Alex Menocal

HOMEWORK
By The Salon Series founder, John Coyle Steinbrunner

LINKS:
The invite mailer
Alex Menocal's website
Kurt Vonnegut's Letter to his Dad

THE SALON SERIES
A bit of backstory: it started with dissatisfaction. Contrary to popular belief, being an artist is not the most lucrative of careers. Throw in a recession and things just look worse. How to get the word out? At the same time, I was growing more and more frustrated with communication in general. I hit existential bottom reading about a new iPhone app. They'd replaced the "phone" job of a phone with an app that sent a voice recording to your contacts' voice mail. Add in email, Facebook, texting, emoticons, status updates, fan pages, Twitter and a host of other layers. Did anyone have an actual conversation anymore?

What if there were a place and time for people to gather, talk, gab, chat, mumble, misspeak and debate with courtesy and respect – but also with opinions well-formed and defended – over things that normally came off obtuse: art, wine and, lately, each other?

Tom MacDonald, the owner of The Bluebird and Webster's Wine Bar and a dear friend, felt the same way about food and wine. After countless hours complaining about it, we decided to act. Artist Mary Livoni and I had always wanted to show together. Tom wanted The Bluebird to be more than just another neighborhood bar. The Bluebird had a nice back room. We all liked talking. The Salon Series.

And so it is my pleasure to send you this primer on the second dinner for Alex Menocal, the fourth artist to show at the Series.

LET'S BE FRIENDS
This backstory becomes especially relevant – and exciting – with Alex's work. Like most artists, Alex has a studio practice and a real-type job. As an Interactive Strategist in advertising, Alex's working hours are spent researching, consulting and leveraging social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and a host of others for clients (as I understand it). He knows this stuff better than anyone in the room. And like any good artist, the world he is exposed to becomes part of the toolset he uses to communicate with the world. I think social media has had a profound effect on Alex's recent work, especially in how he considers its more commercial aspects (more on that later).

This is also telling in his choice of materials. Does the temporary nature of the drawings, with a display life of a few weeks, reflect the constantly new and changing arena of the Internet? Does it reflect his love of small-press 'zines? It definitely comments on the editorial nature of painting (for more on this, go see the Matisse show at the Art Institute). What's the importance of permanence? When is a piece finished? It's a common occurrence to stop by Alex's studio and see a different or altered drawing from the day before. It's thrilling. Does the use of office materials suggest an undermining or redefining of "value"? Do you identify with it more or less because it is tape?

He is a superb draftsman – a magician with pencils and pens, not to mention paint and, now, adhesives. I find in his work rigor and intensity. Rigor in the rules he creates and abides by when making artwork – the exacting attention to detail, the precision; intensity in the private, emotional tensions that fuel him and his constant explorations and edits. I find these tape pieces successful because the energies of both are so apparent, yet so mysterious.

DRAWING LINES
There are some easy lines (heh) to draw between Alex's work and art historical influences. While I don't consider them direct influences, the Minimalist school of the '60s is an obvious bellwether. – the works of Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd and material aspects of Robert Morris come to mind. Dan Flavin's more contemporary florescent sculptures are even more relevant. I see a lot of the same interest in transparency, color and rejiggering of mundane materials to transform a space.

Alex's pieces aways embody a sense of play and wit. These pieces manage to be still and restless at once: commanding their space, but always loaded with potential ways in which they can morph and shift like a maze that changes boundaries as you navigate it (think of TRON). In that sense I also spy in the tape a blush of Duchamp, famous for his ready-mades which took household items out of context and, by placing them in an art space, obfuscated their meaning by confusing our assumptions of purpose.

I read a recent New Yorker article on performance artist Marina Abramovic ("Walking Through Walls" by Judith Thurman), I thought the following passage relevant for Sunday's dinner: "What makes it art? Context and intention, she said." I think these are excellent words to use regarding Alex's work. Think about them while you are eating.

Alex's sketchbook is a treasure trove of evidence, inspiration and exploration. There's a kind of superior doodling going on here. The finished pieces carry with them evidence of improvisational beginnings. I get a sense of infinite scale or, as Alex has called it, "extreme clarity."

(Remember the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Sometimes I feel Alex's paintings are stills from David Bowman's mindtrip into the monolith. They always seem to me to be in the midst of coming and going at once, like a tesseract that pops into being when you thought you had the whole 3-D thing under control. Some of these pieces have a depth in their simplicity that gives me vertigo; you can fall into them.)

UPDATE! ALEX MENOCAL EXPOSED!
While walking through the neighborhood in North Center I spied this on the window of an abandoned laundromat. Coincidence? Let's confront him at dinner. Maybe he has secretly taken his act to the streets (he's been invited to before).

CASH OR CREDIT?
What would you pay for tape art on the wall? The notion of value is something Alex has been exploring in great detail. Artists constantly face the pressure of balancing credit (exposure, reach) with cash (paying the bills). Even showing at this Salon, a restaurant, causes concern for some, reputation-wise. It goes back to the context mentioned in the New Yorker article.

I keep thinking of the "Long Tail" theory made popular by Chris Anderson, or, in Alex's words:

... you'd like an source of income that is unlimited, and requires almost no effort on your part. This means residuals. So, you can do one of two things: star in a TV series that ends up getting syndicated. Or, two: create something that can be bought by enormous numbers of people for a small sum (recommended). Or, three: create something that can be bought by very few people for an enormous sum.

Alex has looked at a lot of different models and examples across industries. If I were you, I'd ask him about David Foster Wallace and why the Grateful Dead may be the savviest businessmen in music.

The image at left was one of Alex's submittals for inspiration. What do we own as artists ... and viewers? (Click on the image at left to see a more readable version.) The piece is a litany of artists summarized to a word of what they "owned." What do you own? Would Alex be tape or triangles or something else entirely? Maybe he'll talk about it at dinner. Maybe you should ask him about it.

It's a beautiful Friday out. Alex is re-drawing some of his pieces tomorrow afternoon, meaning for our Sunday dinner we'll be looking at and talking about work that ranges from weeks to hours old. I wonder how they will relate to each other? I think we're going to have a great time. Bring your appetite, your curiosity and your questions. See you at 7.

– John Coyle Steinbrunner