~ALFREDO MARTINEZ . . BACK TO REALITY / THE NEW NORM / QUIET, GUNS & QUILTS
one day: magic & fantasy, tripping the . . Halloween lantern / light.
less than 4 hrs later: 8 people dead, more hurt. Satanic. coin toss. bike lane.
Home Depot rental truck ?
& the guy was an Uber driver.
the new, new age cliches.
somebody said in the news last night /
the FBI director, or was it the NYPD chief of police ?
“unfortunately this ‘kind’ of terrorism – is now the new norm”.
if orange . . is the new black … !!!!
another lone wolf . . will attack.
Did Emily Dickinson have to deal with that ?
maybe in their own repressed way, the community she lived in, was under a form of conformist / social attack ?
@alfredomartinezartist: “Hi-tech SWAT teams that would look in place in Iraq just went down the subway at 23rd St.”
IMAGE VIA INSTAGRAM @alfredomartinezartist – posted 42 mins ago / WED NOV 1, 2017
note: me & Alfredo both lived up close & personal, through the SEPT 11, 2001 WTC / WORLD TRADE CENTER / Twin Towers terror attack. I saw it, directly as the bird flies . . from my 20th floor mini-terrace / FDR & Grand St. I was morning watering my little mini morning glory plantings, still blooming in the fall air.
I absolutely saw the first plane go straight into the first tower. & then slow delay, heard the reports on TV / as the news people caught off guard, tried to make sense of it: “an accident / a helicopter just flew into the WTC ??”
and, then I saw the 2nd come North, up the East River, turn around, & go straight in, head first. into the 2nd tower . . of doom.
a lot of people are fascinated with guns, and gun imagery, but I always felt Alfredo’s obsession, came from a deeper depth / from the authenticity of an outsider, brought up in the real, rough & tumble of the deeper dark outer impoverished hoods of NYC, where a ‘Saturday Night Special’ had real meaning. and currency.
it was very obvious to me, though sometimes my involvement with JOSH LUVVY HARRIS of ‘QUIET’ of ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’, and . . Alfredo /strikes people as strange ?
they were both great artists / outside the system. outsiders. totally flew over the mainstream.
maybe it was the way, I flew right over the ‘mainstream / my inner ‘radar’ & art / street smarts . . . made me an outsider, too.
we even had a small art show in Chelsea, at now defunct DANIEL SILVERSTEIN GALLERY, after . . ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’, and yet still before 9/11, must have been .. the summer of 2000.
where Josh exhibited a rough edit cut of ‘WE LIVE In PUBLIC’, Alfredo showed some replica guns, and a big, armed-to-the-teeth, life size, Robo / Robot sculpture / and I showed a repaired vintage quilt.
we called it, ‘Quiet, Guns and Quilts’.
to me . . that was like the bedrock of the American experience, from the past & straight up to, even now.
GUNS . . ALWAYS BEING KEY TO TAKING OVER THIS CONTINENT / WIPING OUT THE NATIVE PEOPLES, OPENING UP THE WEST / THE WILD WEST FRONTIER / and ultimately the only way for solving all problems going forward, including that incredible self-massacre we call the ‘CIVIL’ WAR. ingenuity. invention. creativity. craft.
function: kill / preserve / keep safe. make ‘peace’.
QUILTS . . being the other side of the coin. family, comfort, skills, culture, art, remembrance, history. commemoration. even: flag. symbol. underground railroad. communication & the first bi-nary system, patterns, piecing. sampling. math. computers. code. going forward, looking backward. archiving. tradition / innovation. quasi-religious artifact.
not to forget: re-cycling. making do. can do. indie, leaving old ways Europe behind. and in essence: the way of the future / that was not destruction, and evil, and war and bloodshed.
but also: American invention, ingenuity, craft.
function: nourish / warm / keep safe. record. make beauty.
Guns & Quilts:
kind of the All American . . YIN YANG.
QUIET is the visionary. the poet. the entrepreneur. the Thoreau. the Wizard. the magician. the web pioneer who didn’t even know what social media was, when he was making the roots of it, before there were even ‘smart’ cellphones / or cellphones with cameras. and most people didn’t have personal computers, or if they did, it was their kids who had them, and all there was for web streaming . . was dial-up AOL.
technology, code, future forward / social experiments, underground artist patron saint.
also a form of creativity. big bang. productions / pr / media. circus. money.
social invention / social experiment. social ingenuity / social community / ‘bio’ craft.
function: unknowing / moves society forward.
QUIET, GUNS & QUILTS – OUTSIDERS.
a triangle of . . ‘hyper cultural consciousness’.
visualize:
fight skills / warmth skills / & the ghost who conjures the path.
left, right .. head.
yin yang .. web.
NYC / MTA SUBWAY SURVEILLANCE / COMMAND CENTER, POSTER
ALFREDO MARTINEZ – COMMAND CENTER / FALL 2017 / MID-TOWN NYC / MANHATTAN
THE OUTSIDER . . . TAKES THE WORLD, and goes: ‘FLIP’.
JUST SAYING IT – LIKE IT IS: INGENUITY, INVENTION, PAINT. FOR DISPLAY – ONLY.
DOES NOT KILL ? BUT STILL, A WARNING.
INVERSE REALITY. ON POINT.
ON A PIZZA BOX.
THE QUILT MAKER – BRINGS IT HOME.
NANCY SMITH – THE QUILT MAKER’S (CHAOTIC) BUT HOMEY . . COMMAND CENTER.
THE CHILD’S ‘GOLDEN’ URBAN . . LANDSCAPE / COLLAGE ART / FOUND IMAGE, BY SIMON CERIGO, RIP GHOST.
There is always, a Ghost – in the machine, trust me.
ONE DAY, WHEN THEY UNCOVER THE REAL WORKINGS OF THE UNIVERSE – THEY WILL UNCOVER THE ‘HOUSE OF THE GHOSTS’.
BUT FOR NOW, THE ‘SAMPLING’. THE ‘PATTERNS’ / THE ‘NARRATIVE’.
THE PIECES of the ……… ‘QUILT . . of LIFE’ / ‘TREE of LIFE’.
lOL, THE ‘REAL, FAKE’ BASQUAIT FORGER’S – LABORIOUS .. SIGNATURE !!
LOL, THE ARTFORUM . . floating in the starry night sky / the ultimate symbol . . of the outsiders longing for recognition.
the opening shot of . . ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’.
JOSH LUVVY HARRIS: THE INTERNET GURU / PERFORMANCE ARTIST . . . ARTFORUM, NEW YORK TIMES, ET AL . . LEFT BEHIND.
ART WORLD-WISE & ART PERFORMANCE-WISE.
‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ the movie / the documentary based on his life . . . got plenty of press, and acclaim, esp international, won Sundance, premiered at MoMA etc etc.
many write-ups in the NY TIMES etc etc.
but the art world proper, dropped the ball.
might well have been ‘Gilligan’ . . lost on an island.
WHICH REMINDS ME . . .
what is . . . . KNIGHT LANDESMAN’S next move ?
GOT THE BOOT / SEXUAL HARASSMENT.
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH / UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED