Bryan Schellinger seems to be embarking on a similar pragmatic journey away from Barnett Newman’s Onement by complicating his stripe paintings with all sorts of associations, including a false sense of perspective space, allusions to textiles and possibly abstracted veils of drizzling rain? Yet, despite these complications they are essentially process driven formal experimentations. As a painter having it both ways; both purely painterly and complicated through intervening elements is the fence to ride these days.*

Jeff Jahn’s analysis of the work of Bryan Schellinger on the PORT blog struck me immediately as being applicable to the work of Tomma Abts, presented for the Turner Prize show last year.

Abts blend of abstraction with the addition of certain figurative references—notably the spatial references running through the works—seems to follow the movement suggested by the quote, although it’s speaking of a somewhat different style of painting. The artists take these “complications” in differing directions, Abts in a much more austere and restricted way, the activity kept strictly within the frame of the painting; while Schellinger’s seem to be placed to create an awareness and series of connections with the rest of the installation they are a part of. In this respect, the most that can be said of Abts’ work is that they are a series of small paintings arranged neatly in a room.

Although I expect this is just an off-hand comment, and I shouldn’t take it too seriously, I’m not sure I would agree with Jahn that this hybrid form represents a “fence to ride.” It suggests that the artist is avoiding commitment one way or the other. I don’t think this is a necessary requirement of these paintings (or any paintings, unless they are specifically positioned as being like this), or that it is really an issue at this point in time. These artists are positioned at a moment of reflection on the past of painting, through which they are working, and from which these paintings are, perhaps, the (inevitable?) forms that arise.

* JAHN, Jeff (2007). Bryan Schellinger at Quality Pictures. PORT [Internet] 10 July 2007. Available from <http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2007/07/bryan_schelling.html> [Accessed 14 July 2007]

Wait, perhaps that’s a bit disingenuous. I know what my immediate reaction was. What’s taken time has been trying to put that reaction into words and work out it’s relevance.

On the one hand, I’m not good with blood, so inevitably I found the video of I Miss You! quite difficult to watch. On the other, I get a vicarious thrill from the whole practice of cutting and blood-letting, in the same way that I find many types of body modification attractive.

While watching this video I couldn’t help thinking about the beauty of the way the video was distorted by the compression – when it’s viewed full-screen especially it created abstract washes of golden colour, with regions of smooth colour gradients merging into more detailed, pixelated areas.

I was considering capturing some of the footage and isolating those parts as a work of art in itself. I thought that this would serve as a new piece of work to show my reaction to Franko-b’s work. But then I thought, hold on, why would I want to do this? Is this just me avoiding my real issues with the piece?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Gertrude, III.ii)

My reaction to the footage, and my subsequent ways of dealing with it, gives me away. Blood-letting causes a visceral reaction on my part, I would go so far as to say a revulsion, and my coping strategy is to transfer my attention away from that aspect of what is being shown to an aspect of the video that I am comfortable with, in this case the aesthetic of the semi-random pixel effects. This sounds like trauma to me, but I am not well versed in its extensive history, so wouldn’t like to trivialise the subject. The following comes from a text that I happen to have just read, but I should go back to the primary sources, whatever they may be:

…trauma can be experienced in at least two ways: as a memory that one cannot integrate into one’s own experience, and as a catastrophic knowledge that one cannot communicate to others.

Avital Ronell, “Haunted TV” Artforum, 31, 1 (September 1992), pp. 70–3.

And here I am being completely distracted from the work itself by my own reactions to it. Have I nothing to say about the piece or the artist in themselves? I should consider whether this an intended effect of the work*. Can I judge the work separately from it’s effect on me? Can I/Should I be objective about it?

The work asserted the body as a site for the representation of pain and fear, intrinsic to the human condition.

* This point reminds me of another of Franko-b’s works Why Are You Here (Aktion 893)