Exhibition

Witness the Fitness (V15)

Gaston move to an undercling. This is the crux. Then the waterfall. Then up and out. At the age of 14 Chris Omprakash Sharma was already a freak. He was the first to complete a climb rated 5.14c. When a climber completes the first accent he has the right to name (or title) the climb. Sharma has an impressive list of first accents - Realization, Witness the Fitness,Necessary Evil, The Mandala, Dreamcatcher, Es Pontas, Papichulo, Demencia Senil, et al. All of these accents are rated 5.15b to 5.14c, or 8B+ and V14. Most are classified unrepeated, meaning that after the initial attempts (50 in the case of Es Pontas) Sharma has not attempted that accent again - once proves. This approach differs considerably from other professional athletes who appear to spend considerable time and energy continuously repeating the same feat or goal. Sharma prefers bouldering. This is a recent variation on climbing where the climber wears no rope or harness. Instead preferring to climb free on shorter and more dynamic routes. The voice of climbing - the publishers, writers, business - is still dominated by traditional climbers. Bouldering is considered by the time-honored as the death of the climber, the end of history. But it is the once proves culture that appeals to me, that we can move on after the once proves, never needing to re-enquire or repeat. By the flappy skin of your fingers and your aching ligaments, you can move forward, make advances, try new things, without needing to repeat yourself, over and over and over and over and over and over again. 

Jarrod Rawlins 

*Mista Dobalina

Ideas and things, and the way they connect, like Mista Dobalina as a nickname for James (this never took off, but this is no reason that it was not important for that moment, or that longevorty is a mark of excellence). Shelves and branches hold on to things (including fruit)  in different ways. There is a shop that sells toffee fruit that doesn't look to dissimular to the ressined lime that James has helped me with as a cotrabution to his show, but I guess they would most likely take off the stickers. This writting style is felling a little to quirky?

So; branches, fruit, newspaper, bike locks, resin, pictorial fruit stickers, shelves.........

There is something about the contained nature of things within the contrabutions I have made, and indeed the elements at play in James' werk, it is not that things are fixed in a conceptual framework, it is more fluid than that, but the moment is in its self a convex of time and a vessel for material, not unlike the newspapers. But this information is quite literaly unreadable in its context within this show. There are levels of openness, like james' inclusion of my wotk in his show, and the exposure of toiletries. there is also a giving away of the past in this action, and that of using unread newspaper, it speaks of the moment, not in isolation, but in a free and liberating way. Maybe it is not, but there is definatly some feeling of containment which is important and not oppresive.

Gabriel Kuri has done heaps of works involving fruit stickers, other artist have made heaps of work involving other materials, what is it about this branding that is good, intentional or not? I fell a desire to use simular material as artists who's work I like and so does James I think, Kuri's influence on the lime peice is a starting point, it is not what the work is about, but in moving away/around this point, there is a loose context which is formed, a history and a containment of types, what is important is an openning up of dialog, not art about art, but praxis inclusive of multiple praxi. This freedome can be found in having objects of the consumer world in your house, or an Art collection, but it is the content and the bluring between products or praxi that is beautiful. Objects, ideas, things. Content is not something solid, content is the existance and changing conditions of praxis, otherwise it is hystory. Hystory  can be a beautiful changing thing, but then it is different, it is present and future, and hystory.

Maybe I have talked to much about my relation and my praxis in relation to James', maybe I have not included enough poetry? But this is begining to sound like some kind of wrapping up of  an essay so I guess that's it? 

Oh and also I might add as a reprieve or whatever the right expresion is for this, that sponge bottom squarepants is integral to the meaning behind these and other myseries. He is the  punch (and judy) of our times, there is something about what we wipe our culture off with (like a sponge, duh) and how we aproach this in both a considered and un-considered way, there is a Pan (chaos/order/cosmos) like quolity to  these 'fictional' characters, but it is all indeed a representation, at a distance from life... But an interesting one for you to consider further at a later date if you wish. James' praxis I think is more in tune with broader life, or at least  his life, which I hope is one that is rich with interwoven fabrics of experiance.

