Titus O.

I took my 3-D design class over to see the Martin Puryear retrospective at the FW Modern the other day. It’s pretty spectacular. 20 years ago, he was one of those artists so ubiquitous, and traditional to my teenage eyes, that I couldn’t muster much interest. Not being particularly crafty, though I was studying sculpture I didn’t look to him much for inspiration – though then (and a little bit still), some part of me sort of longed to have some defined material discipline. Back then, I had Nauman, Kosuth, and Beuys more on my brain. In any case, Puryear’s honed material sense is the central pleasure to be found in his work, and made for a concise master class in formal sculptural concepts.

The show is arranged chronologically, which benefits the older, almost overly familiar stuff. You get to see it in relation to the later pieces, and how earlier ideas develop and get embellished upon. We all have certain shapes, gestures, visual ideas that we return to again and again, that obsess us. Puryear has this certain lyrical blob form that runs right through. It seems so Platonic that it probably can be described with some algorithm, the Golden Mean or something. It is certainly pleasing to gaze upon; and more than that. The physicality of this work is its signature quality; its size in relation to your own body, and to the spaces the pieces sit within. This is increasingly apparent in the later galleries. Earlier, you can see Puryear developing techniques and his visual language at a relatively smaller scale. The work just gets larger and larger, until “Desire” simply dwarfs you and everything else in the museum.

A huge 20’ wheel is attached by an arm to a central pivot, all made of wood, poised as if ready to grind the karmic grist in your psyche’s mill. A number of the later works deftly evoke this kind of poetic free association. It’s distinctly romantic stuff, solidly in the modern tradition. What distinguishes its contemporaneity is in part the fact that Puryear is the only black sculptor of A-list significance in his or any preceding generation, and that his studies as an emerging artist in Africa illuminate everything he’s produced. The earlier work most obviously alludes to giant, antiquated, “first culture” hand tools: saws, bows, digging sticks, grinding stones. Later, sculptures get more elaborate, and resemble mysterious ghostly machine relics from a lost civilization of titans.

There is a distinct flavor of poignant loss in these works. Their gaze is planted firmly behind us, into a past of indigenous tradition, ritual, and connection to ancestors and place – or at least to some archetypal realm where these things still dimly glow. Our own civilization’s clear and increasing alienation from just these things is embodied in these useless fetish objects, thrown into an uncomfortable relief: we feel everything we’ve left behind, traded in for nuclear power, cell phones, silicon chips, CAT scans, and Ambien. Here is this guy, out sensitively crafting these soul-activating, mind-kneading, time-traveling talismans, defiantly resisting the pull of our sci-fi present, much less the gleeful proclamations of the futurists who say our descendent’s fates lay in deep space and nano-tech. I’d call it a noble, even visionary calling.

This is too weird. On the heels of the whole Eric Trich debacle, a show comes along tailor-made to reinforce my dismay about a certain, all-too-common approach to art production right now, as feebly pop/rock and pseudo-spiritual as Trich’s own, if slightly more knowing (making it maybe even more suspect). It eerily seems as if made by his older, recently MFA’d cousin, just with a different moneyed coterie propping its bankrupt hipster ass up.

Light & Sie is by exponential degree the most impressive gallery to have opened in Dallas‘ recent fungoid explosion of them. It is ridiculously huge, polished, and intimidating. It is also at this stage a spectacular trainwreck. Current case in point: 28 year-old Chicagoan Terence Hannum‘s solo debut.

I’m hardly alone in a visceral loathing of artist statements, but their ubiquity is usually happily masked by simply avoiding them in the front desk binder (a few months ago I even skewered this gallery’s own mission statement right here.) Imagine my horror to find Hannum’s writ in 4″ vinyl letters across the entire entrance-way wall, its’ nonsensical grammar and insufferable art-speak inescapable. Whose idea was this? I feel like I’m losing my shit.

“Witnessing a music performance, performing music and listening to recorded music enter the realm of ritual. They are all sacrificial acts, for the performer and the audience. In an era where the physical presence of the recorded object is vanishing, I find it all the more important to focus on its trace. These objects occupy aural space with their contents but also occupy physical space. While the recorded object is the document, the relic ; the live event is the ultimate channelization(sic) of noise, as well as the place of immediate surrender to it. In the live event, with its group catharsis, the mesh of noise, bodies and heat ; I choose to focus on the documentation of these performances.”

