Steve Storz: loops: Part II

The pump to the right has the hose hanging sleekly down. The small
pump's hose is tangled up and has texture, wear and tear. "It has become an dynamic tangle with tremendous cracks and splits and ocher tubes inside" states Steve; this is more interesting to me. I want to tell stories about it: mysterious strong use and exposure to the elements? It is challenging to create a look like that which yet is authentic, giving  the art piece a look of decay and use, wear and tear. Some one pointed out to Steve that his work was apocalyptic. I feel it is post apocalyptic because his work is renewal of what has been damaged, destroyed or

 neglected. In his work Steve likes to elude to as many as possible reasons for why it looks as it does. The after effect in a piece can address all the imaginable causes.
The fetish pieces can refer to old windows with katsinam and cobwebs and insects. One day Steve wants to create his own glass vessels with extra bulges.... guarding the mysteries of it. I wanted to create something that is lasting and I want to protect them. Some work will not last: it will fall apart with the power supply, the red lights, water and snow and all that.
The magic of beauty is the immediacy of bringing together different elements.

Note the quality of the different lines, how they adhere to the paper or lay on the paper.
Steve works on his technique and it shows in the feeling emanating from the drawings.

Electro motive fetishes: A vision by Steve Storz. part I

Steve opened our conversation with: "I had a very clean living, my mother always had the house in order. The streets were covered with white shells and not with gravel, living near the ocean. I would sift through these shells and one day I found a small rusty piece of metal among them. I was fascinated and I took it with me and dropped it in my drawer. More and more pieces came and it became a box full of stuff, found objects, and the art evolved from that.

An artist has a vision about what he or she is doing. So Steve sculpts with steel and electronics and drawings. There are different sources of inspiration: man made, objects from nature

all of it mixed up in his mind. From natures it may be rock formations, twisted roots and his mind brings them together making new objects of them.

Things, yet what things? Steve is not content in re-expressing things as they are in the most common sense. It becomes a mixture of what we routinely see in our life. He clarifies: How that life affects me causes me to blend the emotional, spiritual and physical into  a new construction. All that happens in my imagination. Sometimes I think of things ahead of time and then I sketch them out. It can be a rack of coils, yet stacked up it is more interesting.

Success, says Steve, is when I have created something that mystifies me and if the public is also mystified. What they see may have nothing to do with my intent. More and more I have made an effort to create my own material sometimes on the basis of found objects like old pieces of vacuum hose or electronics. What happens when I create a version of an object it feels like creating an artifact that never ever really existed. Yet there was a basic object I have seen. Creating these found objects is very satisfying.

Clouds of Sils Maria

Clouds of Sils Maria is a wonderful movie which I happened to see because Andras Laszlo won some tickets from Radio Klara ( the classical and culture radio) for a special viewing in Antwerp. Juliet Binoche and actually all the other actors gave us their very best performance. I loved the movie because of ts layers of meaning and how to read them. The story is about an aging actress who is offered the role of an older woman Helena in the play she starred in as the younger actress Sigrid. She has to accept an award for the author of the play who on that very night commits suicide. A new production is planned and with her PA, Kristen Steward, the content and the way of performing the roles are discussed and different interpretations, aging, resiting the passing of time, reading in a totally different way what the play is about, kind of being stuck in the past interpretation of the younger actress she was.. Different options come to surface. For the older actress it is a harsh confrontation. So you have the 'real life' dialogs and the dialogs of the play she is studying. Both elements sharpening the relationship between  the actress and the PA. During a walk wanting to see the snake of clouds coming flowing through the pass the PA disappears... No clue whether she just turns back, commits suicide, falls, or is murdered... This is good, leaves open different readings of the interactions between the two women. The brilliant PA shows the actress how differently one can read the story. So reality, the play, different visions about acting and personal relations, it all becomes a heady mix. I loved the movie, I enjoyed the spectacular views of the swiss alps which also perform their role to perfection as all the actors did.

Kathe Kollwitz and her contemporary artists

 Jan is architect and my preferred partner to visit exhibitions. He doesn't only look at the objects shown but notices the relationships of the objects to their environment and comments on how they are placed. The statues on the black pedestals are by Kollwitz, those on the natural wood are by 19 contemporaries some working in different styles. Avant-garde as in the work of Jean Arp, piètas as the one by Ivan Mestovic' a sculptor whose work I have admired because of the large Prophet - preacher in Split in Croatia, Emiel Jespers, Zadkine....

