7/22/2006

Kerstin Roolfs

40 comments:

Painter said...

Lives in New York and Germany

cha said...

frothy painting.... feel like I'm dropping down out through the left corner!

Sven said...

i think this theme sucks

no-where-man said...

once again i like it, underwater work always recalls a stuggle of the womb.

cha said...

dreaming... the unconscious.... a journey...

question of photos again..

jpegCritic said...

Kalm James,

Was doing some sunday reading (on a saturday) of old material i had collected.. and came across an article that you may or may not have read, but it seems right up your alley of interests, around the business and culture of criticism around painting. Sure it's 3 yrs old, and ideas suggested by the article is already in full play today, but thought it was kind of interesting -- characterizing critics in Saltz's position as 'goalies' (in Saltz's own words) with no 'real decision-making power', etc. Hmmmm. Tried to relay this directly thru your profile but found no email, so sorry folks for using this blog as a relay and/or if this article is of no use.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_3_91/ai_98541210

brian edmonds said...

I like the painting. It seems like a difficult one to pull off.

jeff said...

A suggestion: read the above article, go look at some Manet's, DeKoonig, and then look at this again.

Its not very well painted. again its a JPEG so am not sure if the flatness of the whole thing is due to the image or if its just painted this way.

All the handleing of the paint seems the same, it all has the same weight, the flesh and the water are painted the same way, even though water is not a thick mass its painted that way.

Don't get me started on how bad the head is drawn.

Sven said...

interesting article though too dismissive of younger artists.
plus Marcaccio was someone he was lauding?
I think comparisons like Prieto to Parker are kinda silly and insulting, too.
I'm not into this painting at all

poppy said...

paint handling is more interesting in this than the one below..
how about the newly posted one above?
Almost not worth looking at or commenting..

zipthwung said...

I wonder how painting can get any more intelligent, refined and or radiant.

When I compare the paintings before 2001 or so, they all bleed into one mass of bland monochromatic army green.

Today the colors are often clear, sharp, crisp, and ravishing, often clearly delineated by thin, black, lines.

There was a desulutory show of Joan Mitchell at the Brooklyn Art Museuum, full of fugitive colors and unsightly blemishes standing in for flowers. Its moment, for me, had passed like a mass of opium popies sprayed with herbicide.

Neo geo is much more hallucinogenic, trippy, and engaging. Still, without drugs I find neo-geo's unmodulated garishness
harshes my mellow.

Must we wallow in bad taste? Sometiomes "bad painting" IS the result of bad bad bad painting.

I submit two GOOD examples of "folk art", with which to unfavorably compare this painting.
here

anachronism

So If I may say, this painting is an example of a trope, pared down to its goofy roots in the ham fisted perceptual framing that every artists must start at.

like who did this first?
here

in that sense, this painting is good:

check out this cecily brown

influence. I'm on to you, Cecily.

I think the value of painting can be pinned down like a butterfly in flight can with my hand crossbow.

Im on the fifth page of that article, and Im hoping for a major plot twist. Blah fucking blah. It is through will alone that I set my mind in motion, as they say.

Sven said...

zip please define trope in this context and please define conceit if you will (I never can get a clear definition in art crtitcism terms only in literary criticism)

Sven said...

I agree w poppy on latest post

zipthwung said...

I think trope is the worng word - but serviceable trope - loosely as something like a formal motif - a kind of pattern that gets repeated - but one that extends to conceptual recipes (heuristic) but beyond that maybe SPECIFIC recipes - of a class that includes something this painting uses, at level two or three but where it could be pushed to the boss level.

THere was a lot of underwater photography for example - lets call this level one, the esthetic experiential level. Horror movies love it. Music videos adore it. Its what FASHION does - like that movie THE CELL that ripped off a bunch of art uh, motifs.
But when does the water become THE WOMB? I dont get that part. SOme people see it as simple mimesis - its like a womb so it IS a womb, sort of, sometimes, like when you are .
drowning in it
.

Lakoff and Johnson, somatic marker theory - got that in school from a geometric abstractionist painter who I owe an appology to for being a contrarian. Still, he was a bit pompous and lacking in the kind of humor that allows you to get a high score in Galaxians.

Heuristic comes from computerese - as does the concept of "framing" where (Im sure you know you know I know you know) computers cant see out of the box, and thus lack self consciousness.

I did a google search -get your nerd on

that article ferom above humorlessly argues for some kind of hierarchy based on lineage like Caine begat Able or some shit. Fuck that. We live in the "rhizomatic" n0ot the "dendritic" where there are nodes, gravity wells, neural nets, and other metaphors that work good.

It takes too much mental energy for me to sustain that kind of hierarchical historical edifice. Im not a pinkerton detective wirh and eidetic memory. Im more of a Mitchum Machine.

Conceited?

zipthwung said...

Oh and - by "mapping" tropes you can "collapse hierachies" I think. THis is a form of compression which is good for sending information over the internet, or through language, or stuff like code. This painting might be a rosetta stone to some people, but it looks like pong to me.

jeff said...

I guess the general consensus is this Kerstin Roolfs is a good painting?

jeff said...

The work on her web site is more interesing.
www.kerstinroolfs.com

Sven said...

