David Olivant - Heteroglyphs by California State Univeristy Stanislaus School of the Arts

HETEROGLYPHS David Olivant

H E T ER O G LY PHS David Olivant Art Space on Main Department of Art School of the Arts California State University Stanislaus 1

300 copies printed David Olivant: Heteroglyphs JANZEN Galerie Dusseldorf, Germany. September 7 - October 1, 2014 Art Space on Main 135 W. Main St. Turlock, CA 95380

January 29 - February 27, 2015 University Art Gallery School of the Arts California State University Stanislaus One University Circle Turlock, CA 95382

This exhibition and catalog have been funded by: Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University Stanislaus Copyright © 2014 California State University Stanislaus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Catalog Design: Tamami Hillerman, Designer; Nic Webber, School of the Arts, California State University Stanislaus Catalog Printing: Claremont Print, Claremont, CA Catalog Photography: Courtesy of the artist. ISBN: 978-1-940753-06-5 Cover Image: Lightning Strikes Twice, 2013, multimedia on panel, 34” x 34”

CONTENTS

Director’s Foreword ��5

Heteroglyphs ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................7

Works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Index.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Biography..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 86

Acknowledgments �� 90

DIRECTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FOREWORD

Heteroglyphs represents a chance to view the most recent work of my colleague David Olivant. This is the second time I have had the opportunity to work with David on an exhibition of his work. His last show in the University Art Gallery was a celebration of the works he created during his sabbatical of 2007. The show titled Cadenza stands out as one of the highlights of all the exhibitions shown at the University Art Gallery in the past ten years. Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest work continues to demonstrate his incredible abilities to create works of art with astonishing skills that are unrivaled. I am very excited to be able to be part of this important exhibition and to be able to share his work for others to enjoy. I would like to thank the many colleagues that have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. David Olivant for the opportunity of exhibiting his amazing work and for his insightful writting, the College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design and Claremont Print and Copy for the printing of this catalog. Many thanks are also extended to the Instructionally Related Activities Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. Their support is greatly appreciated. Dean De Cocker, Director University Art Gallery Art Space on Main California State University, Stanislaus

HETEROGLYPHS

For years I have scoured and interrogated unconscious imagery, arrived at through the outmoded surrealist practice of automatic doodling, and the quasi narratives into which it sometimes coheres, for hints of meaning, seeing these configurations as allegories that somehow root the wellbeing of my psyche in that of the cosmos as a whole. In recent work and in response to the apparent limitations of a linear, temporal narrative, no matter how multivalent, a distinctly different narrative has emerged. The interactions between characters were taking on an autonomy that somewhat subverted or transcended my own time-worn agendas. The characters behaved out of apparent embryonic self-awareness in scant regard for my designs on their careers. Instead of addressing each other and fulfilling their roles in the plot they adopted an outward mode of address, directly engaging, or even patently avoiding, myself or my proxy (the viewer). The stylistic and methodological consequences of this have been radical. The literal, physical connections between the solids of which the figures are generally composed and the flat picture surface come to represent for me a point of intersection or contact between distinct, heterogeneous worlds, and in doing so they transfer the weight of meaning from transactions across the surface to transactions between the surface and what sits in front of it. Meaning is effectively deepened through the interaction of real and illusory space. It might justly be claimed that historically almost any relief sculpture, whether by Ghiberti, Veit Stoss or the carvers of The Descent of the Ganges in Mahaballipuram has more than adequately explored this turf. I would concur with this but with the following proviso- in all of these works and others of their time there is a largely seamless absorption of the sculptural elements into the painted illusion or vice-versa, but rarely have the interactions or contacts between the realm of sculpture and the realm of painting been viewed as the pivot of meaning. A possible exception might be found in parts of the Isenheim Altarpiece (actually, largely a painting) but here it is more that some of the painted elements act like sculpture or magically transform into it, so that the typical seamlessness of relief sculptures now appears to be the result of enchantment. Furthermore, and if we take Grunewald as instructive, what in his depictions allows for layers of allusion through the resemblance of one substance or object to numerous others in a phantasmagoric feeding frenzy, never quite reaches the next

logical stage of having the figures actually built of those other things or substances. In his case it would look inelegant, irreverent or absurd. If the limbs of the crucified Christ remind us of tree limbs they are nonetheless never made of tree limbs or even described as such. So, if the mode of address is outward into the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s space, and if the collision of the picture surface and sculpted elements represents a contact between discrete contradictory worlds, and if the discrete elements of which the characters are constructed convey their literal or primary identity (as fan blade, shell, driftwood etc.) with as much force as their secondary or signifying identity (as airplane wing, human thorax, beardhair etc.) then the traditional linear narrative is at the very least seriously undermined by these other more assertive carriers of meaning. This type of meaning is ineluctably elusive and open- ended and invites the sarcastic, derisory, flippant, ironic or generally less than sincere or well-behaved terms in which I have commentated on each image later in this catalogue. So much for the stylistic consequencesâ&#x20AC;Ś My standard operating procedure between 1980 and 2008 had involved the extraction from a laboriously layered surface (in the case of paintings) or a greatly pummeled and massaged mound of clay (in the case of sculptures) of imagery that, while it suggested multiple meanings, was usually tightly interwoven and somehow all of a piece. I viewed the separation of my work into two distinct categories, the sculptural and the painterly, as somehow artificial and around 2008 I began to add ceramic components, usually heads and limbs, to a flat, painted support. One vague inspiration for this was certain medieval Limoges enameled boxes where the heads of figures protrude, albeit elegantly, from an otherwise flat surface. My initial experiments with hybridizing painting and sculpture failed to inspire until my wife, Katie, pointed out to me that the ceramic figures seemed to be either attempting escape from or entry into the flat, painted world of the wooden panels to which they were affixed. I am grateful to her for kick-starting my recognition of this completely novel dimension of meaning.

