The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Hole

 

Fabian Bürgy
Viktor Popović
Zdzisław Beksiński
Taryn Simon
Alan Saret
Neil Campbell
Sebastian Martorana
Banks Violette
Ryoji Ikeda
Ander Mikalson
Valentin Carron
Tara Donovan
Reuben Wu
Anna Sadler
Egill Sæbjörnsson
Thom Kubli
Bryan David Griffith
Noi Sawaragi
Alix Poscharsky
Daniel Arsham
Bukichi Inoue
Jacques-André Boiffard
Amie Siegel

 

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Fabian Bürgy

Smoke 1, 2013
Cement, hole, smoke

Smoke 2, 2013
Cement, pedestal, hole, smoke

 

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Viktor Popović

Untitled, 2008
iron, used motor oil

 

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Zdzisław Beksiński

Wife Portrait, 1956-57
Few works are darker than those of Zdzisław Beksiński. What does it all mean? Nothing – Beksinski never knew the meaning behind his works and was adamant against any sort of interpretation. His wife died in 1998. A year later, his son, a popular radio host and movie translator, committed suicide. Beksiński was stabbed to death in Warsaw in 2005. The killer was the son of his long time caretaker who murdered him over about $100.

 

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Taryn Simon

A Cold Hole, 2018
In Taryn Simon’s A Cold Hole, participants jump into icy water while visitors in an adjacent gallery watch through a cinemascopic aperture.

 

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Alan Saret

The Hole at P.S.1, Fifth Solar Chthonic Wall Temple, 1976
In The Hole at P.S.1, Fifth Solar Chthonic Wall Temple, sunlight is the natural medium that influences the general shape of the sculpture. As part of MoMA PS1’s initial exhibition Rooms, this site-specific installation consists of a carefully sized and shaped hole dug out of the brick wall. When the sunlight faces the exterior side of the building, a focused stream light enters the hallway and shines down to the floor.

 

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Neil Campbell

Boom Boom, 2004
acrylic on wall

 

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Sebastian Martorana

Untitled, 2015
Marble sculpture of the impression made in the pillow of his late father in-law after lifting him up from his death bed.

 

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Unknown

The black painted spiral staircase at the Zeitz Mocaa Museum of Contemporary Art, Cape Town, South Africa, 1991

 

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Banks Violette

Black Hole (Single Channel), 2004
In works such as Black Hole, Banks Violette aptly portrays a phenomenon of excess. Heavy-metal aesthetics become a mirror of youth culture anxiety, an adopted language compensating and empowering sensations of immense sorrow and despair. Citing examples where musical lyrics become instigating factors to real-life violence, Violette refers to an over-identification with fiction where artistic expression exceeds critical confinement, and fantasy and reality are blurred. Black Hole lingers on this edge of transition: its aestheticised destruction offers both horrific contemplation and potential for misuse.

 

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Ryoji Ikeda

point of no return, 2018
concept and composition: Ryoji Ikeda
computer programming: Tomonaga Tokuyama


 

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Ander Mikalson

Scores for a Black Hole, 2019
With Scores for a Black Hole, events both quotidian and profound unfold daily around a seven-foot hole filled with black ink. Big enough to fall into, this void serves as a site for collective action and shared experience, exerting a powerful gravitational field. Numerous collaborators invited by Mikalson—from artists to actors to novelists to children to yogis and more—enact a scripted yet unrehearsed response of their own to the black hole, allowing for the spontaneous, unforeseen and unrepeatable to take shape.

 

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Anish Kapoor

Descent Into Limbo (2016)
Visitors enter the installation through a small doorway leading into a freestanding concrete and stucco room, approximately 20 feet square. In the center of the floor is a circular pit, the sides painted black so that it at first appears solid, hiding its true depths. Kapoor designed Descent Into Limbo to appear like an endless chasm in space; looking down into it is a dizzying experience. Last week, a 60-year-old Italian man fell into the hole. The man was hospitalized following the incident, which took place August 13, according to the local newspaper Público.

 

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Valentin Carron

A wall two holes, 2016
The “eyes” are the result of an elaborate and carefully constructed intervention. An entirely new wall has been built in front of the existing one, and the holes themselves are lined with concrete forms that subtly differentiate their perimeter from the plaster that surrounds them; even the surface of the wall behind the holes has been painted black, as if to further accentuate the overriding power of negative space.

