niki kriese

Some Install Shots

2009-08-09T11:13:00.004-05:00

Cast Shadows

2009-06-30T20:38:00.002-05:00

Please join me for my first solo show in... a long time!

Cast Shadows

July 11 - August 2, 2009

Opening Reception Saturday, July 11, 6pm - 9pm

Performances by: Audra Wolowiec, 9pm

Yuka Otani, 9:30pm

Dutch Kills Gallery

37-24 24th Street, Suite 402

Long Island City, NY 11101

TEL 718 784 2737

Figuring it Out

2009-06-23T21:45:00.009-05:00

Some new fragments

2009-04-30T19:22:00.003-05:00

Some things in progress, with minimal explanation

2009-04-11T10:05:00.003-05:00

(One note: in this piece i am trying to remake a glove, using leftover scraps of gloves from the casting process as a pattern.)

2009-01-31T14:38:00.002-05:00

2009-01-04T12:10:00.002-05:00

2008-11-17T19:48:00.001-05:00

New drawings

2008-04-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

Here are some studio photos. I started working on these soon after moving into my studio. I started drawing people from memory, starting with my husband and my sister. I felt these were playing on my weakness in drawing as well as in memory.

It made me start wondering what accuracy meant in this form; the features didn't necessarily add up, even as a gradually got closer to "correct". There was definitely an ineffable 'glint' that made the drawing come to life, that was more like what it may be like to be in the presence of that specific person. This led me to my current video projects, where i am investigating chemistry and connection. More soon! Please enjoy these bad drawings of several people in my life, including Mathew, Maggiem and my mom!

Finally something is going on besides Gilad

2007-10-22T10:59:00.000-05:00

CRG Open Video Series
November 15, 2007
6pm

The CRG Open Video Series presents the first in an ongoing series:

INSERTIONS

At some point a dubious reality willfully invades the spectacle,
craving a duel with itself.

Phyllis Baldino
Beth Campbell
Nicole Cohen
Wendy Geller
Derek Jackson
Niki Kriese
Chris Larson
Leigh Ledare
Kalup Linzy
Shana Moulton
Carol Saft
Keith Sandborn
Ryan Trecartin
Joseph Whitt

This inaugural screening of the ongoing series is curated by Angela Dufresne.

Limited seating available, arrive early.
For more information contact: ovs@crggallery.com

2007-04-11T12:49:00.000-05:00

Found?

2007-04-11T12:44:00.000-05:00

Found

2007-04-11T12:39:00.000-05:00

Sad attempt at staying up to date

2007-04-11T12:27:00.000-05:00

These are all from January/February, and skipping a lot of in between stuff. But i'm hoping it all makes sense in the end

No Love Allowed

2007-01-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

i found these two love letters back in the Fall. Strangely they were both in French. My decision was to scribble the words out. I can't really remember the rationale, though it was around the time i was into obscuring text, miscommunication, and relationships. I approached these two pieces as if they were drawings. The mark-making was just mark-making, though the performance of it took a little bit of work in the detachment department.

Last Dregs

2007-01-06T20:43:00.000-05:00

Here are some images of my studio during the last week of the semester. It seems like so long ago. I had installations and some drawings, and photos of outside installations...my studio is definately getting more and more disparate in modes of working...i feel like they can all come together and make an overall body of work but i'm not sure how. I love working with materials and experimenting with my hands but i am also really excited by conceptual abstractions and work that doesn't really exist anywhere. AND i got a video camera for Christmas so who knows what will happen next...maybe that will be the thing thta ties it all together. I'll post some video as soon as i figure out how to edit it into a managable thing.

Loomless

2006-12-10T23:43:00.000-05:00

Weaving paper...It started as a way to fragment text. In the first larger drawing it was two handmade signs put together. They each had ink spills running across them and it was the areas where these two spills overlapped (to create a solid) that interested me most. So i just started weaving spills.

Now i'm starting to think of weaving as a grid, and something that is structural only because of the equal balance between its two perpendicular components (warp and weft). But weaving flat lengths is also interesting to me because it seems to get closer to the idea of two things existing simultaneously; they are both equally present and hidden.

Q: What's at Stake

2006-12-10T23:26:00.000-05:00

Noun, verb, adjective, declaration!

2006-12-07T21:55:00.000-05:00

This was supposed to be a part of my crit but the banners arrived two weeks late. Thinking about fracturing text/language, especially bold language that is meant to be taken in quickly. In this one in particular, i'm interested in slowing down the read, and letting things emerge that were not evident at first. Weaving has always been important to me, and i will talk about my new discoveries in my next post, after i get some pics of my newest stuff.

