Last night, I treated myself to an art opening at a gallery in Chelsea which I have recently become interested. The name of the gallery is Gasser & Grunert and I practiced a new method of behaviors in order to give myself the opportunity to enjoy the experience. The first thing that I do while there is make certain that I am there to look at the art, so I invest whatever time is necessary to do that. The second thing I am doing at an opening is trying to give the Artist feedback and finally I will make any networking connections that opportunity grants to me.

So, first of all, my impressions of Paul Jacobsen’s work was that he was using many materials which I am personally attracted to in my own work, so that gave me a warm feeling as I began to approach it. There were some very strong pieces hanging in the main space, most of which I found readily accepted and acknowledged by my ascetics. These images of natural surrounded by found pieces of wood used to extend and frame the picture found themselves into a comfortable space rapidly. The one exception was the piece titled Petrify, which is pictured above. I actually had to work in order to fully grasp this piece under my formalist method of looking at art.

In the entrance area, Paul had built a woodsman’s cabin with a camera obscura and had some smaller pieces which were similar to Petrify. I had to close my eyes and consciously decide to focus on the whole composition instead of allowing my eyes to be attracted to the painted half. Once I was satisfied that I had the ability to see the negative space as part of the composition, I allowed myself to return to looking at Petrify. I had been concentrating on first look at the painted nature scene and the techniques of producing it, completely ignoring the wood frame negative space. I had originally hoped to lose the wood frame and thought it extraneous, but with this new practiced vision, I found that the negative space soon took over the picture.

This left me with wanting to ignore the nature scene altogether. I was not satisfied with this.

So, I concentrated on seeing the piece in its entire wholeness; striving for a balanced viewing. It took me some effort but finally I had mentally and emotionally found the way of seeing it for its harmony and tension. It was at this point, that I was certain that this was the most significant and most powerful piece in the collection. When I picked up the press release and read the description of what to expect:

By definition, the word “art” suggests human workmanship – the very opposite of nature’s workmanship. Within this framework, the vision behind traditional landscape painting’s efforts to depict the sublime is a thinly veiled human construct with a dark sub-narrative of western colonial expansion that accompanied the mastery (and depiction) of nature. Jacobsen rails against this constructed separation between humans and the notion of nature as other. His new work takes the form of lushly painted but unfinished vignettes of pristine landscapes, an artisan wood cabin doubling as camera obscura and a portrait of his mother pregnant with the artist.

As the natural world loses acreage and is replaced by nostalgic simulations, so diminishes our ability to distinguish mediated experience from reality. In Jacobsen’s paintings, the sections of raw linen and quickly painted gesso stand in sharp relief to the highly finished sections of painted greenery. The romantic vision of nature ends abruptly within each painting but the artist then reintroduces elements harvested from the environment affixing wood beams to the paintings’ edges as armatures and frames. Represented nature and totems from nature are collapsed in this revisionary take on landscape painting, and questions our perception of what is natural. [from Press Release]

I felt satisfied that I had arrived in the same place that he had been aiming to direct me; which made me feel happy, especially noting that there were various actual arrows about the collection and into a suspended target that suddenly were quite funny to me. You know that sort of funny when you think you have worked your way into understanding an inside joke. Anyways, it was nice Art to look at and to think about.

I gave Paul my congratulations and briefly described my experience to him as comments/feedback.

As far as the third objective is concerned, I saw my friend Zefrey Throwell there, he is also represented by this gallery. He introduced me to Klemens and Tanja, the namesake owners of the gallery. Another Artist represented by Gassert & Grunert, with whom I have recently become acquainted was also present and it was nice to see Grayson & his partner; they were a wonderful oasis of human connection during this night of filling the well.

For now, I feel like this method of participating is comfortable and nurturing to my inner space. This is necessary to continue to develop and work within this aspect of the Human Experience. I am grateful for the pleasure I received and hope that my participation was valuable to someone else in some small manner. Please, if you are in NYC go look at this Art for yourself. If you are not, then look at the images on the website, track down these Artists and try to support them. Else, just leave comments here or on twitter.