Just when the water gets murky, and just when things get slightly spooky, The Peripatetic Shark makes his appearance....showing no fear of schools as he never travels in such aggregates, knowing real sharkiness cannot be taught, preferring the ambience of the solitary hunter....knowing that he is what he is, beyond mere paltry theory or, if you will, the limitations of language-My argument is far more concerned with and against, (-if you haven't noticed yet,) what is deontological in this era of post-duchampian ethics. And in this way, I would consider myself an aretaic or, peripatetic, coming down on the side of character as a basis for ethics rather than common virtue. In otherwords, I agree with Aristotle that good works beget good character. I argue for the anarchy of the object and -as any who are familiar with my 'style' -or perhaps more accurately, lack of in terms of an ontology that informs all of my work and more of a nomad in this sense creating each piece out of its own workliness, character or, ontology -not confusing the word as it often is, with epistemology..... And I mean this in terms of specificity....all things lacking by the way in what it is, that I'm against -and by that I mean a whole lot of tepid, low-tech painting for the art masses made relevant and apparently for many,'great' by its adherence to a certain species of categorical imperative...a post-duchampian species that is..I'm not one of many that's all-
Its growing really tedious -the attempts to misconstrue and pigeonhole me as a specific type of artist given to certain 'tastes' or 'style' or even esthetics....first I deny the idea of taste having anything to do with esthetics: I think its a philosophic mistake to think so: to say that a work of art is made to fulfill a certain taste -is to confuse art with craft... to put a precondition on why it was made-art is an instrument of war having to do with corruption of conciousness and -and the clarification there- thus lacking purpose in a decorative sense or habitative motive. Art,... what is relevant to the individual is what it is in terms of its necessity for existence to an imaginative being, engaging in an imaginative experience- that he or she might live with greater depth and breadth....with clarification of conciousness as opposed to a decline into decadence. This is a matter of life and death on an existential level...hardly a matter of taste. When on occaison a work of art creates this effect for many, we have what has been called a masterpiece -when we can all gather around and say yes -I hear or see this too. A gathering of like minded individuals if you will, as opposed to a crowd of conformists-
My argument is for the work to do its thing: for it to speak -not the theorist, not the art educators, but the artists, and the art., -in these terms -not, to have it told to us in a pre-digested form of chauvinism as to what is important and what is not.
My likes in art are varied and complex: I like most forms of painting -in their best incarnations..for instance, I prefer Close to Richter as a photorealist -why? because he is a better painter. His images are far more loaded and way more powerfullly evocative. When it comes to hard edge painting -I like-when its really good -Ellsworth Kelly good. Otherwise I don't, have much time for some of the lesser permutations coming from the provinces- I could continue -on through art history -but in the end, I simply and essentially consider a work of art based upon its own ontology and, how well it succeeds in being that. Not, in all of the 'talk' surrounding or preceeding, 'the thing'......in otherwords -things first ...then, philosophy....a view at odds with the egregious, ubiquity of art world prejudices masquerading as virtues that hold sway at the moment.