Invented Mythologies

an installation of drawings,

animations

and xquisite corpses,

as part of

Bushwick Open Studios

Fri, Sat and Sun

May 31 –  June 2

12 pm – 7 pm

347 troutman #317

Brooklyn

Invented Mythologies, pen and ink on paper, 5x7 in

I worked as an artist for George Lucas and I am very familiar with “The Ranch” in Northern California, where Lucas held 4th of July parties every year. The following conversations between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell took place at  George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, right before Campbell’s death in 1987.

Everyone is a hero in his birth. He’s undergone a tremendous transformation, from a little water creature living in the realm of the amniotic fluid and so forth, then coming out and becoming an air breathing mammal that ultimately will be self-standing. This is an enormous transformation and a heroic act, Joseph Campbell said. He wrote “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, a seminal work of comparative mythology.

Apologies – the links on soundcloud no longer work – someone took good care to take them down but it was good while it lasted.

Bill Moyers released Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth” in 6 episodes on soundcloud. It includes Chief Seattle’s letter to the US Government:

Ep. 1: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – The Hero’s Adventure
https://soundcloud.com/moyersandcompany/ep-1-joseph-campbell-and-the

Ep. 2: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – The Message of the Myth
https://soundcloud.com/moyersandcompany/ep-2-joseph-campbell-and-the

Ep. 3: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – The First Storytellers
https://soundcloud.com/moyersandcompany/ep-3-joseph-campbell-and-the

Ep. 4: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – Sacrifice and Bliss
https://soundcloud.com/moyersandcompany/the-power-of-myth-joseph

Ep. 5: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – Love and the Goddess
https://soundcloud.com/moyersandcompany/ep-5-joseph-campbell-and-the

Ep. 6: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth — ‘Masks of Eternity’
https://soundcloud.com/moyersandcompany/ep-6-joseph-campbell-and-the

“What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things… We must gather it together from far and wide”  Albrecht Durer. This quote was inscribed in one of my favorite galleries in New York – The Morgan Library and Museum.

The exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC runs until June 9th, 2013 - http://www.nga.gov/

…all at Postcards From The Edge – A Benefit for Visual AIDS. January 25-27, 2013 @ Sikkema Jenkins & Co – 530 West 22nd Street, NYC.

The 15th Annual
POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

Featuring artworks by Mirena Rhee, Ann Hamilton, Donald Baechler, Kara Walker, Dana Schutz, Bjarne Melgaard, Marilyn Minter, Burt Barr, Kiki Smith, Ed Rusha, John Baldessari, Louise Fishman, Arturo Herrera, Ida Applebroog, Ross Bleckner, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katherine Bernhardt, Nayland Blake, L.J. Roberts, Marcel Dzama, Catherine Opie, Tony Feher, Mary Heilmann, Jim Hodges, Julie Mehretu, Jeff Koons, Robert Longo, Moyra Davey, Bill Viola, Jane Hammond, Lawrence Weiner, Kay Rosen, Jack Pierson, Louise Lawler, John Waters.

Extinguished a bit of a thirst for art at Art Basel Miami this past weekend. Visited the very same galleries I have seen dozens of shows of in New York, but felt as if meeting someone from church … at a Maskenball.

Hands Chart ( New York series ) - 23 x 29 inches, iron oxide, ink and gouache on paper, 2012

DAF Dress piece at The DUMBO Arts Festival

Join me for the unexpected! – I am doing a DAF Dress piece at The DUMBO Arts Festival! Saturday, Sep 29th, 12pm-9pm. Somewhere near 45 Main Street, Brooklyn, in DUMBO!

DAF Dress piece at The DUMBO Arts Festival

Join me for the unexpected – I am doing a DAF Dress piece at The DUMBO Arts Festival!

When: Saturday, Sep 29th, 12pm-9pm.

Where: Somewhere near 45 Main Street, Brooklyn, in DUMBO!

BE CAREFUL, PAINTING WILL BE INVOLVED! NO PETS OR WEAPONS, PLEASE!

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL is a three day event – it happens September 28-30, 2012. Join me for Brooklyn’s biggest arts event of the year.

http://www.dumboartsfestival.com/

When I first conceived the piece I had no idea how it was going to come out formally. I wanted it to be relevant to the vision of Figment, grounded in “forms follows function” principle and also reflective of the location – Governors Island right across Manhattan in New York. Mark di Suvero sculptures dominated the landscape and provided me with the relevant geometric fulcrum.

