Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Love's unidentified pharmacology badge appears in local town...




* collagraph, photo-transfer on paper



on view at
The Black Triangle, Los Angeles.
aug. 7 - sep. 4.




* etching on paper


Opening Reception: sat. aug. 7, 20:00.
five bone$. live noise. rude comments.

come be seduced, stay for the spectacle.




because life is just too damn short, and you might find yourself alone inside your psychotropic mind hunched over bitter and jaded, striking a forgotten pack of matches from a vegas hotel which hasn't existed since your grandparents were chain-smoking to the tune of keno, patriarch, and america
- too cold to cry.

sometimes the best way to discover if something exists is to injure it indefinitely.
the pain that cannot be bared will annihilate outright.
legend has it Oscar Wilde suffered the world a blow and killed what would otherwise have killed him.
if the proper amount of neurotransmitter careening it's way through plasma and cerebrospinal fluid is met, i will cease to be myself, or at least my expectations.

creeping its way forward through the synapses in your optic nerve, stalking you in old towns near the sound of railroad tracks. keeping you up late at night.
influence the mind and the body will follow.

as lungs dry in a heaving, tuberculous sigh - and so the host of draining struggle and illness dies from its own inherent cure.

when Freud was finished pounding open his third eye with the ludvodican hammer of cocaine the shade was drawn aside as old men relinquished themselves to the insanity of their logic. stories were told. numbers fudged. softly fingering the warm tissue of time and recollection, bemoaning the dripping past's longing for nostalgia. dreaming up a lie whispered through centuries of cytoplasm, waking upon the death of tradition's nihilism. even Bentham and Mill couldn't resist a good old fashioned longing of the earth.

one of the few things worth attempting.
especially in the desert of unreason.



Saturday, July 17, 2010

BFA Graduate For Hire...


*for further inquiries and rude comments, please contact:




Thursday, July 15, 2010

OpeN MiC NigHT...


*Etching, Photo-transfer on Paper


Open mic night. The Disparate spot light, the confession of what you wanted but weren’t. a platform for fuck-ups and preachers. the lonely, the bored, the self-important. hipsters and poseurs. washouts. i drop more than names. “you ain’t a has been if you never was.” dirtbags. water drinkers. scene kids. armchair philosophers. it’s like the undead say: if god does exist it never makes it to the stupid parties. heLLed up in traffic. Dying in an automobile like the rest of us. disappeared under the earth’s chapped lip
in the envious green-flash of a nihilist Western son. Hope Full, but hope less. i can only hope to be a wash-up, decaying in the sand. you can’t die if you never lived. you can’t live if you never die. after-lifes are for still-borns. you’re only more famous when you die if you can taint the air as you rot. anything is something if anyone notices. all was not for naught. vicarious a synonym of death. nothing’s depressing like karaoke.
no one smiled. and the crowd went mild...

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

L A Z Y...



*Temporary Installation. Parking Garage Elevators, CSUF

Ohi Rucecky Collective





"man ain't meant to work / come on build a machine" -Jane's Addiction
let's be honest.
if every person used their bones and atp like they could there would be an entire legion of lift operator, service crew, fabricator, engineer, architect, physical plant, turn screw, turn key, business, bureaucracy, genius out of work.





as society becomes more complex, the basic tenets of a human - human relation to others and the environment changes. cooperation becomes necessary only insofar as it is required to procure a more efficient, pragmatic, utilitarian, calculated hedonism. the close relations once relied upon are now a mere formality in regards to each individual's potential to murder their neighbor and make use of resources. this is heightened in situations of dense population. as survival becomes simpler, larger groupings of individuals create a "social"/"civil" rhizome from the primitive roving-pack seed. distance travel becomes possible. high density populaces call for more complex organization in order to maintain its present operational capacity without caving in.

