John Wellington

John Wellington and I share many resume points - RISD, NYAA, Santa Monica, The Village. It's funny work - the man has based his career around his Asian fetish, essentially, although his artist's statement plays dumb/defensive/evasive about that. Or, like many artists, he can't write about his own work very well.

Still, the pastiche of Asian pop culture with Western classicism, paired with his dedication to craft, makes for an ironic profundity. I love the game-like captions and the combination of cultural levels - he doesn't just nod to Murakami, he includes him in a painting that seems to mock orientalizing generalizations:



Of course there's always that topic of the anti-real idol, the object of desire, but at times it's just another politically incorrect piece of cultural effluvia. The strength is the bizarre narratives implied by the game captions, set in these semi-medieval, semi-postmodern worlds.

Limnrix On Limerence

I know we're all trying to ignore Valentine's Day. I, for one, know that this will be the year the tradition of watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind alone and crynerbating will be firmly established.


I Am Whatever You Say I Am, 2008

I did not know this word existed until two days ago.

This may or may not be your response to reading the extensive attempt to define this: I know that I have felt something like it, but my experience differs in various ways from Tennov's attributions to it. I think it's possible that people experience it in different ways, and this is the root of some things attributed to limerence. Like many psychological definitions, you try to self diagnose. Personally, I know that most meaning in my life comes from one or two limerent attachments I've had - primarily one that was, for a while, mutual. My tendency when discussing it is to not be able to articulate more than snarky soundbites.

Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence" to describe a kind of long-term infatuation her subjects were describing in her study of love. Limerence and love are not two different things - limerence is a kind of love. (Officially, it's the early stage of love, but I consider that limiting.) It's also a way of evading the dismissiveness of terms like "infatuation" or "crush", although the dismissiveness creeps in as a kind of attempted antidote to limerence's hightened affect. Limerence is both itself an emotion and an intensifier of emotion. It's produced a lot of good music, great literature, and probably not a lot of great art, although it is a decent motivator - or extreme demotivator. The reaction is not binary "elation or despair". Even a good interaction can induce the emotion that, like limerence, needed an English word, but which I have seen called "sangry".

Limerence attaches every intense emotion one feels, regardless of connection through anything but oneself, to the limerence object (LO, or, as I will put it in tribute to David Foster Wallace, subject). If you've resolved to cure your limerence, you will end up avoiding anything interesting or that you like.

One way of thinking about it: If you have love or affection toward a subject, you google it. If you are limerent, you avoid googling anything closely connected to the subject, because you are afraid you will run across them, and end up unable to think about anything else for weeks.

An objection I have to part of the definition is the part about how limerence can end with consummation or conclusive knowledge of reciprocation status. Even with confirmed reciprocation, terror that one's limerent subject would lose the limerence reignited the feeling. Once I'd stopped feeling that fear, the limerence was less urgent, turned into an entity supported by two bodies. Whether an asymmetrically limerent relationship should be terminated is a difference of opinion that can terminate any kind - according to Tennov, relationships with one limerent member are sustainable, though commonly maligned.

The "limerent-limerent" relationship is what I've called a "positive-feedback-based assemblage", but why most agree that that coupling (which I want to think can contain any number, including not just integers but imaginaries, etc. ) is itself inherently unsustainable is hard to define. Positive feedback exceeds the boundaries of its system within some amount of time. With limerence the result could be a "burned out" emotional sensorium. I can't tell whether being unable to become interested in anything without limerence is still limerence, or its fallout.

While it's said that different people are more inclined toward limerence or inducing limerence, I suspect it's more likely that people have different and incompatible ways of effectively de-limerencing. I'd like to hear from anyone who hasn't ever felt limerent. I remember sustaining something from 2000 onward, which was replaced in 2006 by definite limerence - I don't think any was involved in the long-term, healthy relationship I was in starting in the middle of that time. Possibly, I always require transformation - a new subject. Which is kind of a bitch, and something I may have immunized against now, but two years of starvation haven't been cutting it.

I have resolved that next time, instead of having most interaction, with a human, mediated by the internet, I'll aim to be limerent towards a nonhuman (non-animal, probably non-carbon-based) entity. I'm not going to assume it would be an AI, partially because the determination of intelligence and whether it's required for limerence are part of what's so fascinating about this particular weird-ass fantasy. Remember, this woman married the goddamn Berlin Wall.Possibly an element of what makes someone more limerent has to do with how much they question the communication system and what constitutes an autonomous entity capable of reciprocation. Example: I do not believe I can be objectively determined to be intelligent or autonomous. Second example: My subject may have been incapable of reciprocal feeling, only attached if returned feeling was ambiguous. There is nothing psychically sick about either of these attitudes - maybe not even with Mrs. Berliner-Mauer.

