Agitation Free

6 - 27 February 2009

Ry Haskings
Kati Rule
Bryan Spier

Essay by Masato Takasaka

An investigation of the inherent conceptual similarities between three non-objective abstraction artists and their representational approaches in addressing the experience of the everyday.

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Essay

Agitation Free your mind - Katie Rules, Bryan Spier had a show called Rules; Ry Haskings uses a Ruler to make his work.

The readymade and the already made?.

What is a ready-made, and can you make one? How can you find what you have already made? Wherein lies the creative act, and at what point and why do the objects become compelling? What are the implications of self-appropriation?

Christopher Miles, "Mark Grotjahn" in Artext, Fall 2002 p. 48

More than meets the eyes* / you do the math (rock).

I went to a gig last week - DAS BUTCHER, a band called PARADING and ZOND.

It was mind melting - DAS BUTCHER was like BRIAN ENO and GOBLIN mashed together. PARADING was like SPACEMAN 3 meets MY BLOODY VALENTINE - a kind of 80's or very early 90's shoe gazer. ZOND just blew my head off! So, my ears are still ringing, and the whole experience has perhaps altered my writing skills...

Agitation Free

... the name of a German prog rock group formed somewhere in time, somewhere in the mid 1970's! Google it! It is also the name of this show featuring the gesamtkunstwerks of Ry Haskings, Sir Bryan Spier and Kati Rule.

The art of Ry Haskings brings to mind a kind of new age mysticism cum geometric abstraction; or Ralph Balson modernism meets Transformers - in the middle of the robot transforming into something else (un) recognizable, the sum of its parts discovers something that already existed.

Ry has been 'surfin the net' for images to complement his NON-OBJECTIVE geometric prog-math-rock-offs... the techno-global age of the internet enabling a 'flattening of the world', mirror to the surface of the super-hard-edge-flatness of Ry's geometric compositions.

The hard edge geometry recalls geodesic landscape architectures - Buckminster Fuller as Doc from Back to the Future part 6 - designing the latest astro-turf in outer space on a super Super Nintendo or PS5. All this and more happens when you make art while listening to Alan Parsons Project, translating music into visual form.

18 AND LIFE (COACH).

Amidst all this math-rock-sudoku-op-freak-out Ry juxtaposes representations of the ubiquitous 'life coach', random pictures downloaded from the net slightly altered with photoshop - eyes and mouths doubled.. but why?

Re-framing the representation of the 'life coach' and Non-Objective abstraction.
In each instance Ry asks the viewer to reach some kind of equivalence of representation of the visual - with no conclusion, the works become lost in mis-translation.

The doubling of eyes, mouth /facial features produces a doubling of vision.
The doubling of eyes, mouth /facial features produces a doubling of vision.

Woah dude!

The constructionist/constructivist connections Ry makes between his representations can be seen as an ongoing concern in his work and furthers the concept of the artist re-framing the work. Using ready-made materials derived from the artists' current studio fit-out, Ry reconfigures these materials that are normally used for Interior Design to re-frame 'High Art'.

Observing the 'current trends in commercial galleries with their approach to slick framing', Ry counteracts this with a D.I.Y. approach -- an assemblage technique for re-framing. The raw deliberate hand made quality of the 're-frames' in contrast to the hi-tech-fastidious-finish-fetish of pencil and gouache creates a 'mash up' - a synthesis of style, simultaneously evoking past and present, while also working on a sculptural and pictorial level.

LET"S DO THE TIME WARP...

Again?

The genre of prog rock, krautrock evolved from extended free jams, psychedelic drones and time signature changes, somewhere in time, out of time from another time.

DISCUSS.

The works incorporate an approach to FREE TIME and extend this idea of FREE TIME... in REAL SPACE

DISCUSS.

Whoa dude! (in the voice of Keanu Reeves from Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure)

Stop.

OFF THE WALL (no, not the Michael Jackson album.)

