Daniel Pešta.

Daniel Pešta, “Scream III” (2015-2016), acrylic on canvas, (all images courtesy of DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague).

Daniel Pešta, “Scream III” (2015-2016), acrylic on canvas, (all images courtesy of DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague).

Daniel Pešta is an artist with a lot to say, and he’s well worth getting acquainted with, to say the least. His work is deeply expressive, profound, and stirring. Many times it’s frightening, because people can be quite frightening, and Daniel Pešta has a good deal of insight when it comes to human nature.

Daniel Pešta’s largest exhibition to date, drawn from his high-flying decade starting in 2007 , which has included three Venice appearances and Second Prize in Painting at 2017’s London Art Biennale, dominates Prague’s DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Pešta’s work is timely, disturbing and profound. His extraordinary artistic range encompasses photography, video, assemblage, installation, sculpture, drawing and painting; his materials include wax, leather, resin, textiles, paper, plaster, wood, acrylic, latex, gum, paint, neon lighting, and stone. Two generative objects pull this exhibition together. One is red string, signifying blood, genetic coding, fatalism, or humanity’s endlessness, variously. The other is the mask. A central motif in Pešta’s practice, it is meant to evoke disguise, dissemblance, and anonymity.

Born in 1959, Pešta lived according to the larger Czech struggle for self-determination. He was painting as the Czechs stumbled out of the darkness of Communist rule in 1989. In the mid-1980s he entered into the underground music scene, anticipating what has been dubbed the “Velvet Revolution” — the demise of what former Czech President Vaclav Havel had called “post-totalitarianism” (in his 1978 samizdat essay “The Power of the Powerless”). After a trip to New York, in 1998, Pešta saw the possibilities of multimedia art.

You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.

Repotting Bonsai Trees

I have to pass on the Iron Curtain series this weekend, because my mind and my hands are now fully occupied by work that won’t wait – repotting my trees. I only have this weekend for the deciduous trees and next weekend for the conifers, because after that the trees would be too grown and I would not be able to touch them without risking they die as a result. Which I do not want.

Currently my trees are more about quantity than about quality, because creating high quality bonsai takes time and I am only doing it for twenty five years. The plan is to build up stock now and refine it when I retire. Growing bonsai trees is not something for the impatient. But I have some medium to good quality ones already and I will share pictures. (I also have trouble getting my hands on quality bonsai pots, because they are not sold anywhere near and I am reluctant to buy them over the internet).

Here is a glimpse into the work that I am currently doing:

SandIt starts with buying a load of coarse sand and spreading it out to dry in the sun. That does not need to be done, strictly speaking, but I find it easier to work with dry substrate so I try to dry it as much as possible. Another ingredience to the sand is high-quality soil or compost, sieved through a 5 mm mesh and also dried if possible. And last ingredience is peat or some suitable substitute, like shredded old leaves and moss  and twigs, or maybe even saw dust. The organic material is there mostly to hold moisture and stop the substrate from clumping.

 

Mixing substrateNext step is mixing up the substrate. Because I have a lot of trees and other potted plants, this used to be the most time consuming and tiring part, taking up hours of hard work. Nowadays I am doing it in  a concrete mixer. A great saving of time and strength, I do not understand how I could manage without it. I was younger, healthier and I had less money but more time on my hands, so there’s that.

 

Various pots and bowls for bonsai trees.Whilst I am mixing suitable ammount of substrate, lets say 100 liters or so for starters, I also have to scrub and disinfect all the pots and bowls that are currently not in use. That is, I take them out, rinse them with boiling water and let them dry in the sun. That seems enough, I never had problem with fungal infections or rotting roots. I do not have enough pots to replant all trees at once, so I have to repeat this process multiple times as pots are emptied.

 

When the pots are ready and the substrate mixed, it is time to take out my most important tool case. Have fun trying to spot all the tools that are in it. All are used for tree care. And just in case someone can decipher the writing on that lid in top left corner – that is not actual mustard, just the cup in which once was mustard. Now it is full of charcoal to treat big cuts on roots.

