jj peetbook reports

JULY 16 TO AUG 09

HOMELY’Sexhibitions and icecream entertainment

HOMELY’S presents

HOMELY'Sexhibitions and icecream entertainment

jj peet - book reports

Homely’s is pleased to present “Book Reports”, a publication and a mini-

exhibition of four artists books by JJ PEET. JJ PEET’s, prolific, performance-

based practice yields ceramic-centric sculptures, paintings, drawings, books

and videos. Dystopian visual culture fragments are grabbed, cut up, re-marked

and re-contextualized. Through JJ PEET’s shaman-like “brain to hand to object“

process, shady financial shenanigans, border-less religious wars, tragic Old Master

tableaux and flowers blooming under barbed wire skies are healed, as it were,

into permanent physical form. Through relentless collecting, witnessing and annotating of images, JJ PEET’s

books offer concise notes on his transformative ideas and insight into his

ambitious, urgent practice, that asks how we — as viewers and humans — come

to understand and possibly affect our condition in relationship to the broader

question of “post-internet” image culture. JJ PEET’s practice takes the position

that (artists) might indeed, thorough a focused mode of “brain to hand to object“

production, affect outcomes and offer possibilities of subjective resistance. “Book Reports” includes four artist books: “Vacant American” (2015): a

contemporary American road trip through Brussels and the American West;

“Shiview” (2014), a compilation and exhibition of images of extreme violence

found online, with details of bloody Old Master paintings at the Louvre and

ultimate redemption through Courbet’s “Origin of the World”; “Ceramics

Manifesto” (2014), an occupation and transformation of a found copy of the

“Communist Manifesto” into a ceramic receptacle of JJ PEET’s ideas about

ceramics and sculpture and “HandHandDevice” (2015), a further outline of JJ

PEET’s ceramic output, through his “Proxy Cups”, “Decoy Cups”, “Brickvaces”

and “Viewers” project-components.Recent solo exhibitions include The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX (2015);

Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA (2013); On Stellar Rays, New York, NY (2012,

2010, 2009); Gallery Diet, Miami, FL (2013, 2010). Recent group exhibitions include

Satan Ceramics, Salon 94, New York, NY (2