Magenta Plains

Within art history’s manifold expansions, painting is an open dialogue, an ever-festering wound to sooth.

I a mere table of contents, so abstract, a very snarl of twine

I just want to be a white girl

The title of Robinson’s newest show is a literal translation of the legal term, res nullius, which dates back to Roman law and is a designation for items of ownerless property which are not considered to be sacred and therefore not protected from anyone who decides to take them.

With a snowflake as with a painting, the formation of meaning and classification lies in the position of the individual to the group.

...structures such as the camera frame, cropping, overlays, montage, repetition, voiceover, subtitling, rephrasing, inversions, assemblage and isolation of image to contain, expound on, exploit, and defamiliarize text and image—creating endless linkages and meditations on the poetry and fragility of the everyday, of existence, and of memory...

The crowd was the veil from behind which the familiar city as phantasmagoria beckoned to the flâneur. In it, the city was now landscape, now a room. —Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

The act of painting functions as a personal codex, just as useful as referring to an encyclopedia for answers or a Bible for solace.

Fatebe’s body is used as a malleable, expressive form--less to do with female body image and more to do with roasting shame and anxiety on a spit, every curve glistening.

"I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities." - Octavia Butler

Unlike much contemporary work, which I see as in dialogue with literature, I have always aspired to the wordless condition of music. I consider the corner itself as a ground, a means of wrapping the viewer in the music; to look at the purely visual with no narrative to distract.

Working within self-imposed constraints, these artists develop conceptual structures to engage the dialectic of order and chaos and the intersection of logical, technical systems versus the transient subjectivity of the viewer. Formal and conceptual links can be seen across each of their practices, a reminder that ideas are cyclical. This exhibition recognizes the lasting impression artistic influence can have on subsequent generations who, in turn, reinterpret these ideas in new and unexpected ways.

In these secluded journeys into the wild, when we stumble across a stream rippling across our path, the temptation is to dip a hand into moving water, to feel the activity of fluid matter flowing by.

Doomsday Preppers who build elaborate bunkers to maintain their survivalist delusion

Saylor’s post-apocalyptic beachcomber aesthetic reminds one of a world where humanity exists amid a fragile tension of creation and destruction and that our human-built culture is but one element of a much larger and complex ecosystem.

Crystalline memories are adjacent to forgetting, blocked inabilities to remember. One form becomes another. Hands hold hands.

The day is brilliant: asphalt glimmers, people knife through the crowd, buildings look cut out against a rare blue sky.

I intend to reach a state that is ambiguous and allows all sorts of interpretations.

The computer was never lifeless for it hummed as if it were cogitating some primordial secret that it would reveal if suitably nurtured.

We have reached the edge of escapism.

HOW TO WIN THE LOTTERY

In the 1920's, Mahatma Gandhi initiates a home-spun textile movement teaching Indians self-reliance leading to an extrication from Britain's imposed cloth and garment trade.

In 1947, India gains independence.

In 1951, Prime Minister Nehru assigns Le Corbusier to prepare a master plan for Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab, as a symbol for a modern India. Included in the plan are the House of Parliament and a new state college.

In 1956, a teak desk designed by Pierre Jeanneret is placed in the middle of the Punjab University Library.

Max Renn: Why do it for real?
It’s easier and safer to fake it.

Masha: Because it has something
that you don’t have, Max. It has
a philosophy. And that is what
makes it dangerous.

Videodrome, 1983

Let’s make America great again.

–Ronald Reagan, 1980

–Donald Trump, 2016

Otters and Seals, Sleeping, and Happy Hemorrhoids

Dear Mr. William "Bill" Wegman,

I have been following your work for some time (about 50 years). I feel now, at this the moment, is the opportune time to offer you a show in our lovely gallery on Allen St.

If you accept, I think we could show maybe, perhaps two of your newest paintings and a large selection of drawings, perhaps some from the 1970's. This would be very beautiful, but of course any suggestions you may have would be welcome.

Please have the common courtesy to let me know if you'll accept this kind offer. Looking forward to your reaction,

Warmly,
David Deutsch.

The possibility or impossibility of segmenting reality.

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