Tool box for bonsai trees.

Angry White Men.

LOS ANGELES — Judging from the paintings and drawings on view at Susan Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Nicole Eisenman has been thinking a lot about angry white men. They are almost the exclusive population throughout the expansive gallery. There is a large contingent of shooters, each confronting us from behind a firearm aimed directly outward, so that to look at the drawings is to stare down a gun-barrel. These shooter drawings are almost all from 2016, with a few from 2017 and one from 2018, elaborated in ink, charcoal, oil, acrylic, and pencil. This last is the largest, and the only one bearing a title, “The Shooter.” One of the untitled drawings, in pencil and blue ballpoint pen, shows a man pointing his gun at us with one hand while the other grasps his penis. Along the bottom margin Eisenman has written “BAMSPLOOSH.”

Nicole Eisenman, “The Tea Party” (2012–2017), ink on gessoed paper, 40” x 35″ paper size, 52” x 45.50” x 2″ framed (photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

Nicole Eisenman, “The Tea Party” (2012–2017), ink on gessoed paper, 40” x 35″ paper size, 52” x 45.50” x 2″ framed (photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

While there is nothing original about equating guns with penises, the full array of drawings in Dark Light reveals Eisenman’s mind ping-ponging through a number of visual rhymes, adding up to many of the show’s most compelling moments. The circle of the gun barrel becomes the end of a cigarette smoked by impassive men. In one case, smoke billows from a man’s right nostril; in another, a sooty cloud issues from a cigarette belonging to an African American in a drawing titled “A Moment of General Anesthesia” (2018), suggesting this man’s need for relief from pain of America’s continuous police shootings of black men. Further iterations of the black circle appear: in a small 2016 sketch it is a bullet hole in the middle of someone’s face, in others it is a darkened sun. A 2015 ink drawing titled “Black Sun” has the cheerless orb spewing fecal liquid that piles like a mound of pudding below, resembling a pipe depositing sewage in our waterways. Finally and inescapably, the circle is an anus.

Nicole Eisenman, “Heading Down River on the USS J-Bone of an Ass” (2017), oil on canvas, 127.25” x 105” x 1.75″(all images courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

Nicole Eisenman, “Heading Down River on the USS J-Bone of an Ass” (2017), oil on canvas, 127.25” x 105” x 1.75″(all images courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

Nicole Eisenman: Dark Light continues at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (6006 Washington Blvd, Culver City, Los Angeles) through April 21.

Fascinating viewing and reading, you can do more of both at Hyperallergic.

Youtube Videos: European and Japanese Armor Mobility

Two short videos comparing two different types of medieval armor from practical point of view. One by an enthusiast owning a medieval armour replica in European style, and one by an enthusiast owning a medieval armour replica in Japanese style. Both armors were made specifically for these individuals, so they are fitted as well as they should be.

A lot of the things I learned in school about medieval armor and swords was evidently completely wrong. Like that armor restricted movement so much that it was impossible to move quickly, or that swords in Europe were blunt metal bars out of poor quality steel.

The Amazing Egg Dance: Peasants to Politics.

Contrast between Carnival and Fasting (ca. 1550–99), artist unknown — Source.

Contrast between Carnival and Fasting (ca. 1550–99), artist unknown — Source. Click for full size.

Whoever the artist of the above piece was, I’d say they had been most impressed with Hieronymus Bosch. The Egg Dance, from village revelry to romance to politics. This is a wonderful piece of history, which demonstrates several cultural shifts throughout the centuries.

The egg dance was a traditional Easter game involving the laying down of eggs on the ground and dancing among them whilst trying to break as few as possible. Another variation (depicted in many of the images featured here) involved tipping an egg from a bowl, and then trying to flip the bowl over on top of it, all with only using one’s feet and staying within a chalk circle drawn on the ground. Although, as shown in many of its depictions in art, the pastime is associated with peasant villages of the 16th and 17th century, one of the earliest references to egg-dancing relates to the marriage of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy on Easter Monday in 1498.

