Cause I meant over the course of the next three weeks, I will be profiling three artists.
So #2, (also in no particular order) is partner of the Great Candice Tarnowski, the Great Charles Stankievech!
He has a very comprehensive website that I highly recommend perusing:
www.stankievech.net/projects.html
Charles' art is way rooted in philosophy and sound, which probably stems from his earlier life as a Lacanian and late night dj.
His influences range from Joseph Beuys, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Michael Snow and various composers who I had never heard of. Here is a still from a piece called Sola Nota 19th century pianoforte used for music therapy at the San Servolo Insane Asylum. Charles recorded himself playing one note and made a 24 hour loop from it. He made this piece while doing a residency on an island in Venice, San Servolo (uh, sweet enough?) and the recording was played from a tower so that it rang out over the water-I THINK that is right, I know that it is something like this (see below). Conjuring it even is very still and beautiful. Normally this is not my kind of work, I have rounded the corner on purely conceptual work, but I take exception with Charles' pieces, because there is such a strong pull of the poetic. Which I think is what is missing in much conceptual art these days, or contemporary art that is grounded in that period.
Here is some text from the catalogue:
Two stories that might be true:†
The first story goes something like this: after studying atonality under Schoenberg’s student Walter Klein, Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi suffered from a severe psychological crisis. The reason for Scelsi’s illness is unclear,‡ however it has been acknowledged he spent sometime in a psychiatric hospital and underwent chromotherapy. The details of this period of Scelsi’s life find many renditions, taking on a somewhat mythological air.ƒ In all the various anecdotes one event always surfaces: Scelsi intensively listening to a single piano note decaying. Supposedly, he would sit at the piano for hours a day striking a solo note; it was this repetitive activity—and not the doctors, they say —which cured him. Perhaps this affair is not so much a success story for music therapy, as it was a moment in music history when Scelsi found the inspiration for his mature compositional style. Instead of classifying a note on the piano as a homogeneous tone, Scelsi struck a note on the piano and listened to the multiple harmonic overtones that fluctuated as the note lingered. For the first time in the Western tradition, the note imploded and timbre became a primary compositional element. The effects of this radical paradigm shift resonate more and more as time accrues.
Like the first story, the second was circulated to a greater extent posthumously: from 1725 to 1978, the small island of San Servolo housed the infamous mental asylum of Venice.§ Probably the most famous madhouse in the world, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley describes the asylum in his poem “Julian and Maddalo.” Spiraling around the island of San Servolo for the entire poem, the conversing duo of Julian and Maddalo (pseudonyms for Shelley and Byron) eventually “Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands/ …climbed the oozy stairs/ Into an old courtyard” where they “heard on high/Then, fragments of most touching melody.” Amidst the “Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blaspheming prayers” their dark journey eventually lead them to a
…Poor wretch …sitting mournfully
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
One with the other, and the ooze and wind
Rushed through an open casement
While exploring the remains of the asylum on the island of San Servolo, I found a 19th century pianoforte desperately out of tune, and furthermore, with only a few keys still able to strike a note. Whether or not this is the piano of Shelley’s verse I do not know. Whether this is the piano that Scelsi struck repeatedly is less likely. These details seem irrelevant; one hears a solo piano note ringing from the island of San Servolo when the bells from neighbouring islands mark the passing of time.
Here is another piece which is a sculptural representation of a note decaying, beautiful no? It's quite large, unless the piece I am thinking of is not on his website, as this seems to be a model for it. It's called Piano and is closely related to Sola Nota, variations on a theme, as it is the sculptural construction of one note.
Anyhow, they are quite a team, Candice and Charles, coming from such different art places, but from my perspective, with considerable overlap. I miss them, way up north.
Check out my new favourite blog:
theseaoftea.blogspot.com
hint hint (in the voice of Karin Black in Five Easy Pieces)
I am reading some great stuff right now, but I have to do some scans for you to see, so more on that later.
I just ate a wicked burrito from Que Pasa who now sells them in stores!!! I would normally feel embarrassed about tolling the virtues of my prefab dinners, esp after going duck and water chestnut hunting with Sarah and Jack yesterday so that they could make amazing dumplings. But serious, this stuff is good! used to eat at Que Pasa when they were around the corner from Emily Carr, it was a real long-day life saver. Since moving to Richmond, I have been privy to only their fabulous corn chips.
If you live in Vancouver, there is a shitstorm of art happening this week, of which I am attending zero. But maybe you would like it.
Just google Vancouver art for this week, and it'll all pop up, I'm sure.
If I had slightly more energy I would be over at the Anza for some Psychnite, but tonight is not the night.
Gonna watch some late-night David Attenborough Mammals!
Sad about Heath Ledger, gotta say it, I don't know why I feel sad about it, didn't know the dude, but I do.
oooookkkkkkk
