In a few short weeks, this blog will be taken down. But not to fear! You can now access my new and improved blog by way of my website:

www.StephanieJaneHalmos.com

All content from this blog will be moved over, so keep on reading! Thanks.

Wax, 2010.

This piece explores how the visibility of women relates to eroticism and femininity. In the video I wax myself, thus putting myself in what I perceive to be an infantilized position. Conversely, it might be considered by some to be a more sexually charged state to have no pubic hair. It is the intersect of these two opinions I am most interested in–specifically how the canons of beauty are established and how it effects the perception of women.

Chew, 2011.

This is my most recent video. This, like, Wax, and like a not-yet-online piece titled Staring Contest, continues on the ideas of visibility by way of these confessional endurance tests I am performing for the camera. In this case, I chew as much gum as I can until I must spit it out. There are references to childhood here, but more so ideas of visibility surrounding gender and class.

More to come.

SJH

copyright Stephanie Jane Halmos

Many image makers struggle with just this: the control and power over the subject in front of the camera, and how that makes them (the artist) feel. I, too, have felt that for years…I hate making photographs of strangers. When I do make pictures in that way, they always fail.

As photography moves into the new media realm and fights the medium specificity of “the referent”, many young artists are more heavily editing their film or removing the subject all together, and working solely in abstraction. I with my “Color Studies”, and other examples of this being done in my direct community include the below:

Kate Steciw

Ann Woo

Talia Chetrit

Recently, I have become fixated on this odd relationship between artist, subject, and object. More specifically, subject AS object. Roland Barthes wrote, “This disturbance [in photography] is ultimately one of ownership. Law has expressed it in this way: to whom does the photograph belong? [....] Photography has transformed subject into object…”

Most image-makers are capable of knowing before making a portrait what they want from their subject. Often photographers will coax their subject into embodying the emotion they themselves hope to evoke in their audience. There is something incredibly empowering about holding a camera (still, video, or otherwise), in that people will suddenly feel important and thus willing to find a way to perform for the lens. (Side note: this may be part of the reason people go out in NYC and are thrilled when some party photographer approaches them to take their photo).

For a long while I was thrilled to move away from subject for this very reason. My recent work has been structured around a feminist bent, hoping to find ways to discuss visibility and powerlessness involved in issues of femininity and sexuality. But then I had to stop and ask, “How is photographing a nude woman achieving this goal? How am I any better as the author of more nude images of [young] women?” And that is when I became really entranced with myself as the author of the body. My capability to turn my subject into object is beyond thrilling! In a sense, it is the understanding that I can do exactly what I critique–objectify women, continue social constructions of beauty, and manipulate moments of vulnerability.

Though I am unsure as to why and how I am suddenly fascinated by “artist as author”, I know that I am on a path right now to show this relationship in art-making. The issues of personal equanimity in relationship to visibility, respect, and sameness are currently appearing in the form of objectifying “the other”. We will see how this plays out, but until then, two recent images below:

Smack, Ink Jet Print, 24×30″, 2010                                                  ©Stephanie Halmos 2010

Bathtub, Ink Jet Print, 24×30″, 2010                                               ©Stephanie Halmos 2010

My lack of writing as of late is entirely due to my whole-bodied consumption into my Masters, and thus general post-studio exhaustion at the end of each day.

So, briefly, below:

“Shot”, 2010, 2 panel painting dealing with issues of gender identity and female visibility. I am playing around quite a lot with what I have coined “Vagina Pink” (wink wink, reference to International Klein Blue) in order to explore aesthetic gender assignment and the perceptions around “types” of women.

“Wax” (film still), 2010. Video piece/performance wherein I wax myself and record only my expressions as I do so. Similarly, I am interested in notions of womanhood and  infantilization in doing this performance. Eventually I will get my video work up onto my site, but for now, stills will have to suffice.

I feel incredibly saturated these past few weeks…reading, talking, making. It is an exhausting and thrilling cycle that CCA seems to be doing a wonderful job of maintaining throughout the studios. My practice is now 100% interdisciplinary, bouncing between video, performance, photography, and painting, and thus the work I put on the blog will be a bit different from the years past. In conjunction with an array of theory, I am currently reading quite a bit of work by Lea Virgine, and stumbled upon something particularly wonderful in her famous Body and Performance: The Body as Language book. She writes:

“Most of the time, the experiences we are dealing with are authentic, and they are consequently cruel and painful. Those who are in pain will tell you they have the right to be taken seriously.”

I found this idea really fascinating. That physical strife lends itself to forcing another to listen (be it a friend, lover, or viewer) is a sad notion, and full of truth. I wonder what society would be like if everyone always expressed themselves with the desperation or zeal or bluntness that they do when they are at a place of struggle.

Just some food for thought. Art!

To see more more of Toyin’s work, visit her site.

One such project is “To Move a Body”, by Noah Krell. You can view all the videos in this really engaging body of work on Noah’s site.

Below is a piece titled Untitled (Piggyback), 2010.