When people say trope in art I think genre /genre motif used as a means to a foreign end(used with distance/used in a way unconcerned with[or opposed to] its original meaning)

I hear conceit used in similar way but no definition exists for art criticism, I suppose one could use it as visual gesture/technique as metaphor

"in literary terms, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs an entire poem or poetic passage. By juxtaposing images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison."

zipthwung said...

Wikipedia rocks.

I went into the stacks and looked for references to tropes - none in visual art -anyone?

my athoritative "A Dictionary of Literary Devcices" says that "tropes multiply synonyms, without increasing the number of words", which sort of goes with the whole "asking questions versus answering questions" with art.

Increasing alternatives to meaning - "polysemy", allows personal conversations in a "broadcast" medium. Trippy. Its like speaking in Satan.

Rad!

Tropes are "figures of speech" that "distort" something.

THis means that they are like mathematical functions (codes, heuristics, scripts) - feed 1 into "f of (x)" and you get maybe 2006, but how did that happen?

A trope seems to be like a function or something.

In that sense, a GENRE is a codified or well understood and repeated function where you feed the numbers in and the TONE changes. FOr example, I feed in a story about a guy with an 18 year old secretary who tracks down criminals into the "film noir" genre and you get a fantasy about some dude who works for himself and gets laid alot. Feed that same story into "social realism" or whatever and he becomes a predatory male with a controll complex.

WHats the truth? What is meaning?

Are amateurish grey paintings about swimming good? How does this painting add to the genre?
I think the author is rebelling against the genre, and yet is constrained by the church, a gnostic to the end.

In a sense the grail quest has arrived at mary magdalenes womb, where the grail is the blood of christ, entombed therein.

I say, let that go, because that genre sucketh.

cha said...

Truth/Meaning...ambiguity is great....it keeps the concepts buoyant!
Zip..Wikip is excellent.. and thanks for all your info !!

cha said...

Truth/Meaning...ambiguity is great....it keeps the concepts buoyant!
Zip..Wikip is excellent.. and thanks for all your info !!

no-where-man said...

womb - breathing underwater - and the first break.

cha said...

MR W.up.... as to money and "spirituality"..... I was advised to make 50+ of each image I want to paint!!! That would take me to a new place with the image..... and the rest would follow !

Anonymous said...

ability in search of skillful experimentation...skill at experimentation in search of ability...art makes me dizzy...when I try to make the big recipe.

Anonymous said...

Wakeup...you are correct...Art comes from the fortunate. Probably has for the most part... since way back...that's why many of our eyes moisten at the idea of a New York art population post depression.

cha said...

So I wonder...if you're not driven by money needs......does your art have better "quality"?

Anonymous said...

Who cares about quality. Quality is not a word I have ever associated with painting...it's much more a word of plumbing, education, and insurance policies. Heaven forbid the simplistic painting see-saw teeters on money/needs vs. quality

cha said...

haha...ok....that was "quality" as in time to do all the searching and reflection and skill honing!!

Anonymous said...

Skill honing in regards to what? Seriously?

cha said...

I suppose it could be technique, ideas about content, marketing.... whatever ...to do with the whole artmaking thing. I haven't achieved the money part so it's all concept for me!

Anonymous said...

Cha, do you feel you should address directly the need in the art market based on your skills...and is it a more difficult proposition knowing there is money/fame/glory/skinny people of one's persuasion...to come closer to if one's successful. All this makes artmaking much more layered in my opinion...why make a painting?

cha said...

Well for me....it's all quite personal. I stay away from the art "machine" [commercial galleries etc] and use artist run spaces. Feedback is what I want mainly.
Why do you paint?

Anonymous said...

Great question...Suprise is my first answer...I like being suprised by myself...How can I set up a situation in which I can still suprise myself. I like art machines because they provide the biggest arena..somehow I feel that the biggest arena offers the most possibility...I really paint for about four people, yet somehow they appreciate ambition inadvertently.

cha said...

Hmmm interesting...
big yes to surprise!
and the challenge of working through a vague fuzzy idea until it starts to "live"... then I take it to claustrophobia and stop painting when it's "dead" for me!..... well sometimes!!!
Ambition has to be present to a degree...we're all exhibionists n'est pas?!

And ...the biggest arena would demand the biggest performance.... which would come at price?

Anonymous said...

it's more fun to paint in the face of the World Series...no matter how plastic, than the beer league softball tourney, even though I can pick an odd hop softball off city groomed fields with the grace of Willie Montenez.

cha said...

ok... :-)

Anonymous said...

sleep tight.

will make drawing from your picture said...

This is a great painting, advancing the idea of what painting can achieve
post-whatever...20th century modernism. For me, to make abstract paintings
today is to be stuck in the language of 20th century, i.e. it provides a too
immediate reading. Like a lot of the best German painting, this repro-abs
hybrid creates a highly engaging dialectic. Sehr-gut!
BTW: I saw Daniel Richters show in Berlin this spring and it was powerful-dark
beauty. For my euro, he is top of the pops.
http://www.cfa-berlin.com/artists/daniel_richter/works/?category=year&value=2006

zipthwung said...

Maybe this painting is about the possibility of painting underwater with oil paint.

swimming in grissaille, a la prima.

Tell me I'm wrong.

zipthwung said...

I like tha trichter - funny that sort of stuff comes out of rural america sometimes, but I imagine it gets squashed pretty quick by Grad shools, if it gets that far.