shrine of the dendrites (2012)

shrine of the dendrites (2012)

brandon lee kramer

between galena, il and dubuque, ia is a small abandoned stone building, pillaged by a unforgiving, weathered time. the western sunsets reign over its decaying last gasps. sprouting dendrites of a sickly brown grow at the base of its convoluted foundation, blurring the distinction of passer-byes: those still willing to feign a vacuous glance. there, amid the moss and mold is a morceau of what freedom was, what our homeland was founded on. when the fox co-existed with the bucolic whispers of mother nature. when the finch sang in an unabashed melody of adolescence, not fearing anything -one with the stars- before they were just that. would whitman or thoreau divulge petty secrets to the tree frogs if they were still here?  warn them to be patient, assure them of an eventual coup d'etat against the foolish harlequins of the mississippi harbor? or would they rather hold their tongues? like i, like we, should? waiting. waiting. waiting, for them all to devour themselves in the push-button politics of our au courant debacle. if we just sat quiet, minds deaf and hands still, maybe we could hear the echos of chernobyl and auschwitz, of waterloo and thermopylae, pleading for a tranquil homophily to bleed through. to espouse, not divide. we could, we can be a consort for the novel, the most romantic of sorts. one that finds a refined valor in the decay of defiled -tested and true- world we are now: the lost time of a lost world. 

Brandon Lee Kramer © 2012

fumar mata (2012)

fumar mata (2012)

brandon lee kramer

composed of used cigarette cartons from various european countries (18 total) and metal no smoking sign, mounted on cardboard, 61 x 51 cm

Brandon Lee Kramer © 2012

anselm kiefer

Schwarze Flocken - Für Paul Celan Artist Book, Germany

2005, Acrylic, charcoal and branches on photograph, mounted on cardboard, 62.5 x 42 x 15 cm

Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris

Salzburg Photograph by Charles Duprat

Kiefer is a personal favorite. I had the opportunity to delve into his work at a fairly early age, discovering him roughly six years ago now. I love the gloomy nature of his work, the blacks and blues being an aesthetic that attests to my natural projections of beauty; an "innate" sense of despair and suffering. I was blessed to stumble upon his work in 2009 while in Palma de Mallorca at the Museu d'art modern i contemporani. I remember being in a state of pure bliss as I stumbled in with a friend - amazed - that Kiefer's work was there. There were giant pieces of convoluted constellations doused in gloom that leaped of the canvases. It was a lovely experience. In fact, another favorite Am Anfang (origin or beginning in German) is still in permanent residence in Palma. If you ever decide to go to the Balearic Islands make sure you stop by the museum on your way to Ibiza.

vigilius haufneinsis

"whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate." from the concept of dread 


bonus points who anyone who actually knows who this is without using the internet to find it...

frederica mathewes-green

"it is possible for cultures to change for the better, once given a dose of truth. like a body, a culture has innate impulse to health. though this can be subverted in a million ways it can be nurtured as well. this should give us hope."

fernando pessoa

“…since in life we all have to be exploited, I wonder if it would be less worthwhile to be exploited by vanity, glory, spite, envy, or by impossibilities. These are those that God himself exploits, the prophets and saints in the emptiness of the world…” 
          -Passage 58


Pessoa has been a source of intrigue since my visit to Lisboa in the Spring. I keep bringing up this trip as it was genuinely my truest escape from reality that I have fresh in memory, Slovakia being a near rival. Lisboa has an essence, one that Pessoa captures in the essence of his temporal misgivings, that I loved and is a location that I would ultimately hope to reside after "settling down" someday. The cobblestone streets and little shops capture the antiquated stains of a still impoverished European city, one that you still feel safe in, as if you were always meant to stay. It smells of the ocean; and the people gleam with joy. However, it is Pessoa's words that circle in shouts of banality, emptiness, and, ultimately, despair. All of this knowing he was still rather happy passing down the Rua dos Douradores. It runs off the page, I find myself beaming with the heartfelt empathy that I knew he saw in others and his quotidian notions of coffee shop visiting and subtle wine indlugence. What is it that God exploits? A good question, dear sir. One that must be fulfilled through our dreams, the purest of curses and the most fragile of impossibilities. 


“Even in the poorest of eras…There are few like me, addicted to dreaming, who are also lucid enough to laugh at the aesthetic possibility of dreaming about themselves that way” 
          -Passage 30


Both quotes taken from The Book of Disquiet, an unedited journal written under his various heteronyms from 1888-1935. 

dennis oppenheim

dennis oppenheim
reading position for a second degree burn (1970)

third piece from roma's contemporary art exhibit. this is me every time i go to the beach, especially last summer in lisboa. i used sunscreen but was still so read that people stopped at intersections when they had the right-away. they assumed i was a stop sign, of course.

gina pane

gina pane
azione sentimentale (1973)

another piece from roma in 2009. miss pane's work may seem grotesque to some, but is very intense. it is what the spanish refer to as "morboso," something wrong yet has an essence that keeps pulling it back to attention.

hema upadhyay

hema padhyay
where the bees suck, there suck i (2008)

a great piece i saw in the museo d'arte contemporanea roma in august 2009.

Salazar on the Poor

“Begging is not a sign of poverty but a vice,” said Antonio de Oliviera Salazar, the former Prime Minister of Portugal, who suggests that a society should “punish the false beggars and place the rest, those left over, in asylums." This is what Foucault deemed "power-knowledge," the production of social knowledge through discourse with the intent to create a power hierarchy. Salazar sought to force his conservative mentality onto the populace, claiming that the poor were the malignant and should be forced into mental institutions. If one reads Foucault's Madness and Civilization, they could find where the roots of "mental insanity" lie and learn the power institutions had in shaping those standards of our contemporary reality. Though this is certainly a complicated ordeal nowadays, convoluted amid the various social discourse we have from politicians, civilians and the field of medicine; I found this short blurb meaningful enough that it may provoke one to delve deeper into understanding power, class and mental health. The initial inspiration derives in the Chiado Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon where I visited last Spring.