So Much That Happens Happens In Small Ways

Priscilla, Ray Metzker, Italy, Spain, Greece, Matthew Wong, Agnes Varda, Picasso, John Ashbery are all connected in my brain spilled out into this letter!

I watched Priscilla the other night. A movie about Elvis and Priscilla Presley. Without a single Elvis song in it. And yet the soundtrack was impeccable. The Porches song in the clip above. Another Sofia Coppola film about relationships. By a director who collaborated on the music for the movie with her husband. Thomas Mars of Phoenix. And great music supervisor Randall Poster.

I like how Philippe Le Sourd shot it. Couldn’t tell it was his first foray into digital. This scene immediately reminded me of a Ray Metzker picture.

Metzker’s focus was light. I was always into how black the blacks were. And how he said he embraced what he didn’t know.

When I was younger I was— Arrogant. Thought I knew everything.

Now— more confident in how little I do know. Maybe his pictures influenced my interest in the shape of cars. Which makes me want to share some I’ve taken the last few years traveling.

2022— I got a lot of driving in. We rented a car in Rome. Cool to cruise around the city. See so much more that way. Drove to Tuscany for two days. On to Portofino from there. Ended the Italian road trip in Milan. I like to do what I want, when I want. Having a car on vacation gives me that sense of freedom.

That was one of my best years. August we went to Antiparos. My friends 40th. Had never been to Greece before. The car I rented couldn’t make it up the steep rocky hill to our AirBNB. So the host traded me for his Hilux.

I went to Spain in June 2023. Menorca was the highlight. Rented a car there too. We wanted to explore the island.

The beaches were hard to find. Was like a small adventure seeking them out.

Can’t remember the name of this one. It had a restaurant at the entrance. You park there. Stop for drinks and a bite to eat first.

It felt quieter than France and Italy. Great food. No scene.

Found a hotel I felt at home in.

Extended a few days.

I don’t have a good transition back into some of the art i’ve seen lately. I started writing this at the end of December 2023. I don’t like the last week of the year. I try to plow through it. Then the calendar flips. And life resumes at its normal, whiplash pace.

Time— cartoonishly crashing coke cans on your forehead. I look at the creases in my palms. Reminds me of a Rinko picture my friend Laurence posted from Paris.

After seeing it— I remembered these Frank Godlke pictures. Howard Greenberg showed many years ago.

Both made me think of this Petra Cortright painting. I’ve had a jpeg of it on my desk top for two months. It’s kinda Cy Twombly ish. I don’t need to share what those look like. You know them.

The Petra painting, Godlka and Rinko pictures sent my brain to a Matthew Wong painting I saw in Miami. It’s dreamlike. The night sky in the background. One pink flowered tree. A quiet winding road. Leading to a place I can sleep later than 5am. I got to meet Matthew a few times. Before he took his life. At the height of his short career. He seemed sweet. Obviously a thoughtful guy. Paused for a few seconds before speaking.

The Wong painting made me think of a Paul Cupido picture. The tonality. It’s like seeing the entirety of the universe— in someone.

I’m still falling asleep to Wings of Desire. I wonder about Wim Wenders— what he was thinking about as he made it? That sometimes life feels like you’re looking down on your own? It does for me. That it’s not real? It’s not a simulation. Don’t start with that. And not necessarily surreal. Just unreal.

I’ve already lived as many years as I have? Pressing each day into the next. I thought about Agnés Varda’s supposed send off to movies— The Beaches of Agnés. “If we opened me up, we'd find beaches”

This made me think of how I make my own pictures. Translate what I’m thinking, feeling. What others might be going through— into a landscape or object like image. Like the one below I took in Greece.

Big landscapes led my brain to the Richard Mosse video installation at Jack Shainman. It’s a triptych. Shot on 35mm on the ground. Specifically designed multispectral camera from the air. Up til March 16th.

Watch it on a massive 60 foot LED screen in Shainman’s new 20k square foot space. It’s a museum level installation.

An exhibition of that magnitude reminded me— I saw the Picasso show at Gagosian. It was a retrospective.

I went the last day it was up. I know all about his conflicted life. Show me a great artist that wasn’t a pr!ck. And looking back at the pictures I took— I liked the paintings more than I remembered. Usually, I’m more of a representation guy.

Maybe it’s the frame or coloring of the Picasso— it reminded me of this Arisa Yoshioka below. American Art Catalogue’s new space will have a show for her March 21st. 239 W4th Street. I’ll be there. It’s down the block from me. You should come too.

The subject in this picture— how my phone makes me feel. It’s the oversharing. Like a public venmo account. Why have that information for all to see? I don’t get it.

I’m addicted to my phone too. It’s like— meth adjacent. Maybe we’re all too accessible? Too much for our brains process. I’m going to now use a Melinda Josie painting I’ve saved for a decade. At times— I miss an almost analogue like burner.

There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Oversharing? It’s trending downward. But a lot of the time online I see new art, a stand up bit I haven’t heard, an old car I always wanted to drive. I stumble on them. Or sent to me by text, dm, email.

Closing the loop— on proudly not knowing things. Like Fairfield Porter’s work. I only discovered it two years ago. And that he was friends with John Ashbery. One of my favorite poets. I learned this last Thursday at the Kasmin group show opening. I wanted to see the below Porter in person.

I’ll end here— with an Ashbery line from his poem Forties Flick.

“Into the silence that night alone can’t explain”