Tamar Halpern: Fleurs du Mal

June 24, 2017 - July 19, 2017
Saturday, June 24: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Fleurs du mal

They are not pretty... they are biting, truthful, real... they are kind of ugly, yet beautiful. A bouquet of sickly flowers....a collection of poems...?

Sitting next to this terrifically hot fire… in the cool quiet aura of the forest…..under the red woods...listening to Lonnie Liston Smith...down the back streets.... smooth...deep...early rap....jazzy...cool. Now I'm listening to Airto Moreira. Being able to flip from dick Landry, to early rap to Brazilian... all while sitting outside by the fire...under the redwoods... lol!!

I like colors that pop....not necessarily flashy colors...more the quality of the color than the actual color.... contrast, one reacting to another... ..light and shadow...film noir... I'm boiling two eggs in the fire...both eggs r actually sitting in the fire....is it called boiling if there is no water...just the liquid inside the egg heating up?? Will it work?? I'm hungry... Art cannot be experienced collectively... nothing can... art is something u are alone with...

Jazz, japanoise, Japanese photography of the 70‘s - provoke, hip hop, the blues, improvisation, sampling, layering.... Work is alive. Changing, breathing….acting, reacting, in dialogue….repurposing images, layers, information.... combining and reusing them.... creating new works.... new content…. constantly rewinding and pushing play…. only each time the layers play they are a little different.... disintegration and accumulation….

So much of my day I spend looking at the screen.... images, film.... communications, exchanges I have with friends, new acquaintances are via the screen. The beginning of a new crush... I share my accomplishments with friends via my phone.... I express many of my heartfelt thoughts with friends and family via the safety of my phone... my phone allows me to open and close while feeling safe.

When I create compositions...it's via the screen... an extension of that safe zone?? To counteract the immense control I have using digital tools.... I found a process that forces me to give up that control. In truth there is no control in reality. On the screen it's an illusion....Without control, there is vulnerability .... substance ... realness .... life .... my process is transparent ... shows the seams, the imperfections, the warts .... art is a mirror of oneself, of one's time... in our time the Line between the digital and the real is becoming more and more
blurred....

Feel depressed...how quickly the personality of the country seems to have changed.... the air surrounding us. Antagonistic, time rolling backwards....so 21st century... time disconnected, disoriented... jumbled... Some digital layers are completely fictions.... others are from photographic files.... some are the
combination.… some are generations and generations of accumulation and disintegration.... others - younger.... simpler. Less affected.

The purpose of art is ....a method to understand one's place in the world.. my place in the world. My process merges certain traditions of art that speak true to me. Cinematic...photographic, painting, gesture, ... Warhol, Wool, Polke....
The twists and turns of my emotions, the fleeting perceptions of my mind …. something of the uncertainty of the mental process and not just its neatly packaged conclusions?? Sweetness can be funky, filthy, or anything.