as numbers increase, physical surface area becomes crucial. room necessary to accommodate the actual spacial volume which a larger population necessitates is directly related to its relative increase in demand on the physical resources necessary to sustain it. power becomes important and necessary as a means of gaining and maintaining control of resources necessary for existence. as technology advances, so does the ability to direct a population's biopower. this is necessary to ensure proper use of available resources in relation to the vast masses which surge against them in a constant vacuum of utilization.

as agrarian society grinds its last plow for the portions of the world which will morph into super power "civilizations," we no longer need to hunt the meat and gather the rest. we have the silicone chip, silicone flesh, modern logic, nuclear fission and apposable thumbs. "you said you wanted evolution / the ape was a great big hit."
the monkey. the man. then the gun.

an old man told me a story once:
with the advent of a less "primitive" warring state of existence, agrarian society ushered in a new era of human prosperity. tools are fashioned to till the earth and make it bountiful. soon, the industrial revolution allows for the mechanization of anything, allowing for more efficient work and machines like tractors. more leisure time now exists. naturally, this portion of solace will be exploited as another means of deriving from the individual. some nights at the end of the week, there's a small gathering at the town hall or some other central locale of the populace where food, music, some form of entertainment and socializing is present and encouraged. and some times, travelers pull into town with odd things not from those parts. and sometimes, there's a special bear that a ringleader has trained to stand on its hind legs and dance through positive reinforcement, behavior modification, and a ring through its septum.
eventually, technology allows humanity a means to procuring much more leisure time as well as a means to answer that void. eventually, crucial skills for the basic security of survival become diminished in a haze of trivial, vacant, expendable tasks and experiences provided to great masses as a means to tranquilization, control and a cognitive buffer against revolt. the dancing bear becomes any great superstar celebutant and the great public a slack-jawed, open-mouth breather scraping their substance from the planet only to hand it back to the man in the top hat holding the reigns. and periodically throughout the eons this carefully manicured machine grinds itself down, and those with the ability necessary to basic survival will be the great achievers for the world ahead. given the opportunity, a mammal has been known to stimulate its pleasure impulses to the point of self-destruction. and while there certainly is a sucker born every minute, an entertaining actor will still be a dancing bear with shit dried to its ass and a ring though its nose as the public gapes upward in amazement and throws coins at it.

rome wasn't burnt in a day, but it owned slaves like the breath drawn through the dust of existence it smashed, and also apparently murdered the world's hope for a creative hero taken too seriously in renovated shipping warehouses, households, beds, hearts, minds and weekdays off. if god came to earth, we told told it to get in line, have the i.d. ready, sign the form, get back in line, and then smashed its head in on the way to the parking lot because it invented the cure for cancer and no one cared about joe dimaggio or fiber optics. human blood is usually dripping from the sharpened finger clenched behind the back of its greatest achievements.

hunt, gather, hut, clan, village, burg, township, polis, city, county, metropolis, eat, sleep, procreate, war, control.
and for fuck's sake, take the goddamn stairs once in a while.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

A Sight for Power.


*Downtown Santa Ana Art Walk
Ohi Rucecky Collective Installation


our new installation featuring nothing shocking, upsetting, or offensive for any self respecting institutional square. do you still look up to your big brother?


*MaNifEsTO - Official Propaganda:
(Available in print and hand touched, for la escuela vieja.
Us PpD):


“the new methods of power whose operation is not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but by normalization, not by punishment but by control…”

-Michel Foucault

A Sight for Power is an exploration of the camera specifically employed as a mechanism for surveillance. Interactive, live, site-specific closed circuit video feeds feature appropriated footage containing situations of institutional power actively forcing itself upon the individual interspersed with that of routine social behavior. This dynamic of visual disparity between scenes of brutality and banal watching is indicative of surveillance's potential to be a site for power in the vein of knowledge production and information gathering commonly exploited by the institutional apparatus of the state.

By exposing and appropriating this means to control, it is our goal to re-direct the flow of power stemming from the use of surveillance by engaging in a critical unmasking of an apparatus typically utilized for coercion. We aim to question, subvert, and comment on the dominant use of the camera as an implied panopticon which silently enforces conduct and behavior based simply on the presence of its gaze.