I made a number of pictures between about 2008 and 2011 that explored the possibilities inherent in my first work of this type pretentiously titled “Polyptych of Ontological Discontents”. For these large panels I produced ahead of time a number of complete low-relief ceramic figures that were then attached to plywood boards and generated painted partners or antagonists on them. This was largely a case of rotating the axis of the narrative through ninety degrees so that it was now perpendicular to rather than parallel with the picture surface, but this axis never projected more than an inch or two from the surface. During this time I also gradually fastened other sculptural components to the surface, mostly pieces of driftwood. The two-dimensional surface, under the impact of the apparent collision with ceramic relief figures started to rupture and collage became the predominant mode of adding painterly elements. It was a relatively small step from this to creating greater fragmentation and heterogeneity in the sculpted forms and in this sense “The Wrong Trousers” 2010 was something of a departure for me. The range of objects now included, in addition to ceramic heads and breasts, two fan blades, driftwood and a flat stone functioning as a speech bubble. The fact that the metaphors generated by the conjunction of different recognizable objects with the forms they depicted, in this case, for instance, painted driftwood and a pair of trousers, now occupied the literal foreground of the viewer’s attention, afforded the more traditional pictorial narrative a subservient and, for me, less insistently autobiographical role. This freed it up to function as a sort of comic or sarcastic melody (in the manner of Shostakovich) against which the darker, more pervasive imaginative themes could be played out. So now (now being around 2011) rather than standing for weeks confronted by an ever thickening skein of abstract shapes and squiggles from which I eventually lifted images that carried some resonance or suggestions of meaning, I was situated amidst legions and cohorts of ceramic heads, and other body parts, in addition to miniature ceramic building facades and anything else in ceramic I thought might come in handy. These would have been built over a period of a few weeks, fired and then stockpiled, like the parts of a kit for building a future universe. In the meantime I would also have haphazardly collected discarded toys, pieces of driftwood, electrical

and plumbing components, kitchen tools, hairdryer parts, piano parts, humidifier parts and other detritus of 21st century existence. In this I was influenced by the practices of my friend, the artist Gordon Senior, with whom, despite our mutual interest and affinity, I was never able to collaborate with (my fault, not his) except in this much more removed sense. It was now as if the potential images from my unconscious were prefabricated ready to be combined at will, in a kind of oneiric assembly–kit. But in fact it was more than this because many of the fragments, take for instance the plastic business end of a potato masher, had lost most of their original identity, not least because I dismembered them. This now functions as the façade of a building in “One in the Eye.” It was for me a revelation that the conjunctions of different components of the everyday world could be more original and project wider spectrums of meaning than what I had for years so laboriously gleaned from layered and abraded automatic doodling. These conjunctions are best described by the neologism “heteroglyph” after which the exhibition is named. In “Lightening Strikes Twice” we see a male figure built partly from a glass light cover, its crenations mimicking those of pleated cloth. His arms and shoulders incorporate a piano action bracket, while his truncated genitals are derived from a similarly truncated bronze fan-blade arm. He sports a clay head, made many years ago by my brother, topped by a quasirenaissance headdress from a plastic humidifier and hair from a bristle brush. The qualities of these elements (hardness, brittleness, plasticity, fragility, weight) dictate the methods by which this heteroglyph is attached to the wooden panel behind, generating the complex relationship between the flat surface and the sculpted components fastened to it. At this stage in my work I was as concerned to undermine the barrier between these two worlds as to illustrate the collisions at their interface. At lower left an elegantly attired lady, not only from the illusory world of painting but from that world as it properly existed c 1680, appears to rescue a younger but ceramic female from imminent drowning, the striations in the wood grain here, as often, standing for aquatic surface ripples. The eponymous lightening is suggested by the black zigzag bridge, salvaged from the same piano as the varnished wood panels. The point of insistently itemizing these details is that the distinct way each component or heteroglyph projects from or adheres to

the picture surface and hence to the implied illusory space depicted on it, follows a gamut of nuanced options which, when they are all combined in a single figure whether it be Mr. Lampshade or Mrs. Lightening, invite a meditation on the ontological status of the figure, a status which appears to

