Zak Prekop
29 Apr - 17 Jun 2018
ZAK PREKOP
29 April - 17 June 2018
I can tell you what I was thinking for some of the other titles too
Bösendorfer is the kind of piano Cecil Taylor played so it's titled for him. I actually planned on that title before he died, because I saw an incredible video of him playing one, and I had been thinking about him as an inspiration for more complex form. And I have just been loving his music, the buried melody
Burrow Plan refers to pathways in paintings, but also the groundhogs that live around our house. We saw one carrying a baby groundhog across the yard, then go back for another one, maybe because the burrow flooded after a big rain. I looked at some cross section diagrams of their burrows - they have two entrances and at least two rooms. Ullmann is for Jacob Ullmann, a German composer of really quiet music. I like the album called Fremde Zeit a lot. Two Hour Weather refers to the two hour drive to our house from the city and the change in climate that occurs in that short distance. But it's more generally about shifting weather that I am so much more aware of where I live now. The fact that the painting looks kind of like a snowstorm wasn't an intentional connection, I really didn't notice that until later
Mazza is for Loren MazzaCane Connors. I was just struck by his music while painting one day, but was also thinking of him making music with Parkinson's disease while I was feeling bad about my back, painting tiny dots. Outside Recording refers to field recordings but more just to the sounds of nature around our house, the kind of incidents scattered in a field that I see in my painting and hear in space and in music.
That is also behind the title of AM Music. I've been listening to AMM's music, particularly their first recording, AMMMusic, which I just changed a little for my title. Their music has the feeling of incidents in a field that create structure over time (over scale in painting.)
Emahoy is for the pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Tanager is a bird.
Before and After has two reasons, one being a little vague but related to the duality of the black and white in this painting, the shadow and anti-shadow and afterimage and a kind of time related to a solarized photograph, where a second instant of light changes what happened on account of a first instant of light. It's also from Brian Eno's Before and After Science. I watched a documentary about him recently and one of the commentators retold an anecdote where Eno went to a recording studio with a bunch of Cage-ian chance operations to apply to his musical sketches but found that he was really disappointed with the results! I thought it was a funny misinterpretation of John Cage, to aesthetically judge results of chance, but I have felt that same way many times. I think of results as experience, the viewer's experience but also mine, after I've finished a painting and have forgotten a lot about making it.
The Pace of Big Fun. Self explanatory except to know that Big Fun is a Miles Davis album, great pace
March is for the month of March and I just like the opacity of that word. I really felt in the depths of this show in March and also the depths of winter even though it should have started to end by then. For some reason that came to me a year or so ago as the name I might use for any music I make on my own, if I ever start doing that. I thought back and really did feel like music and weather (nature) were on my mind as much as anything else while making this show, so I tried to derive titles from that.
Ok talk later,
Zak
29 April - 17 June 2018
I can tell you what I was thinking for some of the other titles too
Bösendorfer is the kind of piano Cecil Taylor played so it's titled for him. I actually planned on that title before he died, because I saw an incredible video of him playing one, and I had been thinking about him as an inspiration for more complex form. And I have just been loving his music, the buried melody
Burrow Plan refers to pathways in paintings, but also the groundhogs that live around our house. We saw one carrying a baby groundhog across the yard, then go back for another one, maybe because the burrow flooded after a big rain. I looked at some cross section diagrams of their burrows - they have two entrances and at least two rooms. Ullmann is for Jacob Ullmann, a German composer of really quiet music. I like the album called Fremde Zeit a lot. Two Hour Weather refers to the two hour drive to our house from the city and the change in climate that occurs in that short distance. But it's more generally about shifting weather that I am so much more aware of where I live now. The fact that the painting looks kind of like a snowstorm wasn't an intentional connection, I really didn't notice that until later
Mazza is for Loren MazzaCane Connors. I was just struck by his music while painting one day, but was also thinking of him making music with Parkinson's disease while I was feeling bad about my back, painting tiny dots. Outside Recording refers to field recordings but more just to the sounds of nature around our house, the kind of incidents scattered in a field that I see in my painting and hear in space and in music.
That is also behind the title of AM Music. I've been listening to AMM's music, particularly their first recording, AMMMusic, which I just changed a little for my title. Their music has the feeling of incidents in a field that create structure over time (over scale in painting.)
Emahoy is for the pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Tanager is a bird.
Before and After has two reasons, one being a little vague but related to the duality of the black and white in this painting, the shadow and anti-shadow and afterimage and a kind of time related to a solarized photograph, where a second instant of light changes what happened on account of a first instant of light. It's also from Brian Eno's Before and After Science. I watched a documentary about him recently and one of the commentators retold an anecdote where Eno went to a recording studio with a bunch of Cage-ian chance operations to apply to his musical sketches but found that he was really disappointed with the results! I thought it was a funny misinterpretation of John Cage, to aesthetically judge results of chance, but I have felt that same way many times. I think of results as experience, the viewer's experience but also mine, after I've finished a painting and have forgotten a lot about making it.
The Pace of Big Fun. Self explanatory except to know that Big Fun is a Miles Davis album, great pace
March is for the month of March and I just like the opacity of that word. I really felt in the depths of this show in March and also the depths of winter even though it should have started to end by then. For some reason that came to me a year or so ago as the name I might use for any music I make on my own, if I ever start doing that. I thought back and really did feel like music and weather (nature) were on my mind as much as anything else while making this show, so I tried to derive titles from that.
Ok talk later,
Zak