Dick's Art Blog

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Government funded New Zealand art critic John Hurrell’s recently reviewed the show Comb a Schooner Like A Comet at Newcall Gallery, including work by Tao Wells. Here is the opening section (largely relating to Tao Wells’ work) reproduced in its entirety.

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“Seeking work that was opinionated, inclined to agitation and direct, the Newcall curators for this exhibition have approached nine artists who according to the blurb, have practices oriented towards ‘activism or confrontation.’ At the same time, the curators are sensitive. They are cognisant of Free Will, that of the artists and their own in selecting them. So nothing can be assumed in terms of product.

“That last bit is crucial because this is not really a placard waving show – though Tao Wells’ invitation of audience participation in placing photographs (with the word WAR) of the gallery neighbourhood in the gallery neighbourhood, and Ralph Paine’s large wall of paintings and drawings on paper, come closest to that lack of nuance in that their subject matter is obvious.

“Wells’ project involves a box of 24 photocopied images of the gallery and the streets around it over which is placed WAR in bold yellow caps. He asks the viewer to either stick them up inside the gallery and/or outside, or to sell them as books. A couple ended up on Newcall walls, including one of some colourful birds placed over a power socket, folded so the word WAR was hidden. I didn’t spot any outdoor versions, except an Obama /Bush hybrid on the front door.” (read the rest of the review)

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On the 14th of January the experimental arts magazine White Fungus launched their 11th issue at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City. Campbell Kneale played, Tao Wells performed – it sounds like something I remember from Adam Art gallery, only in New York. And nothing pleases me more to know that the White Fungus team have brought what they do to yet another city in the world (they are currently based in Taichung City, Taiwan).

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“It was packed, Chelsea already peppered with openings was gently introduced last night by White fungus Gang, to an unpretentious crew whose delivered experience you love to hate while reviewing every second of the moments fame; to go back and suck all the marrow from its bones.

“High Lights, David Watson, sonic brilliance is too easy, this is a mountain of torrents, a flooded valley of bite sized bits melt in your mind moments of precious delirium, one man Bag pipe, another guy doing something I couldn’t see… any way Single tonal blasts that ripple and unfold through the gallery like Fucking Vikings taking the shore.

“Tao Wells, mad last bash of thing, came in and Insulted us all with a ‘Hey fuck up!” literally yelling at people to either shut up or “get the hell out of the gallery”. We were then left with this J.c Penny guy sitting on the floor of a divided by gender room, waiting tenaciously pensive with pen and paper, to finally break the tension with a shirtless dance gesture.

“Six acts in one night is a tiring bore, but not last night, the acts came and tumbled by like finely tuned cards, fluffy dominoes leaving the final act, the curtain crusher. Campbell Kneale Our Love Will Destroy the World, just that. Just that come on give us a juicy metaphor, take a cathedral set it on fire, mike up the pipes of the 2 thousand old organ, hear the bursts in exquisite detail while sitting in the pews. yeah it was loud, violent. all over your ear drums played as they say they are, Brain Drums. Thank You White Fungus. I am 20 pounds lighter or heavier.”

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(originally posted on I Know Everything)

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“I will not forget to insert into these rules, a new theoretical invention for knowledge’s sake, which, although it seems of little import and good for a laugh, is nonetheless, of great utility in bringing out the creativity in some of these inventions. This is the case if you cast your glance on any walls dirty with such stains or walls made up of rock formations of different types. If you have to invent some scenes, you will be able to discover them there in diverse forms, in diverse landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, extensive plains, valleys, and hills. You can even see different battle scenes and movements made up of unusual figures, faces with strange expressions, and myriad things which you can transform into a complete and proper form constituting part of similar walls and rocks. These are like the sound of bells, in whose tolling, you hear names and words that your imagination conjures up.

Don’t underestimate this idea of mine, which calls to mind that it would not be too much of an effort to pause sometimes to look into these stains on walls, the ashes from the fire, the clouds, the mud, or other similar places. If these are well contemplated, you will find fantastic inventions that awaken the genius of the painter to new inventions, such as compositions of battles, animals, and men, as well as diverse composition of landscapes, and monstrous things, as devils and the like. These will do you well because they will awaken genius with this jumble of things…” (Leonardo da Vinci, “Rules for the Painter,” in Treatise on Painting)

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Tao Wells and his partner Laura Shephard’s (who also has works in the show) are moving to Taiwan so everything must go. Works ranging in price from $5 and upwards. Bargaining encouraged. Bring the family. See images from the show.

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Tao Wells book launch for “Art Aristocracy” at Peter McLeavey Gallery (2pm, Saturday 5th December, 2009). See images from the show.

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Government funded art critic John Hurrell has reviewed Tao’s latest show “Space Jam 1996” at Gambia Castle on his blog Eye Contact. He writes that Tao’s “practice in general is conspicuously unremarkable,” that “no meritable quality, in my view, is apparent from just looking at the exhibition” and that “Tao Wells is simply just a terrible artist.” It is clear that Hurrell has an axe to grind, as well as a strange fetish for deleting comments which do not contain, in his words, the “Christian name” of the author (although he recently deleted one of his own comments, as if struck by a sudden frenzy of power). Read Hurrell’s damning review of Tao’s show at here. Of particular interest are the comments from Ron Hanson (one of the editors of White Fungus) and David Cauchi.

In the review itself, apart from the almost vicious remarks quoted above, Hurrell says remarkably little about the art in Tao’s Space Jam show (see left, for example). He spends most of his time addressing the small piece of writing I did for the show called “Three Paragraphs on Tao Wells” (which you can read here). Tao has also since done an artwork responding to Hurrell’s criticisms (or lack thereof) by placing one of Hurrell’s artworks alongside one of his own from the show in question (see below). See more images from the show on Artbash (close-ups of the work) and Tao’s blog (photos from opening night).

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Tao Wells is currently having a show of drawings and prints at Gambia Castle called Space Jam 1996. He asked me to write something for it, which I happily did (see below). Check out some photos of the show on opening night at Tao’s blog I Know Everything. Read commentary on Artbash.

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Three Paragraphs on Tao Wells

by Dick Whyte

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Tao Wells is a terrible artist. But he is a good person. It is ethics which concern me, rather than aesthetics (it is always so elegant to say what something is, followed by what it is not – it seems so final, or definitive). Morals involve any laws or codes which are imposed on you from without (religion, the legal system). Ethics are an internal model of behaviour: when morality no longer reflects our personal reality, ethics must intervene. Michel Foucault: “Ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.”

A second definition of ethics: we must become adept at talking with ourselves. We are always two, rather than one. “I am” is merely the light, beneath the shadowy “me” and “my” (particularly when used in statements like: “Oh me, oh my, I don’t know what I am going to do”). Not knowing what to do, we turn to ethics. Of course, the other response is simply to ignore whatever is troubling: to claim that it is “not art,” “not human” or simply “not to my taste.” If Immanuel Kant has taght us anything: art has nothing to do with taste (and everything to do with time).

Problem: I am interested in ethics, not aesthetics. Solution: I am interested in both ethics and aesthetics. Firstly: how can an aesthetic shock the audience into a moment of critical thought (how do formal aesthetics prompt emotional ethics). Secondly: what does it feel like when you experience representations of people making ethical choices (how do formal ethics prompt emotional aesthetics). Problem: Tao Wells is a terrible artist. Solution: Tao Wells is both a terrible artist and a terrific artist (and that this is the hardest of all concepts to grasp). You are both a good person and you are a bad person. The news is both truth and it is lies. The world is both objectively real and subjectively constructed mind by mind…

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