Found Insertions

2006-12-06T20:56:00.000-05:00

So i have been collecting public installations. Been meaning to do this for a while. Basically i photograph situations i come across that look like something i might have (or should have) done, at least in my "Insertions" phase. By photographing them i am calling them my own. Not sure where i stand yet on the truth/fiction aspect of this yet, but obviously i am only taking partial responsibility at this point. But i do want to do more activities like the comic pages i was doing in the spring, in which i illustrated myself doing certain public actions that were, if not impossible, require a certain amount of planning and engineering. My stance then is that the drawings were documentations of my performances. Is this questioning truth, belief, trust, reality? Maybe. But for now i'm more interested in the act of finding small surprises that take a while for me to figure out.

PS, you can probably tell which ones i took with my camera phone. Does this add to anything? What about composition or anything artsy? Should there be more of a sense of renegade vandalism, running from the scene of the crime?

Also somewhat old

2006-11-18T21:22:00.000-05:00

Old stuff that no longer exists

2006-11-18T20:29:00.000-05:00

Contact Paper on Wall:

Clear packing Tape, Wooden Frame, marker:
Clear Packing Tape:
Yarn, Pins

Clear packing Tape, plywood

2006-10-17T18:21:00.000-05:00

Banner Days

2006-10-17T18:10:00.000-05:00

Clever! Here is Niki trying to catch up on the last month of work. Text!

2006-09-13T00:46:00.000-05:00

Ruby Green

2006-09-11T07:14:00.000-05:00

For the rest of September i will have this piece in an auction benefiting Ruby Green Contemporary Art Center in Nashville. Several years ago i had a show there and they, not to mention all of Nashville, could not have been nicer. The premise of this benefit show is each artist was sent a clear plexi box and was asked to create work that fit inside. I cut strips of duct tape and applied them to the interior of the box, so that you can see both the silvery side and the sticky side facing you. This is exciting me in thinking about work that is contingent on a specific space. The plexi box is not part of the piece, the tape is the piece, however the form could not exist without the box. It makes me think of the Richard Serra piece where he flung molten metal into a corner, making a site-specific piece that was a solid object but could not be moved. There are lots of things i've been thinking about space (the space around/between art objects) that i will have to write about soon.

piles

2006-09-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

SO i have been, in my strive to make free-standing sculpture, making a lot of mound-shaped objects. It seems this simple form is all i can really get a grasp on. Which led me to thinking, you know, sculptures really are just piles, just stacks of things. Obviously that's a preoblematic notion, but hey, it's all i had.

In these first couple i was just cutting the mounds out of foam (the other is a papier mache cut-out), thinking how simple, elegant, or cartoony the shape could be. And i like the idea of a 2-D shape that is maybe a stand-in for an actual pile. Much like a cardboard cut-out of a person. And this acually transitions nicely into the next work i will be doing, which i will talk about soon.

This floor piece is a little promising, not necessarily in itself but for future pieces. I have been meaning to do this for a while. Basically in order to change my idea of (or reliance on?) gravity, i started a piece on the fllor like i would have on the wall. For a while my wall pieces have been droopy, sagging, and in general showing the effect of gravity. I started thinking what if i did that manually, like spreading the materials further and further out laterally, and see what happens when i try to go UP. Well the up didn't happen to much, but i am looking forward to doing more of these. Also kind of funny that the placement of shapes references piling up, but it's running along the floor. That's kind of reminding me of someone...i guess a lot of different artists...

2006-08-25T09:14:00.000-05:00

Using the stiffened paper as a sculptural element. I've always been interested in how a two-dimentional thing (like paper, fabric) becomes three-dimentional. I think this is of particular importance to me now as i struggle to make things that are structurally sound using the materials i more or less know. This summer i have had many mantras that enabled me to work, and one was "Just make what you want to make and figure out the "right" way to do it later." Yes this has led to a studio full of things that are falling over, but it's a start.

More plastic paper

2006-08-01T15:12:00.000-05:00

So i've been getting interested in sculpting with paper and fabric by coating it with plastic. (Also just barely started experimenting with thermoplastic-impregnated fabrics, but it has proven to be prohibitively expensive. Hopefully i'll be able to continue soon) This is a sculpture i made in the spring, which i covered with tracing paper strips using plastic coating in a papier mache fashion.

Next i have been using full lengths of paper draped or propped until rigid.

Yes this last one may look like a pile of garbage, but right now one of my biggest concerns is trying to get big big big, however i can.

Going Up

2006-08-01T14:19:00.000-05:00

Foam ladder tower and detail. Trying to "just do" various sculptural problems that i've never had a great grasp of, such as "Vertical". That is part of the reason that the foam is working out as a material; it can be mostly just cut with a knife, and put together with just glue or small nails. And it's light enough that i can throw it around as i try out different configurations. In terms of the painted ladder form, if you can tell from the photo, the painted ladder doesn't match up totally with the cut-out shape. Here again i'm thinking about 2-D vs 3-D illusion, or in other works, questioning what is more true when you look at it...is the painted "image" of the ladder more real than the structural form of the shaped foam?

