Coincidences

It is very strange when you find the weirdest coincidences in life, or stumble upon things in your life that somehow together are connected to a plethora of things you are doing at the moment.

This happened to me just recently. As you might know, I have recently made some new videos, and one of them is about immortality, called "The Immortal Man" and a while back, in May I think, I made a sort of tribute to rituals, satanic worship, witchcraft and a throwback to my "goth" days, all crammed into a video called "Salt for the Devil".

A week ago I was reading about gothic literature and came upon the novel "The Monk: A Romance" by Matthew Gregory Lewis. I decided to give it a try, more for a laugh than anything else because it is old-school kitsch and a reminder to me about what I left behind in my teenage years. To my surprise, after reading about a third of the novel I found two passages, almost within just a few pages of each other, that correspond to the two videos I made recently! One passage was about an immortal man, the other was about a ritual that included throwing some substance on the ground in a circle, and placing various objects in the shape of crosses around the circle. I would like to quote both passages, and I invite you, my reader, to read the first passage, then watch my video that coincides with it, then read the second passage and watch the second video. Links are provided beneath the quotes.

M. G. Lewis on Immortality:

"Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement: I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no Friend in the world, and from the restlessness of my destiny I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the Grave: but Death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the Ocean; the Waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into the fire; the flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of Banditti; their swords become blunted, and break against my breast: the hungry Tiger shudders at my approach, and the Alligator flies from a Monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his Creatures respect this fatal mark!"

My video on Immortality:

The Immortal Man

M. G. Lewis on rituals:

"He next drew from the Chest a covered Goblet: with the liquor which it contained, and which appeared to be blood, he sprinkled the floor, and then dipping in it one end of the Crucifix, he described a circle in the middle of the room. Round about this he placed various reliques, sculls, thigh-boned; I observed that he disposed of them all in the forms of Crosses. Lastly he took out a large Bible, and beckoned me to follow him into the Circle. I obeyed. 'Be cautious not to utter a syllable!' whispered the Stranger; 'Step not out of the circle, and as you love yourself, dare not to look upon my face!' "

My video which involves some sort of improvised ritual:

Salt for the Devil

Little note: I obviously know these are not exactly what my videos are about, my immortal man is very different and has his immortality on completely different terms, and the ritual performed in my video is completely different to this one.

Enzo's adventures in a new house

Sorry but today's post is going to be incredibly silly. It is specifically for Jocelyn and Enzo to enjoy!

I was cat sitting for Enzo for three nights and... I got some incredibly funny photos of him trying to be all "tough" and at the same time failing and turning into a little kitten. Here is a compilation:

I hope you enjoy this sunny kitten on a sunny Sunday! Enzo, it has been a pleasure having you and we will gladly have you again!

Exist-an-tialist

Sometimes I watch something or I read something and I suddenly get a rush of incredibly existentialist ideas. Today watching two films which ultimately talk about the same thing, made me want to disappear into the void of the universe. Because life is never as beautiful and magical as we want it to be.

I don't really want to discuss the two films so I won't say what they were. I want to discuss the fact that I am now sitting in my bed, looking at my cat grooming herself without a care in the world, except caring whether I love her or Enzo (the other cat) more or less. I wish my life sometimes was as simple as growling and hissing when I am protecting my territory and then happily curl into a ball next to my favorite person in the world. I like that the cat leaves their favorite human no choice but to love them back and love them the most, because that is how awesome cats are. Why can't I do the same thing to my favorite human in the whole world? Why can't I make my favorite human be anyone in close proximity, why can't I settle for what I deal with and not worry about intelligence, looks or grooming habits? Cats like you more if you are a social shut-in, if you spend all day at home eating lovely greasy meat and cheese foods that they can steal from you, they love it when you sweat and don't shower and the more lazy you get, the more they enjoy rolling around in the dirt of your house. It's as if the cat wants you to be a total incompetent slob. And I am not saying I want to be a slob, I am just saying I wish I could choose my humans based on reversed qualities required of people to be liked by other people.

Enough about cats. Here is the real deal. I am (once again) disappointed in humanity. I am not having dark thoughts or feeling depressed and lonely, I am just contemplating humanity and how utterly disappointing it really is, most of the time.

