.  Jeffers, who was not on the bill for Seduce Me, must have crashed the party, but at least he brought beer and chicken…fucking good chicken, served on a blue blanket (like my little brother sucked his thumb through until he was twelve), evidently these “Improvised Comfort Devices” are a series, can’t wait to see what’s next!
(Jeffers, has a solo exhibition coming up a UMass Lowell this Fall: http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Art/galleries/university-gallery.htm)

Check out Seduce Me curated by Setheyny Pen, at 119 Gallery up now until July 11th, 2009, worth the trip to Lowell, MA!
(and check out the kick-ass Cambodian restaurant on the corner by the gallery, so good).

The rejection letter is commonplace for most of us in the Arts, and for that matter Academia. We compete in an ever-expanding market, with an ever-contracting supply. The stuff we produce is marginally quantifiable and highly speculative; as artists can take many positions with vastly different levels of cultural esteem, acceptance, or even understanding – and as academics, educators or researchers we are phantasms to laypeople, and subjects for dissection by peer-review and collegial probing by the anointed. Our job, my job is to be creative, but not ‘creative’ like the team that came up with, “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” or the Manhattan Project, or is it? As Artist-Academics we are obligated to find in the world a mode of expression both new and fresh, but fitting within the ‘norms’ or normative forces of hegemonic institutionalization present in keeping a paying gig at the university.

So, as I have defined my job—i.e., make creative research (a.k.a. art), find esteem for it, and keep it understandable by peers, both interdisciplinary and intergenerational—as difficult. Now imagine you have to quantify and qualify this job in the form of multiple-page documents, slides, CDs, DVDs, copy laser copies, letters of reference, websites, word of mouth, and so. One could do a continual hustle just in the documentation and explanation of all the creation and academic protocols, not mention actually making art or teaching. And the reaction, after all this sound and fury, is what? A letter; nice on bond or laid paper with thoughtful logo, neatly typed, and signed by hand—preferably in blue. Maybe I am trying to find the Art in rejection, or at least the professionalism, implying a level of respect, a nod to the time and effort on one’s part in putting all this shit together, proof of your humanity, or at least tangibility—you have an address, on the earth. Now we have another form, the e-mail rejection. It is fast, clean, better than the phone call, no need to hear the faux cheer and understanding, and doesn’t cost your institution the 44¢ of the letter. E-mail is nicely informal, an extra level of coolness in a business filled with ice, coated in the mostly fictional face of creative fertility, academic rigor, and warm nurturing education. We are in just that, business, slow, arty farty, warm and fuzzy, business, so bring on the e-mail rejections just make sure they contain at least a few emoticons. And for my part I will just make a .pdf head shot, and put my artist talk on Youtube and just forward links to everyone on the committees in massive cc’ed e-mail myself.