The title makes a thematic reference to a
collection of works where
the desire to create a state of mind that is more akin to the artist's
intention of kindling a smile through artistic spoking rather
feeling the need to cover naked white walls with artworks that echo the
trends of the moment. Here, the artist strips the white walls of
the art world and resurrects them in the mind's eye to
"view" at will and when and where and as one pleases. Games, stories,
cards, and recopies for a brief moment of curiosity of wonderment,
cataloged in
a process of "transaction" between one and another for the benefit of
a third, i.e. the viewer. On the wall or not on the wall, more important
is that everything is none the less on view
as proof of a concept, as benchmarks of a friendship, as a concrete but
pluralistic exchange tempered by season through season, and finally as a
set of
collected memories forged into things made from the holy trinity of
paper,
scissors and glue.
In the project 21st Century Games and Wonderments, Art becomes artefact,
artefact of an atmosphere of a non-social leisure class termed
back then
as "down and out" and which today is swallowed, termless, and crowned
as a life style more unless depicted as being"untitled". The works
depict a life style postured in an attempt to socially nap, or lead
an anonymous life while being
park-benched and while contemplating existence as formulated and dictated by
the neo-liberal, turbo-capitalist
mouthpiece: "We want you to want and to want what we want to want
and if you do we will want more together with you!" In conclusion, the
spirit that brought the works about and into existence is best
described as an everlasting curiosity caused by unknown factors,
precarious employment, random drinking bouts, life manifesting in the
non real of the not yet lived, and balanced out with a jogging schedule
to stay healthy to aid in witnessing the everlasting.
BEAUTY MARK
Public Art for Anyone and Everyone
The work consists of a pin-on button and the instructions on how to wear it properly. The button is 1 inch in size and the image on its surface consists of a small brown heart on a white background. From a distance it takes on the form of a beauty mark and up close, one can recognize that it is actually a heart. The work was work created as a small passive device for encountering and exposing blemishes. The text that accompanies the button and explains how to use the device reads as follows: “Of all the treasures of the world, one’s own is always the last to be dug up. Pin the button to your clothes at any point under which there is a beauty mark to be found on your body and “dig up” one of your own treasures and show it to all.” Each person who “performs” the work is made conscious of exposing a “blemish”; as more and more people where the button, the more it becomes publicly visual and the more media stereotyping is put into question.
CHOCOLATE, SEX AND HEROIN
Flights of Fancy for a Set of Paper Airplanes as Art Multiples
The art-multiple “ Chocolate, Sex and Heroin” is a set of art-placebos for anybody not interested in embracing the dangers of hedonistic activities referred to in the title in their real form, but is never the less seeking a form of wonderment allowing them to embrace the “dreamatic” aspects of the mind, and to do this inconspicuously and without addictions, and social complexities that such indulgences inevitably bring. To experience any one of the three “fancy flights” provided, simply select your flight, get ready, concentrate, embed the idea in the mind, close your eyes and then,get ready, empty your mind, cock your hand back, and let go with or without a goal, a target, or reason. Let the plane glide along with your fantasy to produce the proper affect based on the your selection made, whether this be sex, chocolate, or the imaginative effects of a strong opium based drug.
FOR LOVERS OF COFFEE AND VOLCANOES
A simple pocket game
This is an artwork in the form of a simple pocket game and acts as a metaphor of the process of ascent and descent of an active volcano. Playing the game echoes an experience of how one feels in the moment when one discovers that one is completely lost and the way back is an unknown factor. Natures remarkable process of how volcanic deposits develop into some of the richest of soils and how as one descends change from barren rock to abundant green growth takes place is echoed in a humble way through the playing of the game. The goal of the game is to “climb” a volcano by taking turns rolling the dice and moving up and down the "volcanic grid". The first player who reaches the top of the “volcano” and climbs back down safely wins the game. The background image on the game board is the image of an exploding espresso maker, which inspired the artists to make the game, and which reminds him of a 13 hour descent from Mount Etna how good coffee can taste.
