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Berlin artists' journal: low-tech, high-minded & self-serving.
Self centeredness in word, image, animation
. Journeys into subcultures; making & presenting art; club culture & electronica. Now with lots of useless time consuming extras.





August 7, Saturday
Painted Diaries




August 7, Saturday - Painted Diaries

M y friend Thomas from "Saeckl & Schmalschlaeger" dragged me along to this "gay art" show at the Berlin Feuerwache.. There was some unspeakable work of a lesbian and also artwork by Bas Meerman. Meerman's stuff is marketed to be deeply personal diary drawing series, so I expected to like them, but they come across as very calculated and unpersonal. Any professional diary made for publication is calculated of course, but this work resembles an arty academic photoshop filter (a pencil plug-in symbolizing "creativity") put over random (porn) magazine images. 

It is "gay art" not as in Lari Pittman's work (which in my mind are journey into various queer aesthetics widening your horizon), but gayness narrowed down to a chliché of hedonism and death, and as such ironically nearer to a heterosexual, outside vision rather than a queer one.
(I wonder what Mark Simpson would think of it). Some "gay art" may be not so much about gay life, but rather about gay careerism.





Compare it to the painted diaries of Charlotte Salomon ("Life? or Theatre?), or Frida Kahlo for a different example of a diary of the "life is so fleeting" kind, or look at Henry Darger's life's work "Realms of the Unreal" where "notions of self-expression and commodity are not equated". (I read that somewhere, sounds nice doesn't it?) You'll want to start singing a song in praise of less calculated artistic expression or even plain amateurism real loud.

File under: Jacob's Ladders, Gay Mafia.
 

 


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