Here's a paper(pdf) that argues that limerence is problematic, different from love as seen from instances of persisting into later stages of a relationship. I haven't read the whole thing, but without a threshold in the form of an amount of time or interaction after which limerence shouldn't persist, all it really does is, well, piss me off, make me sad, various other limerence-enhanced emotions, based on feeling that my subject had set a short time after consummation it was appropriate for me to still act limerent, I had appeared to exceed it, and that I am therefore entirely responsible for my own pain, emo emo etc. Basically all this does is induce another source of fear and anxiety in the limerent, towards their own limerence and its inappropriateness. I would say that most defined psychological states, like most things, should ethically lack the presence of either "goodness" or "badness".

Another objection I have to the definition is that the limerent inflates the subject's good qualities. Part of the involuntarity of limerence is not that you think everything the subject does is great, but that everything they do is relevent to your interests. The subject is not superhuman, or uniquely qualified: they are simply what the limerent is About. In fact, the word I was using before I heard "limerence" wasn't "in-love-ness", it was "aboutness", and I felt it could apply to particularly dedicated biographers and specialists. Perceived flaws aren't transformed to virtues, they are considered more important than the flaws of other entities, and have a huge emotional impact on the limerent.

I don't know whether it seems immature and self-absorbed to be discussing what is too often stigmatized as immature absorption, but I'm sick of not talking about what I think about. What are your responses?

Elf Deprecate

9:30-12, THIS Thursday, Jan 27th, Niagara Bar, 7th and A.
You can pay through the bar, and their commission is lower if you pay cash. I will buy you a drink if you show up at 8 to help install, or stick around to 12:30 to help pack. There will be a couple other artists, I don't know who.
This is what I'm putting in. Please comment on whether I should lean toward one genre or another or if something is AWFUL.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc 11x17 mounted poster

Only did one of these but if it sells I'll do another run.
Preorder:

Pinwheel 8x10 digital matted inkjet print

Anthropic 8x10 digital matted inkjet print

Andrea 4x5 digital matted inkjet print

Swan 4x5 digital matted inkjet print

Orbit 5x5 digital matted inkjet print

Bubbles 3x6 digital mounted inkjet print

Violet 4x10 digital mounted inkjet print

Stella 8x8 digital mounted inkjet print

Indulgent

Masturbatory

Derivative

Wasteful

Elf Pity

Elf Sabotage

Elf Efface

Elf Pity Party:
This Won't Help
Therapy
I feel your pain


I am considering, but may not have room for:
Guilt of Representation, 2008, oils on plastic, 7"x8".


Misunderstand Me 2010 23x23 oils



Wallow in Immanence 32x32 oils


Don't buy it. I'm really just competing with worthy charities, and don't need the validation at all. I'm already looking like a self-aggrandizing jerk by announcing all of this when it's a tiny multi-artists popup thing. Wait, I'm sorry, this shtick is really annoying.
Where there are paypal buttons above, domestic shipping is included. If you're up for it, you can just send as a friend/family to jupitre at gmail dot com to rob Paypal of their cut. Also email for arranging details of faster and international shipping. I know personal interaction, especially around money, is a pain in the ass. My etsy may rise from the grave, unless ugallery gets some attention.

Wallow in Immanence

WALLOW IN IMMANENCE. 2011, Oil on canvas, 32 by 32 inches.

I used digital sketches and mockups and 3-d ray-tracing in an ongoing back-and-forth with this one, which is definitely supposed to be apparent. I don’t know what else is apparent, but since the amateur feedback I’ve been getting is approximately “THE COLORS MAN THE COLORS”, which gives no indication of what anyone is actually seeing besides colors, I'll provide a little more background and fish for insults.
The painting is structured by a composite image (i.e. not the visible light, but a visualization of the spectra of several common elements) of the Snake nebula. To the point of total coverage and saturation, it generated a multi-directional figure salad of drawings and paintings from at least 5 different male models, usually with the colors shifted to match the composite image or to pursue humanoid spectral extremes. There are some aliens and some anatomical absurdities and a lot of face avoidance.
The central figure is a female figure that mirrors those surroundings - again, not the way it would visibly work, but the way a 3-d program calculates it when the underlying image is 2-dimensional and ubiquitous.
The title refers to the old translation of The Second Sex, in which Simone De Beauvoir describes how women denied transcendence will defiantly, and somewhat masochistically, dedicate themselves to the material and present.