Figment Dress - The making of. Click for a High resolution photo strip.

Be careful: No Weapons , No Alcohol, No Pets

June 9-10, 2012
Governors Island, NYC

What:
FIGMENT is an explosion of creative energy. It’s a free, annual celebration of participatory art and culture where everything is possible. For one weekend each summer, it transforms Governors Island into a large-scale collaborative artwork – and then it’s gone.

When:
Saturday, June 9 — 10AM – 6PM
Sunday, June 10 — 10AM – 6PM

http://newyork.figmentproject.org/figment-nyc-2012/about-figment-nyc-2012/

XQUISITE SHODO ! turns into XQUISITE Kimono.. from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

XQUISITE CORPSE showed up in Central Park on Easter Sunday.. to color some grass. We decided to do XQUISITE the day before and next day we setup the XQUISITE SHODO which turned into a true collaborative effort in the spirit of XQUISITE CORPSE.

As time went on and with input from passers by ( Thank you, Harriet from London! ) the true colors of XQUISITE SHODO painting showed up and it turned into an XQUISITE Kimono!

Music – taiko drumming!

Thank you, grass, for growing.

wearing my painting for the first issue of Revolt magazine - underground Art talk paper by Scotto Mycklebust

The red ceiling..

A Collaborative art project.. with a twist.
Please be cautious,
this will not be a usual art party,
you may need to wear art on your sleeve.
The XQUISITE CORPSE will drink the new wine and art will be made by all and not by one!
Paint, painting surfaces and booze will be FREE, make sure to wear comfortable clothes, if anything.

http://xquisitecorpse.mirenarhee.com/

XQUISITE CORPSE is part of High LIne Open Studios – Chelsea – 2012 and Armory Arts week New York.

With the generous support of Ian Mack.

I have kept a diary since I was 13 years old. In these I write and draw sketches of personal and found work. In a way, they are diagrams of a past and a future, usually written in both English and Bulgarian, sometimes a sentence starts in English and ends in Bulgarian, sometimes I write English words in Cyrillic; sometimes I write Bulgarian words using the English alphabet. There are a lot of made up words and lots of drawings.

My latest notebook is red.

These series of animations are the red notebook equivalent. In them I use my latest drawings and paintings, they carry the mood and the sense of place and space I currently occupy – Brooklyn, New York.

No digital manipulations for the drawings have been used – they have gone in as they are – I scan them into the computer and animate them. The hands are pen and ink drawings on hot pressed board, a very smooth velvety surface produced by an American paper company. The red background is a Crimson Red Intaglio ink monotype on Fabriano papers ( an Italian paper praised since the Renaissance ).

To score these compositions I used Marcus Fischer’s amazing album mip~map/for friends this winter..  Please, support his work: marcus fischer / mapmap.ch and visit his blog.

Winter Diagrams: December ( Brooklyn machine series )

Winter Diagrams: December ( Brooklyn machine series ) from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

Winter Diagrams: January ( Brooklyn machine series )

Winter Diagrams: January ( Brooklyn machine series ) from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

Winter Diagrams: February ( Brooklyn machine series )

Winter Diagrams: February ( Brooklyn machine series ) from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

When I think of Damien – I also can’t help but think of Zaphod Beeblebrox. Hey, if that artist’s intent is to make a lot of money – that is not a reason to reject the work – although this is not my intent but can’t speak against that being someone else’s. The spots aren’t things by themselves and they do not create a traditional artistic value (via the artist’s hand ). We all know from math that a dot cannot be defined as having a substance, it’s a destination. Each room of the three Gagosian galleries was brilliantly hung – thus all the paintings in a room worked together with scale to triangulate space and create a giant, Three-dimensional musical piano ( you know, the toy ones – i had one when i was a kid ).

It was a pure pleasure to indulge in the simple language of color, to occupy the space within the dots and just listen to the music.

The exhibition Opening at Pace gallery’s Happenings: New York, 1958-1963 was packed with the Who’s Who in the art world today. Although the crowds for the most parts obscured the actual show – I think it was more or less the point. The exhibition opening was, all over again, a Happening on its own.

