Okay, this post will be a work in progress. I have a number of projects in development, all months away from completion. So this serves as a primer on what I’m up to at the moment. I will post some images when I have some images worth looking at.
Avant Nez is a line of bespoke fragrances I launched about a year ago for the c (pronounced /k/) brand. In that time I have not standardized the packaging for the line, instead opting to treat the bottle and packaging as a flexible element which could respond to each individual fragrance I designed. However, it is not realistic to presume that as I get more commissions I will be able to maintain this kind of flexibility. So I have distilled the identity of Avant Nez as a process/event/product into a set of values that will transcend any individual commission. At the moment, I have arrived at two design solutions that I like more or less equally. So I’m sourcing materials for both, assuming that one will win out when an actual prototype is made. I have until February, which is when I will be launching the Avant Nez project at Aldis Browne’s new space in La Jolla. A double thanks to Aldis for offering me studio space while I am still without a home studio.
In May I will travel to Italy where I will be collaborating with Dutch artist, Anna van Suchtelen on a project called When to throw a painting to a drowning man. This is a context-specific video artwork/artist book that Anna and I will complete as artists-in-residence during an interdisciplinary conference/certificate program on Translational Medicine. Translational Medicine is a field of research that attempts to bring scientific discoveries from conception to the point where they may be used to directly benefit patients. The beautiful thing about being able to participate in this project – other than it being in Siracusa – is the educational component: Eureka, the institute hosting this endeavor, developed a curriculum for an international group of highly intelligent science and business students. To the extent the content of the conference falls well outside my knowledge base, it completely synchs with my pedagogical interests in new models of educating advanced (graduate level) cultural practitioners. The organizers, Salvo Albani and Berent Prakken are comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with working collaboratively and across disciplinary borders. My collaboration with Anna is just a small part of their program, but one which will highlight the false dilemma of considering art and science as binary opposites; instead our video will be a collection of allegories designed to position art and science as two points in a continuum, which offers practitioners in either discipline a broader set of tools with which to approach their craft.
At the conclusion of the project in Sicily I will travel to Austria to install a body of work at Max and Herbert Lust’s gallery in Vienna. While Herbert is well known for his experimental writing and art historical scholarship, his grandson Max is really one to watch. He’s got the trifecta: youth, intellect and irreverence. My work for the Lust Gallery is still in its infancy, so I don’t want to say much about it, other than it will use painting and olfaction to explore themes of personal and collective identity. More on this as it develops.