Deborah Fisher

Women and Power

Maureen Dowd has been excellent on this topic lately.

Rather than fall into the sexist trap of saying that we are not ready for a woman president, or accusing people who don't support Hillary Clinton of sexism, Dowd is giving Clinton exactly what she deserves. Solid opinion of her actions as a person that take into account that Clinton cannot and should not pass as a man.

Women are different than men. I have worked enough construction sites to know for certain that I do not think like a man and will never be perceived as one. But I have also worked in male-dominated fields to know that it doesn't really matter that I don't think like a man, and that I don't want to think like a man. That this does not impair me unless I don't admit it.

Being a woman surrounded by men and speaking a (in my case blue-collar and primarily symbolic) language of power has taught me a little about the nuances Clinton is facing. I empathize with her position and the choices she's been making. Last night's debate reminded me of my twenties and all the effort I wasted trying to get people to think that I am much taller, bigger, meaner and stronger than I actually am. I never found power there. I only ever found any power, any self-respect or any real voice to what I am doing when I accepted that I am a tiny blond thing with a pretty face and much more interest in grace than in heft.

The key to power is understanding that you already have it. Clinton simply doesn't get that. It's harder to see that fact when you're a woman, but it's still completely true. She's asking and proving herself, and she's changing herself to suit what she thinks people want to see and what she thinks she has to prove.

Which is too bad. At this point, I know that I don't trust Hillary Clinton, even though I really wanted to. I shouldn't trust her. She often demonstrates that she cares more about what other people think than her own principles. Is this shape-shifting a function of being truly diabolical or of simply being unsure?

Easy Doesn't Always Mean Good

Sculpture is a pain in the ass, and that difficult-ness makes it interesting. A sculpture presents the viewer, owner and maker with the problem of its physical existence.

At the risk of getting all Donald-Judd-Fascist, I define sculpture as a way of thinking about the world in terms of this problem of physical existence. There are other things in galleries and museums that have a physical problem or need to be negotiated with your body. But I think sculpture is an intellectual task defined by how meaningful it is to have a body in space that relates to other bodies in space in very specific ways.

The fact that a sculpture asserts itself--that it creates a huge shipping bill; presents you with the limitation of the shape of this doorway; plays itself out within the boundaries of Newtonian physics--is exactly why it is a particularly fecund philosophy. It is a way of looking at the world that is expressly not limitless. That is always relational, no matter what else it may be. I know that a lot of modernist bigboy sculptors work overtime to deny sculpture's aggressively yin nature

(for all of a sculpture's bigness, it is outrageously passive, it just sits there, refusing even to create an imaginary space for you)

but let's face it: the really interesting thing about a sculpture is that it is so meaningless in and of itself. It's not a fake plane of space like a painting that the artist directly projects meaning onto through markmaking. It's not even an idea that plays itself out in our minds. It's a thing that only acquires meaning by resisting gravity. By sitting next to other things. By being animated by your body as you walk around it and discover it in space. Are iconography, representation and color important to sculptors? Sure. But not in the same way as they are to a painter or a photographer.
Edward Burtynsky can take an image of a tire pile and re-present it without taking on any of the burdens inherent to the pile itself. The photograph is an act of looking. An abstraction.

Charles Ray's Hinoki is also an act of looking, but it's meaningful in an entirely different way than a Burtynski photograph. Ray took the real rotting, fallen tree to his studio. Made a complex mold of the entire tree. Took on the expense of throwing the actual tree away. Used the mold to make a fiberglass positive of the tree. Made a crate. Shipped that fiberglass positive to Japan, where artisans carved a replica of this fiberglass tree out of hinoki, which is the kind of wood you make special things like coffins or bathtubs out of in Japan.

There is nothing abstract about this process. And yet you get something that is in no way literal.

Fuck the intricacies of mortgages and artists statements. There are simply much more interesting intricacies to chew on. Sculpture is revolutionary because it is in no way abstract and because it simply doesn't exist except in relationship to the other things in the world. Because it solves and creates problems on a basic, intellectual plane. Because we live in a world where this enormous problem of relationship--the fact that we are not the only species, that we are not the only country--is becoming so pressing right now.

New Studio

Continuing that 2008 trend... I am once again moving up in the world. After three years of working on a concrete slab outdoors, I have graduated to four walls and a roof!

I still have to drag an extension cord around, and I still have no heat. But I can work in the rain!

Ego and Effort

Linked. Inextricably.

Duh.

What does this mean in terms of the effortlessness we all strive for?

More important, what does this mean in terms of the effortfulness we all find ourselves mucking thorough?

I am sure I am not the only one who has those kinds of V-8 moments.

Matthew Ronay Reviewed on ArtCal Zine

Yes, this is a Matthew Ronay sculpture. It's called Of Host, image courtesy Andrea Rosen's website.

The latest Matthew Ronay effort at Andrea Rosen: It's a wild and meaningful departure for the King of Butthole.

Go read my review of it on ArtCal Zine

Agnes Denes: I'm Going!

Artist Talk: Agnes Denes
Wednesday, February 6, 6:30 PM
Agnes Denes will present a slide lecture followed by a conversation with curator João Ribas. Agnes Denes (b. 1931) is a New York-based artist considered to be a pioneer of Conceptual art and the Environmental art movement. Denes addresses ecological, cultural, and social issues with works that are often monumental in scale, such as Wheatfield–A Confrontation (1982), a two-acre wheat field she planted and harvested in downtown Manhattan. Denes's drawings are an integral component of her projects and reflect an obsessiveness about craftsmanship. Seemingly computer generated, Denes's drawings are laboriously wrought by hand and take months (or years) to produce.