Scott Klinger

Scott Klinger, curated by Piero Golia

November 4th - December 15th 2007

Scott Klinger is a Los Angeles based photographer, despite his young age his work has already received international recognition, being featured in group exhibitions and publications in the U.S., Europe and Asia. He grew up in the American Southwest and completed his fine arts education at Art Center, UCLA and at the Mountain School of Arts. Most recently, his photographs were shown in a group exhibition at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan, as part of the Young Portfolio Acquisitions.

His current series of work, Pax Americana, explores the paradigm of American culture. In order to photograph evidences of a societal attitude his work blends both staged and documentary practices. His aim in this practice also serves to question the presumed authenticity of documentary photography. Reality and fiction meets in these images as an ironic and cynical point of view. The black and white photographs from this series have as their subject matter portraits of Americans who are engaged in the post 9-11 dogma of paranoia and preparedness. These photographs are a sort of smiling judgment, haunting portraits that allude to current sentiments with an underlying suggestion to a post-apocalyptic America.

Piero Golia is an artist currently based in Los Angeles, California. His work have been shown in major galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. In 2004 his first feature film was invited at the Venice Film Festival. In 2005 he co-founded of the mountain school of arts in Los Angeles.

For more images go to scottklinger.blogspot.com

Silke Bauer

Silke Bauer, Couplé, September 16 – October 27, 2007

On the way to work
Christoph Gerozissis

The days of May 21st through the 28th, Paris 1871, should be remembered as the “bloody week.” With the help of the Prussian army the conservative French government had struck down the Paris Commune with brutal force. Eugène Pottier who had just been elected to the Council of the Commune of the 2nd Arrondissement with 3352 of 3600 votes cast, was lucky to escape the bloodshed. Within a few days and still shaken by the current disaster, he wrote a poem entitled L’Internationale in which he urges the disparate workers’ movement organizations and workers’ clubs to join a supra-national organization, namely the International Workers’ Association which had been initiated in 1864 by Karl Marx.

Among the communards, Pottier was known as a poet, a “worker-poet” as they called him, since he did earn his living as a packer and later by tracing patterns on fabrics. Pottier propagated radical reforms like legislation by the workers, equal rights for women, a Proletarian People's Militia, controlled prices and compulsory attendance of schools. At the end of the “bloody week” he fled to England like so many ex-communards, intellectuals, and artists, finally emigrating to the United States. The French government pardoned him in 1880 but he did not return until 1887. He died that same year in poverty leaving his wife and daughter behind. The workers of Paris carried his remains to the Père Lachaise cemetery and buried him among the executed communards. Shouts of “Long live Pottiers” could be heard at the funeral.

In 1888, the Lille section of the French Workers’ Party founded a choir called “The Workers’ Lyre.” This choir asked one of its members, Pierre Degeyter, to set Pottier's poem to music. Degeyter was a worker who had started work at the age of seven. Devoted both to music and to the cause of the working class, he had studied at the Lille Conservatorium of Music. He played several instruments. The song was publicly performed for the first time in July 1888. "The Workers’ Lyre" published the song in an edition of 6,000 copies. The battle song of the workers’ movement was born.

And this on the train, an excerpt of Knut Hamsun’s Pan (1894), translated from the Norwegian by W. W. Worster.

For three nights I did not sleep; I thought of Diderik and Iselin.
“See now,” I thought, “they might come.” And Iselin would lead Diderik away to a tree and say: “Stand here, Diderik, and keep guard; keep watch; I will let this huntsman tie my shoestring.”
And the huntsman is myself, and she will give me a glance of her eyes that I may understand. And when she comes, my heart knows all, and no longer beats like a heart, but rings as a bell. [And this part was omitted by the English-language publisher: She was naked under her gown, from head to toe.] I lay my hand on her.
“Tie my shoe-string,” she says, with flushed cheeks. ...
The sun dips down into the sea and rises again, red and refreshed, as if it had been to drink. And the air is full of whisperings.
An hour after, she speaks, close to my mouth: “Now I must leave you.”
And she turns and waves her hand to me as she goes, and her face is flushed still; her face is tender and full of delight. And again she turns and waves to me.
But Diderik steps out from under the tree and says: “Iselin, what have you done? I saw you.”
She answers: “Diderik, what did you see? I have done nothing.”
“Iselin, I saw what you did,” he says again; “I saw you.”
And then her rich, glad laughter rings through the wood, and she goes off with him, full of rejoicing from top to toe. And whither does she go? To the next mortal man; to a huntsman in the woods.

