eronrauch

Mel and I celebrated our fourth anniversary last night (a bit late) with a wonderful, overly expensive, dinner at La Botte in Santa Monica. According to a documentary we watched a few weeks back, I guess even Monet had problems with being frugal when it came to wine, so who am I to argue... Especially since we're four years together and we still have a fantastic time going out and talking for hours.

However, in some sad news, one of the artists who was the most influential on my work, Robert Rauschenberg, has passed away yesterday. Particularly, his use of everyday objects in his "combines" showed me an expansion of the vocabulary of art to explore the poetics of the commonplace or overlooked nooks of the social landscape. Street junk, murky colors running into partially obscured recycled 50's and 60's half-toned imagery in stark colors seem evoke a sense of mystery of dark bars, lonely back streets, dilapidated billboards, and abandoned lots. The poetics and sense of cultural/media weariness aside, the other effect of his work was to defy stereotypes or the simplistic conclusions about the use of gallery space and assumptions about what is proper material and usage.

The idea of the combine - of the hybrid object that borrows from the traditions of painting, sculpture and even hints of dada-esque installation - is so interesting to me because it challenges the revered status of art and probes at how value gets assigned - judged - from one object to another, especially during the hyper-masculine, overly mythological period of the abstract expressionist period. Rather than focusing on the purity of painterly gesture and bold expression of the genius "soul", he focused down on making monuments the patina, grit, waste, confusion and loneliness of modern life. But in a more hopeful vein, the spaces his work creates breath some life into the sterile, nearly inhumane and presumptuous white-walled gallery.

I don't know, honestly, this has been an artistic issue I can't quite wrap my brain-meats around... These totally overloaded and nigh-chaotic images of MMORPGs in full swing, with the interface left on as well the text, etc. are utterly fascinating to me. The really, in some ways, are astounding documents of the sheer visual data that we, in contemporary society, subject our selves to for pleasure (Philip K. Dick anyone?), but yet, I can't quite figure out what do with them artistically. As a lawyer at the recent "Culture of Virtual Worlds" conference mentioned, the law applies differently in the space of games (think how few or no prosecutions arise from thrown elbows and injuries from tackles that happen on the court or field) but does that mean that the art world may function very differently when it comes to the space of games? After all, Duchamp supposedly gave up making art to play chess, since it was superior to painting... yet continued to make art but not show it as contemporary scholarship has shown again again despite the massive mythology around his work in the dada scene... Part of me just wants to make a large, gorgeous print of the following image and tell the photo/art world to rot! But I'm very confused...



"Suicidal Tendencies Raids Karazhan"
Inkjet Print, 2008

Hiya! I just wanted to share a few pieces I've made within the last year that are, along with the Tribute to Gygax, and Dungeon Forms pieces (and a slew of others I've yet to show), part of a building body of painting and sculptural work that is examining the rhetoric and aesthetics of fantasy. Yeah, I know that's a vague description, but I haven't quit figured it out myself. Primarily I've been working in photography for the past couple years, but I'm always bashing-out ideas in more hands-on related projects along the sidelines (often recycling pieces of photographs and ephemera into collage situations).



"Riders"
Mixed Media, 2007



"Leader (If you can't make it good, make it red.)"
Mixed Media, 2007


"Don't Angel Wings Make everything Cooler?"
(Mixed Media on Found Print, 2007

I'm currently attending the the University of California at Irvine's conference "The Culture of Virtual Worlds" and I wanted to share a couple of images from my projects involving World of Warcraft that I've been looking at using in my upcoming show at the Art Mecho museum in Second Life. More information will be coming as it develops.

"Homage to Gary Gygax" (Dice, Gloss Medium, Canvas) 2008


"Dungeon Form #1" (Acrylic Enamel on Canvas) 2007



One of the coincidences that I return to often in my work tends to be the fixation on chance in both RPGs/Fantasy and Avant Guard art. From Hans Arp's compositions made from dropping sting or paper onto a canvas, to Tristen Tzara's chance poems, to John Cage's musical scores whose order is determined by rolling dice, to Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" deck of problem-solving cards, forward looking artists have often used chance-operations to try to free themselves from limitations and preconceptions about art. Since many of my art projects rotate on confusing the boundaries between high art tradition and contemporary [low- or subcultural] life, one of my earliest operations was to notice that Dungeons & Dragons, and it's myriad of more sophisticated video-game offspring, was really in many ways quite similar to avant art in the way that it relies on complicated chance encounters and occurrences to create situations for the players to act in.

For me, I even found a very facinating, yet subversive, beauty in the geometric forms of a randomly-generated map, the intricate system of tables and math, or even the very act throwing dice for no reason. But it's a useful occurrence, that despite the history of art being over-masculinized [especially in regards to the macho culture of gambling] and being so rarified in marble halls, that Dungeons & Dragons is just about the geekiest, fake-wood-panneled cement-floor basement, least "high-art" cultural referent possible. And this isn't about irony. No "D&D is hip because it isn't hip" bullshit here. D&D is geeky and a little tacky and a little dated, but after all, wasn't that the point of those great avant guard artists, that art can and MUST be found everywhere, not just in the pristine museums and glossy ad-filled art magazine - not just in those hermetic spaces where we expect art?