Christopher L G Hill

Shiro Kuramata Wannabe

I'v been thinking about this light more and coming to good terms with it as a kind of magnetic object, in the way it is picking up other elements (like objects and ideas, like the clay frogs or an idea of what the real kuramata light meant both in design and cultural terms) and through those parts, forming something new. Form-wise, they are totally deformed and devoid of pattern or repetition (compared to the formal flow of the real K-Series lights), except for the four supporting triangles in each corner, but even then, one snapped of, almost against this echo of form. There is something visually of Y3K in them, something like the ‘The end of the world and the chilly, callous fairy dreamscape' Hu Fang describes, something whale-esque, or some ESP. The way a whale is a strange creature, an ocean dwelling mammal, hugs up against the two Chinese tea ceremony frogs, the strange amphibious creature. They both share some space between evolutions and de-evolution in the mystic history of time and the earth. Dolphins used to be land dwellers before choosing to move back into the ocean. The three legged, fully developed frog is like a regression into tadpole from a mature form, like the creature is reversing back its evolutions, like we need to reverse engineer our own evolutions, like this light stands for a reversal back from a global, understood culture and starts from the start again baring all of this other stuff. The fruit stickers are from the market, from Gabriel Kuri, Christopher L.G. Hill, from fruit and from everywhere. From eating, staying alive and buying produce. From buying shit fruit and good fruit and under-ripe avocadoes and mixing it with tinned pineapple, from those things coming and going but the stickers staying and looking good on these acrylic surfaces. This stands up against modern design, the neglecting or denial of human processes like eating, washing or shitting, the reality of everyday human existence. I like the produce/production term, and leaving what is left after these processes of deteriation have occurred. The fruit stickers act as more-often-than-not the differentiating factor in the fruit. Anywhere a lemon looks like a lemon, but a lemon with a sticker of a cartoon Native American on it is a point of difference from a generic view of produce. Produce is design and instantly recognizable. I want culture and the myth and the everyday to be in a state of togetherness and unified challenge to one another, to hug and make-up and make-out and move forward to something, or everything new. The ‘personal' fitting into what is historically an industrial process of de-personalized manufacture. This light forms a sort of architecture for itself, mimicking in a dumb way the sculptural landscapes of FOA'a Yokohama Port Terminal or Kuramata's things sitting on a concrete floor in Nakako Hayashi's magazine Here and There ‘House and Garden Issue'.

James Deutsher 2009

poem: rambo at light speed

Who you think taught you to smoke trees?
The life I accept is the most fearful argument against me, But
The words don't come so easily, (no seeds)
Quand, sous les poutres enfumées, Chantent les croûtes parfumées
‘"Exchange, intimacy, attachment can only be born through distance.
But is distance possible?" wrote Unica Zurn,'
Wrote Luce Irigaray.

Noxious Guo gas, always in my grasp
Came up wearing CdG khakis not kangols, to produce a zero point
When asked about it I just laugh
Now I vacate lying on the grass, fuscous honeyeaters and a gaggle of ass
Moroccan square, purple futbol shirts and a handful of hash
Rap Evergreen void writes words that quickly pass (what?)
Potatos, salt, pepper, oil ready to mash
(blank)
When did luxury become ghetto? Just whistle like a Kuramata teakettle
I throw three at you, tell me if you see Ronaldo, red devil
cause there are no more rebels over here, but I smell chronic in the air
that means the world flips over, again, this year
You hear?

Liv Barrett

For my friend James Deutsher's show at Uplands

Long long time ago, after dignified dinosaurs grow out feather and fly to the sky, one of Deutsher's forebear (maybe also you and my forebear) stand up, no one remember why, it might just a maim, a inspiration or mutate gene on a individual, or it is a kind of disease. The fact is that, it is suddenly become popular. Many successors had been survived and amass in the long past. The theorists thought it might give them a better field of view to chase and escape from the hunt. So give then a better competitive apposition (even it is also cause so many backaches and diabetes).
Unlike the predecessor (dinosaurs) their forelimbs didn't grow feathers turning to wings but extend few finger and knuckles, which could grab and pick. Why they develop to this different direction, I don't know, I am inapprehensive at the situations of each their times. But from their appearances today, I guess it might be because their different structure of the genital organs and different position on their body (I guess). This might not have that much to do with James's show so I leave it for some future time to discuss and study.
Anyway the descendants of the group of creatures that had stand on their "feet" and use their "hands" are ours. Or say that them and we have more close kinship than birds (the other creature which also stand before us). And we are the outcome of the elements; those creatures and the pass.
So since we pretended we are the new owner of the ground, and recently start to copy the birds again to further disencumber the gravity. And then we had excess bird to penetrate the aerosphere and escape the earth's gravity (send the spaceship to the space, use techniques to move molecule). Sorry I am wrong; we are not there yet (the far of human are only reach to the moon). Our creations had escaped the earth, but still the moment of "against"or "escape" the "ubiquity" gravity sphere of influence (under sudden unit size anomalistic movement of the atoms are more effect by each others) is important in this context.
However, if we stop there or this exertion didn't bring us a future, or we are just too slow and we destroying our self and our land too quick, this show will as so many of our other actions means nothing.

So please can you make it mean something (for me)?

Hao Guo 21/03/09

James Deutsher would like to thank Tara and Jarrod Rawlins, Christopher L.G. Hill, Hao Guo, Liv Barrett, World Food, ffiXXed, Y3K, loved friends and family.