Geneva, Lausanne, London…

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Greetings,

In recent days (weeks??), I flew out to Switzerland for the opening of Scrivere Disegnando: When Language Seeks Its Other at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve. Co-curated by Andrea Bellini (Centre d’Art Contemporain, Director) and Sarah Lombardi (Collection de l’Art Brut Lausanne, Director), it was very interesting. Works by ‘contemporary artists’ and ‘Art Brut artists’ were curated together, without biographies in sight. In some ways, three floors of diverse work focussed on language, writing, drawing, communication, coding, decipherability, secrecy, ambiguity and ambivalence through various media takes one on a journey through something which as a result is quite intangible. In some ways this is confusing and can raise questions about the curation, but on the other hand feels very much like an achievement in creatively exploring the very theme the show is relentlessly tackling head on. There is also a poetry to the moving through all these documents, rendering text in one way or another to express or describe or do something different to the previous or next thing which approaches from and to elsewhere. All these morphing forms of writing, recorded and reflecting or problem-solving, or foreseeing. There is an unknown geography to it. Certainly worth the trip! The experience of course also meant I can see where or how I fit in to all this, with three of my drawings included. If you think you’ll make it to the show, below are some photographs I’ve taken and perhaps you don’t want to spoil any surprises, but if you know you won’t make it, take a look… (and look out for the 300+ page accompanying book to be published soon)

 

After the initial introductory passage into the show, you are greeted by some wonderfully lit Adolf Wolfli works.

 

Three works per artist along this wall.. You can see a couple of Nick Blinko drawings on one end and my three drawings at the other…

People observing my efforts..

 

This Henri Michaux drawing had a poignancy to it, a highlight for me.

 

I loved these Laure Pigeon works. They need to be seen/felt in person, my documentation cannot communicate their essence.

 

Interesting Aloise Corbaz books containing text/drawings I can’t say I’ve seen before in her oeuvre..

 

An unexpected opportunity to see a room full of Luigi Serafini‘s original drawings/pages from the Codex Seraphinianus!

 

Walking from the Centre d’Art Contemporain to the restaurant, I spotted this attractive tentacle in the window of a games workshop type of spot.

 

I encountered the mythical Luigi Serafini himself at the restaurant.

 

Needless to say, the images I have included here are just a few snapshots barely skimming the surface of this delicious soup. The show has all the potential for a vastly immersive experience, requiring a chunk of your day to absorb to threshold. I was delighted to see pages from Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus and that they had a room to themselves. I came across the Codex perhaps six or seven years ago and my curiosity was piqued by its surreal and absurdist nature. Speaking to Serafini, I learned of his upcoming exhibition of sculptures in London in May.

Scrivere Disegnando (‘Writing By Drawing’): When Language Seeks Its Other is on until May 3rd at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva Switzerland.

 

The following day I went from Geneva to Lausanne to see the Carlo Zinelli exhibition at the Collection L’Art Brut, and to potter around. I dragged Philippe Eternod around several record shops. I had visited a couple in Geneva also. I came away with just one record, the duet between Karl Berger and Ed Blackwell ‘Just Play’ which I’d been after for a few years. Its price was not dissimilar to that of the few copies attainable online, but I save on shipping. See’s To Exist show (a two hour Jazz radio show), which I’ve been running for seven years, is currently on hiatus. Hopefully I can get back to it towards the end of the year. If interested, you can check out the special I did a few years ago on Sweet Earth Records, at a time when there was virtually no information about this short lived 1970s record label available online. Since then at least two of the records originally released on the label have been reissued, the Sun Ra record getting its reissue after the Sun Ra Estate got in touch with me to acquire contact details for someone involved with Sweet Earth Records. Anyhow, in the show, I speak with trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah about and uncover what would have been Ed Blackwell’s first LP as leader, which never saw the light of day. A point of interest for some. I digress, Eternod kindly took me to a great cheese shop and schooled me on various aspects of the cheesemaking processes. He was enthusiastic and knowledgeable. As well as the Zinelli exhibition, I saw the Theatre exhibition at the Collection l’Art Brut, which was also great. I have some reservations about how some of the work is sensationalised, but at the same time, some of the work is sensational. In any case, the museum is incredible. Undeniable quality at every turn. The Zinelli exhibition was fantastic. I’ve never seen so many of his double sided drawings side by side in one space, and the show was enhanced by images of Zinelli working and in his daily life, as well as a great documentary film I sadly just got to see 15-20 minutes of, as I had a schedule to keep. Had I known, I would have made time to see the entire thing. It had strong production values, with wonderfully shot panning across details of his work, and interviews with his friends and family. I’d love to get ahold of this film.

As part of the Theatre exhibition, some lovely Aloise Corbaz works in her books..

Great Madge Gill works and dresses she made were on display as part of the Theatre exhibition, as well as this large print of a colourful image featuring Madge Gill wearing one such dress

 

A curious Adolf Wolfli work with centralised photographic portrait of Wolfli worked into the piece, in the Theatre exhibition.