These four pieces are from a project loosely called "Jenny's Archive" which are small-ish works, around 12" x 20" that are collages/decollages of the fold-out posters in japanese-language anime magazines such as Animage, Newtype, and Megami.















These four are examples from what will eventually be a project that uses every single fold-out-poster from the archive of old anime magazines that were gifted to by Jenny [who often gives me curious media to turn into art] so she didn't have to move them.

Currently, these works consist of layers of fractured/torn posters, both collaged and picked back out, that reveal multiple layers of similar anime genre pin-up images. My organization process is based on the conventions of these posters. That is, one woman in the middle of the [vertical] poster. Two women posing together [horizontal]. Three women from the knees up. Etc. You may notice I said "women" - in two full boxes, there were enough posters with males in them to form a grand total of one, yet-un-produced, image...

The idea was born partially be a critique I had of the increasingly symbolic & mythological nature of Takeshi Murakami's recent larger [ever-larger] paintings. While I'm not opposed to some psuedo-mythological themes, I feel as though the works have started to be so grandiose and self-referential that they have almost ceased any critical dialog with the materiality/object-ness of otaku culture. That is, that I'm fascinated about how while we "read into" the symbols, the images and icons that make up the fetishes of otaku culture are transmitted though ephemeral, often junky, objects as well. These works are partially an attempt to emphasize what I've known and observed asthe tangible/physical nature of otaku culture, not just the textual nature of the subcultural symbols. It's a weird concrete poetry made of VHS tapes and flimsy, glossy paper, and push pins.

Spring cleaning for me is always a special time. Not only is cleaning one of the things that I do to sooth an oft-frazzled mind (with a decent beer, like Oaked Arrogant Bastard), but it also involves digging through all of my menagerie of collected proposed collage/art materials. While much of the work I've shown on this blog has been photographic, a large part of my art practice involves collage or found materials that are manipulated or re-contextualized. I find that playing with the poetics of objects is a great way to think about whatever topic is interesting me, even if I find my success rate to be significantly lower than usual with these projects. Though I'll be presenting some of the spring projects in small groups, Mel did point out, after staring at many of these hung in our work-in-progress gallery in our hall, that they might only really make sense as a big heterogeneous body. I guess the old joke about my work being something like a "one-man schizophrenic group show" holds true, even if I prefer the more dignified description of my work as being more like a sprawling research essay with many branching, converging and even contradicting ideas that explore a theme.

A few more images from my anime documentary project while I tinker with a couple of new-ish projects in mind I might start posting to get some feedback on. Also, there is a chance that I might be having an online exhibit of my World of Warcraft images in a virtual gallery in Second Life. More info coming as I learn about it.



"Initial D (Fanime 2005)"



"Room Party (Animagic 2005)"



"Check-out (Anime Expo 2007)"



"Main Programing (Animagic 2004)"

I'm about to step into WoW for a bit to meet up with my friends from Illinois (we play for a couple hours on Sunday as a way to keep in touch) but I wanted to add a few more photographs from my anime convention project for everyone to ponder. As I get more of these images posted, I'd love to hear thoughts on how the images are interacting, or if you have thoughts about what additional images might flesh out this portrait of otaku-life more fully.



"Front Entrance (Anime Expo 2007)"



"Capsule Hentai (Fanime 2005)"



"Three (Anizona 2004)"

I'm not really sure how many of these posts I'm planning on making, but hopefully there will be enough new images (since there are about 100+ rolls of images that few people have seen aside from the lecture) that it will continue to be interesting. With around 300 rolls of film, with 36 frames on each, I'm still finding new images with each flip through the proofs...


"Vending Machines (Animagic 2006)"



"Long Beach Moon (Anime Expo 2007)"


"Dealer's hall, Airbrusher (Anime Expo 2007)"


"Legs, Drinking (Anime Central 2003)"

So, my Dad has been visiting from Chicago [both to get away from the record setting snow this season and to see my show up in Los Angeles]. A while back I had given an artist lecture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on my photo-documentary of anime conventions. It's a really personal project in so many ways, since it weaves my own autobiographical frenzied relationship, and subsequent alienation, to the American anime scene with an burgeoning interest in pushing the boundaries of photography. It's a project that makes me sad, not in a bad way, but in a good way, because of it's combination of ruthlessness and lyricalness, intimate and crowd.