My apologies for the long gap in time since my last post…of which featured rockin’ tunes created in my psychedelic music laboratory of love. I have moved to a new city, San Francisco to be exact, and my brain and my things are in boxes.

I am embarking on a 2 year graduate school journey at one of the finest (cough cough, if I do say) MFA programs in the country. My work will surely get weirder–more sophisticated, but also just weirder–and through it I will continue to write about all the talented art-makers that affect me and work around me in this great new community, as well is in New York and other cities around the world.

Until then, here are two new Color Studies, both of which have taken interesting turns. I will also include here a piece I shot a couple weeks back that I keep staring at and feel sort of hypnotized by.

Enjoy and please keep reading.

p.s. www.thunderant.com

Untitled (Hair in Blue), C-print, 30×40″, 2010

Untitled (Face in Blue), C-print, 30×40″, 2010

Night Sky, C-print, 24×30″, 2010

©Stephanie Halmos

The Hate

Below is a recent piece, which as of now is not yet titled. Enjoy.

[ALL PERSONAL WORK AND MUSIC ON THIS BLOG © STEPHANIE HALMOS]

http://thephotocoterie.com/

Click below:

Anthems (of ’65) 2

The show runs from July 30 through August 21, 2010. The artists’ and public reception will take place on August 6, 2010, from 6-9pm. For those of you out West, believe me when I say it is a truly amazing exhibition.

More information HERE.

In Reeds At Dawn, 2008, 30×40″ (included in the exhibition, Strange Beauty)

I recently met with Amani Olu, director of the Humble Arts Foundation, an organization committed to supporting and promoting new art photographers.  The crux of our conversation revolved around the blessings of a medium that is, relatively speaking, rather young and in a state of constant evolution, especially in the current day.  He said something of particular interest to me, which has since spurred many late nights of playing in my studio and asking myself questions about how and why the the trained methods of image-making are not necessarily challenged in many avenues of Fine Art Photography.  He said, and I would have to agree, that “everything is in”. Meaning: there is nothing to stop contemporary photographers from heavy-handed exploratory methods of producing work  (both physically and conceptually, academically, socially, and personally).

That there is nothing stopping me from re-defining “photograph” or “video” is really a rare and explosive gift, empowering me as an artist to change my practice entirely…perhaps every 6 months.  The intention behind the work must always be there (no art for arts sake…image-flooded culture needs more messages and emotions and conversations), but the way we make it can and should and will always be changing, no matter how weird we get or how in love we fall with one way of working.

These are 2 new pieces (Above: “I Love You”, 2010. Below: “It All Feels Right I Think”, 2010). Both are new steps in changing the way I think about the physical depiction of dreaminess, memory, beauty, idealism, wonder.  And perhaps, my first steps into exploring fame, perfection, fleeting wants, expectation (the first and most basic inclinations towards my new project, the specific concept of which I am not “at liberty” to discuss….more to come!)

“It All Feels Right, I Think”, 2010

Is the place

Sit down

You’re safe now.

You’ve been stuck

In a lift

We’ve been trying

To reach you,

Thom.

This is the place

It won’t hurt

Never again.

A smell of recognition

A face you barely loved

Empty all your pockets

Because it’s time to come home.

This is the place

Remembering

All the things

You always see.

You’ve been stuck

In a lift

In the belly of a whale

At the bottom

Of the ocean.

A smell of recognition

A face you barely loved

Empty all your pockets

Because it’s time

To come home.

Today, is the first day

Of the rest of your days.

So

Lighten up, Squirt.

Looking for a Bomb by Erwin Wurm

Melanie Manchot, from the Gestures of Demarcation series

Melanie Bonjajo, from the Furniture Bondage series

Leap into the Void by Yves Klein

Tree of Life by Ana Mendieta

Were I to attribute a specific genre, artist, or group of artists as the primary influence on my practice, I would say the Fluxus arists working in the 60′s and 70′s have been a dominant source of inspiration in my aesthetics and intentions. What I find most intriguing about this period of time–as covered in Aperture–is that many of the now iconic images we know are relics of performances. This begs the question: what is more important, the performance itself or the relic of it’s existence?

Something I love about the public perception of both photography and performance are their completely different levels of approachability. Often times, viewers are scared off by the mere notion of “performance”, branding it as too conceptual, “weird”, ludicrous. On the other hand, photography is now so incredibly accessible that much of the general populace coin themselves “amateur photographers”. What I find truly humorous about both of these notions, is that so much of photography is performance, and so much of performance relies on photography.

And, beyond the conceptual intention of fine art-making, do we not all perform (just a little bit) when a camera is present?

There is still time to bid on my work (below), as well as work by artists from around the world, including Danny Clinch, Martin Schoeller, Brian Finke, and Nick Meek. Make sure you take a look at the amazing group of artists included in this fantastic event!

“Untitled (Feather)”, C-print, 30×40″, 2009

In the Desert, C-print, 24×30″, 2010

Self Portrait with Gun, C-print, 24×30″, 2010

Deer, C-print, 24×30″, 2010

All images ©Stephanie Halmos