LARRY MILLER

“Alchemical Elements in the work of Larry Miller”
Michael Maxwell 2007

In 1985 Larry Miller executed a drawing for a sculpture called “Bow”. The drawing consisted of a headless torso with arms outstretched palms facing downward. Attached to each hand is the end of a piano string which has been pulled taut to a point just below the navel and above the genitals. A luminous neon tube formed in the shape of an arrow is nocked in the string. The arrow points upward with the fletching at the navel and the arrow head positioned just above the neck. The shaft of the arrow is formed by a crucifix.

This piece was eventually made as a sculpture in 1986 with a few changes. The crucifix was removed, the arrow was made of a violet neon tube and guitar tuning pegs were attached to the ends of the piano/bowstring anchored into the backs of the downward facing hands.

Around the same time two additional sculptures entitled “Dropping” and “A Rising” were produced. “Dropping” consisted of a cast of the artist’s body from the waist down. A luminous red neon tube in the form of a long tail points downward and swings from left to right like a pendulum. The tail is attached to the sculpture at the sacrum.

“A Rising” consists of a flower pot full of charcoal sitting on the floor. Rising out of the soil are two metal wires that rise up the wall in a twisting double helix where they are attached to a cast of the artists head floating in the air with eyes closed and mouth open about to take a bite out of a circular disc with an image of the moon.

Considered as a suite, these pieces become contemporary alchemical ciphers, suggesting esoteric meanings that may be unrecognizable to a 20th century art world audience and yet have clear similarities to the surreal imagery of alchemy as found in ancient alchemical texts.

For most of recent western history alchemy and alchemical imagery have been shrouded in mystery and myth. Numerous views on what the alchemists were doing have been proposed. The search for the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life that would bring immortality to those who drank it are the stuff of legend. Recent information suggests that the imagery used by the alchemists is an allegorical code language designed to reveal very real and specific information to those who have the keys but hide and preserve it from those who don’t.

There were undoubtedly seekers who performed literal chemical experiments in search of these goals and it would be easy to understand the imagery of western alchemical texts as the deluded and superstitious ravings of madmen driven to hallucinatory states by the toxic fumes of their furnaces and chemical crucibles. Mercury poisoning might seem to be an easy explanation for the fantastical imagery of chimera’s and mythological beasts, colored beings and otherworldly landscapes.

Alternatively, Carl Jung ascribed psychologically transformative meaning to these texts and images. He viewed alchemy as an underground discipline aimed at spiritual gnosis. Literal chemical experiments may have been done as a cover for those seeking to hide their heretical practices or by those who misunderstood the meaning of the texts. The wealth of information and exploration offered in Jung’s extensive works on alchemy point the way to a different kind of understanding and yet something is missing from these works. It’s difficult to draw functional and conclusive knowledge about the real purpose or practice of alchemy from Jung’s volumes.

In the last several decades however, globalization and a continuous cross pollination between eastern and western cultures have opened up a new perspective on the historical function and practice of alchemy. From this new perspective the alchemical elements in Miller’s pieces become visible.