A PIANO PIECE
a piano piece with variations for with or without a piano
“The piano piece is a set of variations for a piano that is not needed to perform the work. The “theme” of the work bares resemblance to the variations upon it, only because they are also in dream and breath like harmonies. The first of the two variations “Caught Like a Thief” is for two or more players sitting at a real or fictive piano, or anywhere else. The piece is performed blindfolded and players proceed by creating a scratch like sound as best they can and then repeating the action ad lib on a different key (or surface) or continue on with the same key (or same surface).“A Breath Sound That is Scratching” is the title of the second and final variation. It is for one, two or even more players and is presented as a foldout score that can be read from any direction, upside down, or even backwards and upside down. To perform it, each player lays the score down on the surface of a table or on a floor (on the grass of a meadow, or on the forest floor) between all performers sitting around it in a circle. The entire work is performed by scratching fine, medium, and course grades if sandpaper with a guitar pick following the score as one understands it.
Material: Printed paper, Sandpaper, Guitar picks
DRINK ME LOVE ME BE MY FRIEND
a hand printed mug for coffee or any other warm substance
Most stories are told and many begin with “once upon a time”, So, rather than telling a story, the artwork “Drink Me Love Me Be My Friend” invites you to taste something magically warmed. Once upon a time there was a very capricious young girl who just didn’t want to eat and who hated drinking milk so much that she would pour it into her mother’s blooming and not yet bloomed flowers. This made the mother angry, the neighborhood angry, and even the cat got very, very angry with her for feeding the flowers with “its” milk. In turn and as the story goes, her father, more sensible about the young girl’s capriciousness, invented a magic syrup. It was kept in a small brown bottle and closed with a white cap. The label read: “A P P E T I T E S Y R U P” . It tasted almost like normal strawberry juice, but for the girl it possessed for some reason a great power: One small spoon before dinner, one small spoon before breakfast and second servings found their way on her plate or bowl and the hunger its way out of the dining room and the lunch room, and off the picnic table. Suddenly, all were happy again and eating, eating rice-carrot-beetroot-tomato soup without caring much about true world of realities of the real taste of that rice-carrot-beetroot-tomato soup hiding behind the loving taste of her father’s syrup. “Drink me Love me Be my Friends” is still available by prescription for not only those with enoy eating disorders, but also for those who like “once upon a time” bedtime stories with a warm cup of milk and a happy cat.
THE EARTH CELL GAME
A board game about life and the living
The Earth Cell Game is an ‘old fashion’ board game. It is played with a die to create animal or flower figures constructed out of the hexagonal shaped pieces. The person who constructs his or her pattern first wins. The game is the resluts of a workshop at the RAINBOW CENTRE SINGAPORE, a non-profit organizations for children with special needs. The Game Board contains comprehensive instructions for setting up and playing the game. The Figures along the edge of the Game Board make up collection of 16 figures, which players choose from and constructed from the hexagonal pieces during the course of the game At the center of the board is the Rainbow Earth Image. It is a hexagonal image of the earth and is made up of a total of 121 hexagonal pieces in the colors of the rainbow. Using a die and a bit of strategy, players compete to build animal and flower figures out of the colorful hexagonal shaped pieces.
NINE LEVELS BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
A do it yourself color the moon kit
Nine Levels between Heaven and Earth is basically a community service art multiple celebrating -in a way- the first Chinese manned flight program culminated in Yang Liwei’s on October 15, 2003, placing China the third country to rocket humans into outer space. The project quotes the title of Yang Liwei’s book “Nine Levels between Heaven and Earth” and the project’s concept is much inspired by the detailed information about food presented in that book.The project therefore partially focuses on the eating of food in space and how this -in the words of Qi Faren- and that this would be for many the most important reasons for carrying out any space program: “to enable humans to work normally in space.”The Nine Levels Kit includes two minimalist, abstract, conceptually based art works for black ink on crumpled paper, a fleet of three paper airplanes “Chocolate, Sex & Heroin” for flights of fancy, a receipe for “Leeky Noodles” -included to remind one of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico- and a “DYI-Blinking-Chopstick-Trainer”. The Chopstick Trainer comes with a roll-out placemat with a partial image (1 /35) of the moon’s surface that combines with the other roll.-out placemats to create a full image of the moon, a set of chopsticks and the electronics to make them blink ras one eats. The electronics provided come with either a red, green or blue LED, which we used in combination with others (while eating noodles, for example) colors the moon so that when asked the question “What color is the moon?”, one knows the answer without speaking.
