mohr dream portals

part of a continuing series from 2007-2011 or thereabouts (recently rephotographed):

"Sewing Machine in a Roman Bath (on purpose)"
19" x 22" x 4"
acrylic and pencil on paper on bark construction

Do any students of Surrealism and Microbiology get the mixed metaphor in the title of the above piece?

"There's a fucking explanation for everything"
19" x 18" x 3"
acrylic and marker on wood construction

"the future is in another part of your brain"
29" x 21"
acrylic on wood construction

dream portal dump

Long time between posts?  missing time.  revelations.  trials.  I'll fill it all in eventually.

This is a selection from the photographic record 

of some of my works from 2007 - 2009, during a residency in a luxurious basement studio (actually a great time) that i collectively call "dream portals".   

In many of them i used a technique that i call now "lucid drawing" in which the brain's pareidolic abilities are allowed to be transferred electrochemically into a durable dimension (that can be photographed).  

So indeed they are portals into alternate, ephemeral dimensions that are generally so barely glimpsed as to be instantly forgettable.  

You can imagine those Pleistocene hunters conversing with the shaman: "wait, you mean this shit is real?".

"...and the hunt was good, and we remember our hands, red ocher stained for weeks."

gate time half lock life star pig
21" x 36"
acrylic, crayon on wood construction

I C U scene Enuf
19" x 19"
acrylic on wood construction
privately owned

let me see planet
14" x 14"
acrylic and enamel on wood construction

triple XXXY theater presents the obvious results
20" x 19"
acrylic on wood construction

to no a veil
25" x 16"
acrylic, enamel on wood construction

HL machine vs PP eater
41" x 25"
acrylic on wood construction

ghostly encounters on the picture plane
30" x 30"
acrylic, wax, marker on wood construction
privately owned

jampact
11" x 7.5"
acrylic on wood construction

rewards of pretense
24" x 37"
acrylic, marker on wood construction

hooray for everything
37" x 19"
acrylic, enamel on wood construction

there's more in this series- I'll be posting some of them soon-

bloodroot vision

"What I say, George, 3X is true"
or
"geometry of bloodroot vision"
31" x 25"
acrylic, marker, grease pencil on paper on canvas on plywood

this is like one of those time travel dreams where you look into the mirror and see that there's a hole in your head (in addition to the usual ones).  
when you look closer, you see that there is a supermarket inside and you're looking down into it from a very high ceiling.  the shelves are stocked with jars filled with sea slugs, which are mating, except they can't reach each other.        
they begin to penis fence with their own reflections in the glass.  
you realize that you must free them before they stab themselves to death, so you must find the valve that lets seawater in and then open all the jars, but there's a fierce wereweasel roaming the aisles, looking for anything to eat other than sea slugs, with their undulating excrescences filled with foul tasting irritants.  
just then, a glowing wormhole bubble appears above you, disgorging intelligent reptilian anteaters from earth's distant past that are seeking a decent cheeseburger.  The expanding bubble of scaly limbs pushes you down through a point that intersects the path of the charging wereweasel, especially the hard pointy bits that surround its stinking mouth hole...




speaking of alien technology,
we have it right here on earth, surrounding us.
the pace of scientific/mathematical/informational technology is growing ever faster.
there's more new understanding of physical laws and interactions (not to mention the gizmos on the shelf) than any one person can ever comprehend-
 and it's getting worse.
when you find a eyeball lying around in the woods, do you a) call the police, b) try to see what you can get for it in a pawn shop or c) look for its designer?
why do you need a creator person that during a boring week creates ad hoc knockoffs of itself?  where will it all end?  (what I'd like to know is when did it all begin- when we figure out what happened in the first x femtoseconds after the big bang, will that suffice? -or do we then have to find out how The Simulators implanted the evidence for a such a beginning?)  ...wait...

isn't the universe itself (including us mound builders) big and spooky enough?