 Kathe Kollwitz's son fell in Flanders fields on the first day of World War I. She then created the statue 'The grieving parents'. And spoke out against war and violence. Many of the pieces shown at the Bream Pavilion in the Middelheim museum in Antwerp are militant. The artists show us that war brings suffering, that it is filled with mass and personal  suffering. This composition of artists and work shown is a true pacifist statement.  I find the small statue with women and children wave at husbands and fathers who are going to war very moving. The women had to keep the family together, feed the children, work and make money... They also lost their jobs after the war because work was for returning soldiers in all war torn countries. I love the light in this pavilion. The war in sculptures is to me deeply moving and a fitting reminder to work for peace. Some sculptors created work in the trenches with the material the enemy fired at them applying all their craft to turn battle field objects into civilian objects. Another great exhibit at the Middelheim museum.

Conceptional artist Roland Van den Berghe

 I was surprised when I was contacted by Roland Van den Berghe, friend of Annie Reniers. She had shown him one of my poetry books Traces/Sporen. He found there a poem that intrigued him since it had a clear volta. Having listened to the man and his wild ideas I realize his deep seated pacifism, his true interest in Vietnam and condemning the ugliness which went on there.

The first song I knew

was

    my daddy is over the ocean

and of course

I thought every American

was my father

Later

I was to blame for the Vietnam war

belonging

where I didn’t belong

Now I hear your voice

      You charmer sweet talker

Too much dying had gone on

to settle down

        when the screams and fire

still pierced your dreams

when you freed my mother from her enemy

and waged a sweet war with her

So GI

later

      - so much later now -

your acceptance

has liberated me

     

belonging where I do belong

Roland is a conceptual artist and when he showed and explained some projects he had done to me I developed a new understanding of conceptual art. I realize the amount of thought and thorough preparation it involves. He was intrigued by the moment the poem changes. I also realize that the pacifist message from the poem would resonate in him since he has done many pacifist actions through his work. Roland, to say the least is well read and has traveled a lot and was interested in Vietnam where he left crutches behind in several locations, taking a picture of it every time.

RuhrKunstOrt - Horst Weichbrodt-

The opening of  the show by Horst started with an interview for the local media, relaxed, everybody knows each other except me who is trying to figure out the relationships, the qualities of of each and everyone. Horst had asked not to ave a formal introduction to his  art but to read a few poems written by Native Americans. So Trevino Brings Plenty was heard, and also Sherman Alexie and MariJo Moore.
Horst sculpting is based on found objects, material along the banks of the Rhine or the Ruhr. He said: I work with cheap materials. yes, it is a kind of Arte Povera. The light effects in his work stem from incorporating glass marbles.
 Sometimes the sculptures light is in one tone, sometimes the marbles are multicolored. Of course besides the poetry not only read in English but also in the German translation by Fred Schywek, there were didgeridoo players, really fun and a Kurdish trio and of course good musicians then tend to jam together: a extra treat. The audience would spill out on the sidewalk and look in... My favorite piece is the Crow.

The last performance of VENN: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

This is the last scene from the last performance of VENN. Yes I attended the performance again. I didn't know how I would react since the element of surprise would not be there. I must admit that I liked it even better than the first time, seeing more, recognizing some of the movements which touched me deeply. Also the music and voices went deeper into me. Seeing the intimacy of certain parts when a person becomes a shoe, a chair, a shower, a coat for the other. The violent scene when a woman gets beaten up without being touched really got under my skin at the second viewing. The waxing and waning of the gestures of a few dancers to the a full stage and the massiveness of the group movement was exhilarating, gave energy.

The gestures preceding the spoken word where beautiful and they contended that there was more communication with fingers and wrists and arms than when people started to speak... I must admire the students of the dance school of the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Antwerp. Some of them are just in their first year, others, with the heavier roles, are in their last year. So no the preparation starts for the final exam, which I hope to see as well. Art is balsam to the soul...

To all of you thanks.

Tony Mafia, Chicago August 4 1931 - Antwerp, Hoboken, May 9 1999

Fourteen years ago Tony Mafia died after a life lived fully. With many friends he is not forgotten and his paintings still make a house a home.

This large and wonderful painting is hanging in the public entrance of the European Parliament in Brussels. Once in a while someone tells me they have seen it.

The tearful eye of god, where not only god is crying but also the guitar player, lovers, doves and a dog and a stallion all this  one can see on the painting.

