www.kenboe.com

12/11/2009

Synchronic Vocabulary(Continued)

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Synchronic Dragons:
Paintings From My Teapot Series maybe will be exhibiting First Friday November 5th at Rendezvous, Flagstaff, Arizona – FOR THAT ENTIRE MONTH (I will be there for the opening reception!)
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Join the discussion among Music, Theater, Dance, Science, Sculpture, Film, Philosophy, Paint, Poetry People!

”...Illustrating whirlygig effigies…”

If you can, hold a “creative meeting” in an art straddled environment such as a coffee house, introducing open minds to the work, and for the sake of talking ideas in the presence of original and experimental art. I think you will find along with others that you are more creative in the presence of art than in some more sterile setting.

For this reason its interesting for me to exhibit my work in Coffee Houses where people actually sit down and talk ideas in the presence of the art. My motivation to create art is perhaps as research into helping people to be more creative who are around it.

I’ve decided to call this round “Synchronic Dragons”. The Tea Pots are begun with a scribble which may become anything. As a mark, it is a changeling, or like “the Chinese dragon… able to shrink to the size of a silk worm; and then swell up to fill the entire space between heaven and earth. It can make itself visible or invisible, as it so chooses. It can take on human form or that of another animal to carry out some secret mission.” As an art experience, I feel that the potential meanings may occur synchronically in the minds of those in the presence of the artwork, as a kind of pre-linguistic synchronization.(Source: S. Wells Williams: http://www.ninedragonbaguazhang.com/dragons.htm )

To speak with me, the artist, call 928-273-7679
To speak with Hotel Management about purchasing work or if the show is up, call Sean McMahan at 928-699-9853 or Jimmy Craven at 928-799-6971

My exhibition, and the Grand Opening of Rendezvous in Flagstaff was delayed:
THERE WILL HOPEFULLY BE A SHOW FOR THE NOVEMBER FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK. And remember: There’s no better place for enlightened discussion than in the presence of art.


More Ken Boe @ www.kenboe.com
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Some of my best Teapot paintings will be showing in an on-going arrangement and some work may hang in the adjacent Hotel Monte Vista.

The Rendezvous is being renovated and expanded along with other improvments to the hotel:
100 N. San Francisco St., Flagstaff, Arizona, 86001
phone: 928-779-6971 toll free: 800-545-3068 fax: 928-779-2904

The synchronic vibration between object and metaphor is the central magic or beauty that my artwork is concerned with. It is a thesis behind my art that all objects, be they containers such as teapots, old rusty cans, sculptures, tree roots, or concepts themselves, continually vibrate frequencies of inchoate meaning which register in our minds as a continuum of metaphorical variability. This is as simple as a child imagining a tin can to be a space ship, or as complex as Game Theory . I am interested in how the embodied mind gives meaning to things, but also, that our minds are but another coincidence on the shores of Universe where waves of energy flow in and out dynamically in collaboration with creation. Original artwork is by this means a powerful player in the rhythmic conundrums of conscious and unconscious, and the way we experience a synchronic vocabulary of our immediate peripheral environment, which is the language we share with those whom we are conversing with, where we are conversing, such as at one of my art receptions.

Just as one concept becomes an analogy for another, one image or physical object metaphorically becomes conceptual, and the cycle continues indefinitely. Within the random details of its liberating ambiguity, original artwork is one of the most powerful tools we have for generating not just new meanings, but new coincidental meanings that tie our creativity into the breathing universe. By artwork I mean painting, all the traditional arts and crafts, also including their collaboration and synthesis with other mediums such as philosophy and mathematics. This manifesto is itself an artwork. And historically, one could say that both science and possibly religion are sub-genres of art.

Both the reception and invention of meaning appears to take place in our minds, such as in private thoughts. But even those do not occur in a vacuum for us interstellar-dreaming social animals engaged in so much conversation and collaboration, where meaning takes place in much more intense oscillations of simultaneous understanding, or synchronic vibration. Though the dictionary of idiom and simile, and the thesaurus of synonym may capture in recorded word formations many of these intersections of object and metaphor, actual meanings only occur like puffs of smoke, or flashes of light. The meanings stay warm no more than a pot of tea shared by two people discussing them (creatively finding meaning and re-finding meaning as their minds roam the languages they find themselves in, which are as much the objects in the room they inhabit as it is their other available lexicons.)