 

The actual headwear Eugene Von Bruenchenhein‘s wife, Marie, is seen wearing in some of his photographs of her, in the Theatre exhibition.

 

The guises of Vahan Poladian, in the Theatre exhibition. I like the inclusion of a saxophone. Something of this man’s demeanour reminds me of my grandfather who wasn’t far off the same age.

 

What looks like a glorious (baritone?) saxophone (or pipe), depicted in this painting from the Carlo Zinelli exhibition.

 

Carlo Zinelli foreseeing rock stars?

Carlo Zinelli also made these heads.

 

A table containing beautiful Raphael Lonne works, displayed in the permanent collection.

 

Leaving Lausanne via train for Geneva airport to return home..

 

Monochromatic Minds: Lines Of Revelation – Jennifer Lauren Gallery /// February 25th- March 4th. Candid Arts Centre. London, UK

In my previous blog post, I gave details regarding this groundbreaking exhibition about to take place in London. All the information about the exhibition and information about the artists can be found here. The opening is on Tuesday the 25th. On Wednesday the 26th, there are some artist talks that I’m very much looking forward to, with Liz Parkinson visiting from Australia and Julia Sisi journeying from France, among others. Further talks will take place on Sunday March 1st. I hope to make it along then as well. I think Cathy Ward will be speaking then. A few days ago I was visited by film makers at my studio, so as to include me speaking a bit about my work for a short documentary highlighting five of the artists in this exhibition, along with Cathy Ward, Valerie Potter (who currently has another exhibition on at The Gallery of Everything in London), Jan Arden and Terence Wilde. I think Terence Wilde will be running a workshop as part of the programme also. Talks and workshops need to be booked, so see website for details. The exhibition boasts a highly potent roster of artists which should be a joy to experience contextualised together. Other artists in the show include Albert, Aradne, Nick Blinko, Kate Bradbury, Madge Gill, Daniel Goncalves, Ted Gordon, Nigel Kingsbury, Margot, Malcolm McKesson, Dan Miller, Michel Nedjar, Evelyne Postic, Mehrdad Rashidi, Ody Saban, Harald Stoffers, George Widener, Ben Wilson and Agatha Wojciechowsky and more!

My process involves at least two layers of filtration and documentation, and here’s another layer…

 

My next entry will manifest sometime after the exhibition opens. See you on the other side. Take care,

Carlo

As we enter 2020, part 1

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Greetings and welcome to another year in the Gregorian calendar… Let’s hope it won’t be a disastrous one! Anyhow, here is some information and observations regarding things I spend time on/with…

Paris 2019

The next day, at home, upon rummaging through my jacket pockets on my way out again, I discovered a small Swiss chocolate. Proof that I had in fact returned from another annual excursion to Paris, having spoken to an array of insiders of the Outsider Art field in some form or other. It was the Outsider Art Fair, the seventh edition of the Paris incarnation. Four of my diary-related drawings were shown with the Galerie du Marche, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Within 24 hours I knew that I’m not getting any of them back. It can be a curious pattern of thought imagining their current whereabouts and the level of engagement that may or may not occur in my absence. I am pleased with what they contain, the way they evolve, and how the thoughts transcribed transform into what in some ways feels like a sort of DNA to me, projected through the aesthetic form that is manifested. But in the end, it is not in the end, it is during the process that I feel the most value is placed/experienced, and while in some ways the evidence of that is contained, the moment in some other ways just comes and goes. Thankfully, the process involves a sequence of indefinite moments.

In the past I have written about things I’ve seen and felt at the Outsider Art Fair, either here or in Outside In‘s blog (2015, … 2016/2014 Paris and New York have mysteriously been deleted) but something that is happening with time is making it unnatural for me to attempt this currently. I have some photos on my phone though, and they trigger open doorways for me to walk in and out of briefly. Apart from photos of the Galerie du Marche booth, the only image I have of a particular work is actually from a short documentary film that was shown on the work of Michael Golz, who spends a lot of time developing a fictional map and associated terminology. Since 1977 he has been dedicated to manifesting Athos. Very impressive. It did remind me somewhat of a fictional map project carried out by Jerry Gretzinger, since 1963. In 2018, I encountered his map when it was exhibited alongside some of my diary drawings in the Vestiges & Verse: Tales From the Newfangled Epic exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum (NYC, USA). It is very unlikely Golz and Gretzinger will have been aware of each other until much later, if at all, given the geographic distance between them and a less linked non-fictional world around the time their maps began to take shape.