[…]

This blindfolded version of the egg dance features in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795). … According to some scholars Goethe’s mention gave birth to the phrase “einen wahren Eiertanz aufführen” (to perform a true egg dance) which refers to moving carefully in a difficult situation. This particularly association of the egg dance with navigating danger was expressed time and time again in political cartoons of the 19th-century: various political figures, from Bismarck to Disraeli, precariously trying to make there way about a floor strewn with potential upsets.

Democracy’s Disastrous Egg-dance, (1884), Joseph Keppler. A woman labeled “Democracy” wearing a blindfold labeled “Stupidity” is pushed by Samuel J. Randall toward a chair labeled “Presidenti[al] Chair”, with several eggs in the way on the ground, they are labeled “Honest Naval Appropriation, Civil Service Reform, Honest River – Harbor Appropriation, Economy, Anti-Silver Coinage, National Banking System, Tariff Reform, [and] Prompt Legislation”, two of the eggs are broken; among a group of men laughing, in the background on the right, are John Logan, John Sherman, and William D. Kelley. — Source.

Democracy’s Disastrous Egg-dance, (1884), Joseph Keppler. A woman labeled “Democracy” wearing a blindfold labeled “Stupidity” is pushed by Samuel J. Randall toward a chair labeled “Presidenti[al] Chair”, with several eggs in the way on the ground, they are labeled “Honest Naval Appropriation, Civil Service Reform, Honest River – Harbor Appropriation, Economy, Anti-Silver Coinage, National Banking System, Tariff Reform, [and] Prompt Legislation”, two of the eggs are broken; among a group of men laughing, in the background on the right, are John Logan, John Sherman, and William D. Kelley. — Source.

The Journalistic Egg Dance (ca. 1840), Andreas Geiger. A caricature of press censorship before the 1848 revolution in Austria. During the Restoration after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the European powers, led by Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich (1773-1859), restricted the freedom of speech and expression to contain any kind of critical, nationalist or anti-authoritarian movement — Source.

The Journalistic Egg Dance (ca. 1840), Andreas Geiger. A caricature of press censorship before the 1848 revolution in Austria. During the Restoration after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the European powers, led by Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich (1773-1859), restricted the freedom of speech and expression to contain any kind of critical, nationalist or anti-authoritarian movement — Source.

You read and see much more at The Public Domain Review.

Anatomy Atlas Part 3 – Upper Limb Skeleton

Human hand has always fascinated me and its skeleton is truly a marvel. Modern industrial robots still lose a lot to its flexibility (hands have seven degrees of freedom of movement, robots have one to six) and versatility (a hand can have a secure grip on almost anything from an egg to an axe).

Upper limb bones

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

For learning and examination we did not have a plastic skeleton mounted on a stand in the corner of the class. We had a box in which the real prepared bones of a man who committed suicide at a relatively young age were stored. So each bone could be taken out and examined separately.

One of the scary stories circulating about Professor Kos was relating to this fact. Small bones, like carpal and metacarpal bones, were stored in little pouches so they do not get lost or too mixed up with the rest. It was said that Professor Kos’s favourite way of examination in his former job at medical university was to shake up the pouch, pull one carpal bone out of it and ask which one it is. Any aspiring physician who failed to give prompt and correct answer was fired.

He did not do this to anyone of us that year, but we always felt he might to.

Inside Cancerland: Distortion Series.

The Neulasta not only gifted me with a fucktonne of pain, it caused a full body shake. Shaking hands aren’t exactly conducive to drawing or painting, so I put the stuff I had been working on away, and started the distortion series, because it’s easier to cover up all the mistakes and slips. So, Inside Cancerland: Distortion Series 1, Infusion Invasion. 16″ x 20″, Watercolour and marker on Bristol. Click for full size.

© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel (1565).

The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel is an accompanying work of François Rabelais’ The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel. The woodcuts are wonderfully creepy, and well worth a look even though they were most certainly not done by Rabelais.

The Public Domain has an article up about this work, and there’s an excellent post about it at Poemas del río Wang. Or, you can head right to the original images at Gallica.