hover delicately between that of the viewer and that of the larger narrative of which the figure forms a part. I almost revel at the way in which representational expectations are tweaked or sabotaged. In the case of Mrs. Lightening, for instance, everything about the way the rest of the image is constructed might lead to the assumption that her left hand should be most

obviously a sculptural component to exaggerate its perpendicular thrust towards the viewer, but instead it is shown drawn in extreme foreshortening. Another strategy that helps complicate the figures’ status is the periodic implied tilting of the orientation of the apparent ground-plane, something I might have picked up from my studies of Indian miniature painting. While what can be seen of the space immediately behind the two large figures tends to recede in obedient single point perspective we seem to look down upon the laminated, varnished wood surface to the left and the green vertical strip behind the image of the young boy. Thus, even where components are attached to the backboard in similar ways they can appear to be different through the implied, not actual, orientation of that same backboard. I once read that Beckmann’s triptychs are more concerned with the suggestion of meaning than its particular definition. That is, while his images read as starkly allegorical, it is never clear what they symbolize. It might be, that working under Schopenhauer’s heavy shadow, he felt that what he was seeking was ultimately unknowable. My own approach to image making owes much to Beckmann’s example. I hope that through extending the dimensions of my narratives to intercept the real space of the viewer, and through exploring and also subverting the interface between sculpture and painting (more properly between “reality and illusion”) I have anchored the plot lines in something more spatial than temporal and that I have managed to some small degree to undermine the linearity of any narrative and whatever teleology that might imply. I would hope the loosely archetypal personalities that my work delivers can suggest the beginnings of self-consciousness, by doubting their scripted roles and thus directing their attention beyond the linear narrative fabric, to encounter the viewers or their putative author’s story. In this way the autonomy of their distinct egos is actually undermined, as most of these personae are clearly interconnected with everything else around them, built heteroglypically from the fabric of the universe and the associations it evokes. In loosening their author’s grip, in wrestling free of traditional temporal storyline they too appear to seek an intangible form of contact and in so doing mirror his own struggles.

WORKS

Fish From Toledo The storm in El Greco’s View of Toledo has passed over and the city’s occupants are left to count the cost in dead fishes.(“Kalter, gratiger Fisch!”) The distant Sierra De Gredos sprawl, corpselike beneath wooden clouds. The storm was conjured by the brujas whose feline accomplice has been hung out to dry on the lightening-blasted tree. The male magician and fisher king will be reincarnated in “Atlantic Fisheries” while his compadre must sustain the required arboreal immolation.

Earth and Sky Now the elements do battle among the wooden clouds (inscribed with isobars, or is it isotherms?) and the stormy night sky manifests some clear Teutonic territorial ambitions. Paris and Western Europe wait below. I knew Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d find a use for that Eiffel Tower pencil sharpener.

Inaudible Cities Apologies to Italo Calvino for misappropriating his title and to the German people for untimely reminders of the failed 1,000 year Reich. Wars involve the destruction of culture, amongst other things, so the vitality of Western music withers with the collapse of its cities, constructed here largely of piano keys, two of which also form a bridge to the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s space. The hushed nocturnal descent of Allied paratroopers reflect the silencing of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s orchestras, while Europa attempts to raise a whisper through the timehonored practice of wiping her fingers delicately but repeatedly around the moistened mouth of a wine glass, (here milk bottle).

Susannah and the Good Vibrations We don’t of course know for sure if Susannah knows she’s being watched and the patriarchs don’t know this either but they suspect she might prefer them to see her dancing than bathing. End of story? The use of bouncy balls for breasts is of course a little obvious and could be construed as insensitive, if it wasn’t for the suggestion that Susannah is created as an image of the elders, whose erotic imagination is as bankrupt as their theology.

Voices The erotic imagination is here so impoverished that it has led to a form of possession and the Rhinemaidens or harpies or muses seem to pity their aging author (“Seligster Mann!”) as one of them whispers in his ear - quite touching really. The drapes flutter in the breeze. If only he could grasp one of the attentive girlies, (“Fing’ eine diese Faust!...”) or at least what they have to say to him. Unfortunately for him he stayed too close to home and uses the fabric from his mother’s discarded frocks to fashion his trousers.

The Wrong Trousers These (the previously mentioned trousers) make another appearance in the eponymous panel called “The Wrong Trousers” with its learned allusions to Wallace and Grommit. It might also be called “The Wrong Beard” or “The Wrong Hands”, it’s clear that something is wrong… The aging Rhine-maiden continues to heckle but her message is petrified to a vacant lithic speech bubble. Alberich has gained considerably in confidence, convinced that he is now a solar deity, despite the fact that he’s wearing lady’s nylons and a wooden beard! Fortunately he seems to be stepping out of the picture, so we could have called it “Impending Solar Eclipse.”

Lightening Strikes Twice … actually three times and with Blitzkrieg coordination. It’s not apparently enough to switch on the lights however and I’m reminded that in Hindi the same word Bhijali is used for both electricity and lightening, which to the bemused English listener means that you hear turn the “lightening on” or “off ” on a regular basis.

energy sources is analogous on some level to the stifling of inspiration. The checkerboard headgear reminds me of something one might wear in a painting by Uccello, or is it Della Francesca, and, coupled with an antique style light cover, it suggests the fading of inspiration from the past. The creature at far right is a giant tick shitting blood, perhaps a parody of recycling and sustainability.

