I was talking to someone yesterday and came to realize that the Kirsten Kindler show I thought I had written very positively about, my friend read as being very negative. Whoah!! This is unsettling. Did anybody else get a negative impression from that post? If so, I need to clarify and emphasize that I really liked that work!!
Re-reading the post I see that I was very descriptive, and not so effusive. I guess I can understand how someone with a different sensibility might read the same descriptions and think ugh. Bridal beauty and pond scum gross, fancy from afar but up close cuts and tape. Those things were pointed out in admiration; duality is good, ambiguity is good, shifting perceptions, simultaneous and conflicting associations are good.
It might be that thinking about Kirsten's work infected my writing about her work. Nothing was clear, murky multiple interpretations abound.
I loved reading your reverie on Kirsten's work. Very thoughtful.
ReplyDeleteThere's a really nice piece of hers up in the back of ADA right now...
ReplyDeleteI think you wrote a very well post on her work. I also like this kind of stuff, but in the end it remains very ornamental and is not really reaching the quality even of a bad painting because it misses the other dimensions of painting (space, light, invention) and stays somehow a bit mechanical. A good counterpart are Matisse's papercuts, but even they can never compare to one of his paintings...
ReplyDeleteBest regards, Hans
Hans,
ReplyDeleteummm, I don't remember Kirsten calling her work "paintings", so I'm not sure you can compare them to bad paintings, and/or the different qualities a bad painting would have. I think her work is a hybrid...