I haven't written in my blog for a very long time. This could be due to me not wanting to share; or not wanting to share my thoughts with you, the unseen, un-trusted public that is. You're a funny lot, you others, and sometimes when we're twitching in the margins we just want to hide in the shadows, keep our cards close to our chest and not let you in.
So what is to be trusted? Our pets certainly, sometimes our loved ones, always our inanimate and animated objects, but the thing that unites me to you – you other – that I trust in you is your art which is always mine too if it then makes any sense to me. I trust in you art, I have faith in you to always make things better.
I was in New York recently and I felt alone and the only thing that made me feel better was searching out the art of others and in looking I found a unity and a delight and an 'ecstasy in communication' (1) that hugged me in a way only my mother can. That art was the art of John Chamberlain found at the Guggenheim, namely his foam sculptures, a honeycomb tactility bound tight, constrained in its being, it held me with it. Laura Favaretto's exhibition at PS1 also did something to me, and in particular her confetti works where something joyful, even a little humorous is at play but with a deep sense of unease. This unease was set free in a room where the confetti is blown about by industrial fans, the only thing I wished for however – though it was fun to watch – was the desire to be in the room with it; to have the confetti closer to me, to allow it to tickle my naked skin along with the air that it was intimate with. I also got a sneak preview of Nick Waplington’s paintings at his studio. These are voluptuous, abstracted figures wrestling with each other, intimate yet in conflict, sexual but also vulnerable, joyful but somehow insidious – they’re paintings I want to live with; he has a show coming up at Hix’s Tramshed, so well worth a visit. And in going forward I want to bounce around in Jeremy Deller’s inflatable Stonehenge, Sacrilege a ‘social surrealism’ (2) where history is made plastic and the everyday is animated to a delightful hyper-real all encompassing environment. You can view where to catch it this summer as part of the London 2012 festival here.
I guess our taste in art moves with our innermost feelings; there is an aesthetic taste that is the core of us, but its also always changing dependent on our environment and our changing relations with others. And when art works for you it binds everything together, relates one thing to another, and connects you to the world. This is the ‘ecstasy of communication’ that I think Richard Prince talks of, at least it is for me.
I am still feeling a sense of solitude, a fragmentary unfamiliarity with frivolity, a disunity to the real and at times an alarm with the seriousness banality of life – this will no doubt pass, and my mood will shift again – but it was nice to share this with you. I feel closer to you now. I'm still considering a pet though.
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Photo: courtesy Nick Waplington
1. Prince, Richard, Thoughts on Spiritual America, 12/09/11
2. Deller, Jeremy, Dazed and Confused, 2012