It’s probably about power sources and inspiration and the magical suggestion that a depletion of natural

You and Me So, I’m sure you’ve had those arguments when you are both subtly aware that there is a third party to the discussion, someone’s mother. She’s always innocent, always a martyr and somehow, through this, always the cause of the argument. It doesn’t matter if she’s long dead or lives 500 miles away, this just makes her influence even stronger. She is the source of all the tears and here she is part watermill. She secretes from every available portal, secretions that are activated by the spousal conflict.

At One with the Rising Waters The conjunction of vertical and horizontal planes is the best way I have found to depict above and below the water’s surface simultaneously, see also “Walking the Keys”. Rising waters have a biblical pedigree and, now as then, why not just pack up the available breeding pairs and load them aboard a giant tub, in this case fitted with a rotating paddle, courtesy of my wife’s obsolete hairdryer. Just plug it in and it propels itself. In this fashion, rather than worrying about inundated shorelines we can truly become at one with the rising waters. Never mind the presence of death’s dark fingers, reaching down to tamper with our mainsail or the neat row of bullet holes peppering the sky. Good plumbing helps of course. The lamb and the bear-headed man shall lie down together and all shall be well.

Atlantic Fisheries I like to use wood-grain paper to represent the watery part of the world, even if it’s a bit of a cliché. First off, painting a convincing water surface is way beyond my skills and I just don’t have the time or attitude for it. I’d rather save water than paint it. Second, I think the fakeness of the paper, trying to be wood, trying to be water suggests that one day these wood-grain effects might stand to lakes and ponds as Astroturf does to lawns. Third, I like the fact that in Indian miniature

paintings patterns are always shown flat, as if from above, no perspective recession, and yet the objects placed on them still try to recede. Same thing here with the patterned wave-paper courtesy of Martha Stewart, not incidentally, depicted as the nude at top right! What this all adds up to I’d rather not say, but despite appearances Pisces is not in the ascendant. It might be rather be a case of …Mercury rising.

Mercury Rising I like to use vinyl records to carry the titles of pieces, thus saving on wall labels. They also imply a sonic element which is often improvised upon by vagrant dissipated piano parts scattered throughout my work, but in this case limited to the legs of Abraham Lincoln and his cronies, grappling with slavery. There are several other characters coming (quite literally) out of the woodwork, here playing itself not water. This is a period piece, Lincoln slavery, a dog from Dutch Genre painting, diverse vegetables harvested from another Dutch realist, some Jacob Van Mondrian or Piet Hoogstrachtsgaarten, tied in friendly trompe

lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeil clusters ripe for the portraying. The young lady seems less than convinced though, maybe because she sees them as symbolic and worries that ingesting them leads to some bizarre transformation, witness the mature school maâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;am on the right, shriveled to a gourd. An even more withered specimen operates the movie camera from behind the bars of a cage in what a more imaginative critic than myself might infer, demonstrates parallels between, the emancipation of African-Americans and the emancipation of painting from the mechanics of optical mimesis.

Sleeping dogs cannot, must not, be allowed to lie Jazz Jackpots - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea More musical numbers here and the vinyl functions as cog wheels and planets, a not uncommon conjunction in the Britannia of Joseph Wright of Derby and Blake’s “Dark satanic mills”. It’s all there in black and white and for the newly emancipated slave his newfound freedom to labor on the great projects of the military industrial complex is a great opportunity to invent the quintessentially American musical art form. For now his banjo or accordion must double as the walls of the factory. “There’s trouble at Mill”, but now he can choose his own muses and what a strange one he has invented. It does seem to leads us “to an overwhelming question, oh, do not ask ‘what is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.”

Home from Home This is not what I had in mind though, something we’d rather not discuss. Rapunzel has escaped from the tower, here played by an amputated chair leg, by the rather obvious stratagem of taking the stairs. What you might not realize is that it is also she who finds a noose around her neck in the absence of adequate drugs for a lethal injection. It’s no coincidence that her gallows is also an easel, but her death does not prevent the continued decay of nature into floral wallpaper, the suburban dream not so easily escaped by fleeing Watford to Sunny California. But anyway,

as I said, “let us go and make our visit…” Just in case it’s not clear, she is as much a projection of his mind, witness the splayed, bi-valvic post–trepanation brain (not so easy in sculpture) courtesy of Dr Juan Deyman positioned centrally beneath her death throes, as her mega-cephalic blonde predecessor in Jazz Jackpots might be of our black banjo player. For me it doesn’t, surely can’t, get much darker than this. Feel the need for a laugh?… let’s see…

Station Master Same idea but in a much more comic vein. The lady is now tricked out in the latest frilly lingerie, in which guise she embodies the life of the nocturnal city that provides her only hope of a halo. She is a poor alternative to virginity. Tied to the rails in silent moviestyle she utters the cries of your typical Wagnerian heroine as the train steams towards her. Can the stationmaster save the day by switching the points? The crowd/chorus looks on in interest. Hopefully the scattered piano parts can evoke the appropriate score.