 

Someone needed to type-read this thing before it headed for the laser cutter. Where was the editor to tone down the rhetoric, to undress his essentially quite simple ideas, finding actual words for them rather than made-up ones, and schooling him in the proper use ; of the semi-colon? And that’s before deciding to assert it as a work of art in itself: it looms over all, occupying more space than any other single thing in the show.

That’s just the beginning – at the entrance to his cavernous video installation, there’s an even longer statement, on a museum-worthy display stand, that (god, no, please) invokes the Sufi poet Rumi as inspiration for his mirror-bifurcated concert footage of industrial screamer Prurient (a name sufficiently pretentious to match Hannum’s own statements and titles. Wake up and smell the angsty shaggy white boys…) I could have maybe even enjoyed the piece - it was kind of cool, and up my alley - if I hadn’t first been assaulted by the text, but who could know? You can’t see the art on its own terms (the only terms that matter) if you’re forced to view it merely as an illustration of the artist’s stated ideas (however tragically/mystically noble), coerced into merely gauging whether you’re properly rising to an particular interpretive gauntlet thrown down. Don’t docent me through your own art, dude.

 

Crucifixion II (The Discipline)” 2007

And I haven’t even gotten to the bulk of the work, nearly two dozen pieces of it struggling to cope with the warehouse-size front room, gloomily lit by one lone skylight. Did the artist and the gallery think that tossing some artsy, vaguely theoretical terms about (“trace” is classic MFA-blather) would fill the void, here only thrown into more stark relief by two abject, flimsy, derivative record sleeve constructions? One black, one white (with “Minor Threat” painted in light blue gouache – wow, so heavy), they huddle the floor, looking lost and forlorn.

Did they think that if saddled with some somber verbiage and left unlit, the poverty of the slew of painting’s surfaces would accrue some heft; that the thin day-glo Crayola marker colors would manifest some of the feeling presumably experienced by the fans and bands at the concerts they clumsily depict? You can’t bludgeon this space into submission – it’s the King Kong of galleries. Three well-placed, well-made objects could maybe tip the monster. Instead, you’re given this onslaught of mediocrity, as if the quantity will overcome your doubts. With titles like “Kill the Light (Evanesce)”, “Conquest for Death (Necro)”, “Erase my Presence (Evacuate)”, and more simply “Doom”, these feather weight doodles have all the turbulent tortured epic death metal spirit of an iPod commercial.

“Fanning the Fires (Annihilate)” 2007

I have to hand it to Hannum. He’s managed to combine nearly all of the most distressing elements afflicting contemporary art into one exhibition. If I was asked to explicate to galleries and artists what not to do, what art isn’t really about, what the most deplorable trends conceptually and formally are in art today, delineating those most completely exhausted and spent, I would send them immediately over to the Design District for this concise illustration.

 

As with Trich, this is another young artist who doesn’t necessarily deserve such a diatribe (but then again, maybe they do). In both instances, context is everything. Hannum’s work, which by any measure I would argue is not quite ready for prime time, is here presented in a multi-million dollar frame, and served up to us as if we should simply feel flattered to have its magnificence grace our little burg. If this work were at a smaller, humbler gallery, where it could be stand or fall on its own legs, well, I probably simply wouldn’t care enough to comment.

 

(photos from terencehannum.com and lightandsie.com)

After taking a break for a few days to get over this cold and actually just make my own work, I thought I’d actually read the materials in the “press packet” Siros is sending around. It was more interesting than I had anticipated. Bear with me – I know that I’ve spent too much time on this thing, but I feel compelled to push it through to the bitter end – like a big, over-due turd.

I continue to get calls from people who are receiving these things, expressing the same mixture of confusion, hilarity, and sympathy that has lately become the essence of my interactions with humanity. Siros has, after all, harassed practically everyone I know in town.

I’m still itching to get an official statement from Gerald Peters about having allowed their name to be used to sell Trich, but I’m assuming after my last call and my statements here that I won’t actually manage to get director Ashley Tatum Casson on the phone, much less Peters himself.