What do I want in life? I want kindness, elegance, beauty, care, morality, appreciation, equality, emotional visual and auditory sensations. And because those are the things I want in life, they are the things I try to provide. I try to be as caring and kind as possible, with pure selflessness thrown in. I am an artist because I want to excite people, depress them, make them wonder, make them angry or laugh, all with my artwork. I really don't do much else in life except make art, look at art (also read, listen and think) and try to make the people around me happy, satisfied, help them in every way and truthfully care about them.

What starts to depress me is when none of this is seen by anybody, when none of this is even contemplated or given back in any shape or form. I hate when everything I do ends up in someone's emotional garbage, or literally just garbage. I hate when I realize, once again, how much nobody gives a damn about anybody, how much everybody spends on themselves and how little on the rest of the world, even just thinking about it. I hate when people assume things and I hate when people put words in my mouth. I hate most of all when people simply don't care and don't even try to care.

Sometimes I go to sleep with such dark thoughts that I have incredibly dark dreams, where fictional characters materialize themselves out of my dark thoughts and end up engulfing them, eating them, making them their prey. Sometimes I make peace with the most evil persons in my dreams, sometimes I make friends with them, and it's all because in my mind the dark thoughts are colliding with everything I hate about living as a human. How many times have I contemplated living as an hermit in the caves of Nepal? Practically at least once a week this thought crosses my mind, or living completely alone on the planet. It's a weird combination of the fact that I love life and I love everything in it, including humans, but then I also despise humanity and I hate the life that humanity leads, leaving me to imagine a world without them.

I am just upset I guess that life really is bitter, sour, morbid, full of fear and hate and apathy most of the time. I wish it wasn't, I wish there was something that interested every single person in the world and I wish people got rid of their inner demons and learned to appreciate one another. I wish everyone thought about beauty and elegance instead of ugly thoughts of hate and disgust. I wish everyone walked around with huge smiles on their faces and greeted each other and felt no grudges or judgemental feelings. I wish we all groomed ourselves properly and cared about what we put out into the world, and at the same time wished to be closer to stars and other galaxies and not afraid to think outside of our Planet Earth. I wish people were not scared of the universe and the fact that we are incredibly small and pathetic and unneeded. A lot of human problems would be solved once everyone realized we are not special or unique and therefore all the big-headedness would disappear and hopefully some harmony could return to the world.

MCA Chicago

I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art finally! (in Chicago... obviously cause that's where I live)

Overall... not actually too bad! I really liked some of the exhibits and they have some iconic paintings that I really enjoyed looking at. Also: I felt incredibly smart when I was approached by two elderly ladies who asked me if I can tell them a little bit about Chuck Close. I was like... YES my time to shine. Because as much as I struggled all throughout art history in college, all that information really stuck to my brain, and now I can show off my slightly useless knowledge! Anyway... bragging aside, here is what I liked/found interesting:

"First 50": this is an exhibition of the first 50 artworks that came into MCA's collection. It had quite a range, from Ed Paschke to Chuck Close to Enrico Baj and so on. I have a soft spot for Ed Paschke, I am not going to lie. I share his interest in collecting images from all printed visual media, and I am really fascinated by how he transformed television type of visual imagery into painting... it translates so well. I remember the first time I came across one of his works, I had no idea who he was or what he was about, but immediately thought: wow this artist works from television imagery... and I was so right. His colors are bright and slightly off-putting by being so "commercial" and "likeable" at first glance. But then the more you look at the colors, the more you realize how sickly disgusting they are and how well they fit the overall theme. I do love Ed Paschke.. so please don't judge me on that. I know in some art circles he is listed with the likes of Jeff Koons but in my mind they are millions of miles apart.

Apart from Ed Paschke, I also really liked Enrico Baj, who I don't think I've ever seen before in real life, and Gladys Nilsson.

"Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today": the title is pretty self-explanatory, but I would just like to mention that they are exploring why painting is always believed to be a dying artform, and it always comes back to bite you in the ass... because painting will never die out, and this exhibition is looking at ways that painting is evolving, which is part of the reason why it will never die. Of course, this is my cup of tea.. because painting is my life. I don't just like to paint.. I have to look at it, examine it, I love going to a museum and looking at the thickness on paintings, how they were painted, look for imperfections, brushwork... and so on. Anyway, my latest obsession is finding out little known AbEx painters, partly because that's what I do in my internship, and partly because I have a new found love for abstract painting.