DNA BUBBLE BLOWER
A Silly Science Project
This is a silly science project that is like DYI science but where a sense of humor also prevails. The design of the bubble maker makes use of the structure of DNA, which is like a ladder twisted into a spiral and at each step of the ladder is a pair of nucleotides. Although the construction of it is based on clear science fact, the use of it should involve more the creative imagination. When DNA is copied, mistakes are sometimes made and these are termed mutations. Sometimes mutations are fatal for the organism and sometimes, evolution is moved forward by mutations. As bubbles float and land they combine with things like puddles and stones, and through fantasy we personify them by seeing bubbles as facial features. For a brief moment, new beings are born. It is here where the DNA bubble blower shows its true identity and by doing so points out an important aspect of life: having fun.
VANISHING BIRDS
a piece of fragile and inflatable art
Vanishing Birds focuses on the all to common image of our modern day world: the destruction of nature because of a general the lack of concern for the preservation of our environment, which is brought about by the lack of care for life forms outside that of human and domesticated animals. The balloons, printed with bird images and inflated with one's own air, evokes man’s substitute for animal life on earth: Cheap, commensurable and profitable. However, the artwork is a playful one and all are invited to bounce the balloon around in the air together as a reminder that it will take all of us to reconcile with the damage environment. The balloons use the printed symbol as a warning as a symbolic representation of a life form crashing into peril.
SPACE ART POSTER GALLERY
a fold out gallery for a mixed reality exhibition
The “Space Art Poster Gallery” was created with the strategy to prove that combining the analog with the digital makes it possible to consume art in alternative spaces such as a domestic habitat, a window, a hallway, etc. In short, the artwork is conceived as an Art Multiple within the genre of a Neo Mail-Art movement that is innovative in its use of technology to introduce new networking and forms of collaboration, which extend the mail art experience without violating any of its principles. To enjoy the analog aspect of the work, one just hangs the poster up in appropriate space; To view the digital layer of the work, the viewer scans the QR code on the poster using any scanning app on a smart devise. The scan connects the user of an app that digitally augments the poster. Using the app, one can view each of the Art Asterisms on the poster individually or can experience them together in the form of complex galaxy made out of an impressive collage of diverse star constellations. To make the app more green orientated, there is also an option on the app to view a 3D replication of the junk that orbits the earth and find out more about the ecological impacts of Space exploration.
SPAGHETTI FIBIONACCI
an almost traditional pasta recipe for traveling with the mind
HOMMAGE
a miniature museum for a spaghetti box
The work consists of three elements: A spaghetti box, a miniature of Michelangelo’s David, and a postcard of Rome at sunset. The spaghetti box is used as a miniature museum for displaying the sculpture of David. The postcard is in actuality a multicolored light gel that is used to color the light inside the box to imitate the effects of a sunset. In its austerity of material, , the work acknowledges the social crises and the tragedy through loss of life during the COVID19 pandemic. By so doing, it pays homage to the strength of dedication of the health workers in Italy during the Pandemic. To experience the work, the viewer looks through the end of the box while moving the postcard across the window of the box while focusing the eye on the miniature figure of David inside. If we can draw a simple conclusion out of a biblical story, it can be said that David defeated the giant Goliath with spirit and it is that the artists attempts here as a metaphor for the spirit with which the health workers stood together to fight an enemy with the means available.
CIRCLE CARD
a work of poesie concrete for a circle
Conceptually, the work explores the circle as in its diverse roles: As a peephole, as a three dimensional object, and as a movement. In its essence, the Circle Card is a work of poesie concrete, which is “recited” through set of actions given on the back of the card: “Take the lens in your right hand and the card in your left; place the lens behind the card and look through the hole with your right eye. To experience the work, slowly make a 360 degree rotation at the point where you are standing.” The effect is wondrous of rotating around the room is wondrous and refreshing, because it turns the room into a colorful work of panoramic art.
WOODPECKER CARD
a performative sound artwork