In his book The Sufis, published in 1971, Idries Shah, the late Sufi master and exponent of mystical Islam to the west, examines the spread of Sufism throughout history. Within his discussion a fair amount of material is devoted to European alchemy and Shah traces its lineage to Middle Eastern alchemy as transported to Europe through the cultural encounters of the crusades and the Moorish occupation of Spain. The Middle Eastern Alchemists who inspired European alchemy were undoubtedly connected with Sufism. Shah points out that while some literal chemical experimentation was done for various purposes Sufic alchemy was primarily an allegorical code intended to disguise Sufi methods of esoteric practice and spiritual exercises from hostile religious and secular authorities. He does little however, to explain what those practices were or to decode the allegories for a western audience.

Centuries before alchemy existed in Europe it was being practiced in the Middle East and Asia. There are clear similarities between European alchemy and the more ancient Sufic alchemy and Taoist alchemy. Like European alchemy, Taoist alchemy is full of arcane symbolism and cryptic allegorical imagery, boiling cauldrons, planetary influences and mythical beasts. While historically this body of symbolism is no less cryptic, a handful of living Eastern Martial Arts Masters such as Mantak Chia, and Yang Jwing Ming have broken with traditions of secrecy that lasted thousands of years and begun to openly disseminate Taoist alchemical knowledge to a western audience.

What is revealed in the work of these men and others like them is that the key to unlocking all the alchemical allegories is an understanding of the human body’s energetic system. An understanding of chi, or life force within nature and within the human body as explained in Taoist Chi Qong and traditional Chinese medicine quickly leads to an unraveling of the alchemical puzzles that have mystified scholars for centuries.

Taoist alchemy is a coded system that describes what is now commonly known as Chi Qong. The practices of Chi Qong are closely related to Tantric Yoga, to Sufic practices and esoteric practices from a variety of cultures throughout history. Alchemical knowledge with certain exceptions is the knowledge of subtle energy and energetic practice as it is described in Chinese Chi Qong, Tantric Yoga, Sufism and western alternative “energy medicine”.

The manifestation of reality through the workings of an underlying energetic principle or living force that operates beneath the surface of the physical universe is the focus of these practices. The experience and knowledge that comes with the perception and skillful manipulation of this energy through the disciplined practice of these esoteric systems is the philosophers stone and the elixir of life.

Anecdotes of supernatural and mystical experiences in the literature of Eastern Martial Arts, Yoga and Sufism make the legends and imagery of Western alchemy seem no less far fetched than those of revered Eastern traditions.

If alchemy is understood as a coded language dealing with the subtle energetic system of the human body and in fact all of nature, it’s possible to see the alchemical symbolism within Millers pieces. What is fascinating is that a twenty first century artist fully engaged in an avante-garde post modern practice was creating imagery in New York City in 1985 that parallels ancient materials but was arrived at spontaneously within the artists own creative practice.

Taoist systems of Chi Qong are essentially operating manuals for the subtle energetic systems of the human body. How the energy flows through this system, what kinds of energies are being absorbed and released, where the energy is focused, where it is strong or weak determines the experience of the human being. Taoist alchemy identifies the functional elements of this energetic anatomy and describes practices to alter its functioning in order to achieve what amounts to an evolutionary upgrade of the entire system complete with supernormal experiences and abilities. Within the basic blue print of the system there are three major energetic foci in the human being known as Dan Tiens. The first is between the navel and the genitals, the second is at the level of the heart and the third is in the head. On the surface of the body are in/out points which roughly correspond to the chakras in Yogic systems. The patterns of energy flow between the foci and the points along the orbit determine and alter the filtered subjective experience of the individual. The diagram above, taken from a contemporary Chi Qong manual, illustrates the Dan Tiens, and the in/out points on the outer circuit known as the cosmic orbit.

In the average human being a lot of energy is focused in the Lower Dan Tien and the lower points on the circuit. This focus in the lower points leads to an experience of reality and a perspective on life that is very primal and survival driven. If energy is allowed to move up to the Middle Dan Tien the heart is opened up and one’s perspective on life begins to change. Emotions such as love and compassion make more sense and it’s easier to connect with other people and the world as a whole. If energy is focused in the Upper Dan Tien the brain becomes charged, creativity and greater intelligence manifest.

