The Praxis of Art in the early 21st Century

Before I realized that I was being targeted for some reason, I used to get a lot of odd damage and stains appearing in my house, but I chalked it up to having a child. There would be no way of knowing what he might have spilled. When the drain pipes from the roof kept repeatedly getting crushed or pulled apart (so that the basement would get water when it rained), I knew it wasn't my son doing it, but I thought maybe it was some kids in the neighbourhood who liked to dismantle drain pipes.

When the screen doors developed tears in them right next to the door handles (which I locked at night), I felt slightly suspicious. When the door locks themselves went askew and my keys didn't work quite as well, I had no idea at the time that this was an indication that my locks had been tampered with.

Looking back, I realize that there was sabotage going on a fair amount. The stains were some kind of engine oil, spread all over the house, including on my son's bed under his sheets. He's not a baby, so he wasn't throwing motor oil around.

Drips

Carolana Parlato
The Kiss
2007





Eric Sall
Icy Hot
2008





Christina Sucgang
Someday Maybe
2007





Wallace Whitney
no caption info






Jasmine Justice
Big Rock Candy
2006




Michael Cody Drury
Untitled
2006






Elizabeth Cooper
(no caption info)





Mary Heilmann
Go Ask Alice
oil on canvas
2006




One of my favorite things about Mary Heilmann's paintings are those fucked up drips. They communicate a kind of resignation. They're a shrug, an "oh well," a "sorry, I just couldn't help that..." It is a gesture without drama, not uptight, but, rather, in a casual, almost flippant, manner. This is a kind of giving up that accepts that it's giving up and learns to live with itself. It’s completely unheroic. It is not about "I am nature." It's simply nature, the nature of gravity. Nothing else. Paint drips. If you load the brush with too much paint it drips. And here is where the thing reverses itself. You see it is in this way that it's a form of trying too hard. The kind of trying too hard that usually fails, that comes on too strong, that, well, acts like a drip.