Sir Bryan Spier, - not Britney Spears and not Albert Speer, but almost - it's like OOPS! I did it again! And again! ... the artist listens and then the artist makes psychedelia- art- nouveau. It's kind of like the drugs don't work - like that Verve song, but not like that Verve song, more like... because you don't need the drugs, because you've already taken too many and you've started seeing black dots - and the BLACK DOTS HAVE EYES! And you start to see the abstract-plastic-fantastic dripping and tripping of the walls (OFF THE WALL)... hey, its also the name of a collection of 70's psychedelic rock posters Bryan has been looking at. A mash up of psychedelic rock freak outs and extended jam sessions in the studio has metamorphosized and crystallized. The outcome is unknown (X), the artist (Y) is designing on the mac laptop (Z) in the studio (eh?) - "It is like Playstation!"!?

RAGE AGAINST THE ARCHITECTURE!

RAGE AGAINST THE MINIMALISM!

The revolution is here dude.

Can you hear... here! NOW.

Can you hear it coming?

It's... it's like Audrey Beardsley meets Frank Stella circa the 80's only listening to BAROQUE HOUSE, in DA HOUSE; in DA BAUHAUS furnished with FENDI and PAUL SMITH beach towels. It's like, after the party and everyone is invited - all tomorrows, yesterdays and next weeks parties - maybe?

Just say maybe.

Stop.

KATI RULES

Kati tells me that her latest body of work is about stuff she doesn't want but doesn't need.

Huh?

Oh, Ok. She has two works.

The first - A wall drawing, of her parents house in the eastern suburbs somewhere. I think it's in Ringwood - yeah. Ok. Mum and Dad are moving out soon, after like, you know 30 years or something. (said in Alicia Silverstone's voice from Clueless). Kati will draw the house in 'The Chocolate Box Style' so as to resemble a country house in the provincial French countryside - a fiction made REAL.

LOW suburbia turns into the imaginary HIGH art picturesque of the 19th century. Maybe. Like a wine label or something.

REAL LIFE...it's like a box of chocolate boxes.

Kati likes the house, it reminds her of somewhere else.

"Somewhere in the south of France maybe?"

Ah yes... provincial France?

'Yeah, like the illustrations on the chocolate boxes?'

You know the ones.

The second idea is she plans to have stuff she has collected - her stuff and other people's stuff. It is all in storage boxes from OFFICE WORKS at her parent's house.

Stuff like - where do put your own art invites, grade two love letters, old magazines and art exhibition paraphernalia? What about Sharon's invites?

I imagine if Kurt Schwitters was alive today... he may have not made the MERZBAU and instead stored everything he had in storage boxes from OFFICE WORKS.

Maybe.

Kati doesn't have a title yet, so I am going to take the artistic license to title the work for her. I will call it:

"ALL THE STUFF THAT I HAVE COLLECTED FROM THE LAST @)_#) YEARS OR SO... IT'S STILL IN STORAGE BOXES AT MY PARENTS HOUSE... SOMEWHERE IN THE EASTERN SUBURBS "

Kati would like the 'stuff' just to be 'stuff'. Kind of like minimalism.
A readymade minimalism. IT IS WHAT IT IS (but not really.)

But as we all know, once it enters the white cube, in this case the SPARE ROOM,
the stuff of the everyday, can never be just 'stuff'.

Which is funny because what happens with a SPARE ROOM in a house... it always inevitably gets filled with STUFF THAT YOU WANT but don't actually NEED.

Objects rendered futile ...a kind of nothing.

Just like... Art.

I imagine all the work for this show could end up in the spare room. The ready-made already made spare room.

END.

Oh .One more thing....

Peace Sells...
But who's buying Contemporary Art?

Masato Takasaka
January 2009

Masato Takasaka is an artist currently undertaking a Masters of Fine Art (by Research) in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University and also teaches in 1st year History/ Theory Interior design at the School of Architecture & Design, RMIT University.

Reviews

Johnson, Frances. 'Psychodelic Patterns'. Sightlines, The Age. 20 February 2009. Pg 17.

Invitation

Catalogue