oswlld's monthly wrap up: april

note: i am trying something a bit different this year, so bear with me as i figure out how i want to format this. i wanted to spend more time sharing what i consume, beyond what i rb, and put my thoughts in one place. these posts are okay to rb

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This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone [started 04/04, finished 04/09] *drags my hands down my face until the end of time* I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. I WANT TO MEET YOU!!!! IN EVERY PLACE I EVER LOVED!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4.75⭐️ in storygraph. — Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell [started 04/12, in prog] I am about 100 pages in and still not sure if I want to keep going or DNF it. idk what isn’t sticking because the writing is beautiful and the pacing is great. And I do care about the characters, I really do. I love the way the author borrows from future grief, it’s what I am enjoying most about this read so far. Maybe I’ll give it 50 more pages and see if it finally sticks.

23.5 Degrees, GMMTV [started: 03/08, ongoing] As mentioned, I am caught up on eps 3-8. I’ll likely not be able to watch it live in may but I will be keeping up with the series til the end. It’s so lighthearted and charming! Not sure how they managed this, but I am constantly surprised by the character group dynamics. It’s def due to the great chemistry everyone has with literally everyone. I need NEED to discuss the score of this show because it’s IMMACULATE. The celestial themes, from the props all the way down to the music, is so rich. I’m so excited to see how this story unravels. — Devil’s Plan [started: 04/23, ongoing] This is a bestie pick, a show my best friend chose to have us watch on our facetime calls. We are 1.5 eps in and it’s a grower. The first game is hella complex and we’re slowly picking up on what’s happening. The people on this show are incredibly intelligent, so I feel like I have to work extra hard to keep up. It does feel rewarding, I’m hooked.

Oppenheimer, Peacock [watched on 04/05] I am a self-proclaimed Nolan girlie, I’ll admit it. I do enjoy his work and the many ways he translates time into film. When I wrote this, it had been a few days since I watched it and I still think abt the little moments that blew me away. Moments like the accentuated dust particles, how the coloring of the movie can be an unreliable narrator, and the utilization of a crowded hall stomping their feet to create tension. The last eight minutes still haunts me. I find more value in the technical side of film, but I will give credit when credit is due: every award Cillian Murphy got this season was so well earned. He carried all three hours of that film with such powerful quietude. And lastly, my heart now belongs to Jennifer Lame. Upon seeing her accept the award for Best Film Editing for Oppenheimer, I have come to learn that she also edited Tenet. HER MIND!!! She has such a bright future ahead of her, to be up there with the minds of Thelma Schoonmaker and Anne V Coates. — Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-Fi Film Club [watched on 04/14] This film needs to be studied in film school. It’s incredibly meta in some ways, having renown directors be the subjects, talking about their passion for film. The production being so stylized and the editing feels very reminiscent of Our Beloved Summer, with the way the found footage and the aspect ratios are intertwined with current day quality shots. This film will hit everyone right in the millennial. A true surprise for me is discovering that Bong Joon Ho and I are more alike that I had originally thought. The way he speaks in casual conversation and his story of setting strict rules for their film collection had me hollering because SAME. The most jessi thing he recounted was how all the VHS tapes were labelled. Yellow Door is somehow the opposite of the "doesn’t take itself too seriously" mentality; it’s actually so great that they made the film like that. By fully immersing us with gorgeous cinematography, cheeky editing sequences, and lush music to tug at your heartstrings, it bewitches you into loving film as much as they did. And still do.

Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé [relisten] I’ve given this several good cycles to confirm my first impressions: it’s def one of her most cohesive albums to date and still stands as a spectacular album. This passion project of hers takes such great care and attention to the voices she amplifies. I can feel the hunger, the innate need for her to make this album. If you haven’t heard how this album came to be, I insist you take the time to educate yourselves. It makes the listening experience so much more empowering. Good for her… GOOD. FOR. HER!! Current favs: Ameriican Requiem, 16 Carriages, Bodyguard, Jolene, Spaghettii, Ya Ya, Desert Eagle, II Hands II Heaven, and Sweet/Honey/Buckin’. — Older, Lizzy McAlpine [first time listening] Coming off the heels of my Five Seconds Flat hyperfixation last year, I haphazardly went into Older hoping its a natural progression in production value. I was shocked that it turned out to be a completely different sound. I soon learned that she actually didn’t really like how Five Seconds Flat was produced because it didn’t feel true to her as an artist. Tbh I was feeling a little lost after the first listen but after digesting this new info, I went back into it and appreciated it a lot more. In fact, the third listen was when I realized that it gave off the same energy as Laufey. I’m excited to listen to it again soon. — Stick Season: Forever, Noah Kahan [first time listening] Having stumbled on all the collabs on Alexa earlier this year, Forever was the only new song for me from his latest release. I’m OBSESSED with this song!!!! The way his voice carries the entire weight of every hurt inside me and just takes it away. Something healed in me. I play it in the car every time I leave the house. I cry in the car every time I leave the house. — The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift [first time listening, standard vinyl ed.] I am going to get this out of the way and say that this album is great. Just great. I understand more than ever why she felt the need to make this album. Having only listened to the standard version a couple times and the anthology twice through, I sit here in this kind of… discomfort. And I’m kind of okay with that feeling. But… it pains me that I can’t share this album with some people in my life and it’s largely due to how she depicts her struggles with people with mental illness/addiction. It’s one, if not the biggest, strike I have against this album and by extension, her. Songs cycling in my head: Down Bad, So Long London, Guilty as Sin?, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, loml, imgonnagetyouback, Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, How Did It End?, I Look in People’s Windows, The Prophecy, Peter, and The Manuscript.

EXPO Chicago [attended 04/13] Yes, I am doxxing myself a bit if you didn’t already know. During college, I used to attend EXPO yearly and occasionally went back long after I finished school. I haven’t attended in a long time, so I made it my goal to attend this year. And I had a blast! My mother tagged along and she’s not one to attend shows like this or art museums in general. It was a beautiful day trip to the city and it was nice to have her company. She mostly trailed behind and took pics of me as I floated around the exhibition hall. I have 50+ artists I tracked on my phone to actively research in my spare time. I sat in on one of the panel talks (ON COLOR), discussing color theory in today’s bipoc landscape. I took so much away from that conversation, it was very charged. I'm kinda obsessed with Alteronce Gumby, I need to do an artist deepdive on his work. — Coachella [watched from 04/12 to 04/14] I work for a big tech company and one of the biggest events to be on standby for is Coachella. I had to be on call for Friday and was backup support for Sunday lineups. Thus, Saturday was the only day I could sit back and relax while watching. My first time lineups included: Hatsune Miku, Peso Pluma, Late Night Drive Home, Jon Batiste, Ateez, le Sserafim, Purple Disco Machine, Bleachers, No Doubt, 88rising Futures, and Latin Mafia. Of all of the performances, I want to take a full deep dive into Ateez and Peso Pluma’s discography in the near future.

"God is an American" by Terrance Hayes

I still love words. When we make love in the morning, your skin damp from a shower, the day calms. Shadenfreude may be the best way to name the covering of adulthood, the powdered sugar on a black shirt. I am

alone now on the top floor pulled by obsession, the ink on my fingers. And sometimes it is a difficult name. Sometimes it is like the world before America, the kin- ship of fools and hunters, the children, the dazed dream

of mothers with no style. A word can be the boot print in a square of fresh cement and the glaze of morning. Your response to my kiss is I have a cavity. I am in love with incompletion. I am clinging to your moorings.

Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.

Poem: https://www.guernicamag.com/three_poems_1/ Art: Diego, 2012, by Alteronce Gumby, Acrylics and collage, 36 × 36 in | 91.4 × 91.4 cm

Alteronce Gumby Water, Stone, and Liquid Thoughts 2022, Glass, gemstones and acrylic on panel 96 x 154 in

My top ten poetry collections of 2023

(in no particular order...other than the order forgetful brain remembered the names and titles)

Mary Jean Chan - Bright Fear

Toby Martinez de las Rivas - Floodmeadow

Adrija Ghosh - The Commerce Between Tongues

Amy Acre - Mothersong

Jason Allen-Paisant - Self Portrait as Othello

Aaron Kent - The Working Classic

Maria Sledmere - An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun

Abigail Parry - I Think We're Alone Now

Jonathan Kinsman - The Fireman's Daughter

Joe Carrick-Varty - More Sky

_________

Buy them all - support the poets and presses ! xx

It’s the last week to see Kennedy Yanko’s exhibition, Humming on Life at Jeffrey Deitch gallery’s Wooster Street location.

Tonight, 4/20/23, she will be at the gallery discussing her work with Alteronce Gumby.

