La Luna Exhibition - Transformations.

An exhibition of art from recycled material and found objects at La Luna Art Gallery (march 30 - April 30) featuring works by these luminaries 

 Jack DeVore, Mark R. Jay, David Robb, Nan Robb,

Glen Rogers, Lucila Santiago, Rafael Avila Tirado, Carlos Z and a great visiting artist Lanny Garland whose life began in the watershed of the Big Horn Mountain. He produces wonderful 'tribal' art from 'hand hammered copper, hand worked silver, gold leaf, and found object pieces in several other materials. Finishes are natural and hand applied patinas along with paint and decorative rivets and chain.'

This piece below is beautiful to me and scary at the same time. I can imagine a priest sitting on his haunches meditating smoking a hallucinogenic spliff in some far gone era ready to place this vestidura over his head before going out into the blazing sun to the sacrificial altar with a machete hanging from his hand where a man is tied, his pale neck exposed, waiting for it to be parted from his body. This piece I find tell a story and therefore that makes it compelling art especially when it is put together from found objects.

The term found art describes art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th century with his fountain 

by R Mutt.Duchamp himself described it as readymade art or if you are French objet trouvé. But according to this critic that term is just semantics and R.Mutt 'found' this men's urinal and signed it in what could be 

described as an ironic anti-art gesture or paying homage to the spirit of  DADA. This piece was voted 'most influential work of modern art' by the 

Turner Prize Committee  

Found Art is art because the artist says it is. The context in which it is placed is also highly relevant and although it may now be accepted in the art world as a feasible practice, it continues to arouse questioning. But the artist expects the audience the time to contemplate the object and hopefully it will prompt philosophical reflection and this can only be a good thing. But audiences these days bred on a diet of fast editing, flashing, throwaway images and the attention spans of a gnat can not always be relied on to stand back and appreciate found art because they either want to hang around at the bar  sipping vino or they are outside plotting a coup, having a cigarette or rioting after which they may return to the object and say; 

'What crap, my 2 year can do that.' 

Picasso 1943 Bull Head.

This piece by Picasso, brilliant that it is, consist of nothing but the seat and handlebars of an old bicycle. Of course, the materials Picasso used are manufactured, but it would be crazy to insist that he must share the credit with the manufacturer, since the seat and handlebars in themselves are not works of art.

"While we feel a certain jolt when we first recognize the ingredients of this visual pun, we also sense that it was a stroke of genius to put them together in this unique way, and we cannot very well deny that it is a work of art."

Mmmm let's think about that pompous quote for a bit...

I reckon my Grandpa working in his garage fixing my bike may have put a saddle together with a set of handlebars and thought about a kudu, a badger or even a bull, but it was not art because there was no story behind it, he was not an accepted artist and he did not put it together in a 'unique' way. It was just my Grandpa in a garage in a moment of boredom. Whereas Picasso, an artist obsessed with masculine vitality from Spain the land of bullfighting realised from some junk he could create a bull's head... now that is a story and now my poor Grandpa is totally forgotten even though he thought of it first and is now lying in his grave thinking ..'That bastard Picasso dang stole my dang idea.' And i bet every bicycle shop owner from Calle Teniente Azueta to Bulgaria has at one time done the same thing and thought the same thing.

An artist can put something together in a unique way whereas I cannot and it is not art and  it all could, in this jaded critic's eye, be a case of The Emperor's New Clothes. 

Stuckists, a group promoting going back to real painting say 

"Readymade art is a polemic of materialism".

So let's all open our minds, check this out and hopefully not walk out of a 'found objects' exhibition quoting the Stuckists ..

Man contemplating a refrigerator he 'found' in a corner of a room.
Fantastic piece put together by MazReal staff.

Damien Hirst - 

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. 

A found shark with a meaningless pretentious name that makes it art.

Colin George Jaffrey
Some crap he found in his kitchen, was going to throw out, then thought lets make a Tea Pot bird.

One thing that does bother us though, is the term recycled art in that it draws one's mind to kiddies art classes where they bring home crappy stuff made from toilet tubes or tin cans or bent forks as wind chimes. It could also be termed SHOESTRING ART we suppose. We therefore cannot wait to see what these esteemed artists and their imaginations do with recycled materials.

(Our regular art critic Eustice Remington is on the plane to Mumbai or if you still think the sun never sets on the British Empire, Bombay India where he will be contemplating various Victorian splendid colonial architectures, studying the Kama Sutra, spiritualizing with the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh II and studying eastern mysticism and sexual freedom. Good Luck Eustice and please don't come back - Ed)

MazReal will not be at the opening (we have decided to go get 'Useless' in Mumbai lock him up in his hovel where he stays until his mystagogue conversion to the Aetherius Society and takes off in a flying saucer so that we can taste the delights ourselves)

 and will give our impressions of the other artists' works later in the month. 

सूरज के दूसरे पक्ष पर उज्जवल चमकता as they say in Hindi!

©MazReal Productions 2011