One of the goals of most alchemical and esoteric systems is to open up the energetic circuits so that the primal energy from the lower regions can flow into the Middle and Upper regions and throughout the system as a whole in a more balanced way.

The diagram above presents this information in a very clear and overt way. It’s significant that this is a contemporary illustration. The drawing below is an older version of similar information from the Chinese Qing dynasty. In it, the energetic information is revealed but disguised in the form of a landscape.

The river that flows from the ocean at the bottom up to the mountains at the top represents energy flowing up the spine. The men working the waterwheel at the bottom propel the energy/water upward. This image is an example of the way that energetic practice was disguised in allegorical imagery. The waterwheel is a typical example of Taoist alchemical symbolism. It refers to the process of pumping energy from the lower regions of the body up the spine to the brain and heart. Similarly, the Lower Dan Tien was referred to as the cauldron. The boiling and steaming of the cauldron referred to the ascension of energy from the lower Dan Tien. The cauldron in Taoist alchemy is a direct correlation to the Cauldron or Furnace in European alchemy. Through esoteric energetic practices energy is collected in the lower Dan Tien, the “Cauldron”, the “Furnace”, or the “Ocean” of Chi . Through meditation, physical exercises and breathing practices referred to as steaming the cauldron, pumping the bellows (a direct reference to the function of breath in such practices) or turning the waterwheel the energy is sent up the spine to open and energize other parts of the subtle anatomy.

The variety of allegorical images and names is vast but once the basic principles of energetic practice are understood the meanings behind the allegories can be decoded fairly easily. Religious symbolism often gets overlaid not only as a cultural façade but also because this kind of esoteric practice often led to mystical experiences of a religious nature.

Beyond the energetic anatomy there is the energy itself, the chi, the force, which could take on various allegorical forms all generated from a basic division of positive and negative to become yin and yang, heaven and earth, sun and moon, mercury and sulfur, dragon and tiger etc. Thus whether the alchemist speaks of sulfur and mercury being combined or the green dragon swallowing the white tiger, the meaning can be understood as the interaction of polar energetic forces.

In this context the symbolism in Miller’s pieces can be interpreted in interesting ways. The electrified, luminous neon tubes used in both “Bow” and “Dropping” become literal manifestations of energetic force in relation to the artist’s body. In “Dropping” the lower portion of the artist’s body is presented from behind. Here the neon tube glows red and takes the shape of an arrow or a pendulum or a tail pointing downward and swinging from left to right. The tail becomes an electrified phallus as well as a turd as well as the pendulum of a clock keeping time. It is the manifestation of the earthly forces which bind us into this body and existence in time and space. While the experiences that arise from the higher energetic centers may transcend time and space, the lower energies bind us to this time and this space on the planet earth. Miller references gravity in the title, the force that is physically keeping us here on the planet just as an inability to release the lower energies of the body into a higher orbit keeps us locked into our most earthly animalistic being. The lower energies, unless transmuted, are the most powerful in human beings. While they serve to keep us alive, driving us to eat and fuck and procreate, psychologically and emotionally they can enslave us. In the alchemical traditions tapping into these energies as a source of raw living power to be attuned with higher goals is a fundamental step. In releasing this force upward however, one can be totally overwhelmed by its power. Dr. Glenn Morris, the recently deceased American Chi Kung master writes about his initial experiences opening up the lower energies into the higher orbits. When this happened to Morris in the 1980’s after months of intense meditative practice he experienced extreme physical traumas and mystical visions in which he thought he was encountering the Devil. Morris eventually brought the energy under control and visions of the Devil passed, as they are only one aspect of this powerful energetic force, but it seems appropriate that Miller’s depiction of these energies takes on the demonic appearance of tail. The tail is attached to the artist’s body at the sacrum. Energetically the sacrum is extremely important, as it is the starting point energy to travel up the spine as well as a gate through which energy can be inhaled. In Millers piece the energy has not yet been released to travel upward but instead continues to manifest as a weight, binding the artist to the earth and to his own animal nature.

