I'm sure by now you have some inkling of the content and process of Zander Blom's work, there has been a load of not undeserved hype. My contribution will be to say that it was a thoroughly depressing offering. It wasn't short of beauty, the prints were interesting, visually rich and impeccably executed. Nor was it short of intelligence, depth or wit. It was depressing in that it contained most of the elements of depression: self-reflection, disappointment and futility. Depression isn't necessarily a bad emotion to be getting out of a work, it's just depressing.

Self-reflection is the worst. It's when you start asking stupid questions, the kinds that don't have answers. Like "What does it mean to make art?", and "What does art mean?" or even "What does Modernism mean?" These questions form the basis of Zander's work, in various and more complex forms. These questions have been asked for years, and the answer is the basis for countless works, but is still ultimately elusive. This is the disappointment: you can't break down those questions by breaking down art. If you strip art of meaning, try to find it's basic components, you inevitably create new meaning, you reference the past attempts at the same. Our minds have been colonised by Modern art to the extent that even trying is a reference. Irony is the last refuge: playing this game on purpose to try and negate it, outrun it. But even irony is just disappointed wit.

Finally, futility. What's the purpose of spending four years building a body of work to only come to the conclusions above? Well, this is where Zander has got it right. If you don't try, you'll never know.

Labels: Zander Blom

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