Someone exchanged Eric Trich and my emails so we could make direct contact. We sent a couple guarded missives back and forth. He says Siros is his friend, who has given him cash, kudos, and “connections,” and for now, he wants to be left alone to study. I said that’s a very good idea, and recommended he stick close to his faculty at SMU, and to be careful of what is done in his name.

Speaking of which, back to the packet. As I mentioned before, it raises a number of red flags. In fact, it’s one big red flag. As long as he’s sending them out to everyone, let’s take a closer look, shall we? Warning – this is lengthy. Much of it consists of direct, full quotes from the packet. The synopsis for the ADD set: Siros seems to have no compunction about, uh, “stretching the truth” when it suits his purposes.

From the Case File (cue CSI ka-chung):

“news stories” and “reviews” (all impressively printed 11” x 17”):

besides copies of my original blog, eloquently calling into to question the whole catastrophe that is Le Cirque du Trich, in an apparent attempt to shame me with an overwhelming Shock and Awe onslaught of glowingly positive press, Siros included the following truly impressive pile of tree…

a) Paper City gallery listings page (just the dates and place for Trich’s sole exhibition.)

b) Dallas Morning News – ditto.

c) Dallas Modern Luxury – the same, gallery listings, but with an actual picture this time, and caption stating “Not to be missed!”

d) DML, again, with a brief feature by S.G. (I’m told that is Senior Editor Stacy Girard, unavailable for comment.) She is responsible for the “renown artist Siros” line. She is also guilty of shoving both “teen Titan” and “boy wonder” into her opening sentence (note : this is months before his one and only show.) The story mentions Neiman Marcus couture manager Matthew Simon as a collector, who for some reason failed to make the collections list I dissect below. I called him. He said he knows Siros, but laughs and says there’s a story. I’m waiting for his call back.

Also mentioned as collectors are Margaret Crow, Barbara Hunt-Crow, and Priscilla Beshears, all heavy duty Dallas Ladies Who Lunch. What got into them I wonder? Trich’s pictured collage portraits of Crow and Beshears are frankly hideous, and somewhat terrifying.

e) Two nearly identical stories in the Turtle Creek and Park Cities editions of The People Newspapers . Both ran June 29, 2007. I spoke with the writer, then Society Editor Kristiana Heap, who said that they only found out about Trich from a call, by (who else?), Siros. With portraits in the works for Crow and Beshears, it was up their alley, the six different editions being basically upscale Dallas community weeklies.

The story says that Siros needed an assistant to help on a commission. He asked Trich to help, after their now legendary encounter in the Starbucks. On seeing Trich’s work for the first time he says: “I was astounded. I have been in the art world a long time and I’d never seen this.” Gerald Peter’s director Ashley Tatum Casson is on record as saying “He’s really lucky to have Siros as a mentor.” That word is used a few times in the story, actually.

Why does everbody keep saying that word? After all this, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use it again without nausea overtaking me. Choice Siros quote: “It’s time for me, after 30 years as an artist, I want to be a leader.”

“Of all 51 drawings” the article states, “all have been sold, and there is a waiting list of well over a dozen people for his future works.”

f) Longview News-Journal , August 12, 2007, story by Lauren Thompson. It includes – Ta dah! – a picture of Siros. Sadly, he doesn’t have the bushy mustache I imagined him twirling between his fingers while cackling “I’ll get you, my pretty!”

Says Trich: “Siros decided I need to have an art career…he shoved as much art history in my mind as he possibly could.” (ahem…I’m not touching that.) It’s a pleasant enough, light-weight little story about a local boy making good. The only real gack moment comes, as usual, with Siros: “I wouldn’t put my reputation on the line if I didn’t think he had something.”

That golden reputation; indeed, a precious thing.

g) Richland Community College Chronicle, Nov. 6, 2007. The by-now familiar spiel, from the voice of the community college charitably granting him a show. “Siros spent the eighties immersed in the New York art world, and witnessed first hand the work of Jen-Michel (sic) Basquiat and Keith Haring.” Siros, not to mention Basquiat, sure come up a lot in these stories about Eric Trich.

h) Last but not least, 8 column inches supposedly from the Chicago Tribune’s Red Eye section , dated August 18, 2007 (for his show in late October?) The infamous headline reads “the Sexiest man Alive in the Art World.” I called the Tribune to see if they actually ran this.  The answer was an unequivocal “No”, nor was there any other mention of Trich, Siros, or this show, in any edition their newspapers, ever.