And this gray piece is just strips of duct tape surrounding a chicken wire structure. I am not sure why but i kind of love this piece. It feels to me that it is somehow transcending it's original materiality, but just barely. Like it's on the verge of slipping backwards.

2006-07-18T13:05:00.000-05:00

(reflective safety tape...one with flash and one without) (Please note hexagons)

Drawing

2006-07-17T16:36:00.000-05:00

Someday maybe i'll show all the sketchbooks i went through during the three weeks i was without my studio. Someday. But for now, here are some of the drawings i've been working on in my Drawing Studio, aka, my OLD studio. The one that contains trace amounts of poison.

And of course, all those hexagons...

More soon, drawings and other. I'm actually starting to create work almost too fast to document, much less post about. I know that's a good thing, but one of the problems with installation-based work is that you work on something, and then in order to work on something else you pretty much have to destroy or at least disassemble when you've just made (maybe that was why my teachers didn't think i made any work...). I've been reading about Ree Morton, and so much of her work exists only in photographs she took in her studio...under almost every photo it says "Destroyed". So, i just have to suck it up! At least there are photos.

Coated Paper, more shiny things

2006-07-13T12:22:00.000-05:00

Transitivity

2006-07-07T09:34:00.000-05:00

It took a ridiculously long time to get back on track in the studio after the evacuation/cancelled education/destruction of personal property. I've moved into my new studio, and am keeping my old studio for the summer to work on drawing. It's actually working out and it helps me keep my new studio fairly minimal furniture-wise.
Right now i am having a good time experimenting with materials, and in general that whole "doing not thinking" thing that was such a struggle during the year. Or, more accurately: Making/trying, researching/thinking, and keeping those two activities from getting in each other's way.
The focus is, coming from the mirrors i was working on, reflection. Reflective surfaces (aluminum, shiny fabrics, tinfoil, mirrors, water, etc). This is leading to doubled images, directional reflection, and variations of clarity in the reflections. Also, i'm still thinking of the artist/art/viewer relationship as seen through the mirror reflection. But here are a few of the things i've been doing:

I'm also still doing hexagons, and still wondering why but i'm just doing them.

Summer reading

2006-07-03T00:38:00.000-05:00

.. Had me a blast...
So here's where i find out if anyone is really checking in. I need some summer reading suggestions. If anyone has anything to suggest please let me know. And i'm not talkin bout some New Release, poolside-light sunshine reading. Please. My studio has no natural light. I care not for Briget Jones. That said, no suggestion is too obvious, because my theoretical reading background is less than solid. Here is what i have been reading and so should everyone else
- Susan Sontag On Photography
- Walter Benjamin Illuminations
- Henry Sayre The Object of Performance
and i also can't get my nose out of my beautiful new Eva Hesse catalogue (from her show at the Jewish Museum) AND The Art Of Richard Tuttle, the catalogue from his retrospective (I saw it last year at the Whitney...i think it's still traveling).
-Oh and Jose Saramago All the Names
Well, what have yall been reading?

B.E.

2006-06-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

Here are a few things i was working on Before Evacuation. I'm focusing more on reflective materials, that which has only characteristics of what it is in relation to, which was at this point still the figure. With this tinsel piece i pinned pieces of tinsel to the wall and melted it to the wall where i saw my reflection.

And here are some of the chain-link fence secret insertions i was doing. They are photographs i took of the sky, cut up and wired to fences in my neighborhood. I tried to find spaces that were more public than private, run-down or deteriorating, but would still be seen by locals on a fairly regular basis. I think i was thinking of them as little treasures that i wanted to share with my neighbors, insert a little sunshine. It sounds pretty cheesy, but when it had previously been suggested that i erase from my neighborhood, i looked around and realized that my neighborhood is already erasing itself. So i wanted to make a positive, if somewhat abstract, addition. Interestingly, many of them were taken down when i went back to photograph, so i was essentially erased. And others are still up, through all the rain and wind, and in one case building construction.

I also like the idea of mysterious public art. I did these at four or five in the morning, hoping to not be detected. I wonder if they are even noticed, and if so what the non-art-school public thinks when they see them.

Anyway, i am somewhat back in my studio, and after clean-up and throwing out a lot of damaged stuff, i'm trying to get back on track. My momentum took a beating, but i'm getting back into the groove of experimenting with materials and processes, guided just vaguely by the concepts i was working with. Mirrors and reflective surfaces, repetition, and accumulation are a couple threads. Also that hexagon pattern is coming back strong, for some reason. I'll take photos next week and post them.

I'm going to NYC for a weekend packed with art. I'm super excited to see the Eva Hesse shows, also On Photography at the Met (i just read the book last week), and many others. I can't wait. It's a good sign when you think every show and artist you hear about has work related to what you're doing...right?

It's been a long week

2006-05-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

mercury madness

More Mocumentation

2006-05-13T04:53:00.000-05:00

Continuing the painting...thanks to Ricky and Matt "not my husband" Bollinger. The painting is now finished and i think what i'm going to do is bind the images together into a hardcover book that i will then insert into the library. Not sure which library yet, nor do i know what kind of book it will be... standard history textbook, conspiracy pamphlet...and i want to write an authoritative-sounding introduction, and various book-like things such as an index (with perhaps witty notations like "sexism, pages 1-200", but less heavy-handed...), i just am struggling with the book's statement. Do i describe everything accurately (down to admitting the set-up and reproduction), or i do i act like it's any other art historical description? Or any other possible variable.

i also like shiny things. and crime.

2006-05-10T00:46:00.000-05:00

SO i got a bunch of shiny things (aluminum, mirrors, stainless steel contact paper, silver wrapping paper) and hung them on my walls and still haven't figured out what to do with them. And DYING for summer.

And whatever this is...

And in between i prepare for my secret nighttime excursions...more photos soon, after i disclose my superhero identity!

In Progress

2006-05-09T00:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is the beginning of a project that i don't understand and am not sure where it will end up. I think that's good. Continuing where the Eva Hesse erasure left off, in terms of documentation, authorship, art by women, etc etc...Again, i'm really not sure and i had to just get this started otherwise i would think myself to death (not the first time). One thing the Eva Hesse Documentation got wrong in my opinion was that i was doing the opposite tactic ("removing" her work in order to preserve or call attention to it, and to show how precarious female art in art history actually is), but carefully recording the action truthfully. So i started thinking about fictive documentation, proving something that is false, or showing a lie. Or something. The first method for this is:
- i set up a "stage" in my studio, and created a prop canvas.
- i asked the four male members of my grad class to come in individually and paint (repaint) one of my paintings from 2001, using only a postcard for reference. They wear their own clothes that they happened to be wearing that day.
- i photograph them working.
- in the end i think i'm going to display the original painting (which is several times bigger than the prop) with the photos. And that's all i'm going to say about that. But final review is in a week so it will definitely get figured out soon. Here are the first two sessions. Many thanks to Jacob and Ziad.

More Mirrors

2006-05-08T00:53:00.000-05:00

Scratching my reflection off. For the first time actually removing an image rather than covering it up. Similar to the painted mirror in that i am not only removing myself, and the artist, but i am removing the mirror's function, as well as it's past and future.

Please disregard my gross face, somehow the fact that my reflection ended up on there anyway feels wrong!
These are two views of the same piece. Here is scratched the back of the mirror and then re-silvered it with liquid silver leaf. There is still a vague reflection in the glass but the silver is dull.

Hey, Labyrinth IS pretty cool

2006-04-24T05:42:00.000-05:00

This acrylic-on-mirror was my first post-crit piece, and kind of saved me studio-wise. It's so easy to get stuck and then afraid of the studio, but i started this right away and got excited by it and it led to other pieces that i am working on right now.

These next ones are attempts at returning to wall sculpture and layering, respectively. Since taking these pictures they've been de-assembled and will probably be reborn in other pieces soon. Confusion! For the tracing paper one I was thinking about portraits, cameos, silhouettes, etc, but mostly trying to get back to my materials-based intuitive ways of working.

Favorites

2006-04-13T00:08:00.000-05:00

Crit is over, it was rough with a capital ROUGH, but i am starting to actually process a lot of what was said (and not said). Will talk more about that later. Right now i am putting together my submission for RISD's awards of excellence so i thought i would finally post some shots of the painted photos. Here's a handful of my favorites. They are all 4x6, original prints, with acrylic. I'm realizing just how different they are on a screen, the texture obviously plays a big part in the experience.

Paulie, if you are reading this -- it is because i love you! right?

Crime Schrime

2006-04-03T01:17:00.000-05:00

Documentation to the max!! ie, letting the pictures tell the story.

Painting Eva Hesse work out of "Women Artists" from the RISD library...going back to question of "What would be a REALLY dangerous thing to remove from collective memory?" And documentation as the art object, because the object (i guess) is returned to the world. Arg, there is too much to say about this. Photo assistance by the Fabulous Nadia.

displaying

2006-04-01T15:43:00.000-05:00

In starting to do some installations this week, i may have come up with a different way for displaying the photos. I'm not sure about the silver one except i like looking at it. The framed one is actually from earlier but i forgot to show it. I just painted out a photo of my grampa (from before he was my grampa) and put it back in the frame in which it was hanging on my wall for years.