 

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Tara Donovan

Transplanted, 2001/2003
“Transplanted,” first created in 2001, is an aggregation of brown tar paper that has been ripped to expose imperfect edges and stacked at varying heights and widths, suggesting, maybe, a mountainous landscape, undulating ocean, or topographic map.

 

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Reuben Wu

Lux Noctis II, 2018
Each image is a carefully-planned scene consisting of multiple lighting positions, layered to produce a theatrically-lit composition. Using the GPS-enabled aerial light/drone in specific positions in space, I am able to create moods of drama and tension through chiaroscuro, and the ability to illuminate isolated features of a scene and include unwanted elements.

 

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Anna Sadler

Mouth Endoscopy, 2011
apparatus, body, flesh, installation, machine, medical, bed, kinetic, light, ready made, space, breath, hole, internal, mouth

 

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Egill Sæbjörnsson

Hole, 2007
A hole in the ground that speaks Icelandic.

 

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Thom Kubli

Black Hole Horizon, 2016
What kind of relations exists between oscillating air, black holes and soap bubbles? Black Hole Horizon is a meditation on a spectacular machine that transforms sound into three-dimensional objects and keeps the space in steady transformation. The nucleus of the installation is the development of an instrument that is operated by compressed air and that resembles a ship’s horn. With the sounding of each tone, a huge soap bubble emerges from the horn. It grows while the tone sounds, peels off the horn, lingers through the exhibition space and finally bursts at an erratic position within the room.

 

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Bryan David Griffith

Wane, 2016
Smoke from open flame accumulated in encaustic beeswax.

 

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Norimizu Ameya

The shape of me, 2010
Holes weren’t dug as such. Rather, these particular holes were dug to open our eyes to the “holes” that existed inside us from the beginning. As well, it is precisely because they can’t be shared with everyone that they are “holes.” However, the fact is this was also pointed out clearly from the very beginning in Ameya’s own words. By this I mean the very title, “The shape of me,” which excludes others. Accordingly, even if the holes were filled in with dirt after the exhibition, the loss would have actually been deeper on account of them losing their shape. And so rather than sharing our sins, all we can do is – as Ameya says – take these holes that the other in the form of Ameya has exposed inside of each of us and, instead of trying to fill them in, make full use of them as “tools” that belong to no one.

 

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Alix Poscharsky

One Morning, 2015
A coffee cup at filmed from above. The coffee starts swirling and finally explodes into a universe.

 

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Daniel Arsham

Dig, 2011
Artist Daniel Arsham turns his attention to Storefront for Art and Architecture, March 1-April 23, for an unprecedented archaeological quarry delving deep into untapped streams of process and form. Dig unfolds in 3 segments, the final in which Snarkitecture create and inhabit the exhibition. From March 29-April 4 Storefront will be transformed into a deep façade filled with EPS industrial foam. From April 5-23 the public will be invited to view Arsham removing pieces from solid white infill, carving tunnels, crevices, and peepholes. In this final stage, Dig will become accessible to the public through rotating doors acting as windows on the site’s exterior, and by appointment through navigable passages that Arsham has excavated.

 

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Bukichi Inoue

My Sky Hole, 1998
A stereo audio recording of transition from outside the sculpture into the hole. The outdoor sculpture is in Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (広島市現代美術館). I recorded it for its furnace-like sound.

 

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Jacques André Boiffard

Bouche (Mouth), 1929
Boiffard uses light in very different ways. In Bouche the light makes everything appear to be disintegrating. In the extreme close-up of the torn-open mouth, the light fragments in the reflections of the saliva and so dissolves what it first made visible: the inside of the mouth. The camera is sharply focused on the uvula at the back of the throat, which opens and closes the path into the body. The uvula regulates breathing in verbal expression and the entrance to the esophagus.