do you really need government scientists reverse engineering crashed UFO's or secret interstellar treaties that stipulate the dissemination of "contact" propaganda to prepare the humans for subjugation?

not that I'm saying intelligent extraterrestrial contact has not or will not occur.
but maybe any intelligence evolving to galactic standards would basically have no interest in other species, realizing that true weirdness (and true wealth) surrounds all of us, everywhere, and that one could never exhaust the possibilities of existence in even a puddle.  if you were, like, god, why would you really mess around with the planets?


so what does this have to do with killing dragons?










especially rubber ones that propagate indiscriminately...?










and what does all that have to do with the painting?








oh yeah, i'm glad you asked about that.   this one is a type of extended automatic drawing.   it started life some years back as a kind of doodle done with magic marker on a large white paper shopping bag.  recently the drawing resurfaced, whereupon it was bonded to a canvas stretched on a plywood frame.  then i added color with acrylic paint and contours with china (grease) pencils.   with these tools, i used the neural procedure of pareidolia to bring shapes into focus.  so to speak.  give birth to monsters.
since the original paper was quite thin (a plain white shopping mall type bag) you can see (click to embigify) wrinkles that occurred when the paper was bonded to the canvas (with acrylic medium).  you can also see some faint bleeding from the old marker drawing.  all these "random" elements are one of my principle enjoyments in making art.  i see my role more as an explorer of a strange land than as an autocratic designer.  although it is in the tension between these two things (accident vs. design or meaning vs. raw sensory data) that things get interesting.  so when you kill dragons, birth is given to all sorts of dramatic characters (including more dragons) that live their own lives nearly apart from the central drama.

ach, i could go on...

Frankenstein Dancer Guardian in Progress

"Trike"
wood, metal, plastic  36" x 82" x 27"  2012
work in progress
part of a proposed series of Twelve Dancing Guardians
[shoppt onto image of mars]

Unlike the story of the artist chipping away at the stone, removing all that is not as he sees it, leaving the finished sculpture, I see the story of the artist more resoundingly portrayed by the  myth of Frankenstein.  This is especially and increasingly so in the present portion of the art historical timeline.  The artist digs up body parts (or hires professional thieves- art professors- to rob the graves of culture) and assembles them to create a new creature, which then has a life of it's own.  Culture is increasingly about culture (another way to say this is that culture, in it's increasing reiterativity, is becoming fuzzier, at finer and finer levels).
The spark that animates this clod-like collection of crap is, of course, the artistic impulse, but instead of "artistic vision", i.e., a pre-formed gift of the gods genuine homunculus, it's more like a neural pachinko game, i.e., a vortex of colliding memes and motifs and tropes.
What's new and unique lies in the sewing technique- the accidental (?) juxtaposition of body parts- which represents, duh,  the architecture of the individual brain, both of the human in question and also the somewhat larger individual brain of the collective brain that is increasingly interconnected via the interconnectatron.  Being personal and collective history and genetics.
It is interesting that the modern Prometheus, like the ancient one, was a thief.  The recognition that copying is a part of and indispensable for creating has emerged now that copy protection rackets are going into fascist overdrive.  Novelty is an emergent property of collections of brains emulating each other and riffing each other's wrinkles.

this plus life sized figure was conceived (however that may have happened) to be just one of a series of twelve Dancing Guardians.  It is part of a series I've had going in a larval stage for some time now: using toy lawn furniture and vehicles plus found branches and logs.

Eventually we will have fully animated versions (that can replicate themselves!) Unfortunately the project is on indefinite hold, pending  funding and a mandate from The Secret Brotherhood.  Even this (top) figure is unfinished.  Currently there are plans to install solar powered interactive light and sound elements.  Once all figures are completed they can be placed in an environment where they can interact with each other and emit sounds (have a robo concert).

