stealth icon (detail)
by anna missed
oil on wood; 2005
full size (120kb)
Stealth Icon replica are available at ChristianShoppersNetwork.com
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February 3, 2006
Stealth Icon
Comments
These pictures and a bunch more by anna missed are currently on public view at:
Linda Hodges Gallery
316 First Ave South
Seattle WA 98104
Commentator annie has been there: These are her impressions.
in a word, spellbinding. you walk in thru the doors and are immediately zapped w/subtle intensity. the depth of texture pulls you in to the unmistakable mission. it dares you yet never makes you wonder what the artist suggests.tickle is the wrong word. tempting. like a poison that tastes good. almost pretty. delicate, yet unmasking just the same. the familiar images undulating, intertwined. one of my favorites, so simple, celedon leaves superimposed over machine of war sets you there , a witness, a target in the underbrush.further down the walls, more daring, dramatic.
one of the many aspects of the art you cannot grasp in a photo is the bulk of the canvas, wood, thick slabs. chainsawed, rough gouges, depth… oh.
Holy shit, anna missed that was like a having a tall glass of ice water thrown in my face!
Rarely does art move me like that; I can think of only one other piece that has had that kind of immediate effect on me.
If I wasn’t a starving student I’d buy it.
Thanks, b.
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by those birthmarks on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan then we take Berlin
-Leonard Cohen
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 3 2006 14:52 utc | 2
Yes. Chilling. Couldn’t access “Stealth Icon” link and too scared to go to the “Christian Shoppers Network” so I didn’t follow but anna missed, you are doing some powerful, powerful things. I don’t have words (did you ever notice?) but would truly love to see the rest of the show somehow. And the reviews. Please.
Posted by: beq | Feb 3 2006 15:04 utc | 3
Speaking of chilling,
“Valley of the Wolves Iraq,”New Turkish movie features American soldiers crashing Iraqi wedding, shooting groom in head, dragging survivors to Abu Ghraib prison where Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, sells them to rich people in New York. Starring Gary Busey.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 3 2006 19:38 utc | 4
best of luck on the showing, anna missed. wish it wasn’t so far away! is that a skull peering out from behind the chapel panel?
Posted by: b real | Feb 3 2006 20:01 utc | 5
Oh b,
That icon link…..I just can’t stay ahead of all this, hyperbole eclipsed by reality again.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 3 2006 20:57 utc | 6
A LINK to the complete exhibition (almost all) of pictures now showing in Seattle USA.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 5 2006 20:26 utc | 8
Really stunning anna missed. Thank you for sharing. I wish I could see them all up close. Thank you. Malooga, American Gothic says it quite well.
Posted by: beq | Feb 5 2006 21:08 utc | 9
wonderful work – anna missed – between the ecstatic & the catastrophic
in these times of the profoundest stupidity & even greater escalation in the degredation of our species – the work of the heart has many obligations – creating art is one of them
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 6 2006 1:27 utc | 12
Yes. Yes.
I would like to see them for real. Anna missed, please, if you will, add my email to those to whom you send announcements concerning future exhibits, etc. You never know.
– Ana
Posted by: Noisette | Feb 6 2006 21:03 utc | 13
Looks like the first review of the exhibition is in, a rock through the front door window of the gallery last night — Linda doesnt seem to upset (yet) — will update if this develops.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 9 2006 20:59 utc | 14
anna missed, that’s a damn shame, lets hope it just a one time aberration.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 9 2006 21:40 utc | 15
Looks like the first review of the exhibition is in, a rock through the front door window of the gallery last night
Congratulations. Call the press. Increase the prices.
(And Linda needs better windows.)
</sarcasm?>
wow, i guess you could take it as a compliment!!. maybe i’ll call the radio station, i have a friend who works for komo 1000. get the press over there on the double!!!
Posted by: annie | Feb 9 2006 23:16 utc | 18
Another review of the exhibition.
Seattle Times:
Against the grain: Using wood panels, two Seattle veterans take different paths
Always stretching the idea of painting to the limit, Chevalier’s new works are no exception. Thick slabs of wood, often with the bark retained, are carved and painted with anti-war images. Once hailed as an abstract painter in the pages of Artforum and Art in America magazines, Chevalier has gone political again. Chevalier was in a big 1991 touring museum survey of art about Vietnam.
Considering he is a Vietnam veteran, this should not be surprising. Each of the 20 works on view combines patterned imagery of leaves and trees with stencil-sprayed helicopters, jet fighter planes, hands and lace. Dots and horizontal bands of color allude to the American flag, now dripping in the blood of red or orange paint.
Titles like “fall in fallujah,” “pointed veil” and “person-hood as a blade” (all works are 2005) have a bluster that does not match these relatively subtle works. Chevalier’s politics are submerged beneath painterly effects of color, brushwork and drawing that only gradually reveal his anger. Rows of black triangles become bomber jets; colored dots become bullet holes; pink and yellow circles surrounded by black are targets.
With the new work, each composition tends to revolve around a central image including “untitled (President Bush)” a raw wooden slab with Bush’s head appearing to have been singed with a blowtorch. Less tendentious works like “sowing the knowledge of resistance,” “snow job” and “creep of darkness” better combine lush painterly effects with unsettling military hardware. In “it’s a crying shame,” drips of red paint stand in as bloody tears; “flying hatchet” is the most sculptural with three wood scraps combined.
