IT WILL BE ANCIENT

an archive of investigations represented in works of art that employ modern + postmodern ideas, theories, + aesthetics.

[thunderstruck9]

Lucian Freud (British, 1922-2011), Gorse Sprig, 1944. Coloured pencil and crayon on paper, 18 x 12 in.

[russian-style]

Mikhail Nesterov - Sketches of St Nicholas and Mikhail the Saint, Prince of Tver.

[russian-style]

Dionisius - Seraph, fresco from the Ferapontov Monastery, 1495-1496

[teknari-deactivated20201211]

[theevildead--deactivated2023033]

[take-it-sloooooow]

Auteur ?

[middleamerica]

Transylvania County, North Carolina, 1971, Alex Harris

[take-it-sloooooow]

Alex Harris

[itwillbeancient-blog]

Born in Tehran, Iran. Lives and works in Brussels.

Sanam Khatibi’s works deal with the thin line that exists between fear and desire. “We are often attracted to that which scares us most”, she says. Her paintings often question the precarious nature of human interaction, excess and the loss of control.

Her subjects are caught in a duality of power and failure, splendour and fragility and are often set in exotic-looking landscapes. Words and writing also play a large role in her practice. “Some people don’t like titles to paintings, it can be too much information I guess, but I love to play with them”.

Her works confront us with the idea of an idyllic place, where something has gone wrong. Thus creating a series of unsettling narratives that is uncanny: simultaneously familiar and strange with an insinuation to the absurd.

Drawing on the pervasive anxiety of natural disasters, Khatibi's works emanate a visceral anguish, which are marked by our instinctive and primal fears.

Texts Cruelle Candeur Savage Innocence (H ART) Magazine Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures The Antagonist Upcoming Exhibitions Louise 186, 11 September - 04 October 2015, Avenue Louise 186, Brussels, Belgium Selected Exhibition Views Ask me nicely, Trampoline, Antwerp, Belgium Séduire ou crever de faim, Island, Brussels, Belgium Palourdes cuites, Christopher Crescent, Brussels, Belgium

[itwillbeancient-blog]

Jimmy Desana 

[exhibition-ism]

A look at the process-heavy, experimental work of Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota. 

[itwillbeancient-blog]

The Devil’s Cleavage, George Kuchar

[itwillbeancient-blog]

Noel Anderson

Image one: 

I Nutt Led, 2010 Erased EBONY cover, ink, watercolor, graphite 13.5 x 10.25 inches

Image two: 

Phatty Ate Snow White's Apple Too, 2011 Woven tapestry 80 x 60 inches

[itwillbeancient-blog]

The Exposed Uncanny

an excerpt:

The Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, in his ten-minute experimental film entitled Outer Space, appropriated footage from Sidney Furie’s 1981 horror film "The Entity" in which a young and attractive single mother becomes the victim of violent sexual abuse and torment at the hands of an unseen entity who has invaded her home. Tscherkassky reshot fragments of "The Entity" in black and white film, and through the repetition of certain frames, has distilled this predictable Hollywood narrative down to violent encounters between Barbara Hershey’s character and this mysterious, unseen, and malevolent force.  

Outer Space begins with flickering images of a house enveloped in darkness. Static sounds of a spinning record without music mimics the flurry of shadows as Hershey’s character appears in front of the house, her back to the camera. The mutilated soundtrack begins with apprehensive steps toward her home.  Once familiar and safe, the space in which she lives with her son has become alien and threatening. The soundtrack crackles and distorts as she enters through the door, down the hall toward the interior of her bedroom, the scene of the phantasmal rapes.  Tscherkassky doubles the room by superimposing image upon image. The dim light source whose origin is unknown, flickers as a fire would, casting shadow across the frame, fragmenting the filmic space. Hershey’s character appears in what looks like a dream world where images and sounds are abstracted and narrative is obliterated. The film reveals her face in multiplicity.  She is divided by shadow, her eyes dart around the room, and her hands nervously yet gracefully fumble through the air as if in search of an anchor in this precarious dream-space. The camera is fixed upon her figure as she cautiously moves about her bedroom. In a crescendo of machine sounds, images of her face proliferate and in the quickening pace of repetition, a violent storm comes through her room.  Mirrors and windows shatter, furniture swirls around her, and in this optical tornado, pieces of the film – the edge of the negative and its sprocket holes -- become part of the assaulting imagery. In this fierce storm of sound, shadow, and light, Hershey’s character –- the image of her –- is erased. The picture goes white and becomes pure exposed film.  It is as if she has become absorbed by light, yet we perceive her continued existence in the sound of her enduring screams. It is unclear whether Tscherkassky’s Outer Space offers a new kind of in-between subjectivity or if Hershey’s character remains erased, stuck, forever flattened to film. Or perhaps this image represents a kind of inversion. She has become the entity; her image has dissipated; she is invisible yet omnipresent.  In the latter case, Hershey’s character becomes a figure of the uncanny: she has transformed from a sexual object into a monstrous one.

Abbey Meaker

[itwillbeancient-blog]

Tony Oursler 

[abbeymeakerphotography]

Blurry artifacts / propaganda painting #film #35mm #abbeymeaker #analog

[itwillbeancient-blog]

From the series, There Must Be More To Life Than This by Anthony Gerace

[richarderdmanstudios-deactivate]

Richard Erdman‬’s seminal ‪sculpture entitled Passage while in progress at his Carrara, Italy studio,1983. Note baby Passage in the foreground and baby Taylor (Richard’s son) swinging from the gantry.

[itwillbeancient-blog]

Maya Deren’s At Land is an experiment in time and space, both of which are rendered unreliable when compared with our traditional understanding of narrative-oriented cinema. Deren inserts herself into the film and in a quest for identity, traverses environments in a constant state of metamorphosis: the knotted tree she climbs becomes a horizontal dinner table upon which she drags herself; the table then becomes a forest path, and so on. She has washed up onto land, but her psychic state is still very much ‘at sea.'

Deren’s alienated character wanders aimlessly yet with intention; she is clearly in search of something. Her expression is often one of confusion and hopelessness, for the characters around her are constantly transforming. Those at the Bourgeois dinner party are completely unaware of her, as she represents their repressed desires, the mystique of the other. The man she walks with on the forest path shifts between four different people. Finally, she splits into three personas. The double on the beach controlling the girls playing chess is her dark side; the one who runs away represents her infantile self, and the one observing both is that of her higher self. She is in the process of reconciling an unexpected self-revelation. 

- abbey meaker