Animated pen and ink drawings, based on a drawing of the same name.
Hands in Central Park – the first day with the hands in Central Park /
I had only three hands with me this day and had them go over several railings, asked a few tourists to help me out with making some of the shots.
Hands Waterfall in Central Park – The Second of three site-specific installations I created in Central Park on October 10th /
Hands Waterfall in Central Park - First of three site-specific installations I created in Central Park /
Hands Dry Waterfall First of three site-specific installations I created in Central Park.
Named this installation after a poem from Hyakunin isshu that read: “Though the sound of the cascade long since has seized
we still hear the murmur
of its name”
Did three installations yesterday, started 6am on the south east side of central Park and hung the last in the middle, didn't want to annoy the central Park staff as I worked without a permit so I let installations stay for an hour or so/ let people take pictures before I took them down and moved on. Had great conversations with people's from all walks of life, ages, and corners of the world including fishing for caper s with a 10 years old.
The first in a a series of impromptu efimero structures around Central Park that I did yesterday, I haven't really picked locations prior so when I saw something that looked interesting I decided to throw the hands in, with the generous non interference from the park staff, it was a very peaceful day with a lot of energy and interaction with a lot of people.
I did not have a permit so very glad Central Park staff did not really harass me but they did start cutting grass at some point so I had to leave. I wouldn't really know what to ask a permit for since I don't work with a plan I basically decide on the spot what to do with the environment based on that very environment so the work is very spontaneous and efimero and I'd like to keep it that way I don't want to plan it and I don't want no execute a plan it's just not interesting.
Wanted to share with you these amazing detailed photos of Tree of Life /
One of the most amazing things that happen when drawing is that there is this incredible surge of adrenaline, The Surge of adrenaline cannot be compared to any other activity, it's the high of a process. The reason drawing is special to me is because it's a very personal way of working you keep very close to the surface there is no distance whatsoever, the surface and you constantly exchange DNA due to the proximity. The fact that there is a lot of detail requires constant presence so there is no really coasting when making a drawing. I really like the very personal way of working when I draw, in this manner without many words or any other Grand things I show my love for the world and at the same time I protect myself from the world by building a perfect world, a world without blemish or strife, an eternal life.
Tree of life, 30 x 40 inches, pen and ink on hot press board, 2018 /
Just returned from the astonishing exhibition of Delacroix paintings at the Met /
And I didn't see even one third of the show, and there was another exhibition composed entirely of his drawings.
I had such a punch in the stomach that threw me back to where I came from to begin with. To the very beginning of why i want to do art in the first place. Delacroix's world is my world. The world of Michelangelo, Durer, Leonardo, Rembrandt, the greatest artists in the world that ever lived, and their spatial and chromatic sensibilities. This is why I like brown. And marble.
I had such a head spinning experience and there was so much emotion in me and so much taking in of paintings I couldn't sit still at the exhibition and will be coming back many times. Delacroix will be my beacon and mentor for the next few months. I will come back to see his work, and his words.
I reflect on why i think beauty is important. Beauty is important because it transcends and transports, and my own duty in this world is to produce as much of it as I can, and cause as much of it as I can in the world.
As I sit here reflecting on Delacroix, I think a manifesto of sorts, of what to do. I will do relentless beauty through works large and small. I will work with ideas large and small, that reverberate. I will put enough power, intellectual and worldly so these ideas have enough trajectory to shoot upwards.
I reflected on what I want to achieve with my Memory Replacement World Trade Center installation and performance - I want to overwhelm with beauty and color and life, with a human touch, with a personal stroke and with the closeness and within the personal space of a human being.
Giant hands in Beacon - many thanks to all the creatures involved /
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I wanted to thank nature for allowing me to do this, because it could have been much more difficult for me - I have a phobia of bugs, insects etc so any sort flying things like bees, wasps, bats ( other than mosquitoes ) would have sent me off. Also wanted to thank the local police and the local bullies for only showing up one time.
. Giant Hands in Beacon - it is getting dark, a bit more loud and the hands are slowly turning. As evening approaches in Beacon - i have to fold everything up before it gets dark, and all the hooting starts.
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Giant Hands in Beacon - the frivolity of weighting little /
Often when we try to achieve visual quality - like in the case of the giant hands - color and strong presence - we lose the frivolity of having the art object simply be. Sometimes art objects need to be left alone to simply be otherwise just like people - they gain weight, become less frivolous and less dynamic. The life goes out a little. I loved being in this place, in the company of bushes, crickets, birds, wind, greenery, ruins, graffiti, and random humans.
Giant Hands in Beacon /
Making of and hanging of :
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Found the hands a beautiful Japanese Garden to hang in, except it was not Japanese, and not a garden /
while hiking in the area I found the most beautiful space - abandoned brick factory which has been taken over by nature. While passing by I only saw a brick wall, partially collapsed and had no idea the area just around the corner held this amazing environment.