Pictures in this exhibition: 1, 2
In this show, Chevalier has turned his accumulated visual lexicon of materials, structure, and iconography into a non-linear narrative that seeks an exemplification of our current social and political climate. These new works examine, from a cultural perspective, the imagery of american exceptionalism, religion, militarism, and advertising. Such imagery is presented as a layered sediment of accumulated metaphor that invites interpretation on the part of the viewer, and may reveal in the process the structure of one’s beliefs.
Congrats anna missed!
These new works examine, from a cultural perspective, the imagery of american exceptionalism, religion, militarism, and advertising. Such imagery is presented as a layered sediment of accumulated metaphor that invites interpretation on the part of the viewer, and may reveal in the process the structure of one’s beliefs.
Wow.
anna missed
felicitations my friend & thanks, b for the link – i think anna that n another moment of time we have also shared pages – art & language
there is a painter in australia whom i think has a connection with your work – peter kennedy – ‘stars disordered’ voices from a chorus’ perhaps a link can be found to his work thru link to monash university & a professor anne marsh
works thru a close reading of raymond williams/benjamin/old karl marx/a little me
in any case
tendresse et force
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 10 2006 19:35 utc | 22
Thanks for posting that b. In spite of feeling a little queezy about all the apparent self promotion going on here with this show — I’m assuming that most here will understand this as a process to find another voice,in visual art, that is expressive of the dialectic we share here. Which has been a major catalyst (you all) that has informed and colored much of the content of this current artwork. So in this case I feel compelled to share its foray into the real physical world, in spite of the emberassment, of seeming to be about me. I can only hope it all adds up as another positive possibility in the scheme of things.
Anyway,
the Times review was not as bad as I had expected. I’ve known this particular critic for many years and he has reviewed my work many times, and always he is unpredictable and to a degree down right fickle. For example, in a conversation about the show earlyer in the week, the first thing he said (in refrence to the work) was “Jack, you know I hate political art”, which contrary to my memory of some years ago, where he would admonish the art community for not being political enough(which of course is universally true in the art world). So one never knows what to expect.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 10 2006 19:55 utc | 23
Don’t feel queasy. It’s all to the good. And to see the physical results of your journey. I am humbled. [anna missed: did you get the flowers?]
Posted by: beq | Feb 10 2006 20:13 utc | 24
& anna
yr work is our geography so share with us what is being said. & the critic – we have known their number – caricatures of caricatures – who often wouldn’t understand gesture, yet alone strokes, or dripping, or projecting, or whatever – lucky enough to have lived a life long enough to have seen their hollowness proved without question & to have grown up in a culture – more or less – in situ – where these parasites could not hide behind dominant cultures columns because they were so feeble
the about turn of this critic not a surpise
they never would have understood that – political acts & political culture are themselves sacred in a culture of silence & consent
in poetry there are three people maiakovski, nazim hilmet & pier paolo pasolini’s experiments that were politically determined have not met their technical match today centuries & decades after their gifts
these assehole wouldn’t know orozco from their orifice
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 11 2006 3:15 utc | 25
@ anna missed
I love seeing your work as a part of this site, and the fact that you acknowledge the interrelationship makes it even more special.
@ remembereringgiap
Good to see your visionary comments again. Hope you are feeling OK.
r’giap,
loved this one , back to you.
The Walnut Tree
my head foaming clouds, sea inside me and out
I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Park
an old walnut, knot by knot, shred by shred
Neither you are aware of this, nor the police
I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Park
My leaves are nimble, nimble like fish in water
My leaves are sheer, sheer like a silk handkerchief
pick, wipe, my rose, the tear from your eyes
My leaves are my hands, I have one hundred thousand
I touch you with one hundred thousand hands, I touch Istanbul
My leaves are my eyes, I look in amazement
I watch you with one hundred thousand eyes, I watch Istanbul
Like one hundred thousand hearts, beat, beat my leaves
I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Park
neither you are aware of this, nor the police
Nazim Hikmet
translated from Turkish by Gun Gencer
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 11 2006 9:08 utc | 27
anna
like the poem you have cited – this important point – within ceation’s order & especially those taught to us by the aster i mention but i could also mention o’keefe, riviera, kahlo etc etc – that is to create cosmologies that are vast enough to include the mundane even the vulgar with the spectral & the transcendental
when inside an epic poem of hikmets – he says – my loved one – my heart breaks not with sentimentality but with awe at the ability to speak for all of us. also true of vladimir when he places himself at the centre of action & when pasolin speaks of the streets of the modern metropolis
these are artist who have taught us the opposite lesson of bourgeois culture – that we have a right & even a cared duty to use – everything – there is nothing tooo banal or too exalted & ecstatic
& it is my position – only those of us in opposition, those of us who have side with the oppressed are capable, really of understanding & transforming these cosmologies
because the culture of the oppressed is a living thing, it has a motor – passion & it learns its lessons from defeat which those who rule from the roll of dollars are incapable of doing
yr work is magnificent because it mixes the banal with the truly transcedental & it is that transcedentality which creates the beauty – which in & of itself – is a form of truth – that as a publica we are dialectically challenged to use in our own lives
venceremos
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 11 2006 15:11 utc | 28
Lovely things. I too wish I could see them in the flesh (the lignin?), so to speak. Congrats, anna.
As for the rock review – dumb as a…
Posted by: Dismal Science | Feb 11 2006 16:21 utc | 29