Dennis Hollingsworth

Second Thought

I changed my mind about the title.

Second Thought: Uh, I don'tlike it.

First Thought: Really? You don't think it's a good idea?

Second Thought: No. I don't think it's a good idea.

First Thought: Really?

Second Thought: Yea.

First Thought: That's interesting. Do you think that it sounds cheeky?

Second Thought: Yea.

First Thought: ...that it sounds too cute or overly portentious?

Second Thought: Yea. Yea.

First Thought: Could it be considered flip?

Second Thought: Yea.

First Thought: I'll think about that.

My first instinct was not even thinking about titling the show. When pressed, I devised a typical Dennis solution: a non-solution solution of a title about a multitude of titles (the blogpost titles, that is). The bigger argument is that the paintings are not paintings about blogging. The multitude of titles point toward content... and thinking of it, the paintings do too... through themselves, towards content.

Painting first, blogging second.*

Down, boy!

Good blog.

Goooooooooood bloggy.

Besides, I'm not big on trumpeting a grand banner of subject for a show. I usually don't paint a group of paintings about... "Mother Earth", or "Fighting the Oppression of Our Tyrant Overloards", or somesuch. As it is, I try to paint in contrary directions from painting to painting... scroll through the past three years of this blog to confirm my claim whydon'tyou?

If the paintings point towards content through themselves, they might be windows by which the facets become cystaline when they become perfect in themselves. Formal mis-takes become obstructions which are polished out to transparancy.

Besides, the blog will always be here. Back up. Bibliography.

I think that it is best that the boundaries of a painting delimits a universe, that when a painting leaves my studio, it will be recontextualized -if I'm lucky- many times and many ways. I've seen attitudes by other artists about controlling the presentation of an exhibition that went waaaaay over the top. They usually end up dominating the presentation so much (announcements, installation, catalogs, whatever) that the gallerists become mere caretakers. The artist sucks up all of the creative oxygen. And what happens after the show? When the collector installs a piece of it in their house? When it is borrowed for a show? After the artist dies (not me right now, not yet... I'm just saying.)?

When a gallery becomes inspired about an install for a show, I consider myself lucky. They all usually ask my opinion, and I give it. But I like that a gallery would own the design of the show, that we could share the expression of the show. What painting should be hung here, there; which painting should be seen first, second, third, across from which painting and in what light. It's all good.

Back to the deadpan: "New Work" or somesuch likewise.

*Although, I have imagined that it would be possible to blog all of life until you puke. The trouble is the puking, or overload, or that curious tendency to devour all of life, only to bring it down to the ultimate fiction of a blogpost.

I remember Dave Hickey writing about this in "Prior Convictions", this taxidermy of life into art, the writer who sees all experience as fodder for fiction. He nailed it.