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Author: arantxatxatxa
*ellipses*
Dramatically Competent
Excellent Vortex
I love this project, in concept and in execution. I had been thinking that I could browse it endlessly, when a funny thing happened. My typically hyperbolic thought became reality, and the series went on without end. The device I first saw it on did not display a complete thumbnail gallery, so I had no idea how many photos were in the series. I just knew that I had been viewing them for some time, then I knew that I’d had that thought repeatedly, then I hypothesized that the website somehow triggers new photos (how it would locate such amazing events was obviously the x to solve for), then I considered throwing in the towel but was still too entertained to do so, then I became sleepy but aware that I could not stop viewing, then I thought of Bunuel’s Exterminating Angel, then I sought sanity and considered my unfortunate dance ignorance and determined to end that, then I found myself back at the beginning of the thought cycle (certainly not the photo cycle) realizing that I was again noticing how long I’d been viewing.
And Is It The Very Horse?
“images found on the internet of people who have died…downloaded and projected into a space that was either important to that person in life or was the site of their death…”
I saw this on Wooster last week, and took the time to learn more. I was surprised by what I learned. There are few other words posted with this work on Stephens’ site. I found I didn’t care, and learned instead that some things are better experienced without knowing how it is to project onto a horse.
The Wand Waved
"Swing Set", oil on panel, Alex Roulette, 2010
So much to latch onto here. The splendour of nature, invisible witnessing, contemplating the everyday. But the wand waved over it all bestows the sense of “a moment”.
This Old Trip
I watched this video of Kristan Horton talking about photography helping address a desire to be everywhere at once, and off I went. Imagining the scene behind the glowing motor inn window Christmas Eve, my own shoes scuffling a dusty roadside as yet unvisited, pining for the multitude of compelling eras I can’t live. Intimate terrain, wordless lifelong companion.
Not Like Her
From a small square of lcd screen, you can only imagine how beguiling Holly King’s photographs of multimedia models would be if you saw them in their fullsize chromogenic glory. Unless you are like my gallery-mate, who found them garish and so would likely prefer less visual information. But you are not like her. She is wrong, and you are right, and now you must remember to watch for Holly King work hanging near you.
The Perpetual Triumph of Magic
There is a corner of Engine Gallery that flips my Lynch switch. I am gliding towards a mysterious item, and as detail increases, so does the attraction. But now repulsion begins to creep in. I can’t stop. I arrive at the item. The depth below the perfect surface of the sphere beguiles. And in the depth –
Chaos and Cacophany!
Strands and puddles and murk and spray and all of it feeling very vulnerable and violent. Spilled.
The gallerist approaches and tells me that the series was created in response to Bennett’s experience of her granddaughter’s malignant tumours. I must know more.
There is not much more available online, and as usual it is an exercise in magic-spoiling, the habit I can’t shake. Simple glass, mirror, varnish, embedded items equally common. Bennett is a former executive at TV Ontario. But of course the real magic of art is that unsolveable effect, much more than the sum of its parts. The flip of the switch.
Tumourous work not pictured, but viewable at the link below.
Malevolent Confines