At the Galerie du Marche booth, I find myself in a most surreal situation of being placed on the wall beside the work of Carlo Zinelli. Sometime around two decades ago, I was in a secondhand bookshop and perusing the shelf of Art Books. I didn’t see anything that piqued my curiosity but for some reason a hardback book with the bold lettering ‘ART BRUT‘ on the spine made me pick it up. The cover image was intriguing and the authors’ name had a nice ring to it ‘Michel Thevoz‘. I recall that simple, yet effective, convergence. The page I opened it up to displayed a beautiful image of a sequence of figures with blob-like holes in their heads. Incidentally, I was drawing people with holes in their heads also. I looked for the name of the artist and it simply was ‘Carlo’ (they weren’t using Zinelli as his last name when it was written).. so, there is the serendipity of the Zinelli-Keshishian axis. As a tidbit, in recent years I heard that Michel Thevoz had seen my work and was supposedly quite impressed by it.

 

Carlo beside Carlo, Galerie du Marche, Outsider Art Fair Paris, 2019

A Carlo gone missing, Galerie du Marche, OAF Paris, 2019

Photo taken from the screening of Philippe Lespinasse’s documentary on Michael Golz, ‘ATHOSLAND’. Click to enlarge. (That goes for all these images, actually)

 

Still in Paris, returning to the apartment where I was staying after the fair one night, I learned from somewhere on the internet that the simultaneous opening of both David Zwirner’s gallery in Paris and the Raymond Pettibon exhibition were occurring, but just about ending by this point in time. It was exciting to learn that a Pettibon exhibition was around the corner. I went to see it the following day and felt enveloped in that very particular Pettibon atmosphere, relishing the fix. What a joy. I love the curation that seems to have some natural instruction from the works to exist in relation to each other in a distinct manner, branching outwards from the walls, creating systems or communities of drawings in pockets of the space. I even crossed paths with Mr.Pettibon himself.

 


 

I’ve done it again. The information has bottlenecked and as tempting as it is, it would be unwise to bludgeon you with its entirety. This part 1 covers the remnants of last year. The next will detail forthcoming news. Hold tight for part 2…

 

Carlo.

Summer/Autumn updates

Outside In 10th Anniversary

Greetings. As usual, it has been a while since the last time I have posted here. Time passes, things accumulate, etc.. So, let’s get on with it!

Outside In have put a show together at Pallant House Gallery, in order to celebrate 10 years of Outside In, which is quite an achievement. It’s great that they can continue to carry out the work that they do and seem to be going from strength to strength. I have a couple of diary drawings in the exhibition alongside the works of other award winners. The show is on until the 30th October, so if you are nearby, do check it out! Also imperative to mention, something that really blew me away and was a total surprise, on exhibition in the DeLonghi Room at Pallant House, are some (many) collected works by Friedrich Nagler. Seriously incredible, faces created out of all sorts of materials throughout his adult life.. Some simple, others quite detailed and complex.. I can’t stress how great this exhibition is and urge anyone remotely near to go take a look, I’m not sure what the probability of seeing them again is, where or when, but I do hope it can tour for others to share this experience. These shows aren’t on for much longer, so check it out while you can!

Friedrich Nagler works on show at Pallant House Gallery

Friedrich Nagler works on show at Pallant House Gallery

Three Quarters Records

By now, I do have a somewhat dynamic history with a figure known to some as Joe Dub. He resides in Hawaii and first came to my attention in the last few years of the previous millennium for his work with the group San Francisco Street Music. He has gone through a few name changes and it is about to happen again, on this occasion to be coinciding with the launch of his new record label, Three Quarters. For their first release, Joe, alongside longtime collaborator Alex 75, handles the production for singer Doug Shorts on a 7″ called ‘Throwing Our Love Away/Slow Poison’.

I am proud to present to you all, a wooden 45/7″ record adapter that I’ve designed for the Three Quarters record label. It is my understanding that these will be available as a limited edition promotional gift with orders of the first release by Doug Shorts very soon.. Stay tuned for more info! In the meantime, you can read a bit more about Doug Shorts here.

Additionally, I have included part of an interview that I recently conducted with Joe Dub, in my 100th radio show for Itch FM (It is my 140th in total). The show focuses on the historical development of my interest in Jazz and I’ll be uploading it to my Mixcloud archive soon. It can be found on Itch FM’s archive already. Furthermore, I am in the process of putting together quite a thorough show focusing on Joe Dub and his music, which will include the full interview. I’ll provide a link to both of these as they become available.

 

The Carlo Keshishian/Three Quarters 45 Adapter

The Carlo Keshishian/Three Quarters 45 Adapter

 

three-quarters-adapter-2

three-quarters-adapter

 

Outsider Art Fair Paris 2016

It’s that time again..  October 20-23rd. Outsider Art Fair Paris, at Hôtel du Duc. A few dozen galleries and organisations from around the world will be exhibiting. I will have works on display with the Galerie du Marché (Lausanne, Switzerland). I’m in great company alongside favourite artists of mine such as Raphael Lonne and Edmund Monsiel, whose pieces are very rarely exhibited, so treat yourself to a trip and journey. Come see us! I will be writing my opinion piece for Outside In as per usual, so if you can’t make it, perhaps you’ll be able to gauge and glean something from that once it’s published. I’ll keep you posted, in any case..

Right, that will be all for now! I’ll be in touch again in due course..

Bright moments,

Carlo

 

 
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