I walked by, the place called me and I answered. It's my magical forest sans the mushrooms. I was in love and spent much time here.
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. They call the place Dennings Point ruins, I found them much improved though, and much more beautiful. imagine the sheer mundanity of a brick factory building with all the brick making stuff in it. Now it has been beautifully rearranged by nature and you have the most lively soundscape too.
It was made so much more beautiful.
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Art is about a punch to the stomach. I figured what the difference is between art and art, art gives you a punch so when the art is absent and the artist is absent you still hold the image in your head. You say ah!
If there’s no ah it is just making stuff, or being creative which is of course absolutely valid too it just isn’t all that interesting.
Giant Hands in Color /
The paint is not looking right because it is almost 4 years old paint. The yellow paint is still great and the pigment suspended - but the red and blue is little separated. I just laugh it off - old paint is okay. Better than no paint.
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More on what the Silicon Valley gave me - vol2 /
Couple of additions to my first post - The museum of modern art in San Francisco had a great permanent collection, they also had incredible exhibitions like the Magritte show which opened an entire new world for me - that of surrealism. My first lesson in art was also at the SFMOMA but oddly enough it was about photography. So there was this major retrospective of Richard Avedon, whom i admired at the time and then there was this show of Robert Frank photographs downstairs. And here for the first time I saw the problem with commercial art standards. So there were these giant gorgeous portraits made by Avedon but because of the commercial strategy and commercial standards he adhered to - they lost their human emotion power battle to the much smaller but made from the heart photos made by Robert Frank. It is all about the punch to the stomach, and that can't be faked with special effects and expensive lighting.
So the lesson was that if it wasn't a battle that the artist fought, if it is not coming form the center and the heart, if it is not true to an inner standard - it won't win the long game. And this is the story with William Bouguereau - incredible technique and special effects, and no punch to the stomach, at least for me.
More on what the Silicon Valley gave me /
Work in the valley gave me an an unlimited travel budget, in addition to a hunger to find the best players in what I considered my field. My field was art and through interactions with other artists and research on my own I decided to focus on the top players in my field, and study their work in person.
So I went to London and went through the National Gallery as well as the Portrait Gallery and other museums, not sure what my top artist was there but a lot of Renaissance. I went to Paris to study the impressionists, my visit to Musée d'Orsay changed my entire attitude and changed the way I look at art. Until that point I had not much respect for impressionism. After that point I gained much respect for both impressionism and art, and got a glimpse of what a profound change in seeing involves.
With this newly gained perspective i started looking at Van Gogh. I went to Amsterdam and the Hague and in addition to Van Gogh looked at Rembrandt, Bruegel and the Northern Renaissance. I discovered Vermeer in person - I was running through a gallery at closing time and arrived, almost out of breath, at one of his smaller paintings. I was stunned and this small painting took my last breath away.
Anyway - back to Paris I resumed studying with sculpture and painting, and started studying Picasso and Dali. I continued my education on Picasso and Dali in Madrid, where there are three major museums stuffed with the best the world can offer in terms of painting, including Goya, and Hieronymus Bosch. My interest in Bosch came after I got acquainted with surrealism, and his work as a sort of a predecessor, the first surrealist.
Now big impact on my consciousness was of course Rome and Florence. The Vatican museums and the Uffizi produced in me growth equal in its intensity to that of going to the moon. I stared at the Botticelli and other pre-Renaissance for hours on end. Most impact on me in Rome was produced by the sculptures in the Vatican museum, and by the work of Michelangelo. Later i saw Bernini in person as well - I spent a whole day with his sculptures at Galleria Borghese.
With all this newly acquired knowledge and new standards I started spending more time in New York and the galleries there. I was flying on weekends to see the major museums, including MOMA and the Whitney. Modern art entered my consciousness, with the solid backing of old art.
And here I will pose for a minute, because art has and will always be at the forefront of what I consider worthy of thought. But there is another thing I discovered, which is a school of thought which dealt with how we see the world, and it had little, if anything to do with art.
I went to Japan, and in a summer I spent time in several temples of the Rinzai school of Zen in Kyoto. Sitting on the mats somewhere in Arashyama, surrounded by ponds and zen gardens, I was struck by lightning. Her I found, I saw and felt, the ultimate efficiency and beauty of simplicity. I saw and felt the effects of Zen and later on adopted that outlook for my life.
What did the discovery of Zen mean? It meant that on my return to America I started seeing how much time and resources we expend on things that fill our rooms and our environment. I remember a conversation with someone about their experience with a seventy thousand dollar kitchen in Westchester. Imagine the amount of pressure and resources that would take to cut up a simple salad. it's like having dinner and dragging a locomotive behind.