A Superficial Gender Critique of Poser 7

By default the program makes inverse normals black on render (i.e. no maps for the inside of a skin), but this is what Poser says a big inverted vagina looks like.

About 2 years ago I started using Poser 7. I’ve come back to it recently, to work out reflections for Wallow in Immanence, and discovered that among the options for altering the bodies they introduced to the default library with this version (and previous ones, I think, although the newest figures are the least anatomically wonky so I’ve stuck to those) is a “genital” scroll bar that can make genitals more or less prominent.

There are many things one can learn about the assumptions and political weirdnesses of Poser’s design team by seeing what you’re limited to when using the program superficially. Firstly, nobody has genitals to start with. The female figure only has genitals if you turn her genital bar to positive - and, of course, INVERSE GENITALS if you turn it negative.

The male figure is a meaty Ken doll, all taint, with no option for genitals at all. The menu option called “genitals” can have a check next to it or not, it makes no difference. Male genitals load separately and you have to position them on the body. The man’s junk has its own sliding sets of criteria. I know, dudes, this is exactly how it is, sure, thanks, got it, whatever. You can’t make an inverse penis, but you CAN make an inverse boner. I have yet to find an uncircumsized Poser penis, though.

Previous male poser library figures DID come with genitals on them. You could do an inverse boner with those, too. The men are by default more mesomorphic, females endomorphic. The three “body types” have scrollables, in 7, and the same figure can be both bony and muscular, and so on. I enjoy that, it looks like it took a lot of work and research.

Female figures have no body hair, and the male’s is Porn Star trimmed, but then, hair is something Poser has a whole separate interface for, and I haven’t yet figured out whether it limits where you can put that hair.

It’s almost like the primary users of Poser are supposed to be a category of people who are not allowed anywhere near real bodies and are specifically working for censored media. At the same time, they tried to anticipate users making porn with their program. The naturalistic territory between those extremes became narrow because they were thinking like Americans. By the way, none of the default library characters that I can find come in any color but beige, although the Poser 7 characters have ethnically-mixed-looking features. Regardless of how Poser’s designers and managers justify the options based on their feedback, the weird, weird decisions were theirs.

And oh, Breast Controls! Breasts are unnaturally perky unless you crank up the “breastsnatural”. One of the strangest scrollables is “Nonipples”: by default, nipples are totally flat, but a positive value on that one makes them holes on the breasts. What the positive and negative values entail is counter-intuitive, there. You can move and orient breasts together, apart, up, down, asymmetrical, whatever you need. But you can’t have a negative value for “breastsflatten”. No way can you simulate gravity making breasts DANGLE.

Also? While dicks can be resized (whether separately or, clumsily, as another body part), whatever size breasts the female figure has, you cannot change them. I mean… okay. Womens’ breast sizes can alter radically over the course of a month, even! And you can’t… I can understand preventing Poser users from going nuts with boob jobs, but the nonsensical double standard with male junk? I’m having a lot of fun with the mega-erections. With everyone looking so porny anyway, could Poser please just let us have fun with it? Is it that all the potentially x-rated stuff installs separately, so there's a sexless (but definitely not genderless) version that would be possible?

It’s actually pretty hard to get to various stages of androgeny, except in faces. Poser, you fail. And you clearly tried so hard, too.

Don't Get It

Don't Get It. 2011, oil on canvas, 32 x 36 inches. Model Kate P.
You may think I didn't do anything with this, but no, I wanted to make it finished before I turned it into something else.

short show short notice

These weirdos the Antagonist Art Movement (Ethan, Un) are letting me do a little popup (that means ONE NIGHT ART PARTY).  If it goes well, I'll probably curate something later, with more artists and more time to plan.

ELF DEPRECATE
Thursday, January 27, 2011
9 pm - 12:30 am

NIAGARA BAR
112 Avenue A & 7th St. NYC
212 420 9517

I'm selling small, fun work, most of which I'll make between now and then.

Resolutions

1. I've tentatively struck an agreement that a friend will stop drinking for three months if I stop watching TV and eat more fruits and veggies, so that's more than fair.