First of all.. they had a Rauschenberg! This one to be precise: "Retroactive II" from 1963:

I really enjoyed Sergej Jensen, he uses a variety of different materials to paint on, which creates interesting new textures. His palette is very subdued but it has a calming and reassuring effect. Here is one of his works I found on another gallery's website, "Untitled" from 2010:

Isn't it just beautiful? Finally, this is not something I like but this struck me like lightning.. in the middle of the room I found a Josh Smith and it reminded me of my Intro to Art class in college... when we had to incorporate the word "CAT" into an artwork and the image of a cat, but make it inconspicuous. I think that idea comes from Josh Smith's work including his initials.

"Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks": This is very "conceptually loaded". He uses a lot of shared experiences and references by constructing artwork from his everyday objects. He is exploring the past and the culture he comes from, but to me it's just something a lot of artists do... and I am not so sold on this idea. For me art is escapist, it is imaginary, it is not your therapist that tells you to dig deeper into your roots to find the core of your problems. I don't really enjoy when art is based on the everyday, when art is given a very direct concept with little room for interpretation. Having said that, I did enjoy some of the works by Johnson, especially all the broken mirror works and the combination of black and gold is very visually appealing. So my question is.. should an artist have a face, a name, an ethnicity, a context background? Should an exhibit have an explanation? I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I didn't read what this exhibition was about before or even after seeing it.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung: Quite interesting abstract art. I didn't like the works where she had the canvas (?) hanging in strips between paintings, but I liked some works such as "Victorian Sex Painting":

New York School: Always a classic of course, focusing on late 40s and 50s, with some amazing works by Rothko, deKooning, Kline, etc. Since I changed my mind about Rothko, this is the first time I've seen it up close and personal. Before, Rothko was one of my least favorite artists from that era but now that I really like his work, I was blown away by the work presented here, which is "Untitled" from 1969 that hasn't been on display since 1996! What! I know, why would they hide a gem like this one. Sorry for the seriously bad quality photo here, I couldn't find a better one online:

I was really not impressed with Esteban Vicente.. honestly he slightly reminded me of Cezanne.. I don't like Cezanne. Philip Guston on the other hand really interested me, because I have not seen a lot of his works in real life, and they really are quite beautiful and playful. I have to say I was disappointed in deKooning because I used to really enjoy his works, but now I getting sick of his "I am an abstract painter but I am gonna stick a figure in here anyway" approach. And as much as I am not a fan of Barnett Newman, the painting they had on display called "Galaxy" made me stare at it for quite a few minutes. When you imagine that the strip of brown is our lifetime in the vastness of the red unknown cosmos, it makes your head swirl a little bit. This is why abstract painting is so incredibly complex and can really take your breath away... you can pretend it's anything in the world, it is imaginative and structurally diverse.

"Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity": I don't have much to say... I am not into buildings that much, and I know that the Skyscraper is iconic but to me it's just another one of those concept-ridden art things that best left to interpretation than solid themes. I did enjoy seeing Westermann's "Memorial to the Idea of Man if He was an Idea" because I remember studying it in art history and laughing... And I actually kind of enjoyed Roger Brown's comic-book lookalike story-telling fresh solid paintings, although not in a serious kind of way. This is "Ablaze and Ajar" from 1972:

I also kind of liked Marie Bovo's two photographs, "Cour Interieure 29 Avril 2009" and "Cour Interieure 19 novembre 2009" because they were simply aesthetically beautiful.

Books from London

I finally took the time to scan all the books I made when I spent a semester in London.

The project was that there are real people and there are fictional people. And then there are those in between... taken from reality but added a little more flavor to. I decided to create completely fictional characters, with completely fictional lives and most importantly, deaths. Every story would start with the notion that this character is already dead. And each story would be told as a biographical account, dry and lacking in metaphors, therefore making it seem like a very true story, rather than fiction.

I created four books. Each book focuses on one fictional character and his "entourage". Each story is more and more bizarre, as the first story I wrote, Russell Brown, is very close to real life and could have happened anywhere. The last one, "Squirrel Guardian" is rather strange.

Here are scans of all 4 books, in order of strangeness (according to me.. not anyone else) and I apologize, scanning them was really hard because they were made on really fragile hand-made Indian paper but I tried my best to preserve the essence of not only the drawings and the words, but also the tactile factor of the books. After all, I made them completely by hand without any outside help!
Click on each image to see it in full size to be able to read it!

Russell Brown:

Without a Twin

London Eye

Squirrel Guardian

Illustrations

Last summer I worked for Bela-Fond charity and created illustrations for the their fairy-tale project. This one was for a tale called "The Moth and the Nightingale."

Here are some of my favorite ones that I made: