theneutral

Interview, NY arts:

2012-01-20T14:39:00.003-05:00

John O'Connor interviewed me for NY Arts Magazine.

"In my paintings those various given terms tend to get outside their usual roles, to do different things. Sometimes the linen support and the painted front switch places. Sometimes the wood gets itself in between the paint and the linen. Paintings seem to be undoing something about how they would normally work."

I talk about zombies too.

To read the full interview:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/curated/in-conversation-john-o-connor-interviews-ken-weathersby

At vacnj:

2012-01-05T13:55:00.000-05:00

179 (twn - detail), Ken Weathersby, 2010

'Textility"

Opening reception: Friday, January 13, 6 -8pm

The show runs until Sunday, April 1, 2012

Visual Art Center of New Jersey

68 Elm St.

Summit, NJ 07901

I'll have work in this show, along with a very interesting group of other artists. The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, January 13, 6-8pm at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey. A fully illustrated catalog that includes essays by both curators will accompany the show. The exhibition runs through April 1, 2012.

"Co-curators Mary Birmingham and Joanne Mattera coined the word 'textility' to describe a new sensibility that they divide into three separate categories: paintings without paint (and its corollary, drawing without pencil), textiles without thread, and idiosyncratic work made with a strong focus on materiality and process." (-- Sharon Butler / Two Coats of Paint)

Participating artists: Joell Baxter, Caroline Burton, Sharon Butler, Mary Carlson, Jennifer Cecere, Pip Culbert, Elisa D'Arrigo, Grace DeGennaro, Barbara Ellmann, Carly Glovinski, Elana Herzog, Marietta Hoferer, Nava Lubelski, Stephen Maine, Lael Marshall, Derick Melander, Sam Messenger, Sam Moyer, Lalani Nan, Aric Obrosey, Gelah Penn, Debra Ramsay, Susan Still Scott, Arlene Shechet, Susanna Starr, Leslie Wayne, Ken Weathersby and Peter Weber.

Faction:

2011-10-04T10:41:00.002-04:00

Faction

University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio
Oct. 3-27, 2011
Reception and panel discussion: Tuesday, Oct. 18, 6-8 PM

Chris Ashley
Timothy B. Buckwalter
Ron Buffington
Marc Cheetham
Brian Cypher
Scott Grow
Matthew Langley
Daniel Levine
Lorri Ott
Jon Poblador
Danielle Riede
Don Voisine
Ken Weathersby
Michael Willie
Douglas Witmer
R.C. Wonderly

Curated by Jeffrey Cortland Jones

For more about my work in this show: 104 a/b (a.k.a. aqua-twin)

Abyss, Abbess, Abet:

2011-10-03T11:08:00.003-04:00

Emily Auchincloss solo show, "Abyss, Abbess, Abet"

Sept. 12 - Oct. 7, 2011
Kent Place Gallery
42 Norwood Avenue
Summit, NJ 07902

"Auchincloss’s paintings expressively pull apart and reconstruct a syntax of image, symbol and space in their relational webs." -- Ken Weathersby

"The title of the show is descriptive: as the three words of the title have an alliterative relationship, they also have a poetic relationship between their meanings, a certain rhythmic hiccupping when spoken, and a further branching of meanings when considered singularly. The work is meant to function in similar territory." -- Emily Auchincloss


Abyss, Abess, Abet, installation view, Kent Place Gallery

Abyss, Abess, Abet, reception, Kent Place Gallery

Abyss, Abess, Abet, installation view, Kent Place Gallery


Ocean for an Overtaker, Oil on Canvas, 54" x 44", Emily Auchincloss

Time Is the Diamond:

2011-10-03T09:51:00.007-04:00

My solo exhibition of a group of very small works at Some Walls in Oakland, CA closed recently.

To see full images and text about the show, go here:
Time Is the Diamond

Chris Ashley's essay:

Ken Weathersby’s "Time is the Diamond"
Some argue that painting, like Humpty Dumpty, has fallen off the wall, taken a great fall, and can’t be put back together again: dropped, cracked open, oozed out, and finished. But painters like Ken Weathersby have shown that painting appears to continue living a healthy life long after its reported demise. Paintings do things and are about things that other mediums can’t match. While much art continues on a seemingly rapid path towards newer technologies and entertainment, encouraging fast looking and sound bite-like understanding, the technology of most painting, handmade and viewed slowly, at a finely granular level, might gradually be seen as anti-technology, or rather, as a kind of antidote to quicker, bigger, and shinier art. The technology of painting is more like Fred Flintstone’s car, made out of stone, wood, and animal skins, and powered and stopped by the driver’s feet.
In addition to the fundamentals of painting, however, its literal and conceptual deconstruction is an issue inherent to the medium throughout history. Painting has moved from being made on a specific wall, to being made for a specific wall or setting, and ultimately made to be completely portable and adaptable to different environments. Patronage has shifted among the church, the state, the wealthy, and the commoner. And, periodically, the question asked again and again is, just what is a painting: what shape is it, is it flat, how does it hang, what size is it, and must it be made with paint?
Ken Weathersby’s art engages smartly and sensitively with the possibilities of painting. Simultaneously clear-minded and intuitive, rational and risky, he pulls painting apart and puts it back together, making something new and quirky and thoughtful. Canvases are sliced and diced, but unlike Lucio Fontana’s cuts opening a void, Weathersby’s cuts are surgical, so that parts can be reattached, or transplanted, or opened to view another level of the painting. He cuts, rotates, shifts, reverses, and inserts. The classic grid or checkerboard is interrupted or made imperfect. Fronts and backs visibly co-exist, and the rarely seen chassis, staples, nails, screws, and threads are exposed. Elaborate carpentry normally behind the scenes becomes a central player. Weathersby’s paintings don’t merely question what a painting is, but provide physical evidence of several visual and philosophical resolutions to the properties, problems, expectations, and contradictions of painting by exploring front and back, inside and outside, the plane of the surface and depicted and actual space, pattern and disruption, and craft and art.
Weathersby’s small works, made with foam core, linen, wood, tape, and the images of his work reproduced on exhibition announcements, are not exactly studies. Although they use many of the same motifs and structures and share the same subjects and concepts found in his larger size work, they are individual pieces that can stand alone. To call them miniatures would not be an insult or diminution, but instead a useful label to place these small pieces as a specific set within Weathersby’s body of work. And though small, each works scale reads as large and full-sized, or, rather, right-sized.
Lined up on a simple shelf and leaning against the wall are twenty-two works in less than twelve linear feet, the smallest measuring approximately 2.5 x 1.5 inches, the largest, a real outlier, at just over 8 x 5 inches. This installation, Time is the Diamond, titled after a song by the American band Low, provides an overview and record of Weathersby’s invention, wit, and curiosity, of what painting might be, aspires to be, and can’t overcome. The song’s dense, abstract, almost impenetrable lyrics have a folk quality, listing things the singer is or is not, or has and has lost, akin to the hybrid and transgressive qualities in Weathersby’s art that are ultimately resolved, over time, in honed, precise, finished works:
If I’m not a lion
And I’m not an island
If time is the diamond
Well all right.
Weathersby’s art is extremely forthright but not immediately fully forthcoming; initially appearing accessible, it is complicated, dense, and full of rich and intriguing contradiction. At a quick glance, his images are of a type one might expect to be manufactured, but instead we see that every single aspect of the work is handcrafted, from the elaborate stretchers and framing, to the taped and painted areas, to the surface cuts and insertions. Materially and structurally, he makes plain how the object is made, but there is often a sense of peekaboo or sleight of hand in the layers, displacement, and disruption of image and spaces. One would expect the use of the grid and checkerboard to lead to stability, but more often than not these normally regular fields are set ajar, slid apart, flipped open, broken, or misaligned. This is not art that panders, but rather insists that we engage by visually assembling, disassembling, and reassembling each work’s constituent parts in order to see, experience, and understand a holistic image and object. This is one way that Weathersby’s art extends painting’s possibilities.
Weathersby also extends paintings’s possibilities via the emotional and psychological spaces and situations it instigates. Intellectually, we might encounter his work as a visual puzzle to be solved, but there is more at stake here. What is the emotion of assembly and disassembly, visibility and invisibility, regularity and disruption, and why is this interesting and how does it enhance our lives? What is the psychology of gaps, slips, incisions, displacements, and what use is this to us? Weathersby’s art isn’t cruel or demanding, but is instead made with the utmost regard for the viewer, conveying integrity, openness, and generosity. Respectfully but rigorously, the spaces of the paintings echo the intimate, perplexing, meaningful spaces of ourselves, our bodies and thoughts, the things we acknowledge and know and attempt to share but are often beyond words. In this work we encounter our own self-knowledge and contradictions, aspirations and ambiguity. By confronting the parts of Weathersby’s art we can experience something in bits and pieces as right and whole in many different configurations and encounters. This is Weathersby’s diamond, painting’s health, and Art’s payoff.

Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA
August 2011

192 (ptch):

2011-10-03T09:28:00.002-04:00

192 (ptch), 2011, acrylic and graphite over linen over wood, 30" x 20"

Ken Weathersby

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192 (ptch), process 3
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192 (ptch), process 2 click image to enlarge

192 (ptch), process1
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192 (ptch), mini (less than 10" tall)
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Upcoming, unending:

2011-09-01T13:57:00.001-04:00

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Without End

I'll be in this five-person show at University of Delaware's Crane Gallery in Philadelphia.

“… In this exhibition, the work selected looks through the lens of process in making art, and specifically the construction and deconstruction of ideas, formula, aesthetics and memory…”

Sept. 8 - Oct. 6, 2011 (reception Sept. 8, 6-9pm)
Crane Gallery
1400 American St.
Philadelphia, PA

and in...

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Faction

a group show, at University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio.

Oct. 3 - Oct. 24, 2011 (reception Tuesday, October 18th, 6 - 8pm.

Art Street, Studio D
University of Dayton
Dayton Ohio, 45469

the pencil of nature:

2011-07-17T13:05:00.003-04:00

I've been steadily photographing here since I moved into Aferro Studios in Newark in February. I use the camera for a number of reasons. As I work, I find that I'm constantly inventing (reinventing, I'm sure) ways to do things. Sometimes in the middle of it I notice that I'm interested, in sort of a detached way, in how a process looks. I try to record those views. I also want to remember specific things that I did, and especially to recall ideas that emerged on the way to something else. I take a lot of notes and make lots of little sketches, but photography is another way to keep an idea around.

an array of very small works, 2011

Ken Weathersby

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process image, 2011

Ken Weathersby

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idea / process, 2011

Ken Weathersby

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process image, 2011

Ken Weathersby

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painting wall, 2011

Ken Weathersby

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For coffee II:

2011-06-13T11:22:00.000-04:00

187 process, studio shot, 6-11

Ken Weathersby

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187 process (verso), studio shot, 6-12-11

Ken Weathersby

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187 process (woven birch and gel), studio shot, 6-12-11

Ken Weathersby

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In California, upcoming, (#1):

2011-05-26T10:51:00.000-04:00

13 small works, less than 5" tall, (studio shot) collaged paper, linen, acrylic & graphite on canvas on archival foam board

Ken Weathersby

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I'll be showing an array of very small works (including some of those shown above) at Some Walls, a curatorial and writing project in a private home in Oakland, California directed by artist and writer Chris Ashley.

The work will be on view there from August 7 through September 25, 2011.

Some Walls home page

For coffee:

2011-05-18T13:52:00.000-04:00

coffeesketch2a, process drawing, digital, 5-18-2011

Ken Weathersby

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Wall:

2011-05-02T13:32:00.000-04:00

studio wall with double D reverse process, 5-1-11

Ken Weathersby

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183 (layover), 184 (doubleD), 185 collage:

2011-04-29T11:06:00.000-04:00

183 (layover), acrylic & graphite on canvas, behind acrylic paint film, with wood, 19" x 16", 2011

Ken Weathersby

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183 (layover - detail), acrylic & graphite on canvas, behind acrylic paint film, with wood, 19" x 16", 2011

Ken Weathersby

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184 (doubleD), acrylic & graphite on canvas, with removed linear areas, 30" x 24", 2011

Ken Weathersby

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185 (collage), printed paper, linen, wood, about 2" tall, 2011

Ken Weathersby

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DD:

2011-04-27T14:56:00.001-04:00

184 DD process, 4 - 2011

Ken Weathersby

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184 DD process, 4 - 2011

Ken Weathersby

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Layovers, and:

2011-04-20T20:58:00.000-04:00

"layovers... " process on 4-20-11

Ken Weathersby

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"layovers... " process on 4-20-11

Ken Weathersby

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"layovers... " process on 4 -11

Ken Weathersby

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"layovers... " and 184 (DD) process on 4-20-11

Ken Weathersby

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PCR:

2011-04-07T12:04:00.005-04:00

Reg Bloor / Paranoid Critical Revolution

at Kent Place School 4-7-11

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Reg Bloor / Paranoid Critical Revolution

at Kent Place School 4-7-11

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(photos by Mariana Do Carmo)

Reg Bloor / "Paranoid Critical Revolution" performance at Kent Place School as visiting artist 4-7-11 for all upper school students and faculty. She played a killer set, roughly 40 minutes straight through.

Guitarist Reg Bloor has been performing with Glenn Branca (to whom she is married) since 2000. She played in Branca’s Symphony # 12, Lesson #3, his rock band Branca/Bloor, in his trio, eventually becoming concertmaster for his Symphony #13 for 100 Guitars. She can be heard on Branca’s CD “The Ascension: The Sequel”. In the late 90’s she was a founding member of the Boston-based band TWITCHER, who released the CD “Leg of Lamb of God” in 1999 and appeared on the soundtrack of the Troma film “Terror Firmer”. In 2010, I saw her perform as Paranoid Critical Revolution in Brooklyn and at Le Poisson Rouge in NY. She also played in the NYC debut of Glenn Branca’s Symphony #15 /Running Through the World Like an Open Razor.

The Paranoid Critical Revolution has been playing the NYC club scene since 2006. PCR’s debut CD “Death of the Cool” came out in Dec. 2007 just in time for the band to play ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES, “A Nightmare Before Christmas” in Minehead, England. PCR played at the South by Southwest Music Festival in 2009, and at many other venues since.

http://www.theparanoidcriticalrevolution.com/

To begin:

2011-03-29T17:23:00.001-04:00

untitled, acrylic on canvas & printed paper collage over printed image of linen, about 4" x 3", 2 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, side view, acrylic on canvas & printed paper collage, about 4" x 3", 2 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, printed paper collage over linen, about 4" x 3", 2 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, sideview, printed paper collage over linen, about 4" x 3", 2 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, printed paper collage over linen, about 4" x 3", 2 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, printed paper collage, about 4" x 3", 3 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, printed paper collage, about 4" x 3", 3 -11

Ken Weathersby

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untitled, acrylic on canvas, about 4" x 3", 2 -11

Ken Weathersby

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In print.:

2011-03-01T14:09:00.002-05:00

173(Lnd) detail, acrylic on linen with reversed areas,

Ken Weathersby

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New American Painting, Northeast Edition 2011 is now available at newstands and bookstores.

Three of my recent paintings are inside, and "173(Lnd)", detail above, is on the back cover. The juror for this edition was Laura Hoptman, curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Malleable:

2011-02-20T12:45:00.003-05:00

179(twnR), detail, Ken Weathersby, 2010
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Postconceptualism: the Malleable Object

Opens March 10, 2011 at University of Maryland's Stamp Gallery

Artist panel-- March 17, 2011, 6pm.

Essay by Mark Cameron Boyd (excerpt):
"Postconceptualism: the Malleable Object explores the work of nine artists who individually extend and expand upon the theories and ideas of Conceptual Art in unique ways...

...Recent work by Ken Weathersby resurrects painting through a negotiation between the intellectual and physical properties of the support. Weathersby subverts the 'language of painting' through a three-dimensional manipulation that disrupts our perception by creating a 'no-space space.'..."

(full text here)

New Ark:

2011-02-18T13:29:00.005-05:00

aferro studios, Newark, NJ

My studio at home has become something of a puzzle with many complicated moving parts--work in progress and tools and books take up an increasing amount of the space.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be doing a residency at Aferro Studios in Newark, NJ. The residency goes until August of 2011, so for the next six months, I'll see what it's like to work a little differently. It will be the first time since my loft in Williamsburg in the 90's that I'll have a dedicated, work-only studio space of over 1,200 sq. feet. The studio at Aferro should allow me to spread out and work on more projects at once, and on larger pieces.

Evonne Davis and Emma Wilcox run the program there, and they seem to have a good thing going, attracting interesting artists from all over.

Gallery Aferro

Aferro Studios Blog

Hallucination:

2011-02-06T17:50:00.001-05:00

sweet stain, oil, acrylic, pencil & ink on canvas, paper, wood & cashmere

Bruce Stiglich

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“Accumulation/Hallucination”

Bruce Stiglich’s “Accumulation/Hallucination”

Kent Place Gallery Monday, February 14 – Friday, March 11

closing reception 6—8 pm on Friday March 11.

Works in the show combine painting, drawing and the gathering of found objects to create complex, beautiful and densely painted collections of surfaces and images.

“Sweet Stain” (above), uses a wide range of means, including oil paint, acrylic, graphite, ink, wood, and, crucially, cashmere. A tiny scrap of stained cashmere formed the starting point of this complex work. Stiglich painted a portrait of the scrap of fabric, enlarged and copied his own painting, represented it again in another way, again and again, and each new view became a part of the whole. The cluster of representations contains mirrorings and repetitions, but also surprises that open up space for the imagination. It is a kaleidoscopic outgrowth of remembering and reflecting. Yet the subject (if that shred of stained fabric is really the subject) remains enigmatic.

Such a ceaseless return to a mute and mysterious object, and the possibly obsessive circling around it with art, brings to mind Citizen Kane’s rosebud, Proust’s madeleine, that little scrap of blue velvet so prized by Frank in David Lynch’s film. The point for me is that Stiglich creates an exciting, almost hallucinatory visual world, and the work resists collapsing into an easy interpretation.

New York Times art critic Ken Johnson has said, “Style in Bruce Stiglich's work is psychological, as the seemingly obsessive repetition of tiny marks that build up into dense vibrating textures suggest the feverishly compulsive activity of an inspired monomaniac. You may be reminded of Jackson Pollock's drip works or folk artists who are driven to decorate their homes with countless polka dots or flattened beer cans.”

Bruce says, “My work is a compiling of personal history. I work in series. These series become installations. They span an extended period of time. It begins with a discovery of found images, objects and doodles that to me seem incomplete. The process of completing the images is self referential in nature.”

Bruce Stiglich’s art work has been seen in numerous exhibitions in recent years in New York City and the New York area, in Pennsylvania, and in Miami, Florida. He currently teaches at Parsons School of Design, and has also taught at Pont-Aven School of Art in France, and at the State University of New York. He has been a curator of several art exhibitions at MyPAC, in Miami, FL.

Kent Place Gallery

42 Norwood Ave.

Summit, NJ 07902

http://www.kentplace.org

# # #

As if:

2011-02-04T12:58:00.000-05:00

layovers to catch meddlers, process drawing, digital, 2-3-2011

Ken Weathersby

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Thus:

2011-01-29T22:57:00.000-05:00

6 paper collages, each about 4" x 3", 1-29-11

Ken Weathersby

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And:

2011-01-25T13:02:00.000-05:00

2 more mockups at 181, paper collage, each 4" x 3", 1-24-11

Ken Weathersby

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In advance:

2011-01-24T11:03:00.000-05:00

mockup re: 181, paper collage, 4" x 3", 1-23-11

Ken Weathersby

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mockup re: 181, paper collage, 4" x 3", 1-23-11

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls), process > complete:

2011-01-16T14:09:00.002-05:00

180 (nmls) process

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls) process

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls) process

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls), reverse

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls), acrylic and graphite on canvas, with removed and replaced area, 30" x 24", 2011

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls), detail, acrylic and graphite on canvas, with removed and replaced area, 30" x 24", 2011

Ken Weathersby

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Also, subversions:

2011-01-13T14:26:00.010-05:00

lookout mountain tennessee and the chattanooga railroad, 1866, Currier & Ives

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THERELY BARE
(a traveling show, curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington)

AVA Gallery 30 Frazier Avenue, Chattanooga, TN,
January 14-February 15, 2011
Reception: Friday, January 14, 5:30pm - 8:00pm
(later moving to Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN, and then to Kent State University)

Kate Beck
Alan Ebnother
Kevin Finklea
Billy Gruner and Sarah Keighery
Jeffrey Cortland Jones
Michael Paul Oman-Reagan
Lorri Ott
Leopoldine Roux
Clary Stolte
Lars Strandh
Richard Van Der Aa
Iemke Van Dijk
Ken Weathersby
Guido Winkler
Lain York

THERELY BARE, an exhibition of non-objective art curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington, will feature the work of 16 artists from around the world, including the United States, France, Belgium, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
Working in a style sometimes called reductive, these artists share a subversive approach to the traditions of painting. The exhibition title is wordplay, an inversion of “barely there.” It also hints at the curatorial premise of the exhibition. The abstract paintings in the show are explicitly physical and tend to have a forthright facture and presence, but also work within the means of painting itself to obfuscate, conceal or contradict expectations. In this sense, the work is hiding in plain sight. THERELY BARE challenges typical modes of viewing and raises questions about perception itself.
The curators, both professors at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, curated this exhibition specifically for AVA , but it will also be traveling to Kent State later in the year.

# # #

Soon:

2011-01-13T10:39:00.003-05:00

syntax, acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30", 2005

Ken Weathersby

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Visual Phrasing
(curated by Virginia Butera)

Jonathan Allmaier, Patricia Bender, Robert Bohn, Collette Broeders, Carrie Crow and John Greiner, Bill Davis, Joseph Farbrook, Lesley Flanigan, Adel Gorgy, Meredith Re' Grimsley, Industry of the Ordinary (Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson), Marty Jonas, Patti Jordan, Meg Klim, Liz Lee (Lake View, So Yoon Lym, Claire Marcus, Christina Massey, Gail Morrison-Hall, Jen Pepper, Tristan Perich, Mary Pinto, Debra Ramsay, Susan Reedy, Rocco Scary, Karen Shaw, Sam Smith, Jamie Marie Waelchli, Ken Weathersby, Mark Wojcik, Jing Zhou, Sue Zwick

"Visual Phrasing" is part of a four-part project combining art, music, dance and poetry collectively called "The Phrase in Art".

It is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

January 20 - April 17, 2011

Reception: Jan. 20, 4:30 - 7 pm, (artist's panel, 7 - 8 pm)

Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery
College of Saint Elizabeth
2 Convent Road
Morristown, NJ 07960

# # #

Sample 5:

2010-12-24T14:29:00.001-05:00

Tky - process, sound hardware installed, 12-24-10

Ken Weathersby

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Tky - first sketch, 4-09

Ken Weathersby

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This painting is almost finished. It just needs final installation of the audio, an mp3 playback of sound recorded in the making and painting of the two panels (sounds of painting, applying and peeling masking tape, sanding, sawing, stapling, etc.). The sound was captured and then organized for the looped soundtracks by composer and musician Matt Sargent.

Earlier posts about this project:

A basement:

2010-12-15T15:09:00.007-05:00

Holiday Inn, Saddlebrook, New Jersey

The management seminar is being held in the Holiday Inn basement.

I've got a stack of papers in my hand that L___, our presenter gave me. Almost all of it is catalogs and order forms for other seminars and accompanying books about management training themes, but sliced into different specialties.

L___ steps to the the front of the room.

He gives notes, suggestions, tells anecdotes and mentions his wife and kids, walking back and forth. He occasionally refers to, but mostly ignores, the powerpoint slides with bullet points on the screen. He has clearly digested a lot of popular management books and statistics, and says he will make this practical and something we can all start to use right away, "not philosophy or theory". That pre-digested management wisdom is to be the "content" of the seminar. We take notes.

***

What I first thought was L___'s unified voice is really an unspecified number of different voices. Sometimes L___ makes a point in a voice that it seems we are to take as coming from him, but which sounds very much like popular right wing TV commentator Bill O'Reilly. I wonder if mass audience pundit/talking head figures from radio and TV must be a ubiquitous source of style in this type of performance. I think about how rare a seemingly novel approach to form must be in this field, as in any other. Several other familiar mimicked voices are used by L___ in a way that suggests that they are L___'s own voice, a voice of sincerity and authority, in contrast to the various "funny" or "persona" voices he uses as counterpoint. These other voices are usually marked as funny or satirical by their more exaggerated sounds and body languages.

There is the ostentatious windbag "bad manager" who thinks he's smart, but is doing something dumb (this one seems lifted from vocal stylings used by radio personality Rush Limbaugh). It has a huffing, self-regarding tone and a stiff body posture.

There is the voice of "L__'s wife" (just a falsetto, sometimes crying), with flailing hand gestures.

There is a version of L___ that is a humorously enraged and screaming comic over-reaction to something (a little like comedian Lewis Black). He almost falls over with loss of control during that one.

And there is one persona that L___ actually gives a name, "Wilbur". Wilbur is different. L___ explicitly tells us who Wilbur is, introduces us to him instead of just slipping him in (or slipping into him.) L___ both acts out Wilbur, and refers to him in the third person. Wilbur is the embodiment of the dumb, screw-up employee, the office scapegoat. The worst nightmare for a manager. Wilbur has a "goofy" voice, clownish, choked, and a little lispy, and spazzy body language, and recurs as a character throughout the two days of the seminar. More than with the other personae, we are meant to notice when Wilbur reappears-- "Oh no, here comes Wilbur again!"

***

I've been thinking about forms of presentation. What is meant to be seen and heard, what is conceived as "content", and what is considered just part of the delivery system, what's meant to be ignored, and what is meant as sugar to help the medicine go down. There is so much that happens in those wrong parts.

180 (nmls) process:

2010-12-04T22:06:00.009-05:00

sketches: gpy 2/jr. and 180 (nmls)

Ken Weathersby

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process, 180 (nmls)

Ken Weathersby

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process, (180 nmls)

Ken Weathersby

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process, 180 (nmls)
Ken Weathersby
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180 (nmls) digital mockup

Ken Weathersby

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180 (nmls) digital mockup detail

Ken Weathersby

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continuities interrupted

interruptions (cuts, breaks, fades) disguised, erased, repaired

(compensated)

interruptions & compensations isolated, sublimated, submerged

PDM:

2010-11-21T20:16:00.002-05:00

amy davis in a still from Pig Death Machine

I'm looking forward to seeing PIG DEATH MACHINE, a new Jon Moritsugu + Amy Davis feature movie that has been shot and will be out in 2011.

It's a psychological horror screwball comedy-- and I'll get to see my name in the credits! They partially funded the project through small contributions, and some of the contributors will get an on-screen thank you. I purchased a tiny amount of fame for a tiny amount of money. I would have supported this anyway, though.

I am a longtime fan of Jon's punk rock aesthetic and totally independent approach to film. I was fortunate enough to meet him years ago through his sister, the excellent painter Alison Moritsugu (one of my first artist-friends when I moved to NYC in 1990).

Previous films by Jon, or Jon + Amy include:

2002 Scumrock [Best Feature / New York Underground Film Festival]

1997 Fame Whore [Best Feature / New York Underground Film Festival]

more Jon + Amy's info at IMDb here

#15, Branca:

2010-11-21T13:44:00.014-05:00

Glenn Branca debuted his Symphony # 15 / Running Through the World Like an Open Razor at Le Poisson Rouge last night.

Michele and I were there early and were seated front and center by the low stage. As it turned out I was less than two feet away from the back of Branca's black coattails as he conducted. I had the pleasure of looking over his shoulder at the hand-penciled pages of the score and notes on the pedestal in front of him and at his feet.

The stage was crowded with musicians, and even more so with the jumble of multiple instruments each would play during the piece. Among the players was Reg Bloor (whose fantastic experimental group Paranoid Critical Revolution will perform at Kent Place this spring).

Each movement was a differently shaped large open field of sound. The opening, cymbal-based section, like some of the later guitar-oriented ones, developed into a huge wave of mounting intensity. These sections evolved with nuance and subtlety, but I never lost sight of the whole washing over me. This was in keeping with my experience hearing Branca's guitar pieces in the past, a feeling of powerful insistent frontality, singularity and strong emotion.

Movements that incorporated strange and varied instruments and toys, especially when chance operations came into play (instrumentalists rolling dice or consulting the I-Ching before sounding a harmonica or rattling sticks), evoked a landscape flecked with countless colors, textures and little absurdities. I pictured Bosch or Bruegel paintings, like Bruegel's 'Childrens Games', where there is a beauty and largeness of conception, a seemingly comprehensive world view, but populated and punctuated and by tiny playful acts of lovely futility.

To me the whole sustained a fantastic tension: a forceful forward movement, an expansiveness, crucially kept at bay by a humor of sardonic negativity.

children's games, jan bruegel, 1560
click image to enlarge

The piece will be performed there again tonight.

Interview with Glenn Branca about Symphony #15 here

NYTimes review of the event here

YHBHS:

2010-11-15T11:52:00.001-05:00

I was recently interviewed on the fantastic LA- based blog
You Have Been Here Sometime.
To read the full text,

Go here.

--------

An excerpt:

Your work blurs the line between sculpture and painting. The work you so graciously donated to the LACE auction could be viewed from the front and back. I found myself wanting others to see it from both sides. Do you work both sides of the canvas and supports on purpose, or is this a byproduct of the design? Have you ever considered showing your works so that your audience can see both sides?

Since I deal with the real space of painting, people seem to wonder about the relationship to sculpture. Sometimes I do allow the both sides of the painting to be seen in some way. Like in the paintings 153 (c & a), or 163 (d & g), the painting is paired with another part that, in a way, shows what is hidden, or almost shows it. But it remains about painting, not sculpture.

For me it all comes out of the given aspects of painting as a tradition, as a medium and as a set of conventions. Paintings are generally, normally considered one-sided, visual, they have parts meant to be seen (the colored paint, seen from the front) and parts not meant to be seen (the back of the linen or canvas, the staples, the wood stretchers, etc.) Things I’m doing seem to work in relation to that. It’s not that I want to emphasize the idea of the importance of painting, or celebrate the tradition (I find that boring). It’s more that it’s just this medium and set of conventions I’m intimate with. I’ve looked at paintings and made paintings for a while now, and I can use that familiarity to create kind of suspended or unresolved situations. Seeing the back of a painting or being denied access to an image or part of an image in a painting is one thing. If I was making sculpture it wouldn’t be the same since we know that all sides of sculpture are usually intended to be seen, and there are always parts of it that can’t be seen from a particular view. I think my paintings would be boring as sculptures; the element of wrongness would be taken away.

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Preview update:

2010-11-10T17:06:00.008-05:00

179 (twnR - detail)
2010

Ken Weathersby

click image to enlarge

I'll be showing new paintings (like the one above) with Pierogi Gallery at SEVEN - Miami
Nov. 30 - Dec. 5, 2010

Pierogi Gallery, Hales Gallery, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, BravinLee Programs, Postmasters Gallery, P.P.O.W and Winkleman Gallery will present a special exhibition in the Wynwood District during the art fair week in Miami.

SEVEN
2214 North Miami Ave. Wynwood District
Miami, FL 33217

Aqua twin:

2010-10-24T09:00:00.002-04:00

drawing (104), first sketches, 8-2010

Ken Weathersby

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drawing (104A), process / detail, 2010

Ken Weathersby

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drawing (104A), process / detail, 2010

Ken Weathersby

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drawing (104A), process / detail, 2010

Ken Weathersby

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drawing (104A), ink on paper with graphite and acrylic on on linen over panel inset, 20"x15", 2010

Ken Weathersby

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drawing (104A raking view), ink on paper with graphite and acrylic on on linen over panel inset, 20"x15", 2010

Ken Weathersby

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drawing (104A) & drawing (104B), ink on paper with graphite and acrylic on on linen over panel inset, each 20"x15", 2010

Ken Weathersby

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JCJ, Closer:

2010-10-24T08:35:00.006-04:00

Now This Is Fun, enamel on plexi, 8" x 10", 2010
Jeffrey Cortland Jones

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"Closer, Still" Jeffrey Cortland Jones

October 22 - November 19, 2010

@Kent Place Gallery

42 Norwood Avenue

Summit, NJ

kentplacegallery

The artist works on relatively small sheets of smooth and reflective plexiglass. He applies enamel paint to cover, edge, mark or blur the surfaces. By doing so, he continually unfolds a multiplicity of expression and play within a rigorous and serious vein of abstract painting.

There is an exciting dynamic in these works between transparency, translucency and opacity. Partly through the development of that dynamic, there is an important, shifting balance between atmosphere and object. Some surprising nuances emerge from the paint on the backs of the panels, in some cases not directly seen, but reflecting off the wall to give bit of colored halo to an edge, sometimes showing through superimposed layers, sometimes crawling onto or around the side of a panel just enough to do something interesting.

We tend to want to see through or into the space in paintings. Here we do, but our gaze is both allowed and contained. Our attention is brought to the fact of the material, of the object. We feel we are getting a partial view, a glimpse, like a quick look out the window of a fast moving car, but we never see more than what we could touch.

Jones offers the following: “Painting is simply: obsessive, correcting, locating, apprehending, pigment, fog, field, continuous, resistance.”

Visitation:

2010-09-17T09:51:00.006-04:00

winter beach, watercolor on paper

Polina Barskaya

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Polina Barskaya exhibition “The Visitors”

@Kent Place Gallery
September 15 – October 8, 2010
Reception September 23, 2010, 6 - 8 pm.

info & directions:

kentplacegallery

Barsakaya:

"I was born in Ukraine in 1984, which was still part of the Soviet Union. When I was 4 years old most of my family immigrated to the United States as political refugees… I grew up in Brighton Beach, a predominantly Russian-Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn… American television was a big influence on me. My reality was defined by Old World Soviet-Jewish mentality and New World American values and freedoms…"

She takes a keen interest in the complexity of character and situation in the works of Godard, Fellini, Almodovar and Woody Allen:
"…one goal I have is to be able to do what a filmmaker does, only with paint."

Preview:

2010-09-06T16:01:00.004-04:00

drawing 100, graphite & ink on paper with graphite and acrylic on linen over panel insets, 2010

Ken Weathersby

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Upcoming Shows...

CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION
USM Museum of Art, Hattiesburg, MS.
Oct. 21 - Nov. 20, 2010

AQUA ART FAIR Miami

with Horse Trader Projects.
Dec. 1 - 5, 2010

THERELY BARE

traveling show curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington.
AVA Gallery
30 Frazier Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37450
423-265-4282
January 14, 2011 – February 25, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, January 14, 5 to 8pm

Zeitgeist Gallery
1819 21st Ave S
Nashville, TN 37212-3705
(615) 256-4805
March 3, 2011- April 2, 2011
Opening Reception: TBA

POSTCONCEPTUALISM: THE MALLEABLE OBJECT

University of Maryland Stamp Gallery, curated by Mark Cameron Boyd.
March 7 - April 8, 2011

...more details later

You know which way the wind blows (YAtW V & VI):

2010-09-03T13:20:00.008-04:00

you are the weatherman V and you are the weatherman VI, injet prints, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman V, inkjet print, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman V - detail
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman VI, injet print, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman VI - detail
Ken Weathersby
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Sidekick & sidekick's sidekick:

2010-08-27T11:43:00.008-04:00

179 (TwnL) and 179 (TwnR), acrylic paint film with removed area over wood scaffolding over linen
2010
ken weathersby
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179 (Twn) process, 2010
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179 (TwnR), acrylic paint film with removed area over wood scaffolding over linen
2010
ken weathersby
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Wood structure is alienating the image-bearing face, the paint film, away from its presumed support, the linen. And the painting is twins, not as identical clones, but as mirror reflections.

YAtW, II, III & IV:

2010-07-26T18:51:00.003-04:00

you are the weatherman II, inkjet prints, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman III, inkjet prints, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman III (detail), inkjet prints, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman IV, inkjet prints, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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you are the weatherman IV (detail), inkjet prints, framed, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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(you are the weatherman (I) is here)

Process hLLL (more):

2010-07-25T12:12:00.010-04:00

178(hLLL), process, 7-2010
Ken Weathersby
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178(hLLL), detail, 7-24-2010
Ken Weathersby
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178(hLLL), studio shot, 7-24-2010
Ken Weathersby
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Process, hLLL:

2010-07-01T10:43:00.008-04:00

178 (hLLL), process, 7-1-2010
Ken Weathersby
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3 bodies:

2010-06-21T11:10:00.010-04:00

glenn branca at le poisson rouge, 2010
click image to enlarge
photo by Lori Baily

Last weekend Michele and I saw a screening of the musical performance film "135 Grand St., 1979", a set by the excellent Paranoid Critical Revolution, and a solo performance by Glenn Branca at Le Poisson Rouge in NY. The occasion was celebrating the film's release on DVD.

Branca: Glenn Branca played a guitar with two bodies, a single neck, and no head. The setup (pictured above) was such that the guitar body farthest from his picking hand (the one up where the head piece of the guitar usually is) was the one plugged into the amp. Up there was where the active pickups received whatever impulses came through. In between his active pick and the pickups at the far end, his left hand touched, muted and intervened, mainly with a glass slide. The sound he worked with was exclusively composed of everything but regular strummed guitar string vibrations: feedback, overtones, chiming and clinking. It was at times exquisite. The overall feeling of the performance was of an improvised something being alternately forced out or allowed to escape. The body language and attitude was clownish, staggering, ironic. The performance ended abruptly, he took off the guitar and did a sarcastic hip-shaking dance with his back to us. There is a perversity about this guitar as a physical object, a weirdness in its conjoined-twins shape, and what Branca does with it, that interests me. Maybe one could imagine that Branca made this thing just to get certain sounds, but there is a conceptual and sculptural gesture here. He has turned the guitar around against itself. The object doesn't know if it is coming or going. The part of it he touches and manipulates isn't the part the sound goes through-- is he distancing himself? Is he making room for some kind of inspiration or unknown thing to enter? It strikes me he is certainly finding a way of continuing to 'dance with the one that brought him'. He is wringing something out of the neck of this object. It is still the iconic convention, still a man on a stage thrashing around with an electric guitar, but he's an old man now, and the guitar has become freakish. He might be trying to coax a little more beauty out of the thing, or he might be trying to kill it.

