Saturday, October 29, 2011

Exhibition Opening

Åpning: fredag 4. nov. kl. 1200
Kunstneren er tilstede også på lørdag 5. nov. kl. 12-16

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Clockwork Lime

Yesterday I finished this painting, Time Loop, whose inspiration and digital sketch was posted last month in this blog.
The time loop is an idea that is bandied about occasionally, but perhaps I should clarify my idea of it. Rather than being a literal loop, (such as a bit of spliced-in film, which repeats itself unchangingly), the time loops I'm thinking of are perhaps more like orbits of planets. Though conditions are largely the same now, when the cycle is entering a phase of concurrence, the universe is nonetheless altered slightly. Events have deja vu, but they are not precise reenactments of history. History doesn't repeat itself to the letter. Rather than Clockwork Orange, now it's Clockwork Lime.
The era is again dystopian, with violence, disposession and revolution flaring up in ways that lead pundits grasping at straws. Yet in this iteration the protagonists are not Burgess' charismatic hoodlums, but rather hooded rioters, seeking anonymity.
Arab Spring... UK Riots...Occupy Wall Street... What will the next chapter be?

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Mansonia Map


This souvenir map is your official guide to a famous but neglected landscape. Blue Ribbon Comities have bulldozed some areas, but there were simply too many pavilions to wipe away entirely. Quite a number still stand today, rusted and neglected though they now are.

The beauty of maps is that they make sense; their web of streets all link together. All roads lead to Rome, or in the case of the Mansonia Map, all roads link to Manson. Charles Manson is the dark symbol incarnate of the most fulminating decade, the 1960s.

Conspiratologists are able to find countless unsettling connections to Manson. One reason for this is that many of his associates sought to distance themselves from him after the events of 1969. This lead to increased mystery and conspiracy, much in the same way that the flawed and whitewashed Warren Commission has not quelled, but increased speculation regarding the JFK assassination.

Indeed, Manson now shares a tangential association with the rogues gallery of institutions that crop up when one examines both the JFK and RFK assassinations: The CIA's MKULTRA mind control program, LSD research, Bay of Pigs wet-workers, The Mob, etc.

How far can we examine this dark footprint? Is it only a historical artifact, or does it show a legacy that extends to our current times?

The chief literary sources of inspiration for Mansonia Map are Adam Gorightly's Shadow over Santa Susana and Russ Baker's Family of Secrets (about the Bush Dynasty.) A visual source of inspiration is the map of the 1964/65 Worlds Fair.

Worlds Fair



Manson Sings

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Protesters

The cover this cartoon falls under should probably be The Old New Yorker. Though the event that inspired it (Cops arresting 700 on the B'klyn Bridge) is recent, some of the characters are old: the bridge itself, and the wordplay among them.  I'll post it on my new blog too, Roman's Comics.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Powwow one-off


This is the finished painting for the sketch I posted May 16, where I also described its inspiration. I thought it applicable to show now because it reminds me of a product by Myron Fass, great genius publisher--and eccentric shock-jock bordering the edges of sanity. 
 Fass was a compelling personality well described in the most recent book I have read, Mike Howlett's beautifully illustrated The Weird World of Eerie Publications.                        


Powwow Culture recalls the type of publication that Fass' organization specialized in: the one-off. Appealing to and exploiting the public's crazes was what he was especially good at, printing magazines about JFK or Elvis (or sharks during the JAWS era.) In my alternate universe, the celebrity LaFontain is the one to celebrate. 


My Forsider paintings in this exhibition are one-offs. They are also OOAKs (isn't that the acronym they use on Ebay for One-Of-A-Kind?) They fall well short of Fass' parameter of success, sales of at least 20,000 units.