Nerfous Energy It has to be admitted that Nerf guns loomed large in my work for a few months in 2013. Try finding them in the work of any other artistâ&#x20AC;Ś This piece really represents the apotheosis of that little fixation, now safely behind me, I think. First off, the Nerf does its job very well in evoking powerful, phallic firearms without all of the menace and damage and hence can readily suggest all kinds of social political commentary merely though its deft insertion in the appropriate context. The colors of the plastics in which it is apt to manifest are unattainable in any other form. The plastic is so fake that it readily counterpoints or even subverts my possibly pretentious preference for more natural materials. When dismantled the Nerf gun pieces are broadly suggestive of the human anatomy and in the present instance they furnish the legs, skirt and hat of

the lady in green in addition to the wheels and fuselage of the steam train. She, the green lady, seems to be in the employ of a master engineer, re-constituted from classical fragments that did time as an earlier more realistic sculpture. His head forms the center of a miniature cosmos derived from a vinyl 78â&#x20AC;&#x2122; in addition to half of a porcelain mixing bowl and pieces of plastic humidifier. As is often the case, the gaps, usually the joints, are furnished by complete or sectioned bouncyballs. By the constant manipulation of the controls he attempts to supervise the distribution of time and space, stopping the train from leaving or his green accomplice from getting away from him. Here the Nerf has almost entirely renounced its potential to kill and mutilate.

â&#x20AC;Śnot so in Peace Process where the clear identity of the twin yellow Nerf guns carries most of the polemical thrust. In the lower section the menace of the two weapons pointing at each other in perfect symmetry (Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve often gravitated to images which imply their own self destruction) is enhanced by the circular saw blade whose cutting tips are festooned with remnants of human viscera At the end of each barrel is a peace-negotiator, both framed by a TV set. The weapons have the full support of rows of marching American revolutionary militia, also in bright yellow. This section forms the shoulders and upper chest, which belong to the head above, similarly decked out in red, yellow and black, and festooned with logos from Ferrari, Shell Oil and Pirelli.

Talking of polemical thrust… This is in some ways a companion piece to Peace Process. It is titled “Black as the Ace of Spades” in reference to the spade, the ace of spades playing card affixed to the real spade handle and the issue of black labor in the not so Democratic Republic of the Congo. I’ve never been to Africa, but I had just read The Poisonwood Bible and seen Marcus Bleasdale’s photos of gold-miners in the Congo. I don’t appreciate didactic art but I feel that the political meaning of a work can enhance the metaphorical associations and ground the phantasy in current events, much in the manner of Pan’s Labyrinth or One Hundred years of Solitude. Environmental pillage and exploitation of poverty have parallels in the unconscious mind and gain in significance when viewed from an archetypal standpoint. That’s why the gold mine’s entrance shaft is framed by the naked figure of a woman, making it both tomb and womb. Of course the Congo has stood for the unconscious ever since Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Target Practice Again we find a naked lady framing human folly. If she is a witness or, like Helen of Troy, the ostensible cause of all the problems she may imminently be dispatched by the neighborly shot-gun wielding coward, or she may just have her knee caps blown off. The sun sets over the mountains and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guess what the future holds. I recall that back in about 1984 a celebrated fellow student at the RCA, David Mack, constructed a large Polaris submarine entirely of car tires.

One in the Eye is the preferred, more chivalric means of disposing of this seductress although the heroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions might be more appropriately targeted at a real dragon. Spot the potato masher? I do like the veins on the horseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leg.

Northern Exposure Elaborate pipelines frame and threaten the permafrost, ready to deliver its oil to suburban homes and vehicles in warmer climes. The bearded patriarchal impresario, in thrall to the white angel of consumerism (notice her color-coordinated handbag) has deemed this safe and necessary despite the attentions of Death about to blunt his incisors against and the steady drip-drip of effluents onto his glabrous cranium. Drilling is now so extensive that we can only maintain appearances by replacing the permafrost with Astrofrost, which has the advantage of never melting and bears an uncanny resemblance to a white non-slip plastic bath mat.

This (see previous) was predicted in Winter Weltanschaaung where the enchantments of a hyperborean Brueghelesque village, conjured by the emaciated thinker (a clear descendant of Blakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Newton) provide the setting for schemes for a better future.

Man in the Moon Is he just a clichĂŠd projection of our hubris or the spiritualization of an otherwise brute natural world? Will he one day hatch from the lunar egg? What if anything might he teach us? And can cell phone circuit boards be recycled as skyscrapers?

Night and Day We might ask the same of the sun here pointing at his own head in a gesture of implied suicide. The lady in the central inset, ripped from an earlier drawing, plays dice with the universe, something scientists tell us God never does, at least not the old blue-bearded patriarchal god slumped unceremoniously on the forest floor, his left hand savaged by a latter-day Cerberus, the thumb of his right testing the leading edge of the aeroplaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wing, should he need a quick escape. First he must cut the umbilical cord by which his boyhood is joined to his childhood home, and he ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t going to do that with his hands clasped firmly behind his neck. While he hesitates, fixated on the single breast offered to him, the sun can never rise properly, and his plane will nose-dive into the ferns and flowers.