In “Bow” the living electrical energy is contained in the form of an arrow. The artist’s torso becomes a bow capable of aiming and projecting this force. The energy is aimed upward toward the heavens and is colored violet revealing a high vibrational frequency. The tension and power needed to project this force comes from a piano string attached to tuning pegs in the hands. The body has become a musical instrument which can be tuned. Tuning an instrument changes the frequency of the vibrations it produces and Eastern masters often speak of tuning the breath and the body in meditation. The apex of the string is pulled down to the level of the Lower Dan Tien drawing energy from the primary storage point of the life force before it is released upward. The point sin the hands through which the tuning pegs are anchored are also important energetically. Depicting the hands as the site of the tuning pegs might be seen as a reference to the way in which the artist tunes himself through the creation of his work. The hands also reference the crucifixion. The original vision for the piece as shown in the drawing from 1985, depicts a crucifix as the arrows shaft. Miller eliminated the crucifix from the final sculpture. He felt the symbol was too literal. The crucifix in the drawing however, at the level of the heart, is perfectly in line with the alchemical symbolism of the heart energy. In esoteric lore, Christ was a manifestation of the perfected energy of the heart chakra and Middle Dan Tien. The traditional imagery of the flaming heart in depictions of Christ can be read as an energetic reference. In Miller’s final piece the cultural, religious overlay is forgone and the focus becomes the more universal energetic reference. In speaking about the piece Miller refers to it as the “spirit” aspect of the “Mind, Body, Spirit’ triptych this suite represents. He notes the play on words between the word bow as an instrument, and bow as a gesture. Bowing is a gesture of gratitude, reverence and submission all of which are attitudes associated with the Middle Dan Tien and the heart. Here the arrow of the heart is in place and ready to fly but has not yet been released to the heavens.

The last in the trio of pieces is called “A Rising”. Miller once again plays on words referencing both an event that has already occurred and one that is still taking place as in “arising”. While this piece was the last in the trio to be produced, it may perhaps be viewed as the first in the series. The piece consists of a plaster cast of Miller’s own head with eyes closed and mouth open, rising on a spiraling double helix of metal wires up the wall out of a clay pot filled with coal in order to take a bite out of a circular disc with an image of the moon on it. The metal wires still reference the potential for electricity and yet they are not electrified. Alchemically, the sun is associated with heaven and the male while the moon is associated with the earth and the female. The lower energies referenced in “Dropping” are also associated with the Earth and the Moon and the female. While Miller’s head is actually rising in physical space, symbolically and alchemically the head, symbol of the sun, the heavens and the intellect would have to descend in order to take a bite out of the moon. In such a way, this piece would represent an inversion, a descent of the solar light of the intellect to partake of the dark lunar light of the moon and the earth. The inspiration for this piece came from a vision Miller had as an adolescent. During that time Miller occasionally experienced psychic visions in which a tiny figure of a comic book king would appear and speak to him. The little king in the comic strip below spoke to him one night and told him very authoritatively to “Put your head on the Moon”. This vision stayed with Miller and in 1986 he created “A Rising”. The figure of a king like the sun and the moon is a typical alchemical symbol and is generally associated with the ego, the intellect and the mind. A visionary king instructing Miller to put his head on the moon at a time that predated his artistic career would seem, rather than a culmination of the trio of pieces, to be a precursor to them. It may be seen as the initial call from the unconscious mind for the artist to delve into the realm of the unconscious, the night, the unknown. The wires in “A Rising” are not yet electrified. There is no charge coming from the pot of earth. There is no opposite pole, as the earth and the moon are interchangeable energetically. Rather it’s the head itself that must rise, or descend as it were, to the moon/earth in order to ignite the electrical charge that is revealed in “Dropping” and “Bow” after years of artistic exploration and practice.

