Steven LaRose, Vain Repetitions, 2008An array of paint on wood laminate
20 x 16 inches
James Elkins, What Painting Is (page 187 +):
"That is what perfect painting is: neither entirely dull water and stone, nor weightless representation. Not merely a wooden panel coated with cracked and abraded paint, nor entirely a madonna and child. Or as Rembrandt, not just a slather of oil, nor simply a face."
This weekend Eva Lake fluttered through town on her way to court gallery representation in San Francisco. I suspect that I have never blogged about "the hustle" because it is so remarkably awkward.Maybe I should.
Eva has been forced to become a traveling road show out of the back of her car.
Elkins again: "Perfect painting is imperfectly transcendent. Less interesting painters do not know what to do with the choice between substance and illusion."Eva does not use tape. I have only met her a handful of times and already I suspect that Eva's seismic paintings accurately represent a portion of her psyche. Shit. Is that a truth? Do our paintings act as extensions ? ? ?
Regardless, this is my favorite photograph of Eva and one of her paintings from this afternoon.
But wait, Eva's clean-edged organic-minimalism is balanced and amplified by her collage work. Her collages are kept in a separate folder.
I had to ask permission to touch this one:
Fuckin' brilliant. I hope that the collage pictured above never sells so that I can trade with Eva."When paint is compelling, it is uncanny: it hovers on the brink of impossibility, as if nothing that close to incorporeality could exist. "
8 comments:
it may be the last thing you want to hear, but Don Quixote and Sancho Panchez won't get out of my head while looking at Vain Repetitions. . .
Speak up man! I can't hear you over this flapping Windmill-beastie. More off-shore drilling I say! More consumption! More Tunnel Vision! More Pixels!
To agree and expand on Marc`s comment- for me I was wondering what happened to the third Wise Man.
I didn't think of Don Quixote immediately, but now that Marc's said that, it won't go away. They look like they've wandered off from Picasso's famous print, which hung on the living room wall in the house I grew up in. I spent many hours of my formative years staring at that.
Eva's painting, leaning in the dapples of sunlight next to her car, looks like it beamed down from some other planet. It looks Photoshopped in, the colors pop from the natural world so egregiously. Or maybe like Eva cut a hole in reality to let in the patterns of light and shade from the other side.
Those candids of Eva's work really reveal its nature. Quite nice.
Thank you Steven. I am now safely in paradise. To be specific, right next to the Presidio. I might disappear into the fog and forget the art business thingy.....
Eva
shit eva, I forgot to sign those inky images.
Well there is always the drive back.
Perhaps I shall be a real driving maniac and not stop overnight anywhere. But maybe stop to grab autographs.....
Eva
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