The film: The performances on the film are mixed in terms of interest. A few came across as weak, slightly out-of-the-mainstream rock songs from that moment in time (boring), but the standouts were sublime. Rhys Chatham's solo performance was shattering, fantastic on every level, as performative gesture, as entrancing drone, as intelligent, even self-critical minimalist exploration of that primary iconic image of rock, a young man ecstatically hitting power chords on an electric guitar. In this case, it was the same, single chord for the duration of the entire piece. Branca was also excellent in the film, as were UT, and Youth in Asia (Taro Suzuki killed with his charismatic hysterics.) We had seen bits of this filmed document of the NY 'no wave' scene when it was screened as part of the "Pictures Generation" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was good to see it in full. Even the low points had the charm of somebody's no-production-value home movie snapshot of the time, and the high points were incredibly high.

Paranoid Critical Revolution: Two women, an electric guitarist and a drummer, played a very exciting set. Viscerally powerful, musical, precise. Their wordless "songs" followed each other rapidly, no time or anything else was wasted. We will see them again.

C'OD(e)R:

2010-06-19T11:44:00.013-04:00

The Walking Test, acrylic, ink, colored pencil, graphite & collage, 30" x 22.5"
2010
John J. O'Connor
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Horror Crash, acrylic, colored pencil & graphite on paper, 75.5" x 58"
2010
John J. O'Connor
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C'OD(e)R, John O'Connor exhibition at Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia
installation view
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Michele and I went to Philadelphia to be at the opening of John O'Connor's solo show at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery this week. Beautiful new work. We fell in love with the piece at top called "The Walking Test". It is a particularly exciting collision of O'Connor's highly articulated, meticulous, data-driven, linear drawing up against flowing, viscous, pushed-around paint. One of the things going on in his newer work seems to be an interesting and complicated dialogue between elements of numerical or graphical notation of flow, processes, change and chance (the kind of out-of-control charting or mapping he has long been known for) and intrusions or insertions of actual occasions of organically-shaped phenomena like loosely painted areas. In "The Walking Test", that phenomenal aspect is present in the smudged, smeared and full-bodied paint that forms the larger enclosing shape. The relation of the outer painted area to the inner, drawn form is one of a high degree of both consonance and dissonance spatially, texturally and coloristically. The two interpenetrating areas seem both inseparable and irreconcilable. That tension is reprised and heightened on close inspection by the way the outer paint perimeter's "random" contours against the black ground have been intricately redefined by precise, tiny drawn boundaries. This pairing or twinning of difference is born out in yet another way when considering O'Connor's statement about the process through which this piece developed: "My personal variation on the Turing Test. I tried to draw a shape in the center of the paper, with both hands, from top to bottom, with each hand simultaneously mimicking the other." In other instances of the entry of "natural" elements into the work, there were a number of John's new sculptures here. They use found tree branches as their basis, complex forms that already carry their own data, and receive complexities of O'Connor's thought in the form of added color and graphic symbols like letters and numbers.

links:
john j o'connor
fleisher-ollman gallery

Equated:

2010-06-06T14:52:00.004-04:00

as above, so below

click images to enlarge

Perfect Mismatch:

2010-06-04T15:45:00.008-04:00

perfect mismatch, Pierogi Gallery, May 28 - June 27, 2010
ken weathersby
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perfect mismatch, Pierogi Gallery, May 28 - June 27, 2010
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P. M. 2:

2010-05-30T11:19:00.018-04:00

Pierogi Gallery, 177 North 9th St., Brooklyn

Perfect Mismatch, opening reception, 5-28-10

Looking at 176 (ocg)

Thirsty.

P. M. 1:

2010-05-09T10:04:00.004-04:00

173 (Lnd - detail), acrylic & graphite on linen, reversed, with removed and replaced areas,
2009
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PERFECT MISMATCH
Ken Weathersby solo @ Pierogi Gallery

Reception: Friday, May 28, 7 - 9 pm
Exhibition: May 28 - June 27

PIEROGI
177 North 9th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
T. 718.599.2144
F. 718.599.1666
E. info@pierogi2000.com
www.pierogi2000.com

l.a.c.e. 2:

2010-04-27T22:23:00.005-04:00

Hollywood!

157(j), acrylic & graphite on canvas with removed and reversed area, 2008
ken weathersby
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I'm happy that my work will be included, along with art by these four excellent artists:

Matt Connors
Ian McDonald
William J. O'Brien
Ivan Terestchenko

selected by David John Dick (of youhavebeenheresometime) for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions 2010 benefit auction.

Public viewing at LACE begins May 7.
Auction May 20.

TPC 2:

2010-04-17T12:51:00.006-04:00

installation shot- Continuing Color Abstraction
at The Painting Center, NY, April 13 - May 8, 2010

click image to enlarge

(pictured, l - r, Setting by Changha Hwang, 154 (df 2) by Ken Weathersby, Mediterranean Slats by Carla Aurich, Witch by Halsey Hathaway, Turf & Stone and Conservative Canvassers by Dan Crews)

also in the show: Russell Roberts, Doug Canfield, Ellen Banks, Gabrielle Evertz, Siri Berg, James Vanderberg, Charlotte Nicholson, Pierre Obando, Lisa Abbott-Canfield, Sherri Cobb, Beth Caspar, Sue Post, Charles Koegel, Shawn Powell, Jean Wolff, Audrey Bergensten, Joanne Klein

l.a.c.e.:

2010-04-11T20:00:00.003-04:00

I will have a painting at L.A.C.E.'s 2010 benefit auction (the section curated by David John of YouHaveBeenHereSometime). The live auction event is on May 20, and online bidding will start May 6.

Section:

2010-04-05T13:12:00.005-04:00

gothic marxist (sketch), element, digital composite with subtraction, 2010
ken weathersby
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the m. o.:

2010-04-03T17:04:00.005-04:00

electrical work on mechanical geese for Julie Taymor's "Magic Flute"
photo / ken weathersby
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in the painting shop, producing a stage prop to match a design
photo / ken weathersby
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filling one wall of a long room, a physical reference index of texture treatments of set surfaces from past shows
photo / ken weathersby
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textures are usually created on fabric glued to vacuum-formed plastic, foam or another light, flexible substrate
photo / ken weathersby
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I recently visited the vast and impressive backstage and prep areas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Giant studios for woodwork, metal work, costume fabrication and storage, wig-making, etc. Four or five levels below the level of the stage with all that and more. It's incredible what goes on down there.

GdP +:

2010-04-02T12:01:00.004-04:00

at the Met on 4-1-2010
photo / ken weathersby
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Works by Giovanni di Paolo (Sienese, ca. 1403 - 1482). I always pay a visit to this small room.

TPC:

2010-03-23T10:16:00.011-04:00

CONTINUING COLOR ABSTRACTION

I'll have a painting in this group show (selected by Rella Stuart-Hunt), the first exhibition at The Painting Center's new space in Chelsea.

Exhibition: April 13 - May 8, 2010.
Reception: Thursday, April 15, 6 - 8 pm.

THE PAINTING CENTER
547 West 27th Street
NY, NY

www.thepaintingcenter.org
212-343-1060
director@thepaintingcenter.org

ocg:

2010-03-12T10:26:00.003-05:00

left: ocg sketch, digital composite, 2010 -- right: 176 (ocg), acrylic & graphite on canvas, 2010
ken weathersby
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Part of a thought:

2010-03-08T19:24:00.003-05:00

another, 3-2010
1' = 1"
ken weathersby
click image to enlarge

G. O. :

2010-02-20T13:41:00.021-05:00

stages of life, 1956
George Ortman
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journey of a young man, 1957
George Ortman
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studio shot-- recent works, 2010
George Ortman
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studio shot, work in progress, 2010
George Ortman
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Michele and I recently visited George Ortman in his New York studio. He showed us his impressive recent and ongoing series of constructions. The pyramidal and other forms are both enclosing and being surrounded by proliferating skeletal or scaffolding-like structures. Lots of ideas are in play, but as far as pyramids are concerned he said he's thinking more about the ones in Mexico.