Meaning is contextual, but the ambiguity of art allows infinite signifiers of potential meaning/metaphor to be juxtaposed in experimental compositions which are open ended for viewers to harvest in whatever moment prevails. The “textus” of context is a kaleidoscope of variability where meaning is weaved from context, but always changing because the infinite variables of context are always changing. If “so and so” says something while drinking tea that is a different context, and therefore meaning, than if he was drinking beer when he said it. If an artwork is painted on canvas that is a different context than if it is painted on plywood. The spin of meaning continues if its tar, dirt, and blood painted on the canvas, but expensive oil paints and gold leaf on the plywood. All this before we even get to the antique pornography or the images stolen off of a secret government database.

Synchronic vibrations become meaning like puffs of light in the moment of a brainstorm, and then they are gone (though the artist may put them into fac-simile – pun intended.) At best, facsimiles are all that we are ever left with. But it works because then the facsimile (artwork, neologism, consumer product, etc.), and the details of its ambiguity, become objects through which the synchronic vibrations may continue at other new levels, history be damned (or undammed.) Thus the word facsimile itself is etymologically rooted in likenesses, not literalness, prior to the technology metaphors it generated from early copy machines to fax machines, meaning exact copy, and now back again to my usage. And the poetry to this is that “exact copies”, things “literal”, “realist”, etc. are no less likenesses than the most ambiguous metaphor. Only context can shift it around rhetorically to where you want it, and then its gone again, copies to the wind.

The kinds of objects that I am most concerned with at the moment are containers. The container “schema” is, according to my old teacher, the philosopher Mark Johnson, and his collaborators, metaphorically/conceptually rooted in our bodily experience in this gravity-based world. Our bodies are containers, ideas or sets are containers, art shows are containers; anything with an “in” or an “out” is metaphorically connected to our bodily experience with/in container schemas. So there is a lot of room for artists to mess around in there, with these ideas, or just ones intuition, collaborations, and research of container phenomenon. My theory is not necessary, it is just another artwork to bounce ideas off of.

For Synchronic Vessels, my January 2010 exhibition in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, I have focused on the teapot as a central theme. The images themselves are secondary to the techniques used to paint them. Shadows are casted from old used containers dumped into the desert, and deteriorated. Scribbles are registered from my unconscious mind and then randomly drawn into teapot persona. Colors, textures, paint application methods, and compositional modalities are juxtaposed off of one another. Philosophy aside, my intent is to create images which 1.) Haven’t existed before but are on some level attached to our worldly experience. 2.) Art which directly represents the creative process itself by being experimental. 3.) Art which is available to the viewers unconscious as a source of creative inspiration and visual vocabulary. 4.) Art which has the possibility of emotional narrative, for easier digestion. Well maybe not.

For Synchronic Chaos, my January 2010 exhibition in Downtown Phoenix, Arizona, I have hazarded more experimental work using encaustic painting techniques where pigments, resins, and bee’s wax are burned into the artwork, along with other assembled materials. In these works I further all the techniques used in the teapot paintings, as well as invent new ones, which is partly the point. Synchronic chaos is that moment when what appears chaotic aligns within us either as déjà vu, coincidence, or as an insight, revelation, miracle, or art form. Like a flash of smoke, doing highly experimental artwork assures producing articles of synchronic chaos. The artwork itself is the facsimile of ones chaotic determinations with the unrehearsed; the mixed-metaphors sodden with mixed-media; the emotionally and intellectually improvised problem solving of purged imagination and physical world. The artwork, in turn, is a prime conductor for transmitting its own synchronic vibrations in the mental hands of audience. The difference between my two exhibitions, their duality, is that the vessel work has a more refined, or focused ontology, whereas the chaos show, like the space itself, is more open-ended. Both shows are full of the details of ambiguity from which you may invent your own salvation, if so inclined.

For more on Ken Boe, click here.

Click here for the news article about the arts in Miami Arizona

Join the Miami Arts Commision – WWW.MIAMIARTSCOMMISSION.ORG Only 10 bucks!

Link here to images of the encaustic and mixed-media works in Miami Arizona show

Link here to see previous exhibition at Coppermine, from my Teapot Series

5/9/2009

ART APPRECIATION = KNOWLEDGE = CHOICE: YOU LIKE WHAT YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE DECIDES THAT YOU WILL LIKE

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A Brief Essay By Ken Boe Concerning The Phenomenology Of Taste, Taste As Free Will, and Morality As Taste. (continues below)

The title of this essay goes directly to my point, which the essay reiterates, which is that you like what you choose to like which means that taste is also a moral decision by virtue of both what you exclude as well as HOW you include that which you will like. It is the choice of having knowledge or not having knowledge. If you decide that you DON’T LIKE Abstraction in painting, for instance, this is a moral decision and prejudice which is usually reinforced through purposeful ignorance. The same would go for not liking various ethnic art forms, or European Classical forms of art. But the morality of taste is skewed because knowledge is required to like something, so you must either choose to learn about something prior to being able to like something, or this learning was forced on you through body, environment, schooling, religion, or parents.

To declare that you DON’T appreciate something is therefore a very grave task because it reveals either your ignorance of it or a political decision to remain ignorant of it. For the more that you will learn about something, the more you will appreciate it, whether or not you agree with its politics, etc. For you should know that if you don’t like Opera, or Ballet, or Hip Hop it is because you don’t know much about it, or its language. Judgements of taste should always be reserved for this reason unless you are content with being amoral. This is not to say that Hip Hop is as sophisticated as ballet. This is not to say that you must listen to any kind of music outside of your current mood. But to essencially declare it off-limits by claiming that you “don’t like it” is the equivalent of being a moral idiot. The moral human is always learning about new cultural forms and always self-actualizing new tastes. Though this essay doesn’t go far into it, opinions and morals also work in this manner, and are related to other concerns which will be overviewed such as post-traumatic stress disorder as dis-taste, or mindless taste.The issue of quality is no trump card, either, because other concerns such as individuality, originality, and basic human beauty trump the issue of quality. We appreciate the quality of something based on a set of agreements and histories, and expectations. But we appreciate a wrecked car in the same way, it is just as subjective. Collectability and economic value may concern themselves with quality, though scarcity rules these forces, too, so I would not make excuses for political dislikes on the basis of quality. You will still betray your immorality and ignorance concerning basic human beauty.

There is no art appreciation of any particular kind of art, there is nothing, period, that you like that you haven’t acquired knowledge of either through formal education, self-education, direct bodily experience, enculturation, or instinct(species education.). The more you like something, the more you will want to learn about it, even more. The more you dislike something, the more you will want to avoid knowledge of it. But if you seek to study your enemies, beware, you may come to love them (unless, of course, you’re a real psychopath incapable of empathy.)Higher Tastes are those acquired mindfully, such as learning about a culture new to you, or learning to play a musical instrument later in life. Lesser are the tastes acquired mindlessly, such as nostalgia or sentimentality, which are likings based on those tastes acquired as children or culture and not out of free will. Only when the lesser tastes are revisited and studied with concern do they become higher tastes, and not merely nostalgic. Of course, we can become nostalgic about our higher tastes over the years, but this can devolve into “resting on our laurals.” This is an important distinction because many people today suffer upon themselves and the world a mindlessness of taste and immoral rejection of” the other”, or the “different” in their tastes, because for the most part they only like things nostalgic to themselves, including most of their so-called opinions about the world, and do not learn outside the circle of these opinions and tastes.

It is often said that Cigars, Scotch Whiskey, and certain foods are “acquired tastes.” This is of course true in the larger sense of all likes and dislikes, and is entirely based on knowledge and decision, either to learn, or not to learn. I suppose Smoking Crack is an acquired taste. I can try to impress your view of politics by saying I don’t want that knowledge, but this is immoral. One should always seek to be empathetic, and through reading fiction I may appreciate the human being phenomenon of smoking crack without actually doing it. The rest is all politics.
The enlightened modern human being is constantly self-educating and experiencing of new things, particularly through arts and literature. There may be a limit to what you can “master” (a dubious term) but one learns to be mindful, or “open minded”. If you merely live on automatic pilot in the idioms of the day/or the culture of your past, you will neither appreciate nor understand much of what is going on in the world. You will have a few tastes, they will be limited, and other people’s tastes and ideas will make you angry.

In most cases, for instance, your religious choices and tastes will have been chosen for you and you do not know them by free will. If you choose to learn more deeply about your appointed religion you will come to appreciate it even more even if you are to become a critic of its own limitations. If you don’t learn much about your appointed religion, you may continue to pay lip service to it and you may enjoy it nostalgically around the holidays. Appreciation Equals Knowledge. You may be too afraid to learn about other religions because if you do you will appreciate them, and if your mind is polarized in black and white thinking, then this would befuddle the little world you are accustomed to.

Polarized reaction ruins the common opinion in these situations. If I was born into, or have chosen Religion A, then Religions B though Z must be “wrong”. If I was born “white”, then “black” must be “bad”. If I’m a surrealist painter then pop art must be “crap”. If I was born “male” then “female” must be “lesser than”. If there are 2 then 1 of them must be better than the other. This kind of dualistic thinking is a skewed paradigm which further isolates the imagination, keeping people from opening up and learning about what other varieties of life have to offer. The good news is that one can learn to appreciate a world full of morally ignorant people, including ourselves. It’s called Comedy.

The most important thing to learn to appreciate are the arts because the arts are the Symbiotic Tree Of Everything, even food and science. This is particularly true for the modern, contemporary, and experimental arts. The avant-garde, or cutting edge of culture and technology. For these are the places where human beings broach the most crucial edges of our evolution in the broadest possible terms, the finest details, the old and the new. And if you don’t choose to join in and learn with them, you may miss out on this evolution. You will also miss out on some valuable collectables in the art world for the mindful collector knows that any artist who has developed their own knowledge and techniques will have scarcity and will become more valuable.

3/14/2009

To learn more email kenboe@gmail.com

Filed under: — site admin @ 9:51 pm

There’s no better place for enlightened discussion than in the presence of art.

It is my belief that art enriches the language and character of discussion that occurs in its presence. Put another way, its my thesis that the environment we share is a language we share. Where our bodies are is where our brains peripherally seek out available metaphors, analogies, and other more sentient designs that help bring forth a more richer dialogue. If people would like to, we may have these discussions in the future on anything from fairly casual subjects to outright philosophy. This week’s events will center around ideas for future art shows, their promise and import, and really anything. I am also prepared to read an art statement later in the event schedule for us to discuss these ideas, should anyone be interested.



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Click here to view my encaustic show at THE COPPERMINE PICTURE CAFE

Neither/Nor

The raven takes the smallest pieces
of forbidden knowledge,
confabulating in carnal thesis
with claw on bible
his dead man’s pledge:

Never More

That life he lived
fraught for his liver,
and his forsaken gifts,
though not forgiven,
to speck across his eyes azure
like holes straight through his scull’s contour.

Through his head then flies the raven.

Through to the charms long lost, forgotten,
the laws engraved on fleeting wind
like the hush of secrets ill-spoken.

This talisman is a dream of wealth,
This talisman is a dream of murder;
Who brought this score of another’s death,
as one man’s scream is another’s laughter:

either/or

That he personified animals
within his own evil
then threaded their feathers
back onto the villain;
wars wolfed, and vanity vultured
into a GI Joe scarecrow, a crucified totem,
his stomach, his brain, his culture.

Neither/Nor

He is contained by his own shadow
like tintinnabulation in the bell tolled
escaping out through the burned over meadow
yet vibrating last where his eyes get cold.

He prays and he raves for the blood of Mohammad,
for fortune, for frankincense and crude.

He is we is of the morals of the sad
history of the self, and the stark raving rude
generations that don’t give a flying fuck.

The generations of pink noise and white lies
feeding off the world’s poor like the raven plucks
out of war, out of waste, our eyes.

© Ken Boe 2007 El Tovar, Grand Canyon

Click www.kenboe.com for more kenboe stuff!

9/7/2008

Kenboe’s Experimental Artist-materials Research Laboratory

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KEARL

There is a revolution going on in the development of new metamaterials such as silver nanowires already famous for possible military cloaking devices, and there is an entire history of innovations the past few centuries, and there are archeological discoveries going back thousands of years, and little of this is being considered for the production of art. I believe that new means of creating art should be one of our first priorities, and that by applying new and old directions of technological innovations to art production there is likely to be a much greater “spin-off” effect in all areas of science, culture, and industry, than military applications, which are too secretive for this synthesis to occur.
METAMORPHOSIS

I am therefore gathering together the proposal for KEARL: The Kenboe Experimental Artist-materials Research Laboratory. My initial thoughts are that this would eventually become a large well funded institute and residency where scientists and other types of researchers would be commissioned in the form of a Residency to apply their research to art applications in association with other artists also on Residency who would collaborate with these researchers on specific projects, as well as spin-off projects within the synergy of a very creative environment. KEARL will hopefully be located in a very small town along with several other creative organizations such as galleries, cafes, a theatre residency, and writer residencies, so that the entire town, along with the locals, becomes a kind of creative incubator in general, but one which also engenders greater focus than a commuteropolis.

