Zurich Period

Olsen and Associates Group Portrait (details showing 8 of 35 life-size standing figures), 1994, 6.5’h x 50’w, unstretched canvas.

10/94: Olsen and Associates Group Portrait, 6.5’ x 50’, unstretched vinyl canvas, Seefeldstrasse 233,

Zurich, Switzerland.

5/94: Alps Panorama, 6.5’ x 35’, unstretched vinyl canvas, first shown at the FOREX ‘94 Convention,

London, UK.

9/93: Portrait of Lou Reed, temporary installation, painted from photograph by Gottfried Helnwein,

produced in conjunction with Helnwein exhibition, Mangisch Gallery, 20’ x 30’, Muehle Tiefenbrunnen,

Zurich, Switzerland.

9/93: Tanz im Moulin de la Galette, 6’ x 16’, plywood construction site mural, companion piece to Cronk

After Renoir, Fuesslistrasse 4, Zurich, Switzerland.

8/93: Cronk After Renoir, 20’ x 28’, painted on vinyl canvas and stretched across construction site

scaffolding, Fuesslistrasse 4, Zurich, Switzerland.

5/93: Mona Lisa Parodies, nine portable murals, 12’ x 14’ each, painted on faux brick walls and installed on

location on the Venice Boardwalk for the feature film “Clean Slate”, Culver City, CA.

8/92: Portrait of Philippe Starck, 20’ x 30’, temporary installation, painted from photograph by Jean-

Baptiste Mondino, produced in conjunction with Starck exhibition, Colombo Gallery, Muehle

Tiefenbrunnen, Zurich, Switzerland.

7/92: Picasso Parody, 20’ x 30’, temporary installation, Muehle Tiefenbrunnen, Zurich, Switzerland.

Zurich Period: 7/92 - 10/94

The artist is a cultural trickster, mocking aspects of culture as he reconstitutes its anthropomorphic myths. Art parody is a deconstructive strategy that recasts metaphysical truth into a new synthesis of viewer, history and burgeoning world view.

Cronk After Renoir, 1993, 20’w x 28’h, vinyl canvas stretched over scaffolding .

Tanz im Moulin de la Galette, 1993, 16’w x 6’h, construction site mural, companion piece to Cronk After Renoir.

Picasso Parody, 1992, 20’w x 30’h, temporary installation (in progress).

Portrait of Lou Reed, 1993, 20’w x 30’h, temporary installation (in progress), from photograph by Gottfried Helwein, in conjunction with Helwein exhibition.

The Mona Lisa Parodies were incorporated into the feature film ”Clean Slate”, starring Velaria Golina and Dana Carvey, as the subject of a running gag. The director, Mick Jackson, had the mural theme written into the existing script to capture the spirit of Venice, then contacted me to paint the series. Nine versions were painted on portable brick facades on a soundstage in Culver City, then transported to the Venice Boardwalk where they were temporarily installed for the shoot. Velaria Golina is featured in the final version (top left).

Mona Lisa Parodies, 1993. 14’h x12’w, three of nine produced for the feature film, Clean Slate.

A pall of methodological conformity has overtaken the art industry that runs contrary to the revolutionary spirit of art. Do not expect significant new movements in fine art to emerge from the current arrangement of artists and institutions. Any attempt to restructure art’s ideological priorities while producing commodities for the art market is destined to be assimilated with little effect. In order to affect change, art must gain critical and public recognition without being reduced to a commodity with resale value. Also, it must not be so obscure as to be indecipherable by the intended audience. It must be understood as subverting the conditions that have reduced art to dollars and sense.

The postmodern despiritualization of Western culture will prove to be the dialectic preface to a new empathetic movement in the arts. The longer the controlling ideology denies the inevitable truth that man is more than reason, the greater will be the rebound of transcendent aesthetics. We are in a period just prior to a cultural revolution that will inspire symbolic experiences rivaling any in the past century. At the end of the current reductive phase in art, a revitalized-garde, freed from the misconceptions of transcendental idealism, will explore art as a means to bring about social change.

Starting in the 1960’s, analytic philosophers undermined the ontological ground of Occidental philosophy and the post-Kantian aesthetics of Modernism. Ideals once thought to be universal were exposed as the biased opinions of an oppressive social order. The art object does not contain intrinsic properties or absolute value. The transcendent experience does not reveal the essential nature of reality as Kant had determined. While the negation of outmoded philosophies opened new horizons in art, artists seem unable to revise the brittle myths and self-serving ideologies that structure art into society. Nor have they inspired art with the potential to integrate the disenfranchised population. For the artist, postmodernism was a dead end. Propositional logic cannot discover anything not implied by the conditions of the inquiry. It provides an inadequate model for exploring or explaining the symbolic content of art appreciation.

Alps Panorama, 1994, 6.5’h x 35’w, unstretched canvas.

Portrait of Phillippe Starck, 1992, 20’w x 30’h,

temporary installation (in progress).