Works by Jim Dine, Simone Forti, Red Grooms, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, Carolee Schneemann, and Robert Whitman.

One thing I learned – when art asks questions – please, do not answer. Asking is fun. Answering, on the other hand, is not.

Christopher Russell’s strange, beautiful grey obelisks at Julie Saul gallery. Grey is a pigment of your imagination..

This is how an animation starts ..

Hand painted ocean (HD) from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

animation still - click for a high res image

animation still - click for a high res image

V6 ( Brooklyn Machine series ) - 4 x 6 inches, pen, ink, gouache and acrylic on hot pressed board, 2011

This piece went this past weekend to Cheim & Read’s Postcards from the Edge.

The ultimate geek list of pigments used in Indian Painting:

White pigments:
1. Lead White ( basic Lead carbonate )
2. Zinc White ( zinc oxide )
3. Chalk ( calcium carbonate )

Red/Orange:
4. Cinnabar ( Mercury sulfide )
5. Vermillion ( Synthetic Mercuric Sulfide )
6. Lac ( primary colorant Laccaic Acid )
7. Red Lead ( Lead tetroxide/orange red )
8. Realgar ( Arsenic disulfide/bright orange red mineral )
9. Saffron ( Crocetin and Crocin )

Yellow:
10. Opriment ( Arsenic trisulfide/soft yellow )
11. Indian Yellow ( Magnesium euxanthate/ originally from the urine of cows fed mango leaves )
12. Gamboge ( yellowish orange )

Green:
13. Verdigris ( Basic Copper Acetate/dark bluish green pigment )
14. Malachite ( Basic Copper Carbonate )
Mixtures to make green – Indigo and Indian yellow

Blue/Violet:
15. Ultramarine ( Natural Ultramarine is the ground, separated blue particles – lazurite – from the gemstone Lapis Lazuli )
16. Azurite ( basic Copper Carbonate/frequently found adjacent to Malachite )
17. Indigo ( Indigotin )

Earth Pigments:
18. Iron Oxides

Black/Gold/Silver/Tin:
19. Carbon
20. Gold Ink ( Gold particles with gum ), similar with Silver and Tin ink

21. Beetle wings ( to represent Emeralds )

Inks:
22. Carbon inks ( Lamb black )
23. Metallo-gallic ink
24. Indian ink ( naturally )
25. Willow Charcoal
26. Lamp Black ( soot from fat, oil, tar )
27. Ivory Black

Gums:
28. Ghatti gum
29. Suresh
30. Gum arabic

Hosted by Cheim & Read, 547 W 25th St, New York

The Preview Party is tonight:
Friday, January 6, 2012 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Benefit show:
Saturday, January 7, 2012 from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Sunday, January 8, 2012 from 12:00 – 4:00 PM

The twist was that my friends and participants didn’t know that all the walls were tarped for painting.., I advertised the event as a sit down dinner with all the trimmings of a family event. I wanted to completely detach the action from a specific result and let things unfold.

..and here are the results

\\ Ink, brushes, charcoal, sharpies, pastels on butcher paper, red lights

The next day, I took photographs of all the walls in natural lighting..

In addition to drawings, there Were-Rabbits, poems and cryptic messages..

even a Were-Man..

Occupy Wall Street and Magritte also showed up.. with parts of a Christmas tree

And how do the grand Satyagraha at the Met Opera, the De Kooning exhibition at the MOMA, the La Carte D’Après Nature show at Matthew Marks gallery, moving studio 4 times, shaking hands with 470 people in three days during Open Studios compare to my brother’s fishing – they don’t even come close second.

Fishing is a philosophy and also a sport, a very zen way to gamble and a fusion of the Romantic and the Classical way of thinking. You could be well prepared, in a Classical way, to fish.. but fish has the very Romantic approach of not getting caught.

Insofar as we understand the universe – if it can be understood – our doings must have some desire for order in them; but from the point of view of the universe, they must be very grotesque. As a matter of fact, the idea of “order” reminds me of something Jack Tworkov was telling me that he remembered of his childhood.

There was the village idiot. His name was Plank and he measured everything. He measured roads, toads, and his own feet; fences, his nose and windows, trees, saws and caterpillars. Everything was there already to be measured by him. Because he was an idiot, it is difficult to think in terms of how happy he was. Jack says he walked around with a very satisfied expression on his face. He had no nostalgia, neither a memory nor a sense of time. All that he noticed about himself was that his length changed!