From the press release-

By employing paint skin and metal in ways that both transmute a bodily essence and reposition the weight of gravity, Kennedy Yanko wields materiality and abstraction with the possibility of intervening in the viewers’ perceptions. In Humming on Life, Yanko‘s first exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, the artist continues this exploration.

Although the tactile quality and lyrical processuality of Yanko’s works emphasize their sculptural quality, the artist considers herself foremost a painter. In her new body of work, Yanko takes an approach to sculpture that reconnects it, and her, with painting. In recent years, the weathered paint and bruised patinas found on salvaged metal relics informed her palette for the paint skins. Now, the artist is introducing colors to the metal she finds. By painting the metal directly, underpainting, fire-cutting forms and compositions, and then crushing those new shapes, Yanko is expanding the definition of painting through her process. She remarks:

Working this way has been labor-intensive and has exposed me to sounds, like water thrashing inside a metal tank while cleaning it. Feeling that thrashing—hearing a power that felt like infinity incarnate—encouraged me to probe water as a medium and examine my intuitive method more closely, which seemingly only comes from physical exchange: input and output, expansion and contraction. In pulling water apart and becoming more curious about its behavior and participation, I’ve enjoyed revisiting the ways in which it’s a web of activation, a source, and information. It’s a cue and a salve and carries with it tinges of what it’s gone through.

What water did for me in that moment was to point back to the livingness of my medium — of the metal and paint skin I rely on — and wash away the binary between life and matter. Erasing this divide expands the possibility of experience; it gives materiality an abstract power that we yield to. It’s that vitality, found in color, form, attention and consciousness, that I hope this work can be a language for.

The “Illuminating Sound” presented apart of the exhibition, composed by Samuel Kareem, is derived from audio Yanko recorded while working in the yard. Kareem expanded one striation of sound within the clip—one small element he excavated from the layers of water, metal, paint and movement—and created 10 ten unique soundscapes. Each of the scapes corresponds with a sculpture within the show, and illuminates it. Listen to “Illuminating Sound” here.

Alteronce Gumby

Shamrock after school, 2023

Alteronce Gumby

Alteronce Gumby at the Allentown Art Museum

Alteronce Gumby at the Allentown Art Museum

Featured Image –  Alteronce Gumby: Dark Matter | at the Allentown Art Museum October 29, 2022, through April 9, 2023 Artist’s first solo museum show opens October 29, 2022 Allentown, PA—The Allentown Art Museum is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Alteronce Gumby: Dark Matter on Saturday, October 29, 2022, in its upstairs galleries. Dark Matter explores the formal, material, and…

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Alteronce Gumby

Alteronce Gumby: Third Light from the Sun, 2020

"If I go there, I won't stay there" at ltd los angeles

Alteronce Gumby

FA222 ,principles of graphic design:

Instructor: mr.munwar mukhtar

@uob-funoon @mnwrzmn

Project 1 : interviews

Alteronce Gumby on His Cosmic Abstractions

The artist talks about his practice of using glass and gemstones in his work, his inspiration behind his colours, and the cosmic and spiritual presence embedded in his paintings

BY ALTERONCE GUMBY AND TERENCE TROUILLOT IN INTERVIEWS | 23 APR 21

Terence Trouillot: Last time we spoke at Charles Moffett, you were telling me how you imagine the colour spectrum would be different on other planets. I wonder if you could say a little more about that and, more generally, how you approach colour in your work.

Alteronce Gumby: Considering that there are literally 100 billion of stars in the galaxy, and each one has its own spaectrum, we can theorize that, if I were to stand on another planet and hold up a prism to the light, I would see a completely different colour spectrum. Everything would change – from the vegetation, animals, minerals and soil to the ways that we have identified colour within society and radicalized it in terms of its relationship to identity. If I were to stand on that other planet, would I still be seen as a Black man? Would they even know what the colour black was if I were to identify myself as such? Imagining this allows me to think about the ways humans define colour and use its language to codify race and identity.

TT: This puts me in mind of Afrofuturism, which considers Blackness a form of technology for survival. Do you see your work as being inspired by Afrofuturism?

AG: In a way, Afrofuturism – including Sun Ra’s idea that Black people are from another planet – is about escape. Sun Ra is a huge inspiration for me. I really do look at my paintings as spaceships, as these vessels that can allow my consciousness and imagination to go to distant planets. I think about the images that I make as cosmic landscapes. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to stand on another planet and to see colours not as fixed but as something that can shift.