Reading some of it to him, the Red Eye editor I spoke with said that there is absolutely no way they would have published this travesty against the English language. Judge for yourself. The article reads thus (spacing, grammar, spelling all verbatim):

“He’s got the looks and talent that go with it too. However, for Eric Trich, a 19 year old Texan who is a freshman at the Dallas Art Institute (sic), it is not only his looks that make him the sexiest man alive in the art world, rather it is his incredible neo-expressionism style paintings and drawings.

“His work is fresh, new and all about his generation of Twenty-First Century American teens. His text messaging words scribbles over the madness of lines and images of recent and historical events and personalities. A fierce rush of brain explosion scatters over his stark black and white canvases, which sets them on fire and leaves the viewer blinded by the flames and awed by its intensity. Eric’s body of work has put texas art collectors and galleries in a frenzy creating a long waiting list for his work.

“His mentor and advisor is Siros. A former resident of Milwaukee, Siros turned the Midwest upside down at the age of 18 with his Eve magazine in the early 1980’s. Eave magazine, so ahead of its time, created a national controversy over its photography upon release of its its first issue and gave siros over-night notoriety. A few years later, Siros moved to texas to pursue his art career. With his pop/neoexpressionist style he is among the emerging American-iranian artists.

“So for Eric Trich to find Siros seems to be an art connection made in heaven. The art duo are planning to merge in create a collaborative body of work to be unveiled in 2009. Then this duo will become the artworlds sexiest men alive. Watch out Men’s Vogue!”

“Solo exhibition at Brazos Gallery, Richland College, Dallas, Texas Oct 19-Nov.21”

Yes, folks, that’s right: alleged copy from one of the most important newspapers on Earth. Yes, indeed-y.

“Planning to merge,” “Sexiest Man,” a strangely erotic subtext, the shirtless poster image, the pick-up in the Starbucks. I don’t know, just questions and more questions…

The Letter:

a) the text:

“Dear patrons and Art Lovers:

SGA Enterprises (New York, Los Angeles, Dallas) in conjunction with London and Tokyo based private art patrons and investors are proud to represent Texas native, American born prodigy artist/painter Eric Trich.

“With his very first astonishing sold out one man exhibit titled “I Do Not Exist” this past October at the Brazos Gallery – Richland College (sic), Dallas, Texas, Eric Trich proved us right in believing in his gifted talent. His sold out exhibition place (sic) his art work among some of the most notable non-private and private art collections in the world. Collections such as: [I document my frustrating vetting process of the 55 item list below.]

“Its (sic) quite impressive from a 19 year old from Mesquite, Texas, who has had no formal art training and was discovered and mentored [gack!] by renowned Iranian-American artist Siros only fourteen months ago. With a year long waiting list for his work and currently starting his first academic semester at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts, Dallas, Texas, U.S.A., we at SGA Enterprises, along with the London-Tokyo based Private Investors Group, would like to congratulate Eric Trich on his achievement. We are also excited about a possible exhibition of Eric’s work in Peking [sic], China. We certainly are looking forward to his upcoming 2008 exhibits. Best wishes and further success to Siros and Eric on their upcoming March 2008 exhibition shows in Paris, France and Brussels, Belgium.

Bravo Eric!

Best Regards

(signed)

K.R. Shook

President”

b) the list:

Alright, I had more of a vested interest than most who received this thing to see if anyone on this list actually owns any of Trich’s work. Who else is actually going to call around (even though those spending their money or writing about his guy ought to have.) Problem was, some of them are hard to reach. Like, say, Sir Elton John, who apparently made it to Richland Community College ["His sold out exhibition place (sic) his art work among some of the most notable non-private and private art collections in the world. Collections such as..."] without the rest of us knowing, to snatch him up some hot Trich. That’s right, our boy Elton is near the top of the list. As are the French shoe impresario Christian Louboutin (also hard to get on the phone.) Fellow fashion houses Dolce & Gabbana and Fendi have also been seduced to join the “frenzy” that is Trich, and all of whom have Richland Community College on their gallery must-see lists.

