John Pomara exhibition in Marfa

poolparty7a_500w

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

 

poolparty2_500w

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

 

poolparty31_500w

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

reading list

Blue Moon, Lee Child
Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis
The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, The Prairie James Fenimore Cooper
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis
The Philosopher's Stone, Colin Wilson
Blood & Thunder, Mark Finn (Robert E. Howard bio)
Renegades & Rogues, Todd B. Vick (Robert E. Howard bio)
Invisible Sun, Charles Stross
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Robert E. Howard
The Tremor of Forgery, Patricia Highsmith
The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq
Whatever, Michel Houellebecq

the technobabble happens here

Hard to believe people are still referring to that dumb "simple net art diagram" but it gets a lot of play over at Rhizome -- gives meaning to their existence, even. Yesterday it appeared attached to a technocratic-sounding tweet from Lozana Rossenova, prompting a smart crack from yours truly. Rossenova disliked the joke and promptly hid it from public view. Here's a screenshot:

Lozana_Rossenova

The old, fun internet (of which even this diagram is a part) has been taken over by the Cult of the Professional Class, which speaks a new, terrible form of English.

nellie bowles in my rss feeds

The name Nellie Bowles showed up twice in my RSS feeds today.

--A right-leaning ZeroHedge story about the NY Times holding back, until after Biden's election, reporting (by Nellie Bowles) on the sorry state of Kenosha after the riots.

--A left-leaning Yasha Levine story about old California oligarch families (a tribe to which Nellie Bowles belongs).

Both are worth reading.