Syphonaptera Deus Translated means the God of Fleas, I liked the “syphon” part and the pretensions of the Latin term. So if you fail to cut the umbilical cord it turns into a life support tube, but your vitality is now comparable to a flea’s. Well, that’s taking a very moralistic, cautionary view of things. The angel has plaster wings as you can see and the wheels of industry and reason avail you almost nothing.

You Won’t See Me (Self-portrait as Road kill) And I won’t see you unless I get some stronger glasses. You won’t see me because I’m leaving home and I’m not coming back which for you is the same as me dying. I hope you like my halo.

Painter-Decorator I can always get a job as a painter-decorator and just whitewash the faĂ§ade. Nearly all my childhood drawings were executed on bright yellow sheets of paper obtained as free surplus from a neighbor who worked at Odhamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s printers in Garston. My color sense has not been the same since!

Attachments Things I like about this piece are as follows; •Broken sugar bowl lid used as bra. •The way the man’s right ankle transitions smoothly from drift wood to painted foot.

•The way in which the red ceramic fragments suggest the man’s viscera. •The grazing grey pony behind the woman’s legs.

•The surface of the pond with its floating bead-bubbles and Martha Stewart gold paper wood-grain ripples.

•The curtain rail finials and brass draw handles used to suggest parts of a throne.

•The incredibly 3D body (hard to grasp in a photo) of the girl in the lower right corner fashioned from a large piece of tree stump carved and then rejected during a stay here by the late, important Indian painter and friend-Ambadas Khobragade. It projects out from the panel about six inches!

•The snake’s head hatching from the golden egg.

•The way the woman’s ceramic hair strands taper into a painted equivalent to disappear behind the bear’s muzzle.

•The bear’s backpack. •The way the bear stares, mutely seeking a response from his mistress. •The way I was able to utilize a lot of weirdly shaped ceramic fragments that had been lying about in my studio since the last ice-age.

Orpheus Enchanting the Animals This is the first of three to include a chunk of someone else’s art, in this case the eponymous Cuyp picture. I started with the viola de gamba player and it quickly became apparent that a horse or ass was whispering in his ear. I felt the need for a distant landscape vista behind the musician’s shoulder and found the appropriate setting among my postcards. The postcard image was poor quality and quite small, so I did an internet search and to my surprise discovered

that in the Cuyp painting, as you can see, the horse is positioned as if he is whispering in Orpheus’s ear. It may not be so much that Orpheus is enchanting the animals as that they are enchanting him. For me a rare painting in a major key. What might I glean from Breughel a number of images from whose paintings, detached from a Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum calendar, decorate the walls of my studio?

Underwood Lightening strikes twice, if you recall, and now a third time. As the mechanism of the storm moves into full swing, Breughel’s peasants trim the underwood still unaware of impending change. The okapi will have disappeared from the planet before they even knew of its existence, so no great loss there… In a time of rapid change and increasing dependence on gismos and gadgets what do the old masters have to teach us? A tentative answer is ventured in “No Improvement”(see next).

No Improvement The title really gives the game away. Two questions“can art ever improve?” and “can nature ever be improved upon?” become, in one sense, the same question. My additions to Breughel crudely reflect the developments in modernism away from pictorial depiction via Synthetic Cubism towards assemblage. Likewise technology moves away from integrated pastoralism towards genetic engineering. Nature and humanity are now a collection of fragments, albeit rich in allusiveness. The artist can rebel, escape to an earlier vision of unity or revel in the fragmentation. Whichever way he turns he will need an increasingly sophisticated life-support system.

Walking the Keys Or “walking the plank”, but the former title puns on quays and keys so I prefer it. The amorous couple are pulled from “The Turn of the Screw,” an earlier drawing that references “Die Windsbraut” by OK. The piece takes some liberties with projection systems. For instance the quays (keys) should rightfully sit parallel rather than perpendicular to the wooden water surface. The boat should rightfully fall out of the water or the picture, and the sailor should rightfully fall out of the boat. The plank and the feet are “correct”.

Nothing Between Us I do enjoy the lady swimmer on the right. The fusion of chair back and curvaceous piano hammer mechanism parts with vinyl record fragments, bouncy-balls, hairdryer components and anatomical, sculptural fragments is just delightful. Also, its attachment to the square panel to its left in just two subtle points, one of which (the upper) involves the continuation of the curve of the vinyl semi-circular water surface but at a 90 degree rotation. (You can’t plan for these felicities). While I’m at it (self-praise that is) I’ve got to love the way the plaster fragments lift imagery from the Breughel winter landscape into a heady concoction of 2 and 3 dimensions. I even like the little butterfly above the roof-line. The menace of the fairy tale witches, fresh from Gogol’s Dikanka, magically mutates to oneiric ecstasy.

