The Evolution of Man

This cartoon wasn't meant to be funny. I am feeling sick and unwell and going to bed for an hour, images of guns and gun talk literally make me dizzy and ill. The overarching message here being .. our steady commitment to obliteration. We were born in a violent burst only to end up creating one. I don't get it. I get hate, I get beating the shit out of someone, I get violence... maybe ( although not the bomb ), but our sheer nonchalance towards violence I don't get. I even get how we can be hated by ISIS. I get self-defense, I get rifles in your home in Montana, I get pistol for your safety ... to defend your home in the burbs somewhere. But having gun stores and gun culture, and casualness in violence, I don't get. And I can't bear it. And it is my fault, although I am not gay I thought we made big progress with legalizing gay marriage. It is my fault, I feel we are still  savages although we sent rovers to Mars. Shame on us really because 100 rovers can't make up for having a thriving killing culture. It is nice living in a big liberal city like San Francisco or New York, comforted by the company of like-minded liberals where we pat each other and congratulate each other with plastic wine cups over having achieved various achievements that we liberals usually achieve. And while, having nice dinners, people around us shoot each other, starve and plain don't make it. It is our fault and I can't bear it. I look around my studio and see meaningless pursuits and wooden sticks with dry paint on them, it doesn't make sense to wave them this way or that whatsoever.

On The Subject of Killing

Imagine a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere in a vast ocean of pretty much nothing. It wobbles and probably hisses, whatever it takes for it to get more round. This tiny rock becomes a bigger rock and probably wobbles more. It gets hit by other rocks and dances around a little, most likely. It grows and starts to settle. There are big dimples on this rock and these big dimples become big oceans. Now, I don't really know since I haven't been there - but there were tiny things at some point very willing to divide into more tiny things. The nature of the process escapes me and, frankly, the urge too. These tiny things at some point grew little appendages and started exploring and became fish. Fish made more fish, the Universe kept spinning, fish made it to shore and became a lizard. That didn't work out but luckily other things did work out better. So Earth tried to make large forests and put large animals in it. It practically took forever. And one day a monkey stood up and was aware of the world that surrounds it or maybe it took millennia from one monkey to another, can't tell ya for sure.

After billions of years there is man. And we are wonderful. We clawed ourselves out of the mud, we fought out the bad guys and took to the sea and then we took to space. And how far we have come for man used to be chained to the earth like a beast. We have created the Garden of Eden on earth. There are wonderful machines and tools delivering wonders to our homes. we open little jaggy things and water flows, we open chunky boxes and food comes out, we flick switches and light comes on. There are these bright screens we have conjured miracles on with dreams streaming in, hierarchy of angels as Joseph Campbell calls them.

And we are beautiful, for the most part. We command nice bodies with versatile trimmings, we command consciousness with imagination, we command machines with wonderful properties, we command a lot of the earth and the sky, and the oceans, well to some degree but looks like we are getting better at it. We put designs of the mind through ores and out come fantastical creations for the first time in billions of years.

As far as I am concerned we are gods walking this planet.

And then there's the gun store on the corner. It takes a jury of 12 men to convict and sentence to the death in our land.. it takes years of deliberation, lawyers and paperwork and until the end someone fights for the life of this man or woman.

And then there is a gun store on the corner, with ready made weapons engineered to take the lives of dangerous criminals and animals. Anyone could become a judge and jury on tens and hundreds of people, and take a life, in an instant.

Killing has become trivial, merely a shopping experience.

Why did we bother then to create and build a civilized nation our of this large chunk of ground. Why cross the seas, why brave Ellis island and make all the skyscrapers in New York, why make a California out of the desert when we still fear getting shot downtown? I recently drove through Oakland in California with a map of the latest killings and robberies on my phone to make sure to find a parking spot with the least likelihood of getting shot. I just don't like killing, man, and I don't like dying. I have this instinct built in me to make sure I stick around. It is our DNA and common sense built into every living human. It is time to put common sense into how we govern our nation and where we want our nation to stand, on the subject of killing.

A Night at the Rijksmuseum - Every Painting is a Planet. Van Gogh's Sunflowers in 3D.

Eiko, from Eiko&Koma, dancing A Body on Wall Street. It is pure gold and right on the money, so to speak.

A Body on Wall Street: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eikoandkoma/albums/72157669071236502/with/27573558595/

..

Isabelle Collin Dufresne - Ultra Violet, an artist and muse to Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol. I photographed her and her work in her studio in New York.

"The Messiah is The Message" is one of Ultra Violet's works that spoke to me the most. It is a message I firmly believe in - you only bring to the world what is truly in you. The purpose of the life of an artist is to distill a message through their practice, artists are the priests of the unknown which they make known through their work.  

Please, email me for usage rights & licensing, the following photographs can't be used in any kind of media & blog without my written permission.

Rest in Peace, Ultra.