NYTimes / Roberta Smith review, Ortman's '06 NY show at Mitchell Algus Gallery

Brooklyn Rail / Jim Long review, of '06 Algus Gallery show

George Ortman 2010 interview at Geoform

George Ortman @ Geoform

The ocg process:

2010-02-17T11:32:00.002-05:00

176 (ocg), process, 2010
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Another you:

2010-02-17T09:40:00.006-05:00

fb profile, 2010
Ken Weathersby

"The face itself is a redundancy. It is itself in redundancy with the redundancies of significance or frequency, and those of resonance or subjectivity. The face constructs the wall that the signifier needs in order to bounce off of; it constitutes the wall of the signifier, the frame or screen. The face digs the hole that subjectification needs in order to break through; it constitutes the black hole of subjectivity as consciousness or passion, the camera, the third eye."
--Deleuze-Guattari A Thousand Plateaus "Year Zero: Faciality"

KPG 3:

2010-02-16T13:25:00.012-05:00

all images: see you there / Miyuki Tsushima at Kent Place Gallery
friday, february 12 - friday march 12, 2010
reception Friday, March 5, 6 - 8 pm
Kent Place Gallery 42 Norwood Ave. Summit, NJ
click images to enlage

Miyuki, working with Hiroyuki Nakamura installing her show at Kent Place Gallery. (Hiroyuki is a very interesting artist too-- he shows at Thierry Goldberg in NY).

Kent Place / full press release

KPG 2:

2010-02-08T08:37:00.002-05:00

crying (contemporary caveperson)
Miyuki Tsushima
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KPG:

2010-01-26T12:56:00.004-05:00

studio shot, Miyuki Tsushima
2010
click image to enlarge

Upcoming at Kent Place Gallery: "See You There / Miyuki Tsushima"
Friday, February 12 - Friday, March 12, 2010, reception Friday, March 5, 6 - 8 pm
Kent Place Gallery 42 Norwood Ave. Summit, NJ
(more to come on this...)

Q:

2010-01-16T11:01:00.005-05:00

175 (q), 2010
Ken Weathersby
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175 (q- reverse), 2010,
Ken Weathersby
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175 (q), process, 2010
Ken Weathersby
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YAtW:

2010-01-15T10:12:00.003-05:00

you are the weatherman, inkjet prints, framed, 2010
click image to enlarge

Model:

2010-01-11T09:33:00.005-05:00

selection / arrangement, 1-2010

1' = 1"
Ken Weathersby
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Opposed:

2010-01-05T12:03:00.007-05:00

160(oc), 2008
Ken Weathersby
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The notion of painting as something purely optical, offered to the eye, irritated by situations that complicate that assumption.

There are other aspects, but I don't want to make a list of them.

Q process:

2009-12-30T13:53:00.006-05:00

175 (q), process, 2009

Ken Weathersby
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175 (q), process, 2009
Ken Weathersby
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175 (q), first thought, 2009
Ken Weathersby
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Buried, driven:

2009-12-14T10:26:00.024-05:00

At the New Museum:

SkowheganTALKS with Fred Tomaselli and John O'Connor. (12-12-2009)
John O'Connor screened this image of Bob from Twin Peaks (David Lynch's tv series). This charactor buried information in his murder victims by "collaging" cut-out letters under their finger nails.
click image to enlarge

Another image screened by O'Connor. The Cardiff Giant was a 19th century hoax. The sculpture, buried and then "discovered", was taken to be a petrified giant. It became part of a debate over a naive (biblical) account of ancient history.
click image to enlarge

Cardiff Giant
John O'Connor, ink and colored pencil on paper, 2009
The giant story unearthed / translated into a drawing.
click image to enlarge

Guilty
Fred Tomaselli, print, 2005
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Dr. Atkins’s Code of Independence
John O'Connor, colored pencil on paper, 2005
78" x 59"
click image to enlarge

O'Connor on "Dr. Atkin's Code of Independence":
"I became inspired to make this drawing while looking at the ancient Egyptian grid systems employed to represent social hierarchy via a pharaoh’s idealism. The system I invented to generate the colors of the grid was based on the size of the language used in various texts – the lengths of words, sentences and paragraphs. It became an indecipherable code. I began the drawing by randomly scribbling across the paper. I then marked the intersection points of the lines and connected them to create the dominant shape in the work. Next, I drew the grid across the entire form and began to apply the system. The system linked the sizes of words, sentences and paragraphs to corresponding colors. For example, if a word was 5 letters in length, it would be red. If it was 10 letters long, it would be silver. The lengths of the sentences are also encoded this way. The sizes of the paragraphs are marked with alternating orange and violet pairs of squares. Finally, a change in text is marked by 4 fluorescent squares. I chose a wide range of texts to encode. I began with the Atkins’ Diet and included works such as Chaos, Declaration of Independence, Bible Code, Dante’s Inferno, How to Build a Time Machine, Rethinking Intuition, The Da Vinci Code and numerous others. The title of each text is written in proximity to its pattern on the grid. Lastly, the color of the larger areas along with the grey central section were determined through chance."

Two terms that were used in the event at the New Museum were "buried narratives" and "information driven". The conversation was an examination of particular works by the two artists (Tomaselli and O'Connor) and an exploration of how their visual choices might relate to "content".

John said that when he and Fred first met several years ago (in John's studio at Skowhegan), Fred looked at the large, complex drawing John was working on, full of diagrammatic information, text, numbers, etc., and wanted to know, "Is there anything behind that, does it mean anything, or is it bullshit?" It turned out that the drawing they were looking at was John investigating and processing his research about Alzheimer's, which a family member was going through at the time. Apparently that was the seed of the talk. I guess that could constitute a "buried narrative", though maybe it's more accurate to call John's work "information driven". I think "buried narrative" is a term Fred brought into the discussion. In either case, I take it to mean that visual choices are fostered by information (whether a story or statistics) that determine or propel abstract visual choices, and that while the end result is derived from and inseparable from that material, the sources may not be transparently available in the final result. O'Connor often cites John Cage, but with O'Connor's work it is different from some who've used chance, the I-Ching or whatever, in that John doesn't shy away from including a lot of personal stuff-- his weight, recordings of his own sleep-talking utterances, or the investigation into the illness of a relative. This is an openness to things that can express a certain vulnerability. Tomaselli talked about how various of his own works were generated out of and tied to his personal stories and experiences. I like Tomaselli's work very much, but I find the relationships John creates between narrative or information and image in his complex drawings particularly unconventional and unique.

Grit index 2:

2009-12-05T17:51:00.010-05:00

174 (grt), wood, sandpaper, acrylic on linen, brass hinges, 2009
ken weathersby
click image to enlarge

Wfp?:

2009-12-02T10:09:00.004-05:00

wfp?, digital drawing, 12-1-2009
ken weathersby
click image to enlarge

Lnd (formerly known as Lnn idea):

2009-11-26T10:33:00.008-05:00

173 (Lnd), 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

173 (Lnd - reverse), 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

173 (Lnd), process, 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Gpy:

2009-11-18T08:58:00.018-05:00

172 (gpy), 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

172 (gpy - detail), 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Re gpy:

2009-11-01T17:31:00.003-05:00

10 roosevelt windows, 11-1-09
click image to enlarge

fudo myoo, japan, 1000 c.e.
click image to enlarge

gpy, first sketch, from bound book #64, 2007
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Gpy process 2:

2009-11-01T13:36:00.007-05:00

gpy, process, back with inset, 10-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

gpy, process, areas removed, 10-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

gpy, process, 10-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Gst, trc, or scr:

2009-10-14T11:20:00.008-04:00

gst-171, 2009
(panels removed and then replaced in wall, seams "repaired")
existing wall (sheetrock), Kent Place Gallery
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

At Kent Place Gallery:

2009-10-14T10:11:00.019-04:00

(installation view) A Few Months, HTML drawings
Chris Ashley
at Kent Place Gallery
click image to enlarge

(detail) month of january, 2009, HTML drawings
Chris Ashley
courtesy of George Lawson Gallery

I selected five months of HTML drawings by Chris Ashley for a show at Kent Place Gallery. For those in the New York area, it's a quick trip by car or rail to Summit, NJ. The show opens October 19 and will be up until November 20. There is a reception at the gallery on October 23, 6-8 pm.