“The Jonathan & Joan Schlesinger Collection” hails from exotic, moneyed Monte Carlo, so they too were hard to track down, or in fact, find any evidence of. As was “The Cavila Family Collection, Milan”. “Udo Bischofburger Collection,” despite immediate associations with actual Basquiat patron Bruno, pulls up nary a match for that name anywhere on the planet, much less Zurich, his stated home-base. With Basquiat seeming to be the alpha and omega of Siros’ contemporary art comprehension, and “Basquiat” the movie some sort of model for his guiding of Trich, it’s not a stretch to imagine him conjuring up his own Germanic dealer hero, even if the name reflects a consistent pattern of imagination failure.

“Shoreh Agadashlo(sic)”, actually Agadashloo, is an Iranian actress I was familiar with from House of Sand and Fog. Also hard to get to. Possibly a fellow Persian, also listed as living “Beverly Hills, CA,” “Gorgi Nikkaran” pulls up one listing. Surprise – he’s right here in North Dallas. An auto parts dealer, he sells Nikken therapeutic magnets on the side. Many names are used numbers of times, for each of their palatial homes around the globe. “Bahram & Batoul Shabahang Collection”, accounts for three listings, one each for presumed homes in Florida, New York, and Siros’ home town of Milwaukee, with Trich art in each one would think.

I actually spoke with Mr. Shabahang, an established Oriental carpet dealer (pointless digression: I used to sell rugs for a 90 year-old Armenian woman as a student). A store clerk in New York just gave me his cell number. He was very nice. He said he had known Siros when he lived in Milwaukee. In accented English, he said “I liked his art because it was different, very original.” I asked him when Siros moved to Dallas. “In 1984 or so.” He didn’t have any idea who Trich was, but admitted he owns some Siros work. He said his wife was maybe currently having Siros paint them a commission or something, but he wasn’t sure.

“Ichihara meat & fish packaging company(sic)” Tokyo, pulls up bupkiss. As do “Siy & Keiko Ichihara” of Tokyo, “Jeffrey Orliey & Sons Banking Investments” New York, “Dr. John Delgis (Citi Architect Inc.)” San Francisco, “Shiraz Winery…Napa, CA” (I used to live in Napa, and I really doubt a winery there would name itself after that low-rent, if sometimes delicious, varietal, or have absolutely no record of existing, anywhere); on and on and on it goes, with Google and Whitepages.com and calls to ATT information in various cities pulling up nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

But wait – I found someone who admitted to having something, even if it’s not an actual Eric Trich. The listing for “Eric & Sheryl Maas (Classic BMW) Collection, Plano, Texas, U.S.A.” led me to just call up Classic BMW of Dallas. I spoke with Mr. Maas’ secretary, who called him directly and confirmed that they do indeed have a big “interesting” painting in the dealership’s lobby. Mr. Maas conveyed that it was a Siros work, but that he was thought Trich maybe acted as his assistant on it (possibly it’s the painting that Trich first assisted Siros with in the stories above.) The letter is not exactly truthful, but at least somebody had some vague idea of who I was talking about. I’ll try to get over for an image of it, if I’m near.

Wrapping up the 55 listings which, rabbit-like, have bred since the January list of 30, after finding no actual confirmed human who will admit to owning Trich’s art, there are a series of totally untraceable “Private Collections,” in Malibu, New York, and Paris, that go unnamed. We just have to take Siros’ word for it. Also taken on faith is the ownership of Trich’s work by collectors listed here as being members of, first, Art in America’s “2007 Top Ten World Art Collectors”, a Trich-owner said simply to be residing in London; Vanity Fair’s “2007 Number One Largest Contemporary Art Collector in America,” a denizen of Los Angeles; and finally, one of “Art New”(sic) magazine’s “Top 100 World Art Collectors” lives in Tokyo, and is crazy for some Sexiest Artist in the Art World (“Watch out Men’s Vogue!”)

What, the Siros lie to you? Naaahhhh…