Daze and Confused : ‘Off Modernists’ by Francesca Gavin, 2012 HISTORY BITES CONFUSED DAZED AS SIX OF THEIR LEADING LIGHTS CREATE NEW 61 60 PIECES FOR THIS ISSUE, FRANCESCA GAVIN EXAMINES THE RISE OF THE OFF- MODERNISTS – ART REBELS USING TRADITIONAL METHODS TO REWORK HISTORY [previous spread] The internet is a bit like a carnival Culture, published SCOTT sideshow. Step right up! Looking for by JRP-Ringier last TRELEAVEN: CIMITERO some fun? Want a bit of culture? year, aims to raise DRAWING #29 Look at this screen here. Everything questions about the 2012 gouache, that has ever been made, drawn, current status of pastel, filmed, painted, written, sung, things. “Why has the house paint and collage danced to and watched is here 21st century become on paper 30” x 22” – all of human creation. Yet as an era of collage, in we stare into the abyss of this which creative works courtesy of the artist ever-expanding archive machine, are made by combining a question arises. What’s next? Is elements from the [opposite page] technological referencing all there former century?” the MATT LIPPS: is? Some artists are increasingly authors ask. “Why UNTITLED (SAFE) 2010–12 drawing from our oh-so-accessible have musicians, writers C-print 33” x 44” history and looking for past and designers fallen inspiration. There is a huge rise in love with the past, courtesy of the artist in the use of the imagery and busying themselves with ideas of modernism, classicism borrowing instead of and abstraction – three veins creating their art from of art history that could seem scratch?” Rose says old fashioned, regressionist and that the book came dead. Yet this pop-eating-itself out of disappointment contemporary culture is pushing at how artists were CONFUSED creativity into a very interesting repeating previous DAZED new direction. generations’ work Music writer Simon Reynolds’ rather than striving 2011 book Retromania charted to create something our current obsession with looking new – the replication back. He talks about how we now of the past rather absorb culture – drifting, skimming, than its reinvention. instantly accessing everything “I have always thought – and how culture generally and that the job of youth music in particular is obsessed with was to put their elders pastiche, sampling and quotation. out of business. Not Time itself, he argues, has changed. out of disrespect, “Our relationship to time and but out of a longing, space in this YouTubeWikipedia- a real human longing, RapidshareiTunesSpotify era has to be better than been utterly transformed. Distance the last generation. and delay have been eroded to To push things to the nearly nothing... On the internet, next level. To commit the past and the present co- patricide.” Rose mingle in a way that makes time considers. “Sometimes itself mushy and spongiform... Can when I look at guys like culture survive in conditions of Kanye West, I wonder limitlessness?” Although Reynolds what they’re thinking. is tentative and critical of some of Those guys just steal the changes in contemporary pop and steal.” 63 62 culture, he does argue that “the Reworking, past can be used to critique what however, isn’t is absent in the present.” the same as theft. So how do we move forward? A number of artists Billy Childish’s hardline retro are looking backwards stuckism (a reaction against YBA and absorbing the past conceptual-schlock accessibility) to create a new visual isn’t it. The “just take it” ethos future. Theorist/artist/ of the Pictures Generation isn’t writer Svetlana Boym it. The readymade approach of has come up with a Duchamp has been done to death, concept that is having and postmodernism feels like a rerun increasing resonance: of a 1980s sitcom. Seth Price put “As you know, post- it well in a roundtable discussion modernism is dead. published in Frieze magazine: In fact, each time “With the internet, the amount the end of history of material at hand approaches was declared, as in infinity, and using aggressively 1989 or 2000, we disparate material isn’t really a witnessed the return matter of taking things out of of history with context anymore, because that step vengeance. We are has already been done for you.” living in the culture Aaron Rose, Mandy Kahn and of rapid obsolescence Brian Roettinger’s book Collage of everything and PAUL MCDEVITT: [this page] NOTES TO SELF: 6 SEPTEMBER 2012 ink, acrylic, coloured pencil on paper 8.3” x 11.7” [opposite page] NOTES TO SELF: 7 SEPTEMBER 2012 ink, acrylic, coloured pencil on paper 8.3” x 11.7” courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Sommer & Kohl, Berlin CONFUSED DAZED 65 64 CAROLINE a fast pace of but a different prism of vision and abstract. His paintings ACHAINTRE: forgetting of history interpretative optics.” are often