When I think of dinner - i imagine going to the fruit stand guy on the corner, having an avocado, a few tomatoes, fruit, eating it in a park or in a nice public space somewhere in Manhattan and using the rest of the time and resources to have fun and enjoy the company of family and friends, of galleries, museums and theaters, libraries if you want, of which our city abounds.
To sum it up and to circle back to the title I gave to this post - I had the piece of mind and resources to study what mattered to me without the pressure to produce immediate results and act on the so gained knowledge, and to expand my outlook on the world and find a set of beliefs and standards for life that struck a chord with me.
The best lessons I learned in the Silicon Valley, and a few more things /
Number one is the ultimate skill of cooperation with strangers - I now notice that i can relate to many people from all walks of life completely and with ease and within the first few minutes, and I did not have a very social job per say. The job of the Silicon Valley artist is pretty much long hours of grind, on the surface. However there is the unique aspect of technology which permeates any Silicon Valley job. When you have complicated tech you have to leave the confines of your computer desk and start talking to people. Since 50 percent of your job may end up being trouble shooting and problem solving. It is not uncommon as part of you job, for you to need to communicate with people from the top to bottom, to engage the CEO, your manager, your colleagues. complete strangers with huge responsibilities who you have never met before and where they are not your friend, relative or acquaintance. I didn't realize until much later what a huge role social interactions had in the valley. And it didn't really dawn on me, until much later, the fact that everyone in San Francisco is overly nice somehow is part of the secret sauce of the valley success. I remember my parents being almost taken aback by the niceness of people, I remember them telling me they thought all the niceness seemed very fake. However they got used to it so much that they talk about it until this day.
This is the reason I recommend, even for artists who eventually may choose a life outside of an organization - take a job for a few years in a high pressure environment, a boiler room, a pressure cooker, a place with high pressure and high standards. If you can get in the best company, in the top place to compete with the A-players. A few years in the top company in the world equals 5 years of education in a top university. And ultimately this is not about compensation at all, it is about growing to the point where you outgrow most of your peers and start seeing a new horizon. It is important to step on a pretty high place to see the farthest.
Never seen anything more beautiful /
The greatest capital in the world is the human capital /
Around this time last year I had a chance to volunteer for the Mayor's campaign and canvassed and knocked on doors on the Upper West Side, between 90th and 101 st street and between Broadway and Riverside drive.
In the span of one day I got to meet a South African racist who literally was rolling down the street in his vile opinions and because we are a tolerant society no one beat him up. In the same day I got many complaints from decent citizens about "the homeless people" where I couldn't believe my ears that in the century of the Space Odyssey someone may consider that a certain human being has less value than another.
Many in the latte holding crowd thought that homeless people are simply out to cause inconvenience in accessing venues that dispensed said lattes.
No one complained that we have too many shops. I am sure no one will complain if instead of homeless we have piles of gold and diamonds on the streets. They will be much better looking piles, right? And not talking and certainly not disturbing the paradise we have built for all the good looking people.
I believe that the moment we decide that human beings who are down on their luck are somehow less worthy, of love, affection, attention and consideration with dignity, we are lost as a society and we are back to being simply a beast. Beast do not care for the injured and the sick but we humans should.
The amount of consideration and respect we pay to simply dug up dirt that was smelted, and cut up crystals, the care we take to put these on display and in shops, it is to me ridiculous and surreal. At the same time we want to put out of sight and out of mind humans who literally took millions of years of evolution to make and whose position of being on the street is only special today; but we have lived in huts and in the dirt for thousands of years, how can we forget what it is to just be human.
Our humanity is our greatest capital. The greatest capital in the world is the human capital. My dream is that in 500 or 1000 years differences will be considered obsolete and humanity will be comfortable enough to dispense with slavery to the material world. And will dispense with the material measures.
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back to my campaign and the human stories of New York...
My main task was to talk to people - in the street and also to knock on the doors in apartment buildings in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world.
Only one person out of many threatened me with police and literally threw me out. But I had many and wonderful conversations with many people who were simply happy to talk. I remember meeting a Bulgarian-American-Jewish man who told me that every year he used to go to his home town, by the seaside in Bulgaria; he used to rent a hotel room from which he could see his childhood home. He said they built a hotel now which blocks the view so he hasn't been back in five years.
Another man shared that their father passed but his values lived on and signed for my campaign. ....................
To sum up my feelings on this matter - I feel it is time we take a good look at our values, of what we consider worthy. Why do we care about gold and diamonds, why do we care about handbags? Why is a sack with straps that important so we put it in nicely air-conditioned rooms and well lit while humans are out in the elements? I can tell you right now a pile of gold is probably only worthy if it has been buried with a mummy. I think instead of saying someone has a heart of gold we should say they are simply human.
The greatest capital in the world is the human capital. In fact I believe there is no other capital to be had at all.