Tony loved his guitars, loved Spain had been for half a year in Casares, Andalousia. A strange place where he painted the locals as he saw them. These paintings were shown at Gallery Françoise Besnard and the show sold out. Jack Nickolson, being in Canes for the film festival, came to Paris, visited the show and signed the guest book.

Hopefully soon, I hope to organize a larger exhibition of Tony's work with the help of some friends.

*



All is changed

nothing stays the same

but the street

on which the changing

walk until words

of past

hurt

for lack of a tomorrow

The fading star

of laughter lost

hears but the

murmur of memory

on rue St André des Arts

meeting Madame Françoise Besnard

Museums

There are several museums I really like: among others the Louisiana in Copenhagen, the Guggenheim in Venice, the Centre George Pompidou in Paris and the Muhka and also the Royal Museum of Fine Art both in Antwerp. What these museums have in common is the beauty of their collections and the light, airy space. Some modern and some stately, the perfect space for the Brueghel's and Rubens' collections. In the museum boijmans van beuningen is the current exhibition is called 'The Road to Van Eyck'. I like the exhibition: the few original Van Eyck paintings, his magnificent book of hours, the 'cheap' fast work made for export to the south was sometimes cartoon like, yet sought after in his time and now, and the funny painting of a lady with her lover and husband, whose glasses she had taken away so he wouldn't notice. However the museum itself and the way of presenting was not optimal. The floor and walls in the same dust gray, the lighting scarce, the lettering (with interesting texts) hard to read. It felt stuffy, with closed in spaces where people couldn't circulate freely. Yet it was a good outing with dear friends, catching up on sharing and talking. Oh yes, people in Holland are taller than in Belgium, so in the bathroom you'll have to adjust to a rather tall toilet bowl.

Black Lamb

During the opening of the group exhibition of Black Lamb I got intrigued by some of the artists and spoke with three of them. Bruno Kristo's work I knew and thoroughly appreciate and I went because of him. And as a friend says: stick your nose out of the door and something will happen. The first artist I had a conversation with was Yosvany Malagon Hernandez from Cuba. His work is interesting because of his philosophical approach to art history and because he transforms political criticism in art. I loved his artistic rendering against violence and capital punishment. He also has a series of the Polish Pope worked in in different paintings relevant in European cultural history. He often combines objects and pictures in his work. I had forgotten by camera so please look here for all pictures. The second artist was Japanese Hiromi Oikawa living in New York. The paintings which spoke most to me were two portraits of a young girl. One an involuntary suicide bomber, who went to the police in tears and showed how she was rigged, trying to get rid of the bomb. She was punished at not yet 15 years to seven and half years of imprisonment. The other girl is her best friend's daughter, innocent open giggly. And then Italian Norma Des: at first glance passing by her pantings, I thought frilly, girlish, decorative. Yet, the work kept calling me back. My subconscious must have felt how she empowers women. Pink as innocence is deconstructed through a pink loose ribbon as perverse. In an other painting an abundant redhead says: mette mi come segno: show me as a sign (maybe even a signal). We spoke at length, brushing up on my Italian. Through the lively conversation I learned to appreciate a painting I had felt to be horrible, seeing the beauty but also despair which befalls us all at times...

Marc Neys makes video poems, and how beautiful they are. Here it is the poem Faites Vos Jeux by Marleen De Crée in Dutch and English.

Walk in the park- The sculptures in Middelheim

 A visit  of the sculpture collection of the Middelheim Park in Antwerp is a joy for heart and soul. The collection holds older work by Meunier, Rodin, Moore, Zadkine and more.

 This is Orpheus by Zadkine and then there is the variation on a horse as Pegasus. The park itself is wonderful and the entrance is free. It is used to stroll, sunbathe, read and to look at the art.

 This sculpting shows that two parallel lines always are at the same distance, whatever form and shape they might be in.

It feels nice and warm, smooth almost loving when one caresses the sculpting.

 The light under the trees and the spacing of the sculptures is perfect, it adds to attraction of the sculptings, some of which inspire kids to play with them...

 Here the bridge by Wei Wei. Pretty, yet hard to walk on. Some artists have polished and planned to the smallest detail and others let drop iron or steal beams at random and that also has its charm.

Sometimes old statues are no longer part of the collection, or were standing somewhere in town, but serve no more

 It is also fun to give new names when one is a bit disillusioned by what is written on the nameplates. The discarded statue left here I feel inclined to call the end of patriotism...