built upon FRINZ 2012 that strikes back There are a number of artists layers of hand-scrawled collage as a boomerang. To reworking and playing with historical text or images, which 8.25” x 11.4” bring back Walter references in interesting ways. he covers with paint courtesy of Benjamin’s distinction Canadian artist Scott Treleavan is a and subsequently the artist between the culture perfect example. He made his name spends days sanding of information with his own style of collage work, down. The result: and the culture of which in recent years transformed abstract paintings in experience, the culture completely into a practice of which the artist has of information does abstract paintings and multimedia less control of the not always allow us to objects. “I ended up working with outcome. Brock often digest, inhabit and abstraction out of necessity,” he creates approaches make meaning of the says. “I’ve been using collage in its and alter egos recent events. Many broadest sense (including montage to find ways contemporary artists and Gysin-style cut-ups) since of painting return to a slower the early 90s, when I was primarily in which pace of reflection making zines and films. I grew up his interests aren’t and an alternative with 80s punk culture, with all of the impetus for new media which I call that salvaging and interspersing of production. off-modern.” tangential histories alongside the This is abstract She coined the more accepted versions. There were painting with a term “off-modern” in endless nuances, endless subtleties very different CONFUSED her 2001 book The and clashes just waiting to be conceptual DAZED Future of Nostalgia, activated. I noticed that the more thrust from Pollock, but has developed I cut up, and the more I intervened Albers and Rothko. the idea further and with the material I was working with, “I think the is releasing The Off- the more abstract it became.” impetus for Modern Manifesto In 2010, during a residency in abstraction is primarily in 2013, to coincide Milan, he found himself covering up historical,” he argues. with an exhibition at his collaged images and replacing “Connecting the Ludwig Museum in them with marks. The starting point with past ideas Budapest that will was some photographs he had taken and ideologies feature Anri Sala, of Italian headstones and memorial and context- William Kentridge, statues. “I had no idea what I was ualising them Agnieszka Kurant going to do with the photographs in the present. and the Raqs media when I was taking them, and the Art has always collective. The term process of elaborating over the top referenced other was inspired by a of and eventually erasing these art or reacted concept introduced by beautiful monuments had quite to other art, Russian theorist and an effect on me. It really shook but maybe writer Viktor Shklovsky me up. If you look at them, you it’s a tighter in the 1920s. Shklovsky can see that these statues are spiral now.” suggested that cultural machines: they’re made to generate Berlin-based evolutions follow sensations of mourning, sensuality, artist Paul “the knight’s move”, loss, religious comfort, immortality, McDevitt’s from chess. temporality, dread, faith... artwork strongly The idea is everything. The whole sum of human addresses 67 66 essentially to go off- experience. The images just ended visual history. kilter, off the path, up totally subsumed.” His work is off the wall, off-piste Under layers of paint and refreshingly and off-brand, making marks the faint outline of the broad: 17th- creative cultural collages beneath are still visible century still- detours into the in Treleavan’s paintings. In the lifes painted unexplored tangents of same way the hint of history and perfectly modernism. Essentially, the weight of those ideas are on beermats, going backwards to still part of his work. Rather than intricate biro drawings form a new idea of modernism, Treleavan’s influences developed over phone forward, rather than are occult and religious texts, zine doodles and following the utopian aesthetics and cinema. But as he daily notes, and 20th-century obsession notes, “modernism took its cues paintings, sculptures with progress. Boym from the same kinds of places that and prints that highlights lateral I’m looking at. The utopic drive, the reference everything examinations of fascination with colour and harmony from Mickey Mouse misfits, outsiders and and its relation to spirit... none to Mondrian, Henry unexplored potentials of that was innately modern. It all Moore, Andy Capp and that engage with “the came in from the periphery, from newspaper comics. new political situation religious texts, from proletarian “Many of us have a of today’s world aims, from a western mind trying to surface view of visual culture.”