SLEEPWALKING

or, The Dreams of Other People

 

Statement:

 

Comfort, suburbia’s most heralded attribute, is clarified in the manicured lawns, large houses, wide streets, and bright afternoon skies. For the majority, it is the optimal place to raise children, lead out safe lives, accrue wealth, and retire. Yet such prosaic pleasantries fall under scrutiny at night, as if the absence of light’s veil brings an end to the day’s charade. Night—only then does the endless sleep of our days come to life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let Forever Be Delayed  (2007)

In the Long Run (2007)

                          Errata (Excerpted from publication accompanying the exhibition)

 

 

 

PROCESS, MATERIALS, AND A MINOR RANT

 

The scenes in these paintings were not imagined or painted plein air, but from photos. As sterile and clinical as this process is often presumed it be, it contains, for me, multitudes—what causes an ‘amateur’ (these photos were found on the internet from random searches, unintended for aesthetic purpose, which have been dramatically altered and cropped) to take a picture of his or her backyard or house? There is a sort of non-self-aware sentimentality that I find extremely endearing. I am suspicious of the notion of a ‘pure’ incident, idealized in the empirical encounter and sensory ownership a painter has with ‘nature’. These paintings were done on Arches 140 lb. hot press with Utrecht acrylic paint.

 

 

MATTES AND FRAMES

 

This show was framed by the artist himself, in the sense that a) he measured dimensions of paintings for cut-out mattes and backing mattes and had them custom made at Cheap Pete’s (which, incidentally, was not particularly cheap), b) bought pre-cut frames at Aaron Brothers, and c) secured the paintings and mattes into the frames. This sounds fairly simple, but was far from that: 1. The frames (11x14” & 10x10” at a 7:5 ratio) were purchased before the paintings were even started, imposing severe physical parameters—the paintings had to be of a certain size and orientation at a ratio respective to the frames. 2. The mattes had been ordered before the paintings had been done, meaning, the artist had to commit to a particular dimension of a painting once the mattes were ordered. This was complicated by the fact that, as part of his painting process, the artist has a tendency to crop or rip the paintings down for compositional reasons, and committing to a ‘final’ dimension disabled this form of compositional discretion. 3. There was no correlation made between what paintings belonged in what matte, and because all the paintings are of similar size, the artist had to toggle paintings from one matte to another to compare, and finally assess which painting belonged in which matte. This all took place in a small apartment in San Francisco, with minimal surface areas (i.e. tables, counter-tops) such that the artist’s bed was employed as a relief surface, a terrain which has a lint content not conducive to optimally lint-free endeavors, namely, said framing.

 

 

CONCEPT

 

I promise (with pleading tone, not a threatening one) this will be the most irritating portion of the document. Concept is implicit in great art, but in lesser-cases (case in point), the precious-thoughts-of-the-artist needs to be explicitly stated. I’m separating this from the I. STATEMENT to enable a moderate initial encounter one might have with this document, for otherwise they [you] would surely put this down. If you made it here, it is due to the polished reserve of this artist. Painting is generally concerned with its ingrown tendency to hermitically seal off the rest of the world by way of its glorious four edges. They aspire to be autonomous vessels. The concept of ‘Sleepwalking’ is to create, through the negative space between paintings, a sort of fragmented narrative that the viewer must complete, as if viewers were stuck with an incomplete set of images and correlating titles. Hence, the viewer is transformed into being a substitute host of these experiences—rationalizing the lineage of these images the way one might try to recall or understand a dream. When real life takes on the semblance of a dream, sleepwalking is a well-deserved nap.

 

 

 

ERRATA

 

I graduated from University of California Santa Cruz (art major, Porter College) in 1998, and the transpiration of an entire decade is not only apparent and notable, but somewhat terrifying. They say time is relative, and each aggregate year is a lesser fraction of one’s life. I suspect many of you are in school right now, perhaps trying to discover the world, to which I wish you the best. Maybe this isn’t the easiest time for you, despite the four-year-vacation your parents insist you’re on. I remember walking down to the ocean masochistically in over-sized sandals Friday and Saturday nights, depressed and consumed by all the sex I was not having, and thinking, rather dramatically in a Goethe kind of way, that this world, or at least mine, was irredeemable. Graduating didn’t make things better. I lived in a cold mold-infested rooming house for 4 years while working at a yuppie-invested corporation. I didn’t get laid off, and I didn’t get laid. If there was such a thing as true utter isolation, I was right up there with cat ladies and blind mutes. Since then, things have moderately gotten better. I have nothing to say about this world, but as someone whose been on the outside for ten years, my only advice is—High A.P.Y (annual percentage yield), at least 4.0%. I’m not joking kids, the sun is on fire, the world is on loan.

 

 

 

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

 

The party of (a) Jimmy Chen concedes (technically) that all glib assertions of objective truth are, in fact, opinion. Such opinions cited are the sole propriety of (a) Jimmy Chen and not (b) Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, or (c) University of California Santa Cruz, the (c) latter which summons (to put it mildly) ambivalent memories in (a) Jimmy Chen. Should the party of (d) Franz Kafka (et al, i.e. publishers) wish to proceed in arbitration for plagiarism(s) of two (2) titles of work, the party of (a) Jimmy Chen reminds, kindly, that the definition of plagiarism is only viable when said plagiary exceeds four (4) words in verbatim, and that the two (2) cases in mention are both exactly four (4) words. Also, if the party of (c) University of California Santa Cruz and the esteemed UC Regents believe that this exhibition and/or document represents their institution negatively, the party of (a) Jimmy Chen reminds, kindly, that he paid (or at least his father did) over $80,000.00 (adjusted for inflation) in tuition, housing, and ‘food’, the latter which is in quotation marks due to culinary/aesthetic transgression(s) employed by procurers of said ‘food’ to a point where it did not resemble, to any reasonable person, food. Finally, all royalties of any sales will strictly go towards the artist’s Scotch habit.

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

We all know the sound of one hand clapping, but what about my standing ovation?

A Little While Outlast the Years (2007)