 

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Amie Siegel

Black Moon/Hole Punches, 2010
Black Moon/Hole Punches, is a series of photographs derived from the hole punches, or black moons, that a laboratory cuts into the first frame of the film negative. Siegel printed the hole-punched frames, which are always omitted from a final edited film, from the digital transfer of her Black Moon dailies.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, David. I figured you would know his work. Ah, happy birthday a day late to Robert Bresson, the master of all things! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Mr. Berman. Very happy to have your input on and kudos for Mr. Ronet. You’re very good, I hope? ** Sypha, Well, my pleasure, of course. I’ve gotten through the first few tracks. Ace! Your ‘JCGN’ is a delightful surprise and, you know, really works. I see your dilemma. You don’t think Boy Destroyer could go auto-tune, ha ha? A book of lyrics sounds good to me, no surprise. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ah, excellent! About the Zine Fest and the possible collab. All the luck re: the grant there is. I don’t know ‘In Fabric’, but I will hunt it. Thanks, bud. ** Steve Erickson, I saw Albert Serra’s ‘Liberté’, if it’s of interest. I thought it was pretty much a total failure. It’s intriguing for the first forty minutes or so, but then just gets stuck in this kind of quasi-Barry Lyndon-meets-Grandrieux set piece for an endless series of watered down Sadeian explicit S&M sex scene-ettes that get very boring and never add up to anything. It just ends up seeming like a self-indulgent exercise on Serra’s part. Disappointing. Good luck with the edit! ** Misanthrope, Very hard for me to imagine it being difficult to get LPS and Kayla on board unless I read them totally incorrectly. Voila! The magic word! ** Okay. I hope you enjoy the holes. See you tomorrow.

9 Comments

  1. Bill

    What’s not to like about holes? I love that swirly coffee cup thing, no surprise.

    Good to see it’s getting close to that time of the year. Cagey the Clown is very fine, though I keep expecting the little girl bite a chunk out of his hand.

    Bill

  2. Armando

    Hey, man;

    Sup,

    I just learned about Sid Haig, man. What a fucking bummer. So depressing. I Love Sid Haig, man.

    Rest In Peace and Rest In Power Sid Haig (July-14-1939 – September-21-2019).

    And FUCK YOU, 2019; seriously.

  3. _Black_Acrylic

    That Alan Saret Hole is very reminiscent of Gordon Matta-Clark, whose work seemed to obsess the Glasgow art scene back in the early 2000s. AS is a new name to me though. Between those two artists, there must have been a fair few holes in 70s Soho gallery walls haha.

  4. Steve Erickson

    Yes, I’m interested in LIBERTE, although I missed its NYFF press screening last week. I hope it returns for a theatrical run in New York. (The amount of sex should help it find a US distributor.) The responses on Letterboxd alternate between ecstatic reviews and “this is boring porn,” with far more of the latter.

    I did a lot more work on FIGHT CLUB essay revisions today. I haven’t heard what my editor thinks of anything I did, but the piece is basically up to the 3rd draft now.

  5. Steve Erickson

    Oh also, US military memos revealing that they told soldiers to stay away from JOKER screenings because of social media posts suggesting that incels are planning to shoot them up were leaking today. Is everybody in this country fucking nuts?

  6. Misanthrope

    Dennis, I like circles. Not so sure about holes, haha. If I remember correctly, you told Leo D. that Kurt Cobain/Hole joke in the interview you did with him, right?

    The only thing with LPS and Kayla is finding the time to get them to do shit. LPS is always up his girlfriend’s ass (she can come too, of course), and Kayla is always working or running around with friends. She’s on her way to Mississippi right now to see her mom and other grandparents. She and friends are going to New Orleans for some music thing or other. Hell, maybe just to hang. She’ll be back Tuesday and then we’re off to London on Friday, arriving there Saturday morning.

  7. Pascal O'Loughlin

    Hi Dennis, I haven’t been on here in yonks. In fact I’ve never commented on yr new-ish blog. I’ve lurked plenty though and enjoyed myself absolutely in so doing. Thanks so much. I should add that I loved both films you did with ZF. I’m here cos I want to ask a favour. The poetry library in London – the largest collection of contemporary poetry in the known universe – is about to start to charge for borrowing books. It shouldn’t happen. It’s a crying shame. Would you be up to drawing your readers’ attentions to this petition : https://www.change.org/p/the-national-poetry-library-keep-the-national-poetry-library-free

    That would be super helpful! I hope you’re having a good everything at the moment and all future moments too.

    All the best,

    Pascal

  8. Brendan

    I love holes. This day reminds me of a hole I took a photo of on Spring St. It’s been there a while and is starting to collect refuse. I had high hopes for the photo, but I don’t think it turned out the way I wanted. Maybe I’ll revisit it later. Clearly I have nothing of substance to say today. – B

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