No Words

2006-04-01T15:04:00.000-05:00

Well maybe a couple. I'm thinking about the crit and what the hell i'm doing. Does anyone have any idea?

So i'm going to do a third drawing for the frame piece. Not sure exactly why i am drawing and painting these but there's something about the writing on the back of photos, like cataloging the memory, or maybe even editorializing, that's more important than the photo itself? Not sure.

The paintings

2006-03-28T21:37:00.000-05:00

First, continuing with the ideas from the cat paintings, i made a painting from a photo and then painted out the figure. I liked how it looked with it brushily painted out, so some of the face is still visible. Also i chose this photo because i thought it might reference a Franz Kline painting. But i don't really think it does.

Next i decided to "remove the figures in various ways. At this point i'm still kind of not into painting but i don;t know what else to do, and i'm under tremendous pressure (in a weird i'm-taking-it-personally kind of way) from the department to produce produce produce! And the catch phrase i've been hearing since arriving at this school is trotted out yet again- "Don;t think, just make!" I'm going back and forth on that and the whole grad school mechanism, but that ranting is for another day...back to these paintings! Here i painted on vellum and then scratched off the figure, and painted the "background" on the back of the vellum. Leaving some scratched remnants. This is probably the most violent intervention i've done, AND the only one in which the original image really no longer exists.

And in this one i painted it and then covered the figure with paper pulp...sort of embedding the paint into the paper, or sandwiching it. I think i like the paintings on paper better than on canvas, it seems to be closer referencing the photo.

So at this point i got fed up and put all the paintings and photos away and decided to start on more installations, even if they don't mean anything yet, this is the physical work i want to make. The weird thing about doing these paintings is i got so hung up on being accurate and realistic (not my strong suit, at least since i haven't been working realistically for about ten years) and "I'm a Conceptual painter, they can't be interesting in their making, they are just there to serve a point" -- where the hell did that come from, who's talking?? As Mat said in like the first two minutes of being in my studio tonight..."Isn't that the answer you're looking for? To make Conceptual work but enjoy the working and making interesting objects?" (well, i edited a little for clarity...) Yeah, i guess. More soon

Gripping Footage

2006-03-28T20:59:00.000-05:00

A current project is painting out the text (actually the entire page) of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas as i read (ie, read a page, paint it out, read next page, etc). That's one thing (with many levels of meaning that i will write about) but i'm also deciding to embrace or at least try documentation. i had been leary of this for a while even though it was constantly recommended to me. i thought it would feel self-conscious, egotistical, and a more literal "proof" than i wanted (i thought i wanted to the finished object to be proof enough). But i thought i would give it a shot. Behold the exciting action packed shots of Niki reading! (note the forehead crease, jeez, it's not that hard of a book!)
I'm documenting some other actions that i will post this week as i finish up. They will probably give more insight to the entire group of work. But i'm starting to push away from the stringent truth model, and my reasons are complicated but i'll try to get into them next time. Anyway, one direction this easing-up has allowed me to take is the realm of non-original documents (like mass-produced texts as opposed to personal snapshots). I tried to describe it in this way: The snapshots are more the actual real-life object, but the books are more metaphor therefore they are more abstract. I'm going to stop trying to explain that thought for now because i can tell it's not going anywhere. I will try again. If anyone has any idea what i'm trying to get at, let me know.

Overheard in Niki's Studio

2006-03-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

"oh niki! Why are you making all these paintings? Are you in a painting class or something?"

updates on the way, as Crit Countdown hits 14 Days!!

Pedestals

2006-03-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

SO i'm still doing these painted photos because i feel like it's the most on-track thing i've done. The big thing with these has been the comment i've heard for my whole 15-year painting career: Get bigger! i wanna see these huge!! You should print them out digitally enlarged!!! All of these comments seem very knee-jerk-reaction to me, and in fact the opposite of the point of why i'm doing them. The scale i feel is problematic but the fact that they are original, negative-long-gone, physical artifacts of life is the whole point! What's at stake if you are painting on something that you could just re-print as many times as you needed to? The point here, in part, is sacrifice, giving something up, destroying the reminder, or memory, or all you have left of the event or person.

Anyway, the installation has been the tricky part, but i feel like i'm on to something. thinking about literal pedestals, and the "pedestal" i often use to refer to the art world or art context. And in the last class in which i showed these, just taped to the wall, we went through the whole crit and then AFTER, when i was taking them down, people came up and said, "Oh, can i look at these? Before i just walked past and didn't really look at them." WTF?? Yeah, in my studio often people breeze right by them. I guess the nature of snapshots. Maybe too personal? Anyway, i'm starting to play with the pedestal, to draw attention, to help define the photo, and to add some sort of supportive environment. I like them all aesthetically, but so far the blank canvas seems the most pointed.

