Art

Conceptual art, It's the kind of stuff that makes you want to take a picture of the walls of public bathrooms, or arrange your socks according to the color spectrum and pin them to your wall or try to take a shower in slow motion. Concept art as a genre has always posed a dilemma for me. On the one hand it represents what I most appreciate about art: the ability to challenge convention, change perception and alter the most basic foundations of how we experience the world and ourselves. On the other hand it represents what I most hate about art: sensationalism maquerading as substance, fashion and trendiness serving to exclude the less than uber-cool, clever quips replacing sincere emotion and depth. It also, by definition raises the question I never get tired of asking: what is art anyway? It's one of those questions that seems like it should be able to be answered in the abstract through a careful theoretical/ philosophical investigation, but as has also often been argued, I find that what really points me to the answer is the experience of art itself. What happens time and time again in the viewing of modern-modern concept stuff is that out of however many pieces, only a select few stand out, remain in my mind's eye long after I've left the exhibit and tell me in that oh so visceral way, that was art. Of course, as Dewey would argue art is an experience. And so my reaction to the pieces when i enter a Chelsea gallery, the WHitney biennial, the top floor of the pompadeou museum in Paris, the Guggenheim Soho, or as in was the case today, PS1 in Long Island City, is as much based on my mood, my other experiences of the day, whether I read the exceedingly long curator/ artist descriptions beside the piece before/ after viewing, the order in which I view them and the relative pretensiousness as well as density of the irony clad crowd who surrounds me at the time as I am by the content of the piece itself. However, even given this contextual disclaimer there are still those pieces that stand out, that call to me at first glance, like a stranger across a crowded room, that transfix me and transcend whatever "scene" they are enveloped in, that capture through some mix of aesthetics and originality...something which is both deeply universal and wholly unique,ie; art