This has been a shitty week. I've struggled to write, to make art and have spent countless hours listlessy cruising the internet. Maybe it has to do with the dread and foreboding of an approaching birthday, but traditionally that can be drowned in alcohol, which I'm sure will work on Friday like it has for countless birthdays. Rather, I have a faithless feeling, like art is a meaningless in-joke and I'm its butt end. Don't get me wrong... I think this faithlessness is major part of being an artist, a good dose of it weekly keeps you regular. So then, why has it been a shitty week?

The faithless feeling has been exacerbated by being sandwiched between two shows. The surprising thing is that I think I like both shows (think, because one is yet to happen). The first is Zander Blom's The Drain Of Progress, and the second is Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg's One More Day to Regret. The latter I'll discuss after I've seen the show, but I'll start with this quote from the press release: "The artists themselves do not motion to put the socially conscious viewer at ease, and it is perhaps the task of this projected viewer to grapple with their own questions of meaning, to interrogate the idea of the hierarchy between the blatantly meaningful (the things we are taught to care about) and the meaningless (the work of the devil)." The former too uses futile acts to interrogate meaning, if in a slightly more introspective way. Zander Blom's work is ultimately disillusionment and irony tempered by a nagging sincerity.

I've unfortunately, owing to my shitty week, run out of time to finish this thought. Tune in tomorrow for The Shitty Week Part 2

Labels: Christian Nerf, douglas gimberg, Zander Blom