chuck ramirez

Chuck Ramirez
Godiva 2, 2003
Photograph
inkjet print 30 x 38 inches

Not exactly recent work, but interesting in the context of presentation. Trash that we usually throw away photographed and presented as an art object. Beautiful.

Footnotes to Duchamp, still? In a way. But I think there is more going on here. The urinal brought the pissoir into the gallery - low end brought high. Here we recognize that this object, though trash, exists/existed, was created, designed and manufactured to showcase a valuable product. Its golden rays suggesting a relationship to icons and religious paintings can't be coincidental. But it is trash. Why? Because we throw it away? Because it has no use? Because it is made of plastic? Because there are so many of them?

The reality is that this could be called beautiful. Because of what we know (all of the above comments) we do not value it. What other things are we dismissing?

More Fred Tomaselli

Been thinking about something Fred Tomaselli said in an interview. Author Siri Hustvedt talks about there being two aspects of perception - expectation and attention, and how we usually see what we expect to see.

Tomaselli replies : "Back when I was a high school philistine, skateboarding around California's Venice Beach, some friends and I happened to go into a gallery that was showing the work of James Turrell. The entire exhibition appeared to consist of a single, large black rectangle painted on the wall of a dimly-lit space. We all thought it was the stupidest thing we'd ever seen and began lauging at it. I reached out to touch it, and to my surprise, my hand passed through the wall and into a limitless void. Solidity literally vanished into thin air. My laughter disappeared into awestruck silence. Turrell taught me to pay attention. he taught me that what you see isn't always what you get. ... I think great art involves a little magic on the road to altering perception.... I personally like to create a fictive premise for the work that breaks down on closer reading."

(Another Magazine, "Magic Realism" by Siri Hustvedt, Autumn/Winter 2007)
http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/fred-tomaselli/articles-and-reviews
(image below is the cover of a publication, also seen at James Cohan website)