So anyway, my dad wanted to see the images that I had used for the lecture. After showing them I wasn't really sure what to say. I have been working on other projects primarily since the lecture (owing to getting burned out). But something about being in that liminal space between the foggy, ponderous, chill of winter and the humid lucidity of spring always triggers a bit of chagrined nostalgia for my otaku days. But rather than ramble further, I thought I show a few images over the next week:



"Slap (Anime Central 2003)"



"Executive Wing, 2AM (Anime Central 2005)"



"Autograph Table (Anime Expo 2006)"

Hiya! I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who came out to support my show "Leveling" this past Friday. It was a great deal of fun to hang out, drink some beer and learn that an awfully large number of people, even in the pretentious art world, are addicted to WoW. There was a touch of vertigo involved in trying to whip my brain between discussing proper gem-slotting on beginning raid warlocks speced affliction and theorizing on the visual implications of realism's lineage in virtual social spaces. Here are a few shots that I snapped while I was milling and geeking and arting.

For those of you who don't know me, my head isn't always filled with pretentious & labyrinthine rants about art. Yes, my head is also often full of booze. Specifically, I have a great admiration for any characteristic or unique alcoholic beverage, and a deep poetic relationship with libations that have a very heavy dose of "place-ness" in them. For instance, single malt scotch whisky (neat, please) is my favorite hard alcohol because the method of production, ingredients, and aging all are so highly dependent on the very land, air and water of the distillery.

So too, my tastes in wine run rather counter to those that Robert Parker currently espouses, which in my mind are eerily close to promoting an "international" style... rather, as I would call it, a generic style. The whole 100-point scoring system, aside from being far to close to those abominable tests we were forced to do in high school, does nothing to reward wines that are quirky, unique or diverse. Instead, it rewards wines that fill a certain category of preconceptions, termed "great" or "classic." Now, by no means am I trying to claim there is not better and worse wine... merely that alcohol and taste are very much aesthetic judgments produced by culture. Far be it for me to remind all the Cab-o-philes in the world that a century ago the wines that sold for the most money at the London auction house were semi-dry Reislings (I got that tidbit from "The Complete History of Wine" if you are interested).

So, in to promote diversity and fulfill my palate's curiosity, I really take well to wines produced in a more "Old World" style, that give or take, does much less to process and control the final taste of the wine (such as malolactic fermentation or fining), and more to use wine to express the lyric-ness of the place in which it is produced. Yes that will by necessity include some cultural biases, but I don't know about you, but people that fad hop to produce imitations of the popular style of the second generally annoy me, and the same with my booze. I want booze for all my myriad of moods, and all the the diverse situations in life. Sometimes austere, such as a Chablis, sometimes, sunny and good natured, like a lovely rustic Italian wine, sometimes quite like a Santa Barbara Sauvignon Blanc, sometimes fiery like a California Zinfindel...

Anyway, the reason for that rambling digression through my personal preferences (aside from whatever artistic theory you might not-so-accidentally dig out of relating my booze to my projects) is that my review is going to be of a beer. Beer & I have a deep and complicated relationship. Since very very few producers grow there own hops, barely or even use "local" water in the way that Scotch does, in most ways the flavors of beer represent a non-place. Or at least a place somewhere between the head of the brew master and the cultural landscape in which it is consumed. That is, "what do they want to make?" and "what do people want to drink?" get spun around in any which way. Now this lack of reliance on a specific place can also be called freedom of choice to produce whatever you might feel up to Frankenstiening together. Many of my personal favorite beers are of this experimental style (such as the great brewers at Dogfish Head).

So when I recieved a bottle of New Glarus Brewing Company's "Unplugged" Bourbon Barrel Boch from my brother this Christmas I was very enthused. There are number of great small breweries in Wisconsin, such as Capital, that specialize in highly characteristic German-style seasonal beers. Though I now live in Santa Monica, not the snowy wastes of mid-Wisconsin, the cold weather almost seems to require a complicated, concentrated beer. That is, this beer is a mid-weight beer filled with a balance of toffee, maltiness, with interwoven strands of rustic yeastiness and a touch of soft, understated oily hops (similar to the kind found in british IPAs)... but just a fleeting touch. There is some lingering smoke and a rather nice touch of grain. The alcohol is very well balanced, and the beer is hardly sweet at all. The most unique part of this beer is that it has been aged in second-use bourbon barrels for over 4 months. The aging process has given the beer a very characteristic oxidized sourness and slightly red-ish tinge. There is very little carbonation remaining after the aging. The aging has pulled everything in to a long, almost ghostly smooth variant of a dense germanic winter's night. Unlike many winter beers, this beer seems be low enough in both residual sugar and ABV to be free from any syrupy qualities, which lends the beer a certain austerity that lends well to a bit of clear-headed revery.

And today, you'll get one free review. For a wine. A wine that is really horrible, and that you should never buy for anyone but your enemies and most aggravating relatives. The wine is Searidge Merlot 2005, and usually goes for around 5 dollars at Vons. The reason I'm even mentioning this wine (and normally I will only review things I like) is that if you are anything like me, you're always looking for a bargain. When I saw a bottle of wine on sale for $2.50 I had to get one. The wine is very cloying sweet, syrupy, lingering hints of alchohol and grape-juicy. There is a definite metallic/bitter scent... Not good... Even for $2.50 this wine is far from a bargain.