Willem De Kooning, written in 1950 for a lecture series at Studio 35 on Eighth Street in New York.

Ultra Violet

says 99 percent certainty is 100 percent certainty.

Quantum Tunneling

Quantum Mechanics says a particle has a definite probability of being anywhere in the entire universe. Although any real distance from the particle’s expected classical path is infinitesimally small, since Quantum Mechanics is a statistical theory those small probabilities must be counted! Quantum Tunneling is a fascinating effect that arises out of these small probabilities. ( I certainly, 100 percent didn’t write this )

Bhagavad Gita

Philip Glass’ Satyagraha is based on Bhagavad Gita and sung entirely in Sanskrit, without titles for the audience. Bhagavad Gita says the world is not for the doubting man.

Math is a language, and choosing Peet Mondrian’s colors is no accident, for Math is not only an abstract language but also a visual language. Visualization in mathematics, or mathematical notation, was invented in the 16th century and it immensely liberated mathematical discovery. Like musical notation, modern mathematical notation is strict and a few symbols could convey very complex ideas.

Exponents

Radicals

I went to mathematical high school and participated in a few Mathematical Olympiads, although I am the worst student of math as I relied mostly on my pattern recognition ability rather than study. When I moved to the States I did some of the  comprehensive IQ tests and scored pretty high; but my pattern recognition was the highest at 147. I have my own definition of pattern recognition and it’s the ability to predict an outcome based on two or three reference points. As in life and math, trouble is if you think you have two or three reference points but in fact only one is a solid ground and the rest.. simply conjectures.

Some of the Mensa tests I take for fun do involve little math but sometimes they do refer to elephants, some with pink and green stripes, some all pink and some all blue..

To feel and to observe are the two most powerful weapons an artist uses.. on himself. When you are out in the world you really see, you dissect the world down to the particles and reverse back through to the whole to construct a mental image, however distorted. You later bring these images to the canvas. In front of the canvas, you feel. To observe and to feel are somehow in a quantum entanglement, the better you observe, the better your ability to feel. You see a brick for what it is and then you really see it, for what it isn’t, a sort of stereo vision which overcomes the senses. That’s why if someone feels one, an artist feels ten. You need that feeling powers ten in order to get the feeling flick through to the brush ( or whatever tool is there ) and via the paint – onto to canvas and from there to the viewer. The feeling needs to have that power in order to travel.

The confusion is that art is about learning how to draw or paint, that ability to render some ( or even strange ) reality. I think art is about learning how to feel. To feel is a powerful narcotic and immensely seductive. It is the blue pill, and the red pill simultaneously.

Joan Mitchell at Cheim & Read

Friedel Dzubas at Loretta Howard

Life existed for 3.5 million years without the ability to see. So the thinking among  scientists is that life didn’t need the ability to see in order to exist. I am hoping it will take me a bit less than that to learn how to see.

Mirena Rhee - New York One Way, 16 x 20 inches, pen, ink and brown wash on paper, 2011

Mirena Rhee - New York Red, 14x19 inches, dip pen, ink and red wash on paper, 2011

Hand Painted Ocean - Tsunami ( Japan series ) - 40 x 30 inches, dip pen, ink and brown wash on paper, 2011

I would like to invite you to my Pen and Ink Drawings Open studio as part of High Line Open Studios Chelsea 2011 – Oct 14-16, 526 West 26th street, suite 723, Fri, Sat and Sun 12-6 pm. I will be participating with new pen and ink drawings.

Preview exhibition and opening reception party will be held at 551 West 21st Street, ground floor, the corner of West 21st Street and 11the Ave.
The Preview Exhibition will be open to the public for the weekend event, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, October 14 – 16, 2011, from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m.

My biggest thanks to Painter and true Londoner Ian Mack with whom I will be sharing the Open Studio space this year. Please, support his work: http://www.ianmackstudios.com/

There are many other participating artists, all within a few blocks around West 26th street in Chelsea. If you can’t make my studio perhaps you can visit theirs: http://www.highlineopenstudios.org/artists.html

“The exhibition  features the first presentation of works from the David Byrne’s new Apps series from 2011. The works are advertisements for witty applications authored by Byrne that speak to the rapid proliferation of apps for the iPhone and other smart phones..”