BBC - Travels with Vasari

Small talk and other small things

We do not need to communicate novel ideas in order to engage socially.  Often we use language to reinforce our current standing in the world and to reaffirm having something in common with others.  One of the great things about reddit is that I found out how many idiots just like me are out there which was very reassuring. I am saying that about reddit with affection as I have learned a lot about the world and myself through that little social media folly.  

/u/Prince_Jellyfish on the purpose of small talk. (reddit.com): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3ss8oz/people_with_high_social_skills_whats_the_biggest/cx02xgd

[–]Prince_Jellyfish 2689 points 6 months ago*x3: This will get buried, but I'll say it anyway in hopes that someone will find it useful:

Misunderstanding the purpose of "small talk." I have friends with poor social skills who say they 'hate' small talk, and find it pointless. I suspect some even consider themselves superior to people who engage in 'pointless chatter'.

They misunderstand the point of small talk is not explicitly in what is discussed, but in the subtext. The subtext of nearly all small talk between strangers is essentially: "hey person who is externally different than me: we are fundamentally the same! We are both people that experience life in the same ways. You're one way, I'm a different way; but there's many ways in which we experience life that are similar."

"Some weather we're having." "Yeah, boy, it sure got cold quick."

This is not an exchange of information about the weather; it is two humans drawing closer by emphasizing that both of their lives are impacted simultaneously by forces outside their control, and secondarily that they live in the same geographical area.

"Just got back from a few days in West Texas." "Oh, I drove through Lubbock a few years back. Real good brisket." "Yeah! It's amazing, right?"

Oh, you and I have different clothes, hair, and religious beliefs; but we've had a similar experience to which we reacted a similar way.

"Did you catch the game this weekend?" "Man, what a finish!" We've never met before, but we both invest in sports as a way to safely express emotion in a public space by using the triumphs and heartbreaks of athletic competition as a proxy for our experience; and we both experienced those same feelings together yesterday, even though we hadn't even met.

Advanced examples: "Did you catch the game this weekend?" "Oh, gotta tell you: I'm a Giants fan." "No! That's criminal! How can you support those bastards!?" "Well my grandpa was a fan, he passed it down to me" OR "well, growing up, I never followed sports. But one day I decided to follow baseball, and I fell in love with the game. Lived in San Fransisco at the time.."

You and I like different teams, but we both like teams and so are the same.

"Have you ever listened to the NPR show The Moth?" "No, I never have. Should I check it out?"

Person two is saying: even though we can't bond over this shared experience, even though we've only just met, I trust you with my time and attention. I'm interested in things you find important and take you seriously.

Solidarity talk: http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/Solidarity-Talk.htm

Fresh off the presses - a great thread on reddit that shuttered my own Tuesday feelings of self-importance. If atoms are 99% 'empty space', how big would the universe be if we compressed every atom down to it's most space efficient arrangement, essentially leaving no space between particles?: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4mvupc/if_atoms_are_99_empty_space_how_big_would_the/

"...We are more like disturbances in the cosmic pool of probability and causation.." literally blew my Tuesday mind, I am gonna try and make it to the weekend without going insane.

Winter Diagrams: January goes on exhibit on 4 Times Square as part of “The Beauty of Color”

 

Show is organized and curated by http://www.see.me/

As part of this show I put together a new squarespace site as a trial.. please, enter code to view:

https://mirena-rhee.squarespace.com/

Prints currently available exclusively on saatchi:

http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-Winter-Diagrams-January/93024/2260698/view

Stills from an interactive simulation of pen and ink drawings

Interactive simulation of pen and ink drawings, a simulated shifting landscape where you interact with pen and ink drawings assisted by gravity. With simulated soundscape - I pre-recorded the individual collision sounds but the resulting soundscape is simulated in real-time. Humpty-Dumpty grew out of a simple drawing: http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-Humpty-Dumpty/93024/3006623/view

Thanks to an inspiration form Denise from Denise Bibro Fine Art.

Humpty-Dumpty, interactive simulation of pen and ink drawings

Please, play in HD. Dip pen and ink drawings assisted by gravity. Created, animated and simulated with Maya and Unity. Soundscape with Garage Band - prerecorded the collision sounds and the soundscape is thus entirely simulated in real-time in Unity.

Humpty-Dumpty is an interactive simulation about a drawing of the same name: http://goo.gl/iEY06h Also starring New York Red: http://goo.gl/PYd2MN

Windows app ( opens dropbox ): https://www.dropbox.com/s/uk52tnixzt7jybm/humpty-dumpty-windows-app.zip?dl=0

OSX app ( opens dropbox ): https://www.dropbox.com/s/n1w7zkr26inst4t/humpty-dumpty-osx-app.app.zip?dl=0

Humpty-Dumpty is a landscape of the mind, it is about the battles of good and evil, the small ones in our minds.