I have a whole stack of photos i want to paint. I'm surprising myself with how unique they all turn out being, not just repeated gimmick. Let me know if you want to see close-ups of the photos so far. Also, see previous post for my next emotional feat. Yikes!

Boring Variations on a Theme

2006-03-11T02:13:00.000-05:00

So....i'm doing more cats erased, in paintings. I'm not sure if i'm going to continue, because i hate repeating myself and i am boring myself to death doing the same painting over again. It's an interesting challenge to make it not boring, and i have to figure out if i am really learning something here.
I'm also working on this painting of a formal wedding portrait, which is maybe one of the ugliest paintings i've ever done, but right now i'm just trying to figure out the idea (if you think you know or are one of the people in the original photo, please don't be alarmed. I tried to change some details to make it more generic looking. Which maybe wrong wrong wrong considering what i say next). The person painted out in this one is a person who is actually close to dying very soon. I keep trying to figure out what is too far, where is that line to cross, for just myself? My next step is to paint over OLD pictures of my family, but that really scares me. First, it feels to historic, like these artifacts are part of my lineage and what i will pass down to future generations. So why do they feel that way and the "contemporary" photos don't? And, that connects to number two in a way...I don't feel like these old photos actually belong to me. They belong to future generations, blah blah, but most of all they belong to my mom. It's HER parents in those photos. That i think is why i feels so wrong, i'm taking something away from her. Thereby, cutting up my own clothes, so to speak. (Maybe that will catch on as a phrase. Probably not)

Update: Here is the painting:

Some questions: Does it matter that the painting is not only not photorealistic, but rather bad and clunky? (I've gotten opinions going both ways - some people like the awkward painting, saying it's charming and sincere). Not sure what i think. I'm still trying to figure out if painting these makes sense. To me it's pushing the believability/trust factor ("Did you really paint the cat??") and also rather than painting out a memory or artifact i'm painting out my own work, my own evidence of labor. How much do you think documentation matters? ie, showing the original painting? The idea of Peformance keeps coming up in my studio too, which i think i mentioned when talking about Janine Antoni. Jon Kessler (who rocks) came to my studio this week and broke it down in a very simple and fertile equation: Verb>Action>Performance. Hmmmm
One more issue that was brought up in Sheila's class (w/ the copies)...Maybe it's not about painting out your real family but painting out your art family. I've been meditating on this for a couple weeks. And it becomes a particularly uneasy situation when placed in the context of Holy SHit, March is Women's History Month. "Kill your heroes" + "Write women back into history". My memory of my grandfather is not nearly as precarious as gender equality. How much does this have to do with the past and how much with the future? Maybe that's enough babbling for now, must get back to work.

Update: Next-Day Antoni/Kriese

2006-03-10T02:16:00.000-05:00

Copy Cats

2006-02-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

assignment due today. We've just read about Richard Pettibone and Elaine Sturtevant, who, for their art copied various artists like Duchamp, warhol, Liechtenstein, Johns. I'm not going to go into their whole thing, but our assignment was to choose five artists who share our focus and copy a work of art from each. This was a fantastic exercise for me, first of all because it allowed me to do things i always wanted to but didn't want to, well, copy. It felt really freeing to have certain parameters decided, and other elements variable. Well, i'm not making sense, but here are my images:
from Felix Gonzalez-Torres:

Empty candy wrappers...Everyone thinks they're pessimistic but i think the opposite...I think they speak to absence, the remains, letting go, weightlessness, beautiful gaudiness, happy memories...If you don;t know his work you should click on the link to learn more about him. Or, if you're my mom, just call me and ask.

From Jessica Stockholder:

It's definitely her aesthetic that i relate to. Here i am not copying real piece of hers but more her "style". I feel like this is work that seems "me", (and others who have come into my studio said the same thing) but there's really nothing behind it besides visual reactions. And there's nothing wrong with that, but as i know from when i was making paintings, it's fun for about a week but then i get bored. Well, we'll see what happens.

From Rachel Whiteread:

She makes casts of interior spaces...underneath chairs, rooms, and her most ambitious project was an entire house. I really respond to the solidifying of emptiness, making it physical, and also transforming the space into something that can't be inhabited anymore. Mine is just the inside of a cardboard box, but i really enjoy all the details, and sense of inverted space.