Thursday, February 18, 2010

Flesh and Bones...



*a first solo show! tell your mom and bring your sister if you can't handle it.

...Ladies und Gentlemen...drop your pissroom bait
And make sure you're not late, you tramps and lunatics.
Here's A trick that's gonna make you
Click.

-Marilyn Manson



*cyanotype on canvas








*chromogenic print





*chromogenic print


~MaNiFeSTo:

Working within the realms of image making and immersive installation, I have become increasingly interested in the notion that “objective” representation is one of the most pernicious myths to ever plague humanity’s understanding of the world. Initially, employed as the handmaiden of this ideology, the camera and its ensuing photographs ushered in an entirely new era of technocratic domination. This method of recording reality simultaneously serves to establish the fabricated reflection of a machine and is used to further legitimize an institutionally ordered world. The camera in this respect is not a neutral tool for documenting “truth,” but rather a panopticon which enforces a system of values founded upon the acceptance of its gaze. Controlling the images behind an idea is a means to reinforce its authority. I am deeply interested in exploring this potential for the image and art experience to exist as a discursive site for power utilized within the realms of knowledge production. I believe this power dynamic is irrevocably present at the heart of photographic production and reproduction. With the image as an arbiter of value, “the heavenly fire no longer strikes depraved cities, it is rather the lens which cuts through ordinary reality like a laser, putting it to death.”1

In my body of “environmental portraits,” I am seeking to address the existential crisis of subjectivity in relation to one’s personal understanding and connection with the Other. In each image, the Subject’s face is physically cropped out of the frame, isolating the body in a specific space. Without the ability to connect a complete facial identity to the person depicted, the viewer is instead forced to construct a persona based on body language, personal objects, and anything that one may glean from the mis-en-scene of the Subject’s domestic space. I am interested in investigating this sliding of the universe away from the individual in an attempt to probe the objectifying nature of another’s gaze at a Subject unable to return the look.

My “Flesh and Bones” series is a direct visual interfacing of both the external and internal structures of the body. In examining humanity’s tissue, these images serve as a simultaneous viewing of the exterior human visage in conjunction with the interior aesthetics of x-ray and endoscopic imaging. Immersed and often subsumed by the medical-visual codification of physical malady, the subject’s internal characteristics are laid bare and made public, forcing us into a confrontation with the intimate sliver of an unseen doppelganger. Operating within the visual lexicon, representation is an incision made by the Foucaultian blade of institution, which peels back the veneer of our external projections, literally cutting to the bone in its attempt to diagnose, prescribe, and control both creature and culture.

By subverting “the (modern) belief in vision as a privileged means of access to certainty and truth,” images may be constructed to challenge the viewer’s dominant perceptual paradigm.2 In this way we may realign, re-asses, re-conceptualize, and reflect on the manner in which we apprehend our reality, ourselves, and others.

1. Jean Baudrillard, qtd. in “The Crisis of the Real: Photography and Postmodernism,”
Andy Grundberg
2. Craig Owens, “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism”

Thursday, January 21, 2010

farm birds...



*stone lithograph on rile target

(on view at W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery
Cal Poly Pomona. mar. 18 - may 1.)


...she focuses on something...that's how she destroys it. intelligent?...oh, she's a nice girl...just not the sharpest razor to cut yourself with. ... let me keep your hands warm, she said as she closed her thighs. i'll do my best to do the same. ... Beautiful in Black...and you don't meat nice girls at the pub either.

Monday, December 7, 2009

cuTTiNg iN...



