Sebastian Gogel

Sebastian Gogel








I recently met this artist in Chinatown working on his installation with another artist at ChungKing Project. Amazing work, I'm not really ready to write any commentary as I'm still digesting these images. But I will say the stuff is good...very good. This guy is pretty amazing....I'm definately a fan.

  • Sebastian Gogel

  • look under "kunstler"
  • Studio


    Fiver



    Fiver was that ultra-nervous bunny in "Watership Down", that had a sixth sense and the uncanny ability to predict catastrophe. I used to be very skeptical of ESP, but for about 2 months after 9-11, I developed the strange ability to know precisely what people were going to say or do about 2 -3 seconds before they actually did it. It wasn't a constant thing, but it was a marked ability that I became somewhat startled by. It's a fairly useless sixth-sense, however, as it was only a few seconds of leeway before I sensed something and then it actually occurred. Furthermore it only lasted a short while, and once the transcendental plane had achieved some semblance of harmony..my strange ability vanished.

    Here's my prediction for the future: same as the past but with more people.

  • Fiver
  • Apophatic Divinity



    "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

    "A way a lone a last a loved a long the."

    (the first and last sentence of "Finnegans Wake")

    Arcimboldo

    When will you die for the last time in my dreams?

    Cathexis

    Black Taj


    ....is my new favorite band

  • Black Taj
  • Celebrate the New Dark Age...



    ...was an album by the Chapel Hill indie rock band Polvo released in 1994. If you're familiar with the band, that's great. If not, I'm hardly surprised. The reason I'm dropping a mention here, however, is that I think there's a lesson we can learn from this 90's rock masterpiece...one spelled out explicitly in the album title. Sadly, I feel that it may in fact be true that we live in a Dark Age of sorts, for all the obvious reasons that hardly need any explication,...but this should not eclipse the sublime beauty and poetic grace that constantly emerge from this gloom. "Light shines in darkness, because what else could it shine in?" I've been observing a lot of handwringing and frustration,...people seem bewildered that there are no obvious systemic guidelines to couch the production of contemporary art. A litany of complaints echo through the air. Mostly there is a dissatisfaction with the machinery- the powerful engines of commerce that seem to be so soulless and so successful, and seem to have annihilated any "discourse" that could provide clarity amidst the surging excess of options. At first blush, there may in fact appear to be a problem with all of this...but upon closer examination, I feel that the actual problem, if there is one, does not concern the "system", or any other vulgar and material measurement of production. This is a war that will never be won, so why try? The problem is that people have begun to value the wrong things, and more specifically that they are looking in the wrong direction for answers. Nothing real can be accomplished by replacing one Authoritative Ideology with another. There is a futility in this approach that is more than obvious. I like to think that certain monsters will vanish if they are simply ignored. But if one makes their bread by saving the world from monsters, then I suppose they like to create and then nurture them for that specific purpose.

    I propose that we belong to a Poetic Age. This is the age of the individual, tribal boundaries have begun to vaporize within the charmed perimeter of the information network. Ideas and inspiration surround us. There are more reasons to be optimistic and hopeful in the transcendent and liberating power of art than ever. But I realize now that this is something that can only be done in private...in small intimate groups and conversations..or even in the solitude of one's own thoughts...We shouldn't look to the world to be our mirror, especially if what we seek is immaterial. And rather then building monolithic immutable momuments of accomplishment that will inevitably crumble into dust, I think it's better to travel like a nomad across the steppes. As we pitch our tents, we can set fires and share stories. In the morning after we haved moved on, our presence will be a whisper in the reeds, the faint heat from the dying embers of our fire... and then finally a dot on the horizon that slowly disappears from sight.

  • Polvo
  • Absurd


    I fully recognize the problematic nature of posting this, and any other image for that matter, on this here internet. But I have to say, this is my blog, and I'll do what I wan't. If you don't like it, don't read it. Nonetheless, It does feel kind of Myspace to be broadcasting the contents of one's own mirror. And maybe there is a part of me that lingers still in adolescence, a desultory and petulant teenager...trying to find my way in this world of diminished expectations. When you think about it, adults aren't really that much different from teenagers, and, as a point of fact I believe that they are less honest..mostly because they are better at playing power games and doing things that need to be done versus things that should be done. Sometimes I wan't to harness that inner teenager and let him run rampant among the ruins. He could read the tombstones and then piss on them...writing his name in the fresh snow. But then I remember I don't live in that world anymore...and could never go back. This would be tantamount to suicide.

    It's been unseasonably warm here in LA, the Santa Ana winds have been blowing a hot dry air across the basin. At night I drive home down Washington Blvd. and then through the Alameda corridor- a twisted and endless landscape of looming industrial infrastructure, a flowing artery of commerce feeding into the hungry veins of America. In the past 6 years I've done this route thousands of times, and never once is it the same. I try to remember the past, but the tragic truth is that it comes only in bits and pieces. The majority of experience is lost like water flowing through a sieve. What remains are misshapen and odd nuggets of memory. It makes me think of the beautiful absurdity that seems to define existence. There is an infinite ritual we all participate in...a daily routine if you will. Wake up and repeat. Lately I've been thinking it might be nice to shake things up and be a little reckless..in the end all it really amounts to is a bizarre and colorful absurdist theatre. So why not? What is there really to lose anyhow?

    Surrender for Fashion



    I made this painting in 1999 at CalArts..posting the below image of Jenny Agutter from "Walkabaout" refreshed my memory.

    Part 40 of A.E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'


    Into my heart an air that kills
    From yon far country blows:
    What are those blue remembered hills,
    What spires, what farms are those?
    That is the land of lost content,
    I see it shining plain,
    The happy highways where I went
    And cannot come again.

    This verse is recited at the end of Nicolas Roeg's stunning 1971 masterpiece "Walkabout".

    "lifestyle arbitrator"


    Sorry Bart, couldn't resisist...its was just calling me.
    I hope people realize this as being in the spirit of an homage..and an expression of sincere admiration. I wish people would do humorous send ups of my art.....

    antonhenning.com



    I love this painting by Anton Henning...it's a quotation of a famous work by Courbet called "Patron Greets Genius". Courbet was famously narcissistic....Anyways, Anton Henning is a fun painter. Looking at his work doesn't make you think much, but it makes you feel good. It makes me wan't to paint in bright, cheery sun-drenched hues. He's probably a really happy guy, and that comes across. But who knows...it all could be a performance...maybe he's an irritating asshole. Does it matter?...Not really. I wan't to do some paintings based on populating his luxurious modern interiors with wierd noirish sci-fi characters...now that would be cool.

  • antonhenning.com
  • Thursday


    I am the Cardinal of Geneva




    Turns out that I'm also the Cardinal of Geneva....but don't be too impressed, it's just some fictional character in an online fantasy game that internet nerds play. I'm going to take control of my character and will soon be doing things very unbecoming of a Cardinal...alot of drunken swearing and staring leerily at lusty wenches. Getting loaded before mass and proclamations of the greatness of Scientology....click on the link below and then read to the bottom for the new and improved Cardinal..hehe.

  • His Eminence, Jacques de Beaufort
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