I think this piece may be successful if only for the fact that I do know if it could have been successfully accomplished five years before or after right now. All this technology, like the webcam and the digital camera I'm using may well be so widespread in a few years that we won't even think about filming every part of our lives. I also don't know how relevant a painting is going to be in the future. I paint because I enjoy painting. I want to be quoted as saying there are still important painters but there are no more important paintings. I guess if I wasn't as well trained in painting, I would film 100 hours of myself doing a menial, repetitious task.
For instance, would it be more successful if I filmed myself mopping the floor of a giant airplane hanger instead of filming myself paint a painting? I actually don't think so, since that airplane hanger will be an airplane hanger once I'm done mopping it - relinquishing itself from it's art objectness, the painting will forever be a painting. Although, I think I'm just using the painting itself as a facilitator of communication. Paintings are known fairly universally as an "art form" and does have some sort of role in someone's life, if not just to make a wall look, 'pretty'. This one just has quite the past.
Back to airplane hangers - there's someone whose job may very well be mopping that same airplane hanger and I'm not sure it's really that, well cool to take away someone's job or use that job as a means of expression. I think it's very important and there's much self responsibility for an artist to do things in the name of "art".
I think that may be what people forget; there are many mediums to work with, but the medium isn't the artwork, what you do with the materials as tools is what makes something simply amazing. If I ever see some film of a white guy mopping the floor of a airplane hanger repititiously, I'm going to think just that - it's a white guy, who's much to much full of himself.
That's what I'm sort of afraid with other alex's work: it's fairly inventive, but it's a bit too meaningless for me. alex made a model of an armchair that moves wildly around on the floor. He's going to cast a life-sized version of it in plaster and then make it finally in wood, transferring the design from plaster to wood using a tool much like you would use to transfer a plastic sculpture to marble ala the Renassaince masters. Being a process freak, this whole idea is interesting, but asking alex why he's doing that, gives me a muddled 'ahhno', and a shrug of shoulders.
And now I really don't know what the medium of this piece is. I have the painting, but I also have the film, and now I have a collection of stills from the film with critical thoughts on the film and painting or something completely different. I also have the program that created the coordinants I'm painting... I have the swatches used to match the paint colors to their RGB counterparts, I have cut out paper letters, I have the pencils used and there's also myself, the dumb white guy that's painting it. This thing is going to be impossible or at least, very fun to categorize... But where do I stop? Do I include the drinks I was drinking while painting this? Do I include the clock? The calendar? The people I slept with while painting this? All these things have shaped this painting. So I selectively include things to strengthen my idea?
This is all taking for granted that this entire painting works out, because I am not sure all the pieces are fitting together. Thinking about how many things could go wrong is unnerving. The color may not have been mixed correctly, there could be a bug in the program that made the coordinants, there may be human error in painting everything, I could somehow lose all the data from the films (which is in the gigs, raw), it could just not make sense from anyone else, and on and on and on. And yet, it's impossible for me to say if it is working out; I'm stuck on a process which is dissimilar to working up from say a sketch or underpainting. It's this lose of control that I do not like.
This painting is such a commitment. It's hard to explain how it feels, but It's almost like being very well ready for a roadtrip, leaving for the trip with fairly good directions, but not really knowing if the place you're going to really exists.