It just Ain’t Pretty …disappearing into the gaping (saw blade) jaws of a giant lizard, or being caught with your undies at half mast, or functioning on elaborate but largely medieval life-support, or trying to get your message across, or being ordered into an endless tunnel at the end of which there’s clearly no light. Most of the wood in this comes from a piano and I was careful to preserve the different wood surfaces. The lizard is made largely from driftwood.

There are four circles or discs and each functions very differently. The flanking pair consists of the eponymous vinyl record and a sanding pad for a disc sander. Each produces very different noise, one depending on grooved smoothness, the other on uniform roughness. The figure for whom the sanding disc functions as halo clearly needs to replace his headphones. Of the inner circles, the larger and most prominent represents simultaneously the lizard’s head and the void surrounding it, and it sits forward far enough that the lizard’s victim has room to project at ninety degrees from the picture surface.

It’s all in the Game The ludic aspects are clear in the proliferation of bouncy-balls and the gay colors as well as the allusion to Dali’s floppy watches in the bent vinyl record at bottom right. We see the remainder of the ceramic mixing bowl that appeared in “Nerfous Energy” doing time as the central character’s abdomen and shoulder. There comes a point when a component, previously Nerf gun parts and piano parts, demands center stage and here it is clearly the bouncy balls. Who would ever have thought they would be this versatile? We see them evoking the eyes, cheeks and chin of the

central character and most of his major joints. They also comfortably occupy his scrotum. Their colors and striped pattern are continued as embellishments to his wooden limbs. A horizontal register of these rubbery targets decorates the ground beneath his feet reading as some strange infantile system of hieroglyphs or a primitive comprehension of genetic code. We might even claim a few allusions to Pop Art. You might think the red left panel represents communism and the allusions to gasoline on the right an allusion to the demise of capitalism, but you’d be wrong.

INDEX

1 Fish from Toledo multi media on panel 18”x17” 2012

7 Lightening Strikes Twice multi media on panel 34”x34” 2013

13 Home from Home multi media on panel 20”x18” 2014

2 Earth and Sky multi media on panel 24”x19” 2013

8 You and Me multi media on panel 19”x15” 2013

14 Station Master multi media on panel 35”x26” 2013

3 Inaudible Cities multi media on panel 22”x24” 2013

9 At One with the Rising Waters multi media on panel 24”x27” 2012

15 Nerfous Energy multi media on panel 20”x26” 2013

4 Susannah and the Good Vibrations multi media on panel 25”x18” 2013

10 Atlantic Fisheries multi media on panel 18”x14” 2013

16 Peace Process multi media on plastic 35”x23” 2014

5 Voices multi media on panel 22”x26” 2012

11 Mercury Rising multi media on panels 28”x26” 2013

17 Black as the Ace of Spades multi media on panel 26”x16” 2014

6 The Wrong Trousers multi media on panel 50”x27” 2010

12 Jazz Jackpots - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea multi media 16”x15” 2013

18 Target Practice multi media on panel 20”x22” 2014

19 One in the Eye multi media on panel 24”x10” 2013 20 Northern Exposure multi media on panels 31”x19” 2014 21 Winter Weltanschaaung multi media on panel 24”x16” 2013 22 Man in the Moon multi media on panel 18”x13” 2013 23 Night and Day multi media on panel 48”x42” 2010 24 Syphonaptera Deus multi media on panel 23”x21” 2013

25 You Won’t See Me. (Self-portrait as Road kill) ceramic on panel 19”x13” 2013 26 Painter-Decorator multi media on panel 21”x11” 2013 27 Attachments multi media on panel 48”x30” 2010 28 Orpheus Enchanting the Animals multi media on panel 21”x23” 2013 29 Underwood multi media on panel 29”x19” 2014 30 No Improvement multi media on panel 22”x23” 2014

31 Walking the Keys multi media on panel 23”x29” 2013 32 Nothing Between Us multi media on panels 17”x33” 2013 33 It just Ain’t Pretty multi media on panels 58”x72” 2012 34 It’s all in the Game multi media on panels 54”x72” 2013

David Olivant Professor of Art at California State University, Stanislaus/USA since 1995 born on 3rd May 1958 in Watford, England; living and working in Turlock, California

Education 09/81-07/84 09/76-07/77

M.A. Painting. Royal College of Art, London/UK B.A. Art. Falmouth School of Art, England/UK

Awards 09/89-04/90 11/86-06/88 09/84-07/85

British Council travel award, Stockholm/Sweden Commonwealth Scholarship, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi/India Cheltenham Fellowship, England/GB

Solo Exhibitions 09-14-10-14 02-11-03-11 02-10 -05-10 09-08-10-08 11/07-12/07 06/07-07/07 03/07-04/07 09/01-10/01 04/99-06/99 11/96-12/96 12/95-01/96 12/93-02/94 06/92-08/92 03/91-04/91 02/90-04/90 11/87-12/87

