the fleshy container of my Self

My girlfriend was given a one-year membership to the Whitney Museum. One of the perks of being a member is that you can circumvent the crush of a new, 'hot' exhibit and check out a preview. Of course, it helps to be unemployed, under-employed or ultra-rich as the preview only runs from Noon to 6pm on a Wednesday. Fortunately, my girlfriend works part-time and I met the first option so in we went.

I've never been a fan of contemporary art. It's not that I am an art snob who enjoys ripping elitist museums apart nor am I one of those morons who thinks that realistic=good and everything should be painted in egg tempura or ELSE. It's just that there's a lot of digital photography manipulation and abstract blotches of paint that are being called art and I can see very little thought or feeling being mustered in their creation. Artwork should either move me or open me up to a new perspective. Now, that's a pretty tall order and I can't expect every artist to meet such high criteria straight out of the gate - it takes skill and experience. In absence of that, I always respect craftmanship. I know, I can hear artists screaming about how they are consciously making a choice to not learn specific techniques from their past because it forces a certain way of expressing themselves. Well, if that is truly the case, then all the more power to them. Re-invent the wheel if that helps you to understand how it rolls, but then don't come crying to me if I think your oil-stick, colored splotch with the word "Proteus" scrawled on it in Helen Keller script is a piece of crap. Yeah, you heard me, Twombly. I can write Shakespeare across my play but that don't make it A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Tim Hawkinson rocks. There's no two ways about it. I had seen the painting he'd done with the gigantic photograph of a face that gets randomly shifted with wires. It was interesting, but it didn't exactly light my fire and the idea of seeing an entire floor of hydraulic paintings sounded like just the kind of contemporary gimmick art that I didn't want to see. I know that, for museums and writers on such topics, it's difficult to pick out genius in the middle of a cluster-fuck of hungry artists who all want to be heard. In addition, most art schools hammer it into students that they have to find their 'thing' that is unlike anybody else's 'thing' and before you know it, you've got one artist churning out a hundred variations of the 'thing'.

Tim Hawkinson does have a thing but it is not entirely wrapped in technique or theme. Actually, there is a method to the madness but it is that intangible quality that can't be described in any explicit way outside of the art itself. Hawkinson has this analytical focus on self. Specifically, his body occupies his art. With his hair he has fashioned a feather with his fingernails he has built an eggshell. He hex-maps, measures and photographs himself from every conceivable angle. The exhibit made me think about this frail thing called my body that plummets through time and space with my soul buried somewhere inside it. As I get older and feel joints ache and age around me, I am in awe. Hawkinson does a remarkable job of giving such sensations an exhibit or at least he gives me an opportunity to remind myself that I AM in awe.