1.  Candice Lin and Patrick Staff
   Hormonal Fog 2016 – 2018
   Hacked fog machines, scent diffusers, and herbal tincture.
   Science Project GenreTwo pieces in the same style as each other in opposite corners of a dimly lit room.  Short box tables with one box table stacked on top (both pieces).  Various liquid holding jug and jar contraptions on and around both.  The liquid holding containers have herbs and different colored clear fluids inside.  The same herbs in the containers are also scattered on the floor.  Tubes, wires, tools, and some electric lights on both tables.  Some vapor fumes spray from small machines behind both pieces.The use of herbs and the themes of the essential self and bodily transformation through outside influences (like natural herbs) is interesting to me.  The herb vapors are supposed to suppress testosterone and manipulate our biology.  The artist statement brings up questions about our biological nature and “disrupting the anxieties about environmental pollution that uphold purity narratives. My own project has moved into a psychedelic theme and something similar I’ve thought about is how small forms of “brain damage” can accumulate and influence/alter us over the course of our lives: from exposure to chemicals (cleaning, maintenance, paint, ink, plants), head injuries, drug consumption, sleep schedule, diet, etc.

2. Sum, 1958

Alfonso Ossorio

Oil on Masonite

Paint Gloop Genre

A tall swirling rectangle of very thick, bulging, paint gloop.  Black, white, grey, brown, green, pink, red, orange, and yellow gloops are glopped all over a white gloop background.  All partially smeared, swirled, and mixed but mostly glopped/glooped onto each other.

The painting is wavy and bulgy with clumps of paint.  The painting looks organic, almost like a giant mold or fungus.  It reminds me of a mutated mold corpse from the (okay) horror sci-fi movie, “Annihilation.”  The painting looks somewhat tumorous and organic with a strange texture that comes from the thickness and clumpiness.  I’m interested in body horror and using some 3-d texture that brings the painting into our world.

3.  No. 12, 1949
James Brooks
Oil on Canvas

Abstract Figure

A background made of light brown, grey, tan and white shapes.  Covered with blotchy shapes of red-orange that interlock with accompanying dark shapes of similar sizes.  There are small black and red-orange strings and drops of paint between shapes.

This painting looks to me like a jumble of destroyed/deconstructed abstract bodies.  In the center, there is a flesh colored face with black eyes a nose and mouth with brown hair on top.  The black shapes look vaguely human-shaped.  I see torsos, arms, shoulders, legs, scattered around.  I don’t know if this interpretation is correct, but I think that this interpretation conveys violence and physical pain.  It looks like people being viciously torn apart in a storm.  I’m interested in the abstract jumbled figure and empathizing with whatever it is going through.  Is it conveying a sensation?

4.  Jake Prendez
7  Generations of Genetic Memory: Xinachti Xochtli
Oil on Canvas 2018

South American Figure

Light white/grey background.  Narrow yellow rectangle with red and tan interlocking borderlines on the center right edge of the painting.  Standing vertically down the center of the painting is a figure of blue lines.  To the left of the blue line figure, there is a fully painted figure of an identical height and proportion doing the same vertical pose.

The figure of blue lines is Mesoamerican style graffiti of an ancient Mesoamerican holding a plant.  In front of the graffiti, a child is doing the same pose and holding a real plant.  The graffiti represents her ancient ancestry.  I wonder what this artist is thinking and saying about genetic memory.  Genetic memory is another subtle aspect of ourselves that influences who we are, but I’m dubious it, there’s no way we can know what it is or how it actually works in our time.  Something I’ve thought about is how we’re all combinations of the different people we’ve descended from, and how we are fusion half-clones of both of our parents, and how having a genetic child may be similar to reincarnating because they are almost a clone of you.  I interviewed the local artist Yelizaveta Bakhtina once and that was an idea she brought up.   I think about that when I notice myself expressing a trait or mannerism that one of my parents or grandparents specifically does, that I’m a kind of modern reincarnation of all of them, I’m somewhat like how they might have been if they were born the same time I was?  But then all living bloodlines are ancient and trace back to the dawn of human civilization (and life itself).  I have a short (2 min) video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HvrySwhZrQ

5.  Ilana Zweschi

Painting Algorithm (Blue/Red One)

Oil Paint?

Abstract Algorithm

The painting is made up of a pattern of rows of many thick indented lines that are streaking side by side throughout, forming shapes that echo outwards and into themselves.  The painting is mostly blue (cyan around the borders, getting teal towards the middle), with muddles reds scattered around and condensing towards the middle where they become vivid red shapes.

The painting looks like a circuit board or a wall of alien technology.  The artist paints by feeding text into an algorithm that drives every decision made in the painting process, this produces unique abstract art.  This constraint removes the artist’s “decision making” and leaves the artist’s skill and ability to follow through with the algorithm rules?  I wonder how much of the painting was really decided by the algorithm and how much of it was intuition?    Either way, I’m still thinking of a constraint to impose upon myself.