Chapter 6: In which the universe condenses slightly.

Things are finally coming together, and coming to a head. As the middle of semester narrows to it's bottle neck, it seems only right that the blog posts come more frequently. Mostly, I wanted to finalize some ideas on here and compile some images of work related to mine. With the dreams, my final piece for theme sequence will be six photographs and a video piece.

First Mary Kelly. You might remember her work called "Post-Partum Document" (1973-9) in which she essentially exhibited her son’s dirty diapers. (It was "intended as a sociological study of the mother-child relationship" according to Kelly.) More recently, she exhibited at Documenta XII, an installation which included a house called Love Songs. She did a lot of work with feminism and activism. She studied in Florence, but moved to London when she realized she was more interested in contemporary art. B.T. Dubs, Mary Kelly was also the name of one of the prostitutes brutally murdered by Jack the Ripper, so be careful if you want to do an image search for more of her stuff. Try adding documenta to see her installation there.
Second, Danika Dakic, also at Documenta 12. This video of El Dorado takes the concept of guided tour to a new level. She made films in a wallpaper museum in Kassel. Talk about a sweet dreamscape. Anyway, she's actually working with ideas about immigration, El Dorado being that utopian dream or unreachable paradise, a destination. She films teenagers, "unaccompanied minor immigrants," telling their stories, running, dancing, etc. in front of the massive wallpaper backdrops. Pretty cool.

The next guy, Romuald Hazoumé, has this piece called "Dream," which is a boat made of black oil cans in front of a beach backdrop. Documenta says "His material collage works are based on disposed of items and everyday objects, which he often uses for criticising the European cross-culture awareness and the consequences of modernity."

The last artist, Ellen Gallagher relates more to my drawing project, in which I'm drawing mostly with a knife, juxtaposing figures from masterworks with commercial publications, advertisements, product packaging. I'm going back in to work into the material in various ways, which Jana noticed was a lot like some of Gallagher's work in DeLuxe. (Which was a whole series.) She said, “I take archival material from original black photo magazines and reactivate it through a series of transformations using plasticine, coconut oil, etching, paint, ink, toy eyeballs, and crystals. These fugitive characters reoccur throughout the grid both as themselves and other worldy presences. Each repetition is an inauguration of the character into an altered state.” She works with a grid, which is something I'm considering, although most of my pieces are not uniform.

K. Va bene.