Humpty-Dumpty - interactive simulation with pen and ink drawings

Humpty-Dumpty, 30 x 40 inches, pen and ink on hot press board, 2016

 

http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-Humpty-Dumpty/93024/3006623/view

How To Count Past Infinity - we came up with Omega.. and it was good

Thanks to Cedrick Collomb for this large dose of Omega.

Curiosity Looks Back

televisions, meat, diamonds, couches, brand new lawns, pools of various sizes, lawn chairs, wars for all of the above... yet Curiosity is roaming completely oblivious to all of this. Down the thread on reddit people are getting excited about dirt biking on Mars, just like back home. What a great time to be alive.

Thanks to reddit and https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/4ktoha/curiosity_looks_back/

Curiosity Rover mission page on NASA's website: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

( funny thing, it turns out i like (reddish) brown, my dad likes brown and from what he told me my grandma also liked brown )

I have everything

This is a combination of two posts I wrote a year ago and decided to revisit as part of putting together the "I have everything project".  In addition to an essay, the project also includes installations, collages, digitally manipulated photographs, photographs of various objects and a sound recording.

"I have everything" project started with ( even before ) moving from the Marina in San Francisco to a small room with a red chair in Harlem. The title I got from a message I scribbled over a Nordstrom catalog. It is so brash, of course no one ever has everything and it is factually incorrect. Because you ever only need one thing - the ability to think independently.

For centuries people found comfort and security in being told what to think. Peoples have been thinking the thoughts of kings and queens, the thoughts of their masters, the town elders , the pharaohs, the priests ( don't get me wrong I am religious but I argue and think about my religion and don't you ever take that from me).  For if there's a great gift that the French gave to the world it is the opinion of the common man.

Now as part of this project, being a common man myself and also confronting the Occupy movement in New York, I made several sound recordings where I reflected on the question of what is it to have. Occupy had stratified people into the 99 and 1 percent, where there were some that had more than the others.  I made a thought experiment of trying to determine what is it to have.

What is it to have? To hold? How is it that we are having it when we are not holding it? How do we have the things that we supposedly have like our limbs. We posses temporary control over a collection of molecules that responds to electrical stimuli? Is that the having? But we do own supposedly things that we neither hold nor electrically stimulate. How  are we sure. It is a fascinating subject.

When I open a newspaper it is as if we never went through the Enlightenment. It is full of guided content and regurgitated narratives of sex, guns, and money. Have you ever wondered how many girlfriends Kant had, or Plato? Did you ever wonder how much money Van Gogh had? None.

No one ever tells you that the most important thing that you own, apart from your good health and the proper function of all your organs, is your ability to think independently. And the second thing is your ability to express and argue your opinion in public. These were the two Dreams of the Enlightenment.

In his Essay What Is Enlightenment? Kant defines Enlightenment as  "man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance." For his  second dream he says "the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind."

Once you have traded your goods and services, obtained lodging and food, secured your home, sturdied your frame and medicated your body, feel free to use the greatest gift you may ever have, free thought.

I have everything, 19 x 11 inches, sharpies on the back of a Nordstrom catalog, 2011 - Mirena Rhee

I have everything II, 23.1 x 15.3 inches, digital collage, 2011 - Mirena Rhee

The paper dress I am wearing is a 30 x 40 inches mixed media collage over a c-print of my Lucasfilm W2:

I have everything paper dress, 30 x 40 inches, collage over c-print, 2011 - Mirena Rhee

The Plank constant

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.

Unfinished paintings by great artists at the Met Breuer - for an artist it is a revelation.

Unfinished show at the Met - favorite unfinished piece so far is a Van Gogh, painted just before he died, it is the ultimate interruption in an artist's work.

Zoom into a Leonardo.

I thought the show was magnificent and made me weak in the knees, thanks to Ian Mack for letting me know so I hurried to see it.

I'd pick two rooms, one with a Van Gogh, another with Michelangelo, Leonardo and Van Eyck.

Can't imagine anything better than being in a room together with Michelangelo, Leonardo and Durer, with a Van Gogh across the hall.

After several centuries crowds gather enthralled by little pieces of cloth and wood with scribbles on them. The two Leonardos are the size of a letter. Such is the power of art.

There are no chests filled with gold and emeralds, no food, apparently no one is naked, no clowns juggle in the halls, but everyone is quietly in a trance in front of these great albeit unfinished works. Such is the power of art.

There's also Rubens, El Greco, Rembrandt, Titian. The titans of paint in all their unfinished glory. It happily confirms my convictions in the power of art to wiggle out of centuries and entertain fresh crowds.

I went to the source museum for the Van Gogh's piece and turned out it is a museum in Finland which has the painting.  Naturally they had a very high resolution photograph of it online for your viewing pleasure here:

http://kokoelmat.fng.fi/app?si=http%3A%2F%2Fkansallisgalleria.fi%2FE42_Object_Identifier%2FA_I_755

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