A long time friend visited me in the studio to talk and mess around with ideas for a project with multiple vents. It was interesting and made me wonder under what conditions are we at our best talking about the work? Regardless if our lovely conversation today, sometimes you’re just not feeling it, your reaching for words rather than speaking a river. Speaking a river is that way that expands the accordion of the ideas that help you make work. Making work is in the end an action, neither a thought nor a text, and it’s reception is also an action. We talked about taking things in sympathetically. It feels like mature art lookers are ready to pounce into the critical. It’s so important to be with work instead of judging work. I’m a bit taken aback at how fast people move through shows, myself included. (Including the Nauman show). Regardless of our presumption of the short hand familiarity experienced lookers have about art, with every artist, we can see worlds within worlds. Some better than others. This might be the visual art version of the suspension of disbelief, perhaps another term should be invented. It’s an act of faith though, that the time invested might yield some insight or another.

We talked about how good the Nauman show was and compared it to the Chris Burden at the new museum sometime back. I’ve yet to see the PS1 leg of Nauman.