Edwin VanGorder
Since 2010
Works in Madison, Wisconsin United States of America

PORTFOLIO (12)
BIO
I am a cyber drawing artist interested in building my archives as my art form which integrates trace both in the sense of genuine movement and prosody as well as the sense of semiotic blending which creates unusual architectures out of drawing as a cross-disciplinaric rhetoric or morphogenic agency of becoming.
Discussions (71) Opportunities (0) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Required Reading


The observation on ritualistic unpacking reminds me of The Lost Meaning Of Classical Architecture by George Hersey in which he regards the origins of much of our classic ornament as deriving from animal sacrifices in which the hide was reconstituted over bones as an act of propriation to spirits, and from this he devolopes an etymology for the word trope... the significance for art being obviously that painting of canvas skin on stretcher bones reconstituting the world -were a first siting of the idea of the herm or garlands to spoils or statues that symbolized art attitudes within art....at a time...
But I think more likely the box represents the subconsious, that as Freud put it the "subconsious is like a person not master of their house" No one really knows what is in the box. The first Architectural show on deconstructionism at the Moderm featured many models by the diverse architects that used wrapping paper to symbolize I suppose the packaging process that accrues to "reading " imagery.... divestiture of intellectual baggage and creation of cultural architects and artifacts are an odd trimarine....

DISCUSSION

Self Possession Of The Devil : Glory Of Formalism


Technologies of emerging practice interrupt formalist tendencies and that is all to the good as far as that goes and is politically correct ...yet in observing the formula- human interest curating good, artistic ivy tower elitism bad, I enjoy in Rhizome a more balanced and would enjoy as much an even more balanced reporting on the broader scales of interest that play into the spectrum inclusive of (horrors-gasp) formalism. The recent article on Mungo Thomson succeeded in a very funny way although possibly by accident but I will resume to that...
I worked running prints for some time at Gwathmey Siegel Architects ("definitely" formalists and their mantra is "design development")For National Blue print (Rauschenberg had the same job, did some experiments with the paper and was famous, I tried a few things on the paper and was practically arrested) and the kickoff architectural show at the time and at the Museum Of Modern Art was I think called Decontructist Architects and Eisenman in particular was awesome. The context for deconstructionism was presented in the context of many of the architects working with wrapping paper the idea being the packaging of imagery that is our modality for better or worse or worser as the singer puts it...

More currently an article in the British drawing zine/site Tracey proposes more "spit" in drawing digitally for example , meaning inner conluence or identification to "the mysterious fluide of life" as it were... and bringing I suppose closer to the digital surface the worn color sense of Tibetan prayer flags and such....
I see in my minds eye a not so hypothetical artist I call Quaker Oats who realizes the appeal of older imager but modifies the way it comes accross so it makes it to the contemporary visualiztion zone of comfort and likewise ages the look of contemporary modes to give the middle ground zone of comfort...the middle class adores him....nothing wrong with that, in their better moment they used to adore Morandi- no thats not true Morandi is an artist's artist I almost forgot.... somehow I see an 18 century comedy of manners but at the constume ball one person is dressed in contemporary coat and tie and is talking about oil spills and a few "capital ideas".... Anyway- could a new formalism find genuine energy without going fascist? I definde formalism as resolving approaches to philosophic concentration and the love of knowledge that is more than just love of technology.
The recent article on Mungo Thomson in Rhizome which concerns a very old school conceptualist approach on Thomson's part similar to Asher in its sympathy for formalist inspiration discloses Thomson's approach of husing dust largely human cells that settle to celluloid when he invents the video negative and the dust of the archive environment that has gathered....anyway its a kind of gentle cannibalizing of Morandi's dust...People often miss the point that Thomson is making enormous fun of the often fatuously espoused principle of human context per deconstructionist mores while also staying very serious and true to his principle of editing which is what I mean by old school... for example his project to edit the Road Runner from the landscapes that enclose him or Art Forum articles from the advertisements that surround them ("cut to the chase and quick") the project being perhaps a Quaker Oats mix of Morandi and Roadrunner....

DISCUSSION

The Varieties Of Experience (2008) - Mungo Thomson


The fact that dust (of interiors) is largely human skin helps explain why some Yogis can live off of air perhaps, it is a gentle cannablism as is the borrowing of Morandis dust by Thompson....