*photo-transfer, synthetic lithograph on paper






" viv*i*sec*tion\...n...1: the cutting of or operation on a living animal usu. for physiological or pathological investigation;broadly : any form of animal experimentation esp. if considered to cause distress to the subject 2: subjection to minute or pitiless examination or criticism " - webster's third new international unabridged dictionary and seven language dictionary, vol. 3


1. We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
And we aim to depress - Marilyn Manson
2. I always believed that God would destroy L.A. for its sins. Finally, I realized
that He had already destroyed it, and then left it around as a warning.
-Lewis Baltz

man truly is a bad animal...
one thousand four hundred fifty dollars for six inches by nine inches. rough with pencil drawing beneath. t-shirt available. silk screened g-stings for the ladies next time. custom hand-pulled resin anal beads. a guaranteed perfect fit. we may as well be shoving it up our asses. why should low art be allowed to command this amount and Hussar and Robert Williams aren't in most of the real church's permanent collections? never-mind the animal in the image: the shitty price-tag was a knife in the back of the art realm: the low-brow, the gallery, the patron, the viewer, the artist. the rhetoric of smallness. an implied rarity among commodities, as if the object was a treasure in light of its size. as if what it lacked in surface area it made up for in depth. a bad excuse. a dirty joke.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

D-Con Pasadena Toy Time 2009



*custom bric-a-brac clearance owl (3.5 in.)


it was a fun, worth while experience, especially if you were a retailer and not an independent artist. but we know all this by now - moot points accepted. the only "toy" related object i've painted, for posterity's sake. maybe if i made a few thousand of them and had a slick box to put it in?

JA's birthday present.

always hearing the owls are not what they seem. this kinky rock god only had two strings left when he came off the stage. the hieronymus heart ache of our heroine hero hides a heinous ridiculousness beneath it's thick hide. visions of early mourning tea pulled through a glass siphon. baby, this little wing sleeps under a red house.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

what rough beast slouches back toward the drawing board...



*monoprint with stencil, photo-transfer, hand coloring



the body and mind :: the brain and the spirit
two abusive parents living on opposite poles of a scorched earth, continually beating the life out of their impoverished, illegitimate, sociopath stepchild, science. the one made a pile of numbers out of all they could see, the other never saw the tank approaching. do i cease being me when my neurotransmitters shut down? do you feel when you sleep? does the world die when you shut your eyes on it? why can't we be more than the blood running through plaque encrusted gelatinous tubes? what if gray matter was a muscle instead? what does it mean to find neurons in heart tissue? it can be argued quite well that all our "emotions", "feelings", etc. are simply sensations produced by the excretion of hormones produced from glands in the brain, released into the bloodstream, coursing through the circulatory system, prompting somatic responses, the firing of neural synapses. so what/who am i? where are we willing to place control? i can still see that bug-eyed frenchman looking through the keyhole as a tear crawled down his face. what now? i hear atlas only shrugged. "one beats the dog one loves best."

1. the worm is in man's heart. that is where it must be sought. -Albert Camus
2. who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. -Walter B. Gibson
3. the field cannot be well seen from within the field. -C.S. Lewis
4. i shall never be a consciousness watching itself -Therapy?
5. unless you have lightning in your heart you cannot possibly understand. -Friedrich Nietzsche
6. the heart is pointed down -The Smashing Pumpkins
7. the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. -Blaise Pascal

Thursday, October 22, 2009

dis-associated press....or, marvin strikes again






*photo-transfer, letterpress on paper


deconstructed and recontextualized to pleasure your propaganda palette. what does the newspaper really say? let us not be so naive. you're gonna need more than that coffee to wake up.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

the glory hole is in your head...



*temporary installation, university restroom


in case you didn't have restroom insecurities before...this time the joke's in the wall, not your hand. you won't get no glory on that side of the hole...

Monday, October 19, 2009

holy francisco A.P.E. - jumpstarting the roadless travel




*photo-transfer, letterpress on paper

post APE post! it's been over a year and the goth-emo quote of the day: a birthday means you're just a years worth of heart beats closer to your own death. re-kindling the embers of a sandy fire, blowing down the highway to put dust in the bowl and carry back the coals from san francisco. while the radio screams HELP! through the haze we look to the trees for the blossoms of yesterday. the good doctor was wrong. the road isn't dead yet.