My abstract for the forthcoming Engaging Baudrillard conference has been accepted. I will be delivering a paper entitled Created to lead astray: Baudrillard’s seduction in contemporary artefacts at Swansea University between the 4th and 6th September 2006. Read my abstract.

I always forget I do more than I think I do… As evidence, I updated my profile page.

As you may begin to notice, the 2006 Artist of the Month competition is just an excuse for me to think and write about an artist every month. And, as such, there are no rules about who I may chose: they may be from any corner of the world, using any medium, old or new, alive or dead…

March’s artist is a dead painter and, in a way, also a painter of the dead. The body of works of Giorgio Morandi mainly comprises still lives made of bottles, pots, jugs and trinkets found in and around his studio.

It was Jorge Oteiza, a Basque sculptor, who first brought Morandi to my attention. In 1957, Oteiza received the International Grand Prize for Sculpture at the fourth Sao Paulo biennial. True to his personality, Oteiza publicly stated that he would not accept his award should Morandi not win its painting correlation. Luckily for him and the biennial organisers, Morandi did win the painting award.

Some years ago, as a painter, I was in awe of Oteiza’s vigorous sculptures and wondered who was this Morandi that inspired such feelings in him. I was surprised to find delicate, small scale paintings. One of the things that most impressed me of Oteiza’s oeuvre, was his Chalk Laboratory, where, with small pieces of the material teachers use to write on blackboards, he thought of space and matter.

Oteiza’s Chalk Laboratory. Oteiza’s museum, Alzuza, Spain

This was the first time I encountered art for thought’s sake, instead of for gallery’s sake. The same attitude is visible in Morandi’s bijou paintings. The first time I had the chance to see one life (it is an imperative to experience Morandi’s paintings life) was after Tate Modern’s opening in 2000. The gallery was crowded with people, art and space symbolism, famous and infamous pieces cut out of modern and contemporary art books, people crammed in front of them awaiting for an osmotic phenomenon to occur, crowds looking at high ceilings and long floors… Morandi’s painting, small in scale, empty, tragic, honest, devoid of spectacle, representing the existential questions still lives’ tend to do, were revelatory in comparison.

Geirogio Morandi (1890-1964) Still Life, 1946. Oil on canvas, 37.5 x 45.7 cm, Tate Gallery, London

Years later, Tate modern opened a retrospective of Morandi’s work. In the repetition of his architectural motifs (I got to know his trinkets as if they were mine), and their placements in the real and pictorial space, I found new depths in the meaning of the word pathos. When one of the objects got overturned or the corner of a table appeared it was as if a violent, dangerous thought, a vast precipice, an incomparable void and existential chasm had happened.

For more information on Giorgio Morandi, visit The Museo Morandi

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ARTIST OF THE MONTH COMPETITION:

Artist of the month - 1: Pilar Albarracin
Artist of the month - 2: Javier Perez

Javier P?©rez’s exquisite sensibility captivated me since I visited one of the most successfull shows the Guggenheimm Bilbao has ever exhibited. In La Torre Herida por el Rayo (The Tower struck by a Lightning), Javier P?©rez’s Levitas piece was an affront to the world of possibilities; it opened inspirational, aspirational and expressive doors.

Levitas, 1998

I had already seen his dresses made of cow’s intenstines and his hair masks on my faculty’s library catalogue collection. However, seeing the work live imbued it with ever more sensibility and fragility, something lacking in the expression of contemporary artists from Bilbao, especially males.

El baile del infinito

Since my first face-to-face encounter with his work in 2000, the name of Javier P?©rez has been mentioned in relation to important contexts of the contemporary art world, Basque, Spanish and international. In 2001, he represented Spain in the 49th Venice Biennale (together with the also Bilbao-born artist Ana Laura Al?°ez).

A trip to Venice, Javier P?©rez’s installation for the Spanish pavilion, Venice Biennale 2001

In 2005, he exhibited at the Palacio de Cristal, part of the Reina Sofia Museum. This beautiful gallery at the heart ofthee the Madrillian Retiro had been previously inhabited by artists of the stature of Michelangelo Pistoletto and Anish Kapoor.

Tempus Fugit

However, it was in his Artium retrospective in 2003 that Javier P?©rez’s ontological dimension hit me with it’s hard contingent stick. His displayed bodily fluids, the use of his own body in despairing, intense, eternally recurrent video sequences mesmerized my intellect as if it was me in paralel universe I was contemplating. My co-visitor felt a similar existential pull.

Latigo, 1998

Reflejos en un viaje, video installation / 60 escalones (perpetuum mobile), 1999

It is the overwhelming sensibility, the ontological certainty of our mortal selves and the aesthetic beauty and interdisciplinary character of his installations that has earned his the title of 2006 February Artist of the Month and a place in the 2006 Artist of the Year final.

For more information on Javier P?©rez’s work, visit
http://www.artium.org/ingles/expo_javierperez.html

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ARTIST OF THE MONTH COMPETITION:

Artist of the month - 1: Pilar Albarracin
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All broken links have now been restored.

Pages with new drawings and old photographs have been added.

Starck Ting and the Captology blog have been linked to through del.icio.us via the sidebar.

I first encountered Pilar Albarracin’s tragicomic work on the 51st Venice Bienale. Her incisive look into the popular culture and folklore of her nation (which is also mine), together with her extraordinarily visual video, performative and photographic composititions have won her the first 2006 Artist Of The Month special mention and a firm and well-deserved nomination for the 2006 Artist Of The Year award.

As a taster, here are some images from her Video performance Bailar?© sobre tu tumba / I Will Dance on Your Grave, 2004 (with the collaboration of the dancer Andres Mar??n)

For a fuller account of her works (including a short excerpt of the video mentioned above), visit her website http://www.pilaralbarracin.com/home.htm

The Mind’s Construction Quarterly has published my review of the 51st Venice Biennale, entitled A Biennial in Venice. You can access from here, or the writing’s page.

I am delighted to announce that the Leading Astray project will finally take place at Sheffield Hallam University. I couldn’t have hoped for a better home for it.

This is the Wimbledon School of Art Research Centre I used to work at after an artistic Renovation by Richard Woods, transforming our detached, suburban office house into a wannabe creation.

The press release also mentions:

The addition of a shiny gloss paint printed skin of cartoon bricks takes the building into new realms of painting, sculpture, design, construction, fantasy and hyper-reality.

If you are in London, don’t miss it