Brandl Opening Painting-Installation Zurich
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
January 22, 2013 9:08 PM
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It is finally the time! After some years in the making, the room-filling painting-installation based on my PhD dissertation is opening at Jedlitschka Gallery in Zurich. You are cordially invited to the opening, I'd love to see you there.

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Mark Staff Brandl My Metaphor(m), Painting-Installation 28 Feb. - 18 April, 2013

Opening Reception: 28 Februar, 5 pm - 9 pm the artist will be present (as well as on Saturday, 2 March)

Laudatio/Opening Speech: 28 February 7 pm Dr Philip Ursprung, Professor Art and Architectur History at the ETH Zürich

Discussion with the Artist: Friday 22 March, 7 pm with Dr Gerhard Mack, Editor and Critic for Art and Architecture at the NZZ am Sonntag

Finissage /Closing Reception: Thursday, 18 April, 5 pm - 9 pm The artist will be present.

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Brandl, Painting, Eshu
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
January 16, 2013 6:43 PM
Brandl_Eshu.jpg

Here is another painting from my upcoming installation in Zurich. It is of Eshu, the spirit of the crossroads in Yorùbá. Also known as Èṣù, Legba, Eleggua and identified with St. Anthony of Padua, Saint Michael or Santo Niño de Atocha in Santería. Èṣù is a spirit of Chaos and Trickery, and plays frequently by leading mortals to temptation and possible tribulation in the hopes that the experience will lead ultimately to their maturation. He is both young and old simultaneously. In my PhD dissertation I replaced the metaphoric figure of Oedipus with Eshu in my rewrite (misprision) of Harold Bloom's theory of misprision.
Oil and enamel on canvas.
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Painting
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
January 13, 2013 2:47 PM
One of my smaller paintings for my upcoming Painting-Installation in Zurich, a tribute to Velasquez.

Brandl_velasquez.jpg

Oil on canvas.

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End of the World? Nah, it's only a renowned international art exhibition!
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
December 9, 2012 12:30 PM
My Essay in comic form for the cultural magazine Saiten, St.Gallen, Switzerland. Dezember 2012.

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Operators, Manipulators, Petty Bureaucrats Business As Usual At The Whitney Biennial
Posted by The Shark
December 3, 2012 3:30 AM
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The question is why these people -how were they chosen? Michelle Grabner is at least understandable, a sturdy if somewhat limited painter, and more notably an art world operator both here and abroad extraordinaire, she has inadvertently demonstrated via her multifaceted ' art career' the de Kooning dictum 'isn't it amazing how much you can do with so little". The problem I have with Michelle -whom I personally like, is, that aside from the fact she has a history here of championing really bad painting with a focus on aping what is internationally 'hot', is what a partisan power broker she has always been, bringing to Chicago via Suburban/ Poor Farm a steady stream of trending international fare -while presenting from here a rather narrow, myopic, self serving polemic as to what has currency, recently from the very painting department she heads. (think Reeder /Zukerman exhibitions at the MCA -which had her fingerprints all over both of them) Unfortunately, the middle brow academic abstraction in various guises she supports -from colorfield bland to dorm art quality histrionics has been played as if it were the only game in town (think Grabner, Ledgerwood, Gerber, Reeder). While coincidentally, (or not !) over the course of almost two decades of this dynamic, of a small circle of people, institutionally supported, holding sway here, interest in Chicago art -painting in particular- has not surprisingly plummeted at the international level. So, now along with ethical considerations of an artist curating her friends into a big show, comes the distinct possibility that the art world is going to experience the tedium of mediocrity, the tepid de-skill that has hung around the neck of the Chicago art world (and everywhere else) like a putrefying albatross for years at the Whitney. In other words, NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS! That there exists the potential of a show featuring some really bad crap may even be, the desired goal given the idiotic/imbecilic art world of today Michelle is such a purveyor of. Still, I am going to hope for the moment she transcends her milieu, and surprises me. Showing first of all more painting, and while rising to the occasion, confounds her friends while delighting her foes in a demonstration of shocking integrity showing not the usual suspects who she has championed in the past, but rather what is actually skilled, particular , original and fierce from here. Anthony Elms, that, is far more problematic, and nothing less than Kafkaesque: the inexorable creep forward of a petty bureaucrat... why this guy, this career mired in mediocrity at every turn? From failed artist to silly projects to reams of mediocre art writing,) going from an entry level position at Gallery 400 to another entry level assignment at the very small Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia. Its difficult to imagine they couldn't have done better. As for the film gentleman, echoing Werner Herzog's sentiments concerning his own participation in the last biennial, why is it other disciplines feel the need to invade the small realm of visual art? Last time I checked there were plenty of venues for any kind or type of effort in that particular medium.

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The Next Documenta Should be VISUAL!
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
December 2, 2012 3:16 PM
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I always liked Jens Hoffman's image for his critique of documenta. I have made one myself for my thoughts about it and all big international shows. Please spread it around!

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Poetry of the Week: "The Noir Wife," "Hives," and "Rose Red, on Sibling Rivalry" by Susan Slaviero
Posted by Simone Muench
October 3, 2012 11:55 PM
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Susan Slaviero's full-length collection of poetry, CYBORGIA, is available from Mayapple Press. Recent chapbooks include A Wicked Apple (Hyacinth Girl Press), Selections from The Murder Book (Winner of Ghost Ocean Magazine's 2011 Chapbook Contest), and Apocrypha (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in journals Fourteen Hills, Rhino, Oyez Review, Artifice Magazine, PANK and elsewhere. Susan has a BA in English/Professional & Creative Writing from Lewis University. She moonlights as a literary editor for blossombones and as a performer with the Chicago Poetry Bordello.

THE NOIR WIFE

She's smackleg, gunbody brilliant.
She knows how to pin a man with her
tailbone, pen him nitrogen-blind
like a block of dry ice. She's
Lauren Bacall with a cigarette
stuck to her gums, lipstick
smeared on her pretty
cupid's bow. Glasslights
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Make it ---
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
September 10, 2012 6:21 PM
The slogan of Modernism was Ezra Pound's "Make it new." The unspoken slogan of Postmodernism is "Make it clever." I suggest a new slogan for reaching beyond Postmodernism: "Make it yours, make it matter." --- Mark Staff Brandl.

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Relational Social Work - not phony art world posing.
Posted by The Shark
September 3, 2012 11:22 PM

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'Meanwhile,' Installation by Mark Staff Brandl
Posted by Mark Staff Brandl
September 3, 2012 8:20 PM


A 28 minute documentary video of the painting installation created in 2011 at the Peoria Contemporary Art Center by Mark Staff Brandl, Gary Scoles and Th. Emil Homerin.

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