 These two octogenarians sit like the King and Queen by Moore.

The prophet by Pablo Gargallo has been a long time favorite of mine. I could have posted  fifty more pictures, but the best thing to do is get up and go and visit for your self.

Don't forget to look at the different pavilions made by architects...

American Sign Language and Poetry II

Here you see Dori Vaughn who works in a school as an interpreter/ educational assistant for children who cannot hear, practicing on a text of a poem. When I asked her whether she could sign some poems, she hesitated a moment and said yes. Signing is interpreting. American Sign Language (ASL) is not “English”. So she practiced while I spoke the text and she looked for the best rendering of the image or the concept. She also practiced ‘off the page’. Working from a written text is a job not many interpreters like to do, and poetic language of course is an extra challenge. She also discussed the content of the poem, what I had meant, how it came about. I however wanted to know how she read the poems, because a poem once written, is read and interpreted by the reader and might carry a different weight or connotation. Here you can see that Dori did a great job and added to the beauty of the event of April 30, 2012: desert poetry night.

Mound builders and Paducah

The Indian Trading Post alerted us to the location of Wickliffe Mound State Park. The mounds were build about 1200 years ago. Some flat topped as meeting grounds, others for structures of importance for the community.

 There must have been about 15 dwellings and the exhibition shows the tools used, the food eaten and the pottery. The light spot on the picture left is a burial mound where 14 people were found, unburied, studied and then returned to their original grave in as close the same pace and position as they where.

 Then it was Paducah, a town with a theater, with bistro's, wineries and quilting, being the quilting capital of the USA. Of course also here the 'Ministery of Harley Davidson' and Free Spirit. Yet also frozen mocha was to be had and even decent bread, hippie stuff and dirty chai: chai with chocolate and a shot of  coffee. Of course antique shops and restaurants: the catfish was excellent, a pleasant surprise along the Mississippi.

April snow

The winter had been rather dry, so nobody complained when a pouring rain came down after the Friday evening local fish fry.  The rain danced and played on the tin roof in gentle and hard rhythms.

 Usually spring is nice and friendly. I have picnicked at Lake Mead at Christmas day and at the top of Hualapai mountain the next, with just a shirt and a sweater. Now I try to stop the wind from entering by putting pillows in front of the door
and the words a carpet of snow have become rather literal. Yard art is enhanced by nature. Here a sculpting by Bob Stördahl, putting old rust from the mines to good use.

The Heart of Darkness - Dark Heart - Duister Hart

 I love the theater, I love monologues and Josse De Pauw is one of the real good ones. Guy Cassiers is a formidable director who with seemingly meager means visible on the stage manages to evoque an array of moods and situations. If you have a chance to go and listen and watch and feel, don't miss 'Duister Hart'.

 I also love this particular theater, the Bourla, with its ornate interior: the sciences and the continents are represented on the ceiling. This monologue is written by De Pauw based on the excellent Dutch translation by Bas Heijne of the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and deals with the Congo and a trading post where Kurtz gathers the most ivory of all the agents. The language is rich and at times chilling.

 A good crowd showed up to listen to this monologue dealing with colonialism and the effects of greed and loneliness, the loss of a moral compass when one has nobody to talk to and the horror, the horror when looking inward at the state of ones soul. One will recognize the final scene as used by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse now. 

Kurtz has plundered the region, has been a violent and cruel representative of the firm, yet he is remarkable, intriguing, imposing, awe inspiring violent and even lovable man. The story is told by Marlow the Captain of a ship sailing up the Congo River in Africa for a Belgian Company. His goal is meeting Kurtz, who has been member of an international society to abolish rude manners and customs. Yet in Kurtz he meets a dark heart, without moral references or control. Josse De Pauw plays all roles thanks to a state of the arts technical approach, projecting the roles that have been  'taped' before and sometimes in the dialog, the actor on the stage is filmed and projected on the projected screen. Thus the meeting with Kurtz, becomes also explicitly a meeting with himself. One wonders why the company never intervened when they knew about about the plunder of the land and the violence against the indigenous inhabitants. The only reason would be greed, in other words capitalism and colonialism. Yet the play leaves one wondering whether one could lose one's own compass.  Great art is food for the soul and food for thought. When the thin gilded layer of civilization is scratched away all that remains is a dark heart.