the technobabble happens here (part 2)

We've made fun of the hyper-punctuated technospeak of this tweet by Lozana_Rossenova:

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In terms of verbal communication, someone who grew up learning English in the classical sense might have no idea what any of the above meant. Also, what is a "PhD w/ Rhizome?" Is Rhizome.org now "accredited" is that just some fun thing? Must have missed this somewhere.

The tweet also comes up mysteriously short in the visual department. Those familiar with MTAA's decades-old "The Art Happens Here" cartoon know that the image was a blinking animated GIF (the lightning bolt trembled). You can't upload those to Twitter -- Twitter converts them to video -- but Rossenova didn't take that step; it was simply rendered as a flat .png. So much for net-art-as-inspiration (&more!). Worse, what is that swirly stuff surrounding MTAA's rectangle? Apparently it was one of a series of ambient backgrounds uploaded to Rhizome's server by an ad agency that did Rhizome's last design. It's basically decorative fluff and has no business being attached to "art" -- imagine a show of 1960s conceptualism at the Metropolitan Museum with Rainbow Brite patterns instead of white walls. So much for "designing archival interactions" and "interface transparency" (again, whatever those might be).

John Pomara exhibition in Marfa

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John Pomara, Pool Party #7, 2021, oil and mixed medium on aluminum panel
15 x 11 inches

 

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John Pomara, Pool Party #2, 2021, oil and mixed medium on aluminum panel
15 x 11 inches

 

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John Pomara, Pool Party #31, 2021, oil and mixed medium on aluminum panel
15 x 11 inches

This new work of Dallas-based painter John Pomara's presents a departure, or deviation, from his exhibition a year ago titled Digital Debris. That show was part of Pomara's long-running dialogue with the trappings of digital culture: pixelation, display errors, questions about what is being communicated, using painting to investigate non-painting.

These Marfa works have physical similarities: the paint is applied to a metal (aluminum) surface and the top layer is glossy. The processes between are pure analog, however.
Per the gallery: "[U]nlikely combinations of oil paint and other additives to react with one another.. as fluid properties of the paint repel or attract... As these episodic reactions occur, the unpredictable activity is mediated to a great degree by the artist’s observation of the entropic aspect of this process. Pomara thus allows his 'laboratory' to be inundated with wildly out of control colors, surfaces, and improbable combinations..."

Tom here: the Marfa group provides an intriguing sidebar to Pomara's work -- a detour back into analog and also into The Monochrome, which has its own tradition and associations within abstract painting. It will be interesting to see how or if this direction loops back into ongoing digital discussion.

Opened December 10, 2021 at:
Eugene Binder
218 North Highland Ave.
Marfa, TX
eugenebinderart@gmail.com

"On Screen/Off Screen" exhibition review

My review of the Dallas exhibition On Screen/Off Screen: Kate Petley, Lorraine Tady, & Liz Trosper at Barry Whistler is currently up on Glasstire, a Texas-based art magazine.
I hope you'll give it a read. I posted some detail shots earlier, which I used as a reference when writing the review.
Below are some more. Kate Petley (the gray strip at the top is the wall behind the canvas):

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Liz Trosper:

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Lorraine Tady (extreme close-up to show a line that may or may not be painted):

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