Hybrid Dreams - Objects and Assemblages. Janzen Galerie, Dusseldorf, Germany Narrative Drift. First Street Gallery, Humboldt State University, CA/USA Studio Leitmotifs. Robert V Fullerton Museum, California State University, San Bernardino/USA Cadenza. University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus/USA Cadenza. Janzen Galerie, Wuppertal, Germany. Ceramic Sculptures. Vergas Gallery, Mission College, Santa Clara/USA Those Images That Yetâ&#x20AC;Ś, Truckee Meadows Junior College, Reno/USA Towards the Door We Never Opened, University Art Gallery, California State University Stanislaus/USA World Not World, Fresno Art Museum, California/USA University Art Gallery, California State University Stanislaus/USA Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi/India Watercolors from the Aspen Series, Stephen Solovy Fine Art, Chicago/USA Stephen Solovy Fine Art, Chicago/USA Stephen Solovy Fine Art, Chicago/USA Center for International Contemporary Art, New York/USA Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi/India

Selected Group Exhibitions 08/12-12/12 CSU Stanislaus Art Department faculty exhibition, Carnegie Art Center, Turlock CA 02/10-03/10 California State University Stanislaus Faculty Exchange Exhibition, First Street Gallery, Humboldt State University/USA 03/08 International art fair, art Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe/Germany (represented by Janzen Galerie,Wuppertal) 10/06-11/06 Eight Hours Difference, Lancaster University/England. 09/02-10/02 Art Department Faculty: Valley View, University Art Gallery, California State University Stanislaus/USA 11/97-02/99 Last Dreams of the Millennium, Art Museum, University of Hawaii, Honolulu; Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler/USA; California State University, Fullerton/USA;California State University, Stanislaus/USA 02/97-03/97 Two From Britain, California State Polytechnic, Pomona Art Gallery/USA 01/95-04/95 Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin/USA 11/92-02/93 Haggerty Art Museum, Marquette University, Milwaukee/USA 04/90-06/90 French Institute, Stockholm/Sweden Work in Public Collections Robert V Fullerton Museum, California State University, San Bernardino/USA Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin/USA Art Institute of Chicago/USA British Council, London/GB Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee/USA Bibliography Alan Artner, “Two Sets of Drawings from Olivant, Both of them Strong and Ambitious,” Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1991 Krishna Chaitanya, “Olivant’s Images of Chaos,” The Hindustan Times, Feb 2, 1987 Cathy Curtis, “Valentine from England,” The Los Angeles Times, Feb 10, 1998 Shanto Datta, “From Existence to Entropy,” The Pioneer, Jan 18, 1996 Ken Johnson, “David Olivant at CICA,” Art in America, Oct 1990 Kay Larson, “True Brit,” New York, March 12, 1990 P. Mago, “David’s Chaotic Sea of Marks,” The Patriot, Feb 7, 1987 Nava Semel, “The Voyage from the Figure to Abstract,” Studio Art Magazine, May 1990 Leo Stutzin, “A Seeker’s Art at Stan State,” Modesto Bee, Dec 8, 1996 Leo Stutzin, “British Artists Find Appreciation,” Modesto Bee, Nov 20, 1997 Daniella Walsh, “Romantic Visions for Modern Times,” Orange County Register, March 1, 1998

Curatorial Experience 1999-2000 “Last Dreams of the Millennium” Group exhibition of contemporary British art in the collection of the Stephen Solovy Foundation. CSU Stanislaus, CSU Fullerton, Tyler Museum of Art, Texas, Art Museum of Hawaii, Honolulu Catalog Essays “Ambadas” Published by CSU Stanislaus 1998 “Last Dreams of the Millennium” Published by Stephen Solovy Art Foundation 1999 “Ranbir Kaleka: Ironist of the Imagination.” Published by Bose Pacia Gallery, New York, 2005 “Sophie Chardonnet” Published by Art Vietnam Gallery 2006 “Life Games” Published by CSU Stanislaus 2008 “Gordon Senior: Tools of Unknown Use and Other Works” Published by Humboldt State University 2008 Reviews of other Artists “Multiplying the Variations: David Olivant on Robin Hill,” artcritical.com 2006 “Standing On Earth: David Olivant on Gordon Senior”, artcritical.com 2006 “Eleanor Wood- mixed Media on Paper: David Olivant on Eleanor Wood” artcritical.com 2007 “David Olivant on Takashi Murakami at the Geffen” artcritical.com 2008 “Joan Moment @ Limn and JayJay” squarecylinder.com 2009 “Picking up the Pieces” David Olivant on Julie Heffernan, artcritical.com 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS California State University Stanislaus

Dr. Joseph F. Sheley, President

Dr. James T. Strong, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs

Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Art

Dr. Roxanne Robbin, Chair, Professor

Dean De Cocker, Professor

Daniel Edwards, Assistant Professor

Jessica Gomula, Professor

David Olivant, Professor

Gordon Senior, Professor

Richard Savini, Professor

Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Assistant Professor

Meg Broderick, Administrative Support Assistant II

Andrew Cain, Instructional Technician I

Jon Kithcart, Equipment Technician II

University Art Gallery

Dean De Cocker, Director

California State University Stanislaus Art Space on Main | 135 W. Main St., Turlock, CA 95380