DISCUSSION

Call for Papers and Proposals


Yes, I believe I will be very happy to forward to this forum the comments I submitted to the Rhizom discussion thread but which didnt quite get up front to the effect that the ephermara which artists propose have radically altered the found object take on publishing(which has itself become an institution salient digital modes imbedded to curating, gifting, zines, print on demand resources, real time on line residencies etc. and which once were a focus on marketing are today more open to Robert Smithson's critique that the marketability of art is its weakness. If the found object as an initial thread of artsits ephemera has become an institution itself its Institutional Critique may well be a passage from anti art to art for arts sake and this betokens the all liability of art criticism at the end of its age to philosophy as a closing of the circle and what is philosophy if not art for arts sake.
My enthusiam for digital drawing as a mode that states physicallity formerly of sheer and torsion of traditional means to a linking of the human reflex arcs cortically integrated as rythm in relation to the computers own scrolling process is passion for a medium that I believe is most beloved in the UK. Why? A hint for me was having the BMLP ask me for an abstract of my blog and the British Minority Language Project works to link productively the diversity of dialects in the UK ie Scots, Ulns, Manx, Welsh, Guinea, Gaelic, Irish etc . I had and do observe in my blogs that drawing is like pidgin english of the visual languages, ie it is not a bastardized version of another language but rather has its own innate language impulse and is a structuralism.
I believe the passion for digital drawing and drawing in general in the UK ie www.drawingpower.com, www.c4rd,www.tracey.com, The London Drawing Room, www.creativityandembodiedmind.com,INTUT, etc... has to do with drawing as belonging to language building and sharing, and the digital realm in its new incarnation as language promotes or can promote a new commonality within diversity...If trope is the art imagination and if entropy are the measures of change a system can withstand digital drawing is a kind of tropentropy of drawing becoming philosophy as well as ever it has.

DISCUSSION

Post Decontstructavist Intuition


The ephemera which artists propose have radically altered the found object take on publishing( which has itself has become an institution). Publishing which once implied an absolute focus on market immersion and penetrating markets has now in the hands of artists inventions made upon publishing salient to curating, gifting,POD resources,zines, real time on line residencies etc are not without specificity but the feeling of linkage is more mercurial, osmotic. There for the institutional critique made upon the ethos of the found object is a passage from anti-art to art for arts sake and in the closing of the age of criticism the fate of criticism is to be all liable to philosophy, and art for arts sake, and after all what is philosophy if not art for arts sake?
The flow of a culture not content to be homeless may also be ready to discern a rather authoritorean content to the idea of frames of reference given that nations and brick and morter galleries alike yield to a porous transparency of art intent.
On the dialectical technical beat of emerging practices which Rhizome details minute by minute there is to my view a tension between on the one hand the structuralist paradigm Heidegger marks by paraphrase of Kant:" the conditions of the possibility of experience are simultaneously the conditions of the objects of experience" and on the other the more phenomenalogical view put by the underrated Mieka Bal:"topology destroys linearity by making embedding not sequence , a principle of narrative time: embedding- and enfolding of one thing within another, a body within a house".
Tropentropy is a phrase I coin to view into the phenomonalogical -structuralist tension by considering the conciets or border bending context leaping jumps of the artists imagination over categories ie the fabled "trope" and the condition of the passage of this state of mind within art works as process. Entropy means the measures of the degrees a system can sustain to change. To me personally this resides to a great degree in the relation of drawing to the grand panoply of technical platforms from the vantage of a simple level: digital drawing. Whereas formerly the drawing room was the body (of work) withib a room the digital arena is a scrolling activity between the computers mode of scrolling and the human body which operates from a vocabulary out of reflex arcs which drawing integrates towards language from our earliest age.
I was surprised at a moment to have the BIMLP ask me for an abstract based on my blog over at http://blog.drawingontrope.com which belongs aslso to www.drawingontrope.com my site. The British Isles Minority Languages Project gives me some insight as to why digital drawing is so immensely popular in Great Britain ( ie www.tracey.com, wwwc4rd.com,The London Drawing Room,www.drawingresearchnetwork.com, www.creativityand embodiedmind.com ,www.drawngpower.com and their hundreds of links (especially Intut)
The BIMLP is a research arm for considering business integration of the diverse dialects of the United Kingdom: Ulnas, Scots, Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, Guinea,Manx, etc...
It occures to me that drawing is in general very much like pidgin english in that while it relates to a specific language it actually generates its own language building impulse that is a structuralism. Drawing belongs to the learning of language and the very "gage of language means "pledge" or something give forth or thrown down, emblematic....
I would very like to see develop in America a similar enthusiasm for digital drawing, my own work as I mentioned developes from a sense of kinesiology implicit to the fact that the digital media is not available to the torsion and sheer of actual traditional art materials but instead uses rythm to create its own sense of physics and directive towards the sculpturotectural inner eye.
If anyone is aware of any such on or offline directives in the State please let me know something of your resources.
Thank,
Edwin VanGorder (Van)


SAVED WORKS (16)
CURATED EXHIBITIONS (1)