Nil Dimension Jam

"Nil Dimension Jam"
digital collage  12.64" x 8" low version   2012

I ask myself "am I mad?" and I realize that the only way that that question can be meaningfully answered is by a certified professional who specializes in the treatment of madness (whatever they call them nowadays).  Since that judgement has not as yet occurred (or I would be writing this from a different place), I must ask myself why I should even ask myself that question.  Is it a monitoring device of my brain to ensure social functionality?  Does it function to ensure compliance with society at large so that I don't get put away?  Or is it because I believe in irrational, invisible things and that having those beliefs is somehow disturbing?

In the body, the maintenance of sanity is called homeostasis.  This concept only exists because there is disturbance (insanity), as in "this is fucking crazy, blood sugar is so low!!"  If you were a pancreas, would you not feel that life was frantic?  It's just one darn crisis after another.  That's how you tell that something is alive: things are moving; it keeps waffling from one position to another.

Is anyone 100% in their beliefs?  Even Jesus was tempted by the Devil.  When the pollster comes to your door and asks you a question, do you then not pause for a second and wait for your own internal pollster to tally the results from your population of neurons?

Also, the question becomes meaningless if it includes the belief in irrational, invisible things because you have to have a standard of normalcy (aside from YOU of course) to define it.  And if you take your own informal poll of people out there, you will discover rampant belief in all kinds of irrational, invisible things, like Goodness and Democracy and Truth and Justice and Juggalo Love and Invisible Pink Unicorns, and that the voices in your head are coming from God.

This whole game must have some function.  How useful are your beliefs?  I won't discount sheer entertainment value, of course.

CC'd

"CC'd"
digital collage   11.91" x 8"   2012

while I'm waiting for the paint to dry on some things, here's another digital collage.  This one itself is a tribute to digital collage- in the broadest sense, where, in the future, everyone will be 15% machine.  Talking, listening, watching and being watched by- you guessed it...

Diggin' up Da Vinci

"Albert McLouds"
study for an environmental animation
digital collage  10.66" x 8"  2012

If you could bring Leonardo through the wormhole into the present
(he's all agog at your ipod)
would he have lived all these years?
Will he be prime Da Vinci?
What can a shadow know?
But No you want to go into the past and fuck around with it.
You want to tell him he's on the right track and give him the plans for internal combustion.
Send a message to the little boy
and change the present, improve your knowledge; rewrite history.
No really imagine you could have an actual time portal- and you went back and messed around
(which you would do simply by breathing).
You cannot go back (to the same future) because of that nasty thing you did to your great etc grandad.
If nothing else, your knowledge of events past would change the future (ah, the ever enfuzzinating many time branches).
But you would be the only one who knew that things were different.
No, really, in this other universe, you didn't have a beard!
Even you, the traveler, might forget that things had been any different (on account of it would be just too fuckin weird- the cognitive dissonance would feel too distressful, akin to paranoid schizophrenia- having multiple versions of reality competing for dominance).
In order to repair cognitive functioning your brain maybe would self enforce a healing of the rift.
Maybe you would begin to doubt that you had ever traveled into the past at all.
You know, that "time machine" did look a little like a closet lined with aluminum foil, LED's and speakers stuck all over the walls.
...and that special "wormhole suit" was a mite absurd...  

APTS ALIEN ARMS

"APTS ALIEN ARMS"
collage on wood with pencil and screws  7" x 8.5" x 2"  2012

This piece had to be repaired recently due to an adhesive failure, and may have been altered slightly.  It originally was from the 'two hour series' back in 2010 (to each work I devoted 2 hours time- approximately).   So there you have the 2012 date.  It was the only collage in the series, but otherwise similar- the slab on base, simple or central subjects and outlines.  I feel this has a certain identification with the stream of modern cartoon inspired/infused art-   In the Democratic Republic of Web, any and every cultural era is currently in resurgence.  Ho hum.  Dynamo hum.  This shit is post- apocalyptic.  It's all upside down.  The low, the high,   the hum.