Art Moons

out at night. Again I had no plans, so the work on the walls mirrored the way

I usually start paintings: instinctively and blind—by feel—by hand—by the

seat of my pants.

It’s always a tightrope walk to make a painting—but improvisation

doesn’t mean that “anything goes.” It has nothing to do with “free expression”—

in fact, improv means that you are keenly aware of both composition and

construction, that you know the rules of a formal game, but are responding

instinctively to present conditions, with an open eye, ear, mind and hand. It

means you have to keep paying attention all the time, be in the present, at

every moment, with every mark, with all your senses. And you have to both

act and edit, move and think, speak and listen simultaneously, weighing

critically in the moment, responding from the hip—and it sometimes

comes out awkward, ugly, ungainly, embarrassing—and these are qualities

that I prize in art. I work both analytically and totally spontaneously, but

here I didn’t have the usual long time to languish on endless fiddling and

editing. I had to make these ten surfaces work in two weeks, and leave spaces

open (to fit works on them), to build up layers of difficult, ungainly, strange,

even “ugly” or “funny” colors, patterns, forms, with the intention to mess up

the clean white logic of square white cubes, and build something surprising

and energetic. It was a blast.

I also want to say that these walls I’ve painted will be destroyed

when both shows are over. In Bern, they will paint the walls white again;

in Aachen they will destroy the big walls I painted on and inserted into

the rooms. And here comes the part where I regard these shows and the

characteristics of art that I believe in as having a kind of politics: I regard it

essential to value the work and the process above and beyond the value/sales/

commodity/everlastingness/ or truth claim of artmaking. I value taking a risk,

constructing things from what you have at hand, as a kind of arte povera or

dare, being willing to cut through mountains of scholarship and reasoning

with your instincts and your smartness. This is not exactly about “skill” or

“expertise”—but it’s not without skill either. You have to keep your game tight,

and let things fly, to swing freely, to let what isn’t comfortable come out, to

allow for mistakes and ugly feelings, to respond to the emotions of a situation,

to use what you’ve got, to make something strange, funny, maybe ironic,

cutting, destructive and pleasurable, all at once. It’s partly about getting the

harmonies, ratio and timing right, like in music; it’s partly about feeling

the weight of the material in your body. You have to be tough, a stickler, not

pompous, and both really critical and passionate at the same time, to not obey,

to shoot from the hip, to be dialogical, to learn, to stretch, to not just KNOW

all the time, to not think you must succeed, and above all to be courageous

and adventurous. The curators of Kunstmuseum Bern and Ludwig Forum

Aachen abetted me by giving permission to take on such a task, to make

something weird and wonderful, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Richard Hamilton,

My Marilyn, 1965;

Andy Warhol,

Jackie III, 1966

48

story/static painting

work privately 

underground promise

Distortion Repeats 

Draw the light

Textile prints

350 drawings on the wall

Make bags from factory leftovers