tom moody
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Belaboring this, but what the hell. The Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo just opened a big show called "Extreme Abstraction," which is short for "Extreme(ly Large) Abstraction (Show)," since the work isn't really extreme but consists mostly of blue chip practitioners both living and dead. What would a real "extreme abstraction" show consist of?
--Work in a visual language that is neither Renaissance perspective nor Modernist allover flatness nor Kraussian "expanded field" conceptualism but something wholly new and unrecognized. Which by definition means it would not be in the show.
--Abstract art outside the range of human perception, requiring special equipment to view or hear it.
--Art that is so volatile or fugitive that it decays by the show's end.
--Abstraction that results from extremes of human behavior, as in paintings made of blood during actual cult rituals, under the influence of hallucinogens, etc. See also John Nash's "paranoia rooms" in A Beautiful Mind.
--Conceptual art practices that recontectualize abstract things from the culture, such as mathematical formulae, circuit diagrams, or botanical microphotography, all of which are completely incomprehensible to the layman.
Any others?
Update, from the comments:
--Abstract art created while doing a righteous goofy-foot 360 counter-rotation backside double-fakey. (mark)
--Thousands and thousands of yards of saffron fabric hanging from orange goal posts... (bill)
"Nine Inch Bells" [mp3 removed]
Quoting myself from an earlier thread: "Chris, thanks for the comment on the recent visual work, and no, my musicmaking is still going strong. I just picked up a slew of new programs and am slowly learning them. If anything has to give here it's going to be the damn writing."