There are materials research laboratories everywhere studying everything from road pavement and house-building materials to archaeometallurgy and paleobiology from which to draw new ideas and materials for artists to work from, let alone the exciting work being done in nanotechnology and physics.

I will post more as I develop these ideas. Please contact me at kenboe@gmail.com if interested in helping to make this dream become possible. Below are some links, and I will add more later.

This mixed-media/mixed-message art work a combination of photographic prints of found objects, cut out around those objects, oil paint, chalk, pumice, enamel hardener, and spraypaint with Fiberized Aluminum Roof Asphalt on Masonite. There is one other, not shown, which is a double-sized dyptic of this same series. Though highly mixed-media, these works are built to last, and are extremely strong works of experimental art. To be in the presence of these works is to endow oneself in the very idea of creativity and experimentation, and a host of other possible meanings.

Collaboration by Ken Boe and Art Kenyon, 2007

4/11/2007

Recent Paintings Of Synchronic Alchemy, By Ken Boe

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GALLERY 414 - FINAL FRIDAY CLOSING RECEPTION
Please Note: This Show has ended, some works still available.
click here to see some Ken Boe Art on myspace

Overview: The “man-made” object is subject to the violence of being thrown out, exposing it to the elements and entropy of nature. The object is divested of its functional meaning, entering a state of abstraction, until it exists no longer. My art works harvest these types of abstraction midway, also including The Scribble painting with Manipulated Whips(Action Printing), and other techniques which brew design from chaos and order. Why I do this has its roots in my learning on the function of art itself: The Theory Of Synchronic Alchemy.

The intention is to create an ambiguous but wide ranging vocabulary of imagery which may become synchronic at an unconscious level with the creative thinking process of those who are in the presence of the work. For this, I prescribe “sticky” images, rather than hyper-clean “digital” imagery, especially in today’s commercial environment. My work is very experimental, and by exhibiting them one is communicating the basic idea of experimentation to those present, for instance.

My main theory of Synchronic Alchemy is that while at a gallery or museum one may spend a few moments staring at an art work, but most of the time art work and other objects around us are only viewed peripherally. Yet, peripheral viewing is a powerful process not well known. The subconscious mind is “seeing” and processing peripherally gathered information in numerous ways. If there is someone in a crowd you knew years ago, your subconscious mind will inform your conscious mind to notice them. Other signifiers are to recognize danger, food or water sources, lost items, sexual orientations, tool making needs, and the intellectual and communication tools of Analogy and Metaphor. A synchronous intellectual harmony exists in a gathering of two or more naturally when they share an art-rich and/or nature rich environment in which they discuss ideas together: The place of the discussion is the most immediate language shared. It is where our bodies are. It is an instantaneous and experiential well of shapes, forms, and variable symbolism to derive tropes from for communication and concept making.

Cognitive Science has demonstrated that language is foundationally metaphorical, and experientially embodied. For instance, the earthly experience of gravity informs the metaphorical basis of “up” meaning positive, and “down” meaning negative. Hell is falling down, heaven is ascendant, on and on, but let’s not get bogged down in examples.

What I discovered in 1992 hiking in the Berkeley Hills was that surrounding imagery informs creative discussion with someone else you are with. While involved in a very intellectual and creative discussion, I noticed that I was using metaphors and analogies from the natural environment around us to bridge the concepts between us. Roots, branches, and an old bottle became creative tools in our discussion. But I had not noticed that I even saw these images, until I looked over and realized the synchronic processing that had just occurred. This moment convinced me more than ever to continue with my pursuits as an artist, and to hone a path for further learning to develop these ideas for my art work. My goal has been to create art which provides a rich synchronic vocabulary for those around it, enabling the creativity of those who press on together in changing the world in their own ways, with pleasure. I hope to create the ultimate art for the creative class to display in their offices, conference rooms, studios and living rooms. Raw art is like vitamins to a digitally sterilized work place. In fact, I believe that class rooms should be filled with art if educators are serious about having real discussions.

I am interested in doing artwork designed for specific teams of people to display where they work (this can involve a gentle but experimental interviewing technique with participants, and/or research into the archetypes most suited to their creative needs.) I am also interested in working with a clinical researcher for a more empirical study on peripheral sensory information collection/processing, and the pharmaka† of art (†Greek for both painting and remedy.) For an appointment with the artist, e-mail to kenboe@gmail.com to see works from the current exhibition, to commission work, or to participate in similar projects and collaborations.
© 11/24/2006

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