While interpretations that refer to subtle energy and alchemical transformation may seem out of place there is at least a hint of the mystical in Miller’s life and work. In the 1970’s he created pieces that explored trance and hypnosis. He produced voodoo dolls of notable figures in the art world and had a psychic healer attempt to affect them. Behind closed doors he will speak about experiencing spontaneous astral projection and psychic visions. He takes it all with a grain of salt and refers to himself only as an “interested skeptic” but it’s clear from Miller’s overall body of work that he is genuinely in touch with something beyond the status quo. What his works reveal is not an elaborate system of esoteric practice but rather a basic awareness of an energetic reality beneath the surface of the material world, a probing into unconscious depths that art in the western world has not explored in centuries but that certain esoteric cultures have mapped out clearly. Where the knowledge revealed in these pieces will lead Miller as an individual, or where such pieces in their function as artistic objects will lead us as a culture remains to be seen. Recently there has been an increased interest in spirituality in the art world fueled largely by a resurgence of psychedelic culture and younger artists dissatisfied with the mode of academic cultural critique that has held sway in past decades. In looking at spirituality across the scope of human history what becomes evident is that despite cultural and dogmatic differences there is a common thread of esoteric practice. The thread that connects them all is the shared perception and experience of a subtle energetic phenomenon inherent in all being. Western Psychology could not quite grasp the thread because it didn’t have the energetic key to the puzzle. Miller however has been weaving his own connection to the thread through his artistic practice for decades. It may be that artists such as Miller who touch upon the universal and the energetic through their own spontaneous creative exploration will be seen as the avante-garde of a new era in western culture, as artists who laid the foundation for an artistic practice that seeks to engage and encounter the ineffable and the mysterious in an authentic way. Political cultures rise and fall, the cultural critique and fashion trends of the day will be forgotten tomorrow but the infinite will always be with us calling us to reach out if we dare. Miller speaks about art as an event. Objects may seem to be real, solid, but photos fade in time and sculptures crumble. There is no thing, there is no object. The universe is an event that is happening through us and the question is simply whether or not we can feel the becoming and how much we want to participate in the evolution.

Michael Maxwell 2007

SOL'SAX

July 2007

Kazuyuki Takezaki

Kazuyuki Takezaki’s mixed-media drawings and paintings push meaning to the very edges of the visual plane. His diffuse sense of composition results in works consisting of blank space pockmarked with fragmented sketches, odd shapes and scribbles, generally done in faint pencil or pen with some oil overlay. It is almost impossible to read these images as anything coherent: they strip away the meaty center of iconography and stop short of replacing it with any alternate substance.

Takezaki says he attempts to represent the way we perceive things and preserve that immediacy. In any given drawing, scratches of yellow color pencil could be sunlight reflecting off a highway median or a strobe bouncing off a disco ball, but could just as easily be heat rising from concrete or sweat rising from dancers’ bodies, car horns or music. Through this visual synesthesia, these works achieve a kind of transparency. If you don’t look closely, you’ll never see beyond the surface; if you look deeply, you won’t find anything beyond the surface. The works exist as they are. They could be emotions: not the profound, transcendent sublime many people seek in art, but something more practical, the fleeting, day-to-day sensations of joy, happiness, healthiness that often escape recognition, and certainly escape expression.

This poetry is tempered by the deliberate sloppiness of Takezaki’s execution. Takezaki, not a particularly big guy, walks around Tokyo in a pair of beat-up, bulky biker boots. His closet-size studio overflows with half-finished canvases, art supplies, junk, week-old garbage bags, cigarette butts. He reduces the ideal of perfection into the more visceral, perishable concept of “freshness,” working for days to scratch and scuff away the boundary between the artwork and the world around it until he thinks, yeah, this is ok.