Janine Antoni:

Here is one of my favorite artists, whom i respect so so much, so of course this piece failed like no other. Here i was meditating on her pieces "lick and Lather" and "Gnaw", and i guess to an extent "Slumber". In the first two pieces she uses chocolate as one of the main materials, and i've really been wanting to try it for it's unique texture but also all the connotations, familiarities, and sensory elements, I wanted to tie in the face prints that i was doing in December. Also, i really respond to her use of process, how she uses performance but not necessarily in front of an audience...Anyway, i made a slab of chocolate and used it as my pillow. Last night. It was definitely a new experience. Okay, here is the picture:

And it looks even grosser in real life. This was taken right after i "woke up". It's already starting to change texture. Maybe I'll take more photos as it ages. My studio reeks of chocolate (kind of makes me miss Chicago). But making this piece really excited me and made me put a lot of thoughts together about process, and evidence, and markmaking, and materials. It always seems to go this way: the more the idea makes sense, the shittier the art looks. Again, balance!!

For the fifth piece, i'm not really sure who i chose...it kind of splintered off into several different things. I'll post pictures of that stuff later, as well as more talky talk and ideas from class.

skin flaps

2006-02-28T09:51:00.000-05:00

For a couple days i was still using the wet paper technique but tearing the edges around the wet marks to make them let rigid, more ephemeral, layering them, pinning them to each other. This veered away from the concept but was getting more interesting formally and visually. And, people come into my studio and are so distracted by it and it seems to affect them emotionally. And it made me think about communicating through evoking emotions rather than intellect and words, something i used to know but i keep forgetting. Once again, the key is to find a balance. Of course!

See, walking to school IS helpful

2006-02-23T14:28:00.000-05:00

Here is a note i just sent off to my teacher. I thought it might generate some discussion. Lots of things to think about. I feel like going back to sleep...

******

Hi Sheila, i just came across this article about originality, and i thought it might be a good jumping off point for continuing our conversation.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,585-2050834,00.html It reminds me of a couple things re: newness...

A paraphrased quote, perhaps from Mr Greenberg, that haunted me throughout my undergrad and after: "Everything new is ugly at first." I think this mainly made me suspicious of art that i was attracted to...shouldn't truly "good" art repel me? And then, where is the criteria by which we can critique it?

Another article i read this week, from the New Scientist, talking about the more advanced we are getting with mathematical proofs, the harder (sometimes impossible) they are to actually verify.

And finally, i am reading something in another class by William Greider, talking about the history of the development of currency. I feel like this is relating to my current "dilemma" in my work about Actual vs Stand-in. At one point he is talking about our current paper money (and even beyond, plastic money) and arguing that this is more efficient than past currency (ie, cattle) *because* it has no actual, physical value. I feel like, while typing that, i just made my dilemma more clear for myself and perhaps answered a question...maybe art has meaning because it is not actually physically valuable but because we (whatever that group may be) can agree on at least some pedestal for it. Um, okay, i need to think out this last part more, but this comparison is definitely helping something in my brain.
Thanks for indulging my deluge.
niki

******
What does everyone think?

More Cats

2006-02-19T16:24:00.000-05:00

So, for my wintersession class i took "unconventional upholstery". It was six weeks of constant, hand-numbing, five-hours-of-sleep-a-week, work. For my first project i made a sleeping cat. (the orange thing is not part of this piece, but i made it for the second project, below). Unfortunately the black velour doesn't photograph very well, but you can get the general idea.

The "flap" on the back was intended to read like a shadow...The cat is becoming its own shadow. Or something. My main concern was taxidermied pets, that someone will stuff their dead animal (usually in this kind of sleeping pose) and take comfort in this, and not be creeped out. Again, more holding on vs. letting go. Does this empty shell hold any power, or is it like a photograph of a loved one? I don't know. I do know that this is in my studio and i still do a doubletake every single time i see it, like Dada is actually there. (clarification: Dada is not dead, she was just my model for this piece)

For the final piece i wanted to learn a variety of actual upholstery and sewing techniques. I pretty much ran out of time to do everything i wanted, but the concept i think was the strongest part. I wanted to re-create my grampa's stuff. Basically next to His Chair he had this orange vinyl ottoman with various things on it that he needed close by. (crossword book, enormous ashtray, Camel unfiltered cigs, TV remote ca 1980, and coffee cup which i still haven't finished.) I did these things from memory, and the fabric i used was my own clothing.
Look! i made piping! It's a real thing!
And fabric covered buttons!!
And embroidered my life away!!
The weird thing to discover was that it was actually harder to choose to cut up my clothes than to experience my grandfather's death. Maybe that's oversimplifying....He died seven years ago. It was not a surprise at all. It was not MY CHOICE that he died. But, i realized that being attached to your clothing is not just being materialistic and shallow. We have extremely intimate relationships with and powerful memories related to our clothes, so much that they become a part of us. I feel like this is as close as i've come to the balance of Truth and Communication that i've been struggling with. While i was working on this someone came in my studio and and said that he as a viewer didn't care if it really was my clothes or if i "cheated". i had for a long time been wondering about that kind of thing, if honesty really mattered. Like, if art is illusion anyway, as long as it "appeared" that it was my clothes, for example, and the audience believes it, does it really matter? I'm starting to feel like, in my work at least, the truth is everything. But what does everyone else think?