Chris Ashley produces beautiful, jewel-like colored drawings. He creates a fresh drawing, each one a new and unique idea, every single day. His medium for this daily discipline is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), a digital process not usually associated with fine art in the sense of traditional painting and drawing. Ashley’s work shows that it can be an ideal medium both for aesthetic delight as well as endless invention.

This ongoing string of artistic variations is made to exist primarily within a digital world, since HTML is native to the internet. For years now the drawings have been published daily on his blog, “Look, See—“ (http://looksee.chrisashley.net/), but for this exhibition at Kent Place Gallery, Ashley presents five months’ worth of carefully printed images of his HTML works, which will be displayed in the gallery grouped in five large blocks, one block on each wall of the gallery, like five calendars. This provides the chance to see the images simultaneously, note the evolution of Ashley’s ideas, and compare work produced at different times.

Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday - Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. For more information visit www.kentplace.org.

Grit index:

2009-10-07T10:38:00.005-04:00

sand paper painting idea, graphite & archival ink on arches paper 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Gpy process:

2009-10-04T13:57:00.004-04:00

gpy, 2 mock-ups, 10-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Symmetry / Aphrodite:

2009-09-24T15:05:00.003-04:00

a partial thought, graphite, colored pencil & archival ink on arches paper 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Reverse of the Reverse 2:

2009-09-20T13:59:00.017-04:00

The Reverse Side Also Has a Reverse Side

Kent Place Gallery
September 10 - October 9, 2009
Kent Place Gallery, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ 07902
Opening Reception, Thursday, September 10, 6-8pm
http://www.kentplace.org/news

Installation views:

167 (bgbjrid), 2009, 170, 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

171, 2009
(panels inset in wall)
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

169 (k & w), 2009, 162 (nfc), 2008
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

164 (mcb), 2009, 158 (ar), 2008, 168 (bgb), 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

164 (mcb), 2009, KW, 1963, 158 (ar), 2008
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Falling 2:

2009-09-07T13:55:00.004-04:00

169(k & w), process, 8-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Reverse of the Reverse:

2009-08-19T10:18:00.015-04:00

165 (wky), detail, 2009

The Reverse Side Also Has a Reverse Side
Ken Weathersby - Exhibition / Installation

September 10 - October 10, 2009
Kent Place Gallery, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ 07902
Opening Reception, Thursday, September 10, 6-8pm

http://www.kentplace.org/news

Star:

2009-08-17T14:41:00.010-04:00

star, acrylic, ink, gesso on shaped paper with cut out areas, 2009
John O'Connor
click image to enlarge

star on our wall
click image to enlarge

"Board shaped according to most recent Dow numbers, plotted via my own invented system as lines emanating from the center." --John O'Connor

John's piece seems both plausibly neutral-- it's generated from some kind of systemic use of data, after all-- and at the same time suggests an out-picturing of a psychological state related to the recent / current financial panic. Assembling the cut-out letters that punctuate the tips of each point of star, the text spells "man made monster".

We love it.

See more of John's work here.

Bgb process 3:

2009-07-31T16:23:00.011-04:00

168 (bgb), acrylic & graphite on canvas with inset panels, 7-30-2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

168 (bgb - detail), acrylic & graphite on canvas with inset panels, 7-30-2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

bgb, process (back with insets), 7-2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Bgbjrid:

2009-07-24T23:25:00.007-04:00

167 (bgbjrid), 2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Bgb process 2:

2009-07-20T11:09:00.007-04:00

bgb, process, 7-19-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

bgb, process, 7-19-09

Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

166 (Grdy)

2009-07-20T11:03:00.002-04:00

166 (Grdy), acrylic & graphite on linen, 7-19-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

166 (Grdy), back, process, 7-19-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Grdy & Lnn:

2009-07-16T17:10:00.007-04:00

Grdy, sketches, 6-11-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Lnn idea, process, 7-15-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Bgb process:

2009-07-10T13:00:00.008-04:00

bgb, process, 7-9-09
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Impending:

2009-07-06T22:51:00.006-04:00

process shot, 2009, Ken Weathersby

The Grid (a group show)

August 19 - October 17, 2009 at MP5 - Milepost 5
900 NE 81st Avenue, Portland, Oregon.

Opening Reception: August 22, 7-9pm
Closing Reception: October 17, 7-9pm

Sample 4:

2009-07-04T15:31:00.003-04:00

Tky panels, (process - position), acrylic & graphite on canvas, 7-4-2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Sample 3:

2009-07-02T17:18:00.003-04:00

Tky panel one (left), and tky panel one's near-double (right), acrylic & graphite on canvas, 7-2-2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

detail: Tky panel one (left), and tky panel one's near-double (right), acrylic & graphite on canvas, 7-2-2009
Ken Weathersby
click image to enlarge

Tky process.

theneutral

Interview, NY arts:

At vacnj:

Faction:

Abyss, Abbess, Abet:

Time Is the Diamond:

192 (ptch):

Upcoming, unending:

Without End

I'll be in this five-person show at University of Delaware's Crane Gallery in Philadelphia.

Sept. 8 - Oct. 6, 2011 (reception Sept. 8, 6-9pm)Crane Gallery 1400 American St.Philadelphia, PA

and in...

Faction

a group show, at University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio.

Oct. 3 - Oct. 24, 2011 (reception Tuesday, October 18th, 6 - 8pm.

Art Street, Studio D University of DaytonDayton Ohio, 45469

the pencil of nature:

For coffee II:

In California, upcoming, (#1):

For coffee:

Wall:

183 (layover), 184 (doubleD), 185 collage:

DD:

Layovers, and:

PCR:

To begin:

In print.:

Malleable:

New Ark:

Hallucination:

As if:

Thus:

And:

In advance:

180 (nmls), process > complete:

Also, subversions:

Soon:

Sample 5:

A basement:

180 (nmls) process:

PDM:

I'm looking forward to seeing PIG DEATH MACHINE, a new Jon Moritsugu + Amy Davis feature movie that has been shot and will be out in 2011.

I am a longtime fan of Jon's punk rock aesthetic and totally independent approach to film. I was fortunate enough to meet him years ago through his sister, the excellent painter Alison Moritsugu (one of my first artist-friends when I moved to NYC in 1990).

Previous films by Jon, or Jon + Amy include:

#15, Branca:

YHBHS:

Preview update:

Aqua twin:

JCJ, Closer:

Visitation:

Preview:

You know which way the wind blows (YAtW V & VI):

Sidekick & sidekick's sidekick:

YAtW, II, III & IV:

Process hLLL (more):

Process, hLLL:

3 bodies:

C'OD(e)R:

Equated:

Perfect Mismatch:

P. M. 2:

P. M. 1:

l.a.c.e. 2:

TPC 2:

l.a.c.e.:

Section:

the m. o.:

GdP +:

TPC:

ocg:

Part of a thought:

G. O. :

The ocg process:

Another you:

KPG 3:

KPG 2:

KPG:

Q:

YAtW:

Model:

Sept. 8 - Oct. 6, 2011 (reception Sept. 8, 6-9pm)
Crane Gallery
1400 American St.
Philadelphia, PA

Art Street, Studio D
University of Dayton
Dayton Ohio, 45469