Barchael and DMB stickers appear on French cars

A Few Images of Venice

Here are a few images from last week’s trip to Venice.

27 hours from Venice

I’m back in Pont-Aven after a 27 hour bus ride from Venice. The school stayed 4 full days in Venice and 2 full days of travel by bus. The bus trip was exhausting and I’m now happy to be back. The trip included a trip to Mac/Val, then the Venice Biennale, the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Punta della Dogana, the Palazzo Grassi, and finally the Lyon Biennale. By the time we got to Lyon I think I may have been suffering from a bit of art overload.

The Venice Biennale had a number of interesting artists, but overall was a bit less spectacular than I had imagined. A few highlights were the work of Steve McQueen, who exhibited a 2-channel video in the British Pavillion, Öymund Fahlström’s map-like diagrammatic paintings, and Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragsetthe in the Danish Pavillion. This last one was one of the only moments of the trip where I laughed and felt briefly inspired. The installation took a while to get into and I only began to really enjoy it just before leaving the building. It is good to be reminded that some work can be a bit slower to digest than others.

The most interesting work I saw during the trip was the Pinault collection at the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana. The exhibitions included Felix Gonzales-Torres, Charles Ray, Fischli and Weiss, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Krueger, Cy Twombly, the Chapman Brothers, Rachael Whiteread, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, amongst many others. I was impessed by the curating/collecting choices in both locations. This is one of the more interesting personal collections I have seen in quite some time. Prior to this visit I knew little about the collection, but now consider both locations to be essential places to visit when in Venice.

The collector, François Pinault, is also the owner of the Gucci group and considered to be one of the most influential people in the contemporary art market. As a Breton, Monsieur Pinault invited PASCA to have a guided visit to both locations of his personal collection. I’m happy that PASCA was the guest of such an influential collector.

Now that I’m back in Pont-Aven, I want to begin working on a few ideas I’ve sketched while traveling. Sometimes stepping away from the studio is helpful in generating new ideas and energy to work. The time away has made me miss the studio and the time to work. However, this evening is probably better spent catching up on a bit of rest. The studio work can wait until tomorrow.

Restes de pain

I’m sitting here, eating the remnants of the bread I bought at the bakery today. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t been making enough work for my liking. Luckily, preparing and presenting to my classes means that I am looking at, talking about, and thinking about art. Eventually it should fill my head and overflow into some media. I’m sure of it. I’ve started to photograph, but am uninterested in editing the photos. I’ve started a drawing, but am not as focused that way either. I’ll let you know when something interesting starts to happen. Yes, I said you. You may ask … is he talking to me? Well, yes. I’m talking to anyone that has ever been referred to as you, vous, tu, usted, or similar in languages that I don’t yet understand.

Mon retour à Pont-Aven

It’s now been a week since I returned to Pont-Aven. I have returned as a member of the faculty, rather than as a student. This means that I am spending more time preparing for classes and a bit less time making art. Luckily, I took a few hours today to photograph. I will be updating my flickr page relatively soon. Getting here was an interesting experience. It took 1 car, 2 planes, 1 train, and a van to get here. Somewhere in the middle of the trip I had to wait 6 hours in the train station in the Charles De Gaulle airport. I was too exhausted and had too much luggage to go into Paris, so I decided to wait around. Somehow—I guess it was my lack of sleep and constant presence—I must have looked suspicious to the undercover, French customs officials. They stopped me and looked at my paperwork. Luckily, they quickly found me uninteresting and continued their search for more unusual characters. Just before I left, I saw them digging through the luggage of a young guy who I think looked a bit more like a trouble maker than I do.

While I was waiting for the train I noticed a number of people seem to get frantic and start hovering around an older woman who was sitting on a bench. A few minutes later I realized that she had blood pouring down her leg and it had soaked through one leg of her pans and covered her shoe. She was very calm and didn’t seem to think it was too bothersome. A little while later the paramedics came and started to bandage her. In the process he same officers who had questioned me seemed to find this event interesting enough to watch. It all seemed very surreal at the time, but that may have had something to do with my sleep deprivation.

Since I arrived I have seen many familiar faces about town. I have been warmly received everywhere I’ve been. One of the other faculty who is here for the first time has acknowledged that this is the largest collection of incredibly nice people he’s ever experienced in one place. That is one of the many reasons I am happy to return.

I’ve set up my studio and begun to get settled in my apartment. I’m hoping that by passing these hurdles I have removed any delay in making new work. Today’s brief photo walk and the beginning of a drawing should begin to build my momentum toward a new body of work and/or catching up with ideas I have yet to explore. Now I must get back to work … or at least thinking some more about it.