Sunday, May 29, 2011

Un Joven Y Su Tío







These are two separate though related series of drawings. Those above were made in Connecticut during the summer of 2007, the ones below are from the spring of 2005 in Florida. How are they related? They share the same hero. Though the adventures may vary, the quest is continuous.




Friday, May 27, 2011

Opium Wars & Construction 2007



These are some of the photographs I took to document the show Max Schumann and I did at Max Fish in September 2007. My half of the show took on a broad range of subjects suggested by the nineteenth century Opium Wars and their reflection in the various neocolonialist wars started by the United States government under the Bush Administration on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Max's half of the show dealt with the very local subject of recent real estate development in the Lower East Side (as a result of gentrification or yuppie colonization.) While I can't claim that it was one of our more coherent shows, it certainly was our most ambitious since the Dawn Of The Dead/Law Of The Land show a decade earlier.
























Thursday, May 26, 2011

The Maya Mural


This mural was painted in early 1996 and was initially intended to represent the links between the Central Mexican cultures, especially Teotihuacan, and the Mayas, of both the Highlands and Lowlands, in what are now Yucatán, Belize, Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It was also meant to suggest the persistence of these cultures' influences, especially here and now in California. The first pair of figures are a Maya Prisoner, bound for sacrifice, and his Teotihuacan Captor (the later image from a monument found at Tikal.) The other pair are Hun Hunahpu and the Merchant God (known to scholars as God L.)




On the wall seen just below, there are those two figures I had used before from the film Zéro De Conduite hovering above the ruins of Palenque. For me, these two authority figures represent all the regressive elements in our education systems, and the process of molding students into compliant members of society, which entails filling children's heads with misinformation which they falsely claim as fact.



This wall depicts the ball game where the prisoner is bound and rolled down the stone steps of the temple pyramid. Of course the way in which the Maya artists conveyed this was far less bloody than in actuality, and I followed suit in my rendition. It may be that the ball here is only meant to represent the prisoner. Not having lived in Kabah or Tikal two thousand years ago I can't say for certain what actually took place. I do know, however, that it bore no resemblance to what Mel Gibson presented in Apocalypto (and in his ridiculous case, he absurdly set his gross misrepresentation of Maya culture in the sixteenth century AD.)




Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tres Amigos De Chano Ramos







I'm making this post in large part at the urging of an enthusiastic admirer of the work of erotic video maker Robert Ackerly, better known as Chano Ramos. I hope I have not misled anyone into believing that I'm personally acquainted with Mr. Ackerly. I have not had any direct contact with him. These stills from his work I found through the Internet on a site devoted to urine drinkers. I was directed to this site by a comment Chano left on yet another blog, which I discovered by googling the name of his mentor, Jim Moss, and the name of one of their films, Tom Cat Beach. I hope that clears up any confusion. Now for more important matters, such as the display of some rather enchantingly theatrical pictures from a video I have never had the good fortune to see as such, here are the highlights I've chosen to represent this handsome trio.