2. I vow to make some art every day. Even if it's just a subway doodle on a work day. I have a show in May, so with that deadline in mind, I will paint for at least 6 hours a week. I've threatened retirement, since I've had a lot of trouble actively making art lately, but hopefully building a habit will change that. The only reason I'm not switching careers is that I have no idea what else I could do that wouldn't require going into more training and debt. I hate how it sounds when people get all positivist about unpaid creative work, though. It's really not important and I just don't feel entitled to self-indulgence but, if anything, I do want to somehow communicate this cynicism.

3. This is not a resolution, but, Yom Kippur style, an apology for something I've particularly done a lot of this year. Men who I have pushed away as friends because I was afraid I'd try to make it romantic or just sexy, I am sorry. I will be your friend, I will not awkwardly try to bone you, and I will try to actually be good company. (If you do want to mate, it's your lead.)

4. I will stop cutting my hair, for the love of god. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, lady, just stop. Hide the scissors if you have to. Let that shit grow out. I don't care if it feels uneven.

2010 albums

Hey!  You don't care what I like because I have no taste! I've limited the numbered list to 20 this year, but some other good ones were: Vampire Weekend - Cousins, Ratatat - LP4 , Bear Hands - Burning Bush Supper Club , LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
Anyway.  If you click on the links I think I might get some money no matter what you buy, so get to Amazon through me, thanks!

 
20. Woodhands - Remorsecapade

 
19. Holy Fuck - Latin


18. Wavves - King of the Beach


17. Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be


16. Girl Talk - All Day.

 
15. Robyn - Body Talk . Favorites: Fembot, Time Machine, Cry When You Get Older, Love Kills


14. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz. Favorites: Age of Adz, Too Much, Vesuvius, I Want To Be Well, Impossible Soul


13. Jenny and Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now. Jenny Lewis, Jonathan Rice. Favorites: My Pet Snakes, Big Wave, Animal, Committed


12. Wolf Parade - Expo 86. Favorites: What Did My Lover Say? (It always had to go this way.) , Yulia, ghost pressure, cave-o-sapien


11. Best Coast - Crazy for You . Sounds like missing L.A. from New York. Favorites: Boyfriend (quinceañera video), Crazy For You, When I'm With You, Bratty B


10. New Young Pony Club - The Optimist. Favorites: Lost a Girl, Dolls, Chaos, The Optimist. Mostly-female dry-voiced dance rock.


9. Janelle Monáe - The Archandroid (Metropolis Suites II-III)
If I were more into every song, instead of just Cold War (EMOBOT), Tightrope, Faster, and Come Alive, her persona and the urban SF messiah story which is not nearly central enough to the album, this would be top 5.


8. The Knife, Planningtorock, and Mt. Sims - Tomorrow, In A Year . This is nothing like a The Knife album, even the parts that mix techno in with postmodern opera and sound-evolution minimalism. Favorites: Minerals, Seeds, Colouring of Pigeons


7. Sleigh Bells - Treats . You either love or can't stand these Cool Kids, cheerleader-like vocals by 5th grade teacher Alexis Krauss and punk fuzzed guitar by Derek Miller.  I played it at work once and a toddler sang along. Favorites: Kids, Infinity Guitars, Rill Rill, Crown on the Ground, A/B Machines, Riot Rhythm


6. Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern . Supposedly she went through a dry spell of writing and the suicide of the ex that got her into "good music" provoked more abject songwriting. Though it's not the breakthrough I was expecting to come next, it's a grower. Favorites: For Ash, Risky Biz, Female Guitar Players are the New Black, Gimme, Building a Body

.
5. David Byrne, Fatboy Slim, a kajillion collaborators - Here Lies Love.  It's a disco biopic of Imelda Marcos told through the class tensions between her, her nanny, and other mostly female voices. Byrne's explanations of it suggest it's examining how the personal is political. Favorites: Every Drop of Rain, Don't You Agree, Please Don't, Order 1081, Why Don't You Love Me


4. Yeasayer - Odd Blood The video for ONE resembles a Samuel Delany story. Madder Red. Ambling Alp, Mondegreen, Rome.


3. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs . The Suburbs, We Used To Wait, Half Light II, Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains). FULL OF WIN.


2. Crystal Castles II . I love them more than you'd expect of someone who's never done coke. Favorites: Doe Deer, Baptism, Empathy, Pap Smear (platform dance!)


1. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me. It's big and long and it hurts so good. Favorite tracks: Have One On Me, Good Intentions Paving Company, Go Long, Soft as Chalk, Kingfisher