I’m also looking more at astrophysics and thinking about the gemstones that are in each painting as actual fragments of materials forged from stars. They have this history of colour, energy and light that’s infused within their raw material, their raw colour. In a way, I see these gemstones in my paintings as carrying within them the energy of the universe. Quartz crystals give off a very strong frequency.

The world wouldn’t be what it is without these minerals embedded in the earth, nourishing the plants and animals that, in turn, nourish us. When thinking about colour, light and minerals, it’s important to remember that we’re all connected, from the micro to the macro.

TT: That’s a good segue into talking about your use of materials as a painter, working with glass in particular, but also these gemstones and activating them as part of your process. How did that all come about?

AG: I’m very conscious of the intentions I set within my work and the things I’m asking them. My sense of spiritualty comes from my upbringing. My mother was a minister and I grew up attending church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I was always made aware of this being or energy in the world that was felt but not seen. I kept nourishing that, especially in my teenage years when I stopped going to church.

Thinking about the use of gemstones within holistic practices really interested me, especially in their relationship to colour. I activated them using moonlight to enable this strong energetic presence within my paintings. I wanted my paintings to feel alive. That was where I started.

The idea of using glass came to me one day when I went to the bodega near my studio to get a sandwich. I noticed that there was a pile of broken glass at a bus stop: it was glistening in the sunlight, rainbows flickering off it. I was like: that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! It reminded me of Félix González-Torres’s Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991). I took the glass back to my studio and sat with it. I didn’t really know what to do with it, but I started playing around with it, treating it like it was acrylic.

TT: In your latest work, currently on show at Charles Moffett in Tribeca and at False Flag in Queens, you’re embedding these gemstones within the substrate of the work, positioning them in your own zodiac constellations. Can you talk a little bit about how you see these abstractions as self-portraits?

AG: For me, putting these pieces of glass together was also a metaphor for putting myself together, especially in terms of my relationship to the cosmos and astrology. But then I’m also trying to redefine myself through colour, through abstraction, though the process of painting. Each piece of glass that I place symbolizes a moment of my life that has accumulated to form who I am as an individual sitting in front of you today.

TT: Your work is also about creating a shared experience for the viewer, to participate in this energy that your paintings give off. Are you at all concerned about who is actually experiencing the work or whether they will understand the holistic element?

AG: Sometimes, yes. I’d like to know everyone who acquires the work but, at times, it’s out of my control. Once these pieces leave the gallery or my studio, I can only guide the viewers mind’s eye to a certain perspective. I do my best to lay the path out for them. I put as much attention into the construction and conjuring of the painting I as possibly can, so that, when it leaves me, the intention and energy is still there, still set. I’m bringing these materials together, placing them in a certain way, making sure the alignment is right within them and that the palette they’re working with is also amplifying the colours these gemstones are presenting. But, in the end, I feel like there’s only so much I can do. I can only play the song: I can’t make you dance to it.

Alteronce Gumby's 'Somewhere Under the Rainbow / The Sky is Blue and What am I' is a dual-site exhibition on view at Charles Moffett, New York and False Flag, New York, through 25 April 2021.

@lavar.munroe.studio 🙏🏾 Prayer Warrior Acrylic, latex house paint and spray paint on canvas 60'' x 60'' 2016 See this and other work in upcoming group exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center  in Charlotte NC, titled: "Painting Is Its Own Country" curated by Dexter Whembly.  The museum will host a free community opening on Saturday, November 2 from 10am – 5pm. Participating artists include Derrick Adams, Rushern Baker IV, Kimberly Becoat, Jurell Cayetano, Dominic Chambers, Elizabeth Colomba, DeShawn Dumas, Alteronce Gumby, Stephen Hayes, Marcus Jahmal, Cheyenne Julian, Gerald Lovell, Jackie Milad, Mario Moore, Lavar Munroe, Fahamu Pecou, Kenny Rivero, Sloane Siobhan, Alexandria Smith, Vaughn Spann, Stacy Lynn Waddell, Will Villalongo, Cullen Washington Jr #supportblackart #levarmunroe #prayerwarrior #painting #contemporaryart #artoncanvas #contemporarypainting #iwasmadeinthebahamas https://www.instagram.com/p/B4MGXydBpy0/?igshid=11if0sd1adv4x

Alteronce Gumby’s Otherworldly Abstractions Reenvision the Color Black - Artsy

Alteronce Gumby

If Not Me, Who, 2022

glass, gemstones and acrylic on panel

48 × 46 inches