The untitled piece from 2007 at Arts Tropical combines ink, color pencil and paint on canvas, stapled onto wood panel left visible as a border along the work’s bottom edge. A bar of blue-black paint goes down one side of the canvas. Somewhere near the center, a malnourished rainbow, in wane rainbow hues, snakes limply by the outline of a revolver and then two starburst-like rings made with furious, tight pen strokes. Along the bottom of the canvas, a finger suggests a proposition. Nearby, completely out of proportion, are a small coffee table, the line of a house roof and the beginning of a leafy tree, identified by faint green washes. From the top of this assemblage, a clump of fishing wire and hooks dangles above a splash of white paint. Written in permanent marker on the exposed wood panel at the bottom, a slogan is the lone and telling hint of self-awareness: “OUR DAYS WITH ROCK!” Placed in the Arts Tropical window display, the work invites an added element of indecipherability and incomprehension. As people look through the window, they might not be close enough to see any detail at all, but this is ok. Transparency is deceptive.

-- Andrew Maerkle New York, May 2007

Kazuyuki Takezaki lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. His work is on view in “Return to Cézanne…” at Collection Lambert en Avignon, France, through May 20, and is included in “Not only A, but also B,” May 12 – June 16 at Transformer Gallery, Washington, DC.

Randeep Kumar

Arts Tropical, 110 Meserole Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY 11222


Randeep Kumar - War Lumber (2003)
April 1, 2007 - April 28, 2007


Randeep Kumar’s photograph of a derelict warehouse in New Orleans is taken from the series God Respects Us When We Work But Loves Us When We Dance, first exhibited at Gallery Rivaa, NY in 2006. The series includes landscapes and portraits - all of which demonstrate both a poetic empathy to geography and place, as well as a distance and remove that might be characterized as benign aloofness.

Specifically, Kumar somehow balances the vast and the local in his photographs. For instance, Kumar’s photographs of Nevada (2003) depict both the surrounding, sublime Las Vegas landscape full of open roads and possibility as well as the interior back streets of Sin City. There are old pick-up trucks parked in front of complexes with copper green paint flaking off the paneled wood houses, seemingly abandoned motel swimming pools, single-wide mobile homes propped up with shoddy lumber, and open compounds set among dusty, horizon-less vistas. Emptied of people, Kumar invites the viewer to look at these places almost as if they were empty shells. Ripe with nostalgia yet undeniably anchored to the culture that inhabits them.

Kumar’s photographs of council estates in Ballymun, Ireland (2003) depict an aspect of Irish culture that is as inspirational as it is controversial. Interested primarily in the functional, yet strangely beautiful architecture, again what is missing from Kumar’s pictures is evidence that anyone lives there. They are entirely un-peopled and the images invite us to consider what these places are, encouraging the viewer to ask questions about the activity the structures contain. For example, Ballymun’s famous pony kids who gallop around the estates wild and unfettered. Shortly after the photographs were made, much of Ballymun has been demolished to make way for new housing. Regeneration initiated by Dublin City Council to address the abject poverty and state alienation that the area has endured since the 1970’s.

Similarly, Kumar’s photographs of New Orleans look at Louisiana’s inherent geography as well as its built environments to reveal its polemics. There are wet, mossy swamps teeming with lush if capricious ecosystems as well as houses that have jungles growing out of their roofs. Perhaps most emblematic of New Orleans inherent contradictions is Piety and Abundance (2003) which depicts a dilapidated house at the crossroads of two streets named: Piety and Abundance.

Kumar’s image of an abandoned warehouse, chosen for the inaugural exhibition of Arts Tropical amply demonstrates the contrary conditions set by Kumar’s photography. That such an abused structure can elicit so much poetry speaks of a certain time and place but also of an intermediate space between the cyclical machinations of destruction and reconstruction.
—Adam E. Mendelsohn New York, April 2007

Randeep Kumar is an artist working in various media. In summer 2007, Kumar is going to India to begin the process of building a renewable energy-powered home, and pursue strategies of escape from the violence generated by the Green Revolution.

Arts Tropical is the storefront window of artist Andrew Guenther’s studio. From April, 2007 Arts Tropical will exhibit one work by one artist per month selected by a guest curator.