I made a painting

2006-02-17T11:17:00.000-05:00

For some reason over winter i started doing a lot of art with cats. Or at least more than usual. In my final studio visit with faculty one thing they said was the (invisible) work wasn't as strong as it could be because it wasn't specific enough. They seemed a little put off that i was making art about death and coping mechanisms because it's interesting, and not because someone close to me died. So trying to be open-minded, and resisting the urge to snidely say "I did that kind of shit in high school," (but i still said it), i embarked on making good art out of emotional baggage. Which i've never really been good at. One of the interesting things that actually happened is this little painting of a cat named Mate', who died. First i painted the cat from a photo, and I used the same technique as when i painted over the snapshots in the Fall. But obviously instead painted out the painted image. Here's the two steps, but only the last one is the actual finished piece.

I think this also brings up my issue with truth, in that, as far as the audience is concerned, i didn't really need to paint the first step. And i don't necessarily care that they believe me, but I know the truth, and that for me is where the power of the piece lies. I'm still sorting through all my thoughts on this issue, so hopefully the chance (or responsibility) to write about it in a semi-public forum will help. Anyway, next i will post photos of my upholstery projects from my winter class, so stay tuned for more cats and ghosts!!

And then i make invisible art

2006-02-15T22:58:00.000-05:00

No really. I started painting the urns on paper with water. The water evaporates, leaving an imprint but no actual residue. Kind of hard to photograph but you get the idea.

Then i started making "Face Prints" onto paper with water. A little more intimate, more about the physical body, and maybe a little about the action of doing it (though i try to avoid that in this case). But still, almost no one around me was into it (Kind of the running theme all semester).

I've kind of always had the problem of being a bad communicator. My art and writing always gets called unclear or even cryptic. It's a really big question for me how to remedy that, especially now when i'm realizing my bigger concern, compared to which the whole "death" thing is really just a topic. I'm trying to resolve for myself the issue of Truth in art. Is (my) art a depiction of a particular idea or is it the idea itself? For example, someone suggested that to make my water-on-paper pieces more clear i should use ink instead. But the whole point to me was that there was nothing left behind. So here is where i start to struggle...If my work really is to communicate to people, how crucial is this honesty? Am i becoming a prima donna? Only time will tell.

Post Crit

2006-02-15T22:39:00.000-05:00

I got nothin'.

Urns on paper. Containing death? Containing physical remains, memory, holding on or letting go. Decorative furniture.

Crit!!

2006-02-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

Then...

2006-02-15T21:51:00.000-05:00

Sometime after week 5 i had a revelation...Just do, don't try to justify every action with content. And things started to happen.

Making reliquaries with fabric and thread, two dimensional objects are three-dimensional with stuffing inside...But the reliquaries are still "blank".

At the same time i also started to paint on snapshots and photographs of travel destinations. Both painting people into the scenes and painting people out. The latter quickly became more interesting and i keep coming back to this in my current work.

Weeks 1-5

2006-02-15T21:09:00.000-05:00

In which our hero feels inhumanly inadequate. You may have hear me use this tired analogy already, but i did feel like i stepped off a cliff on day 1 and kept falling. Um, maybe i'll let the photos tell the story...

During this time, i think, i was thinking about:

Souvenirs
Memory
Containment
Failure
Pathetic Aesthetic
Physical Remains
Death
Shrines
Reliquaries
Domestic Space
Engaging wall and floor as a 3D vs 2D conflict
Hiding and Revealing

Starting off with a Bang

2006-02-15T20:47:00.000-05:00

Dear friends,
In an effort to keep y'all updated as to my goings-on here at RISD, may i present my studio blog. This is where i will shove my in-progress, my just bad, my "Is this even anything?!" for your viewing and commenting pleasure. It will remain wholly unprofessional and rough, as if you were visiting my studio. Sort of.

I'm going to start by trying to catch up with the past five months. There's a lot of nothing, but i feel like it all fed into the nothing i'm doing right now. All feedback is appreciated, with the understanding that nothing is finished, and i'm in the midst of this weird, scary, existential nightmare that is grad school. I'm a broken woman, and it's supposed to be that way, apparently. But let the comments fly. And thank you to everyone for your friendship and support.

love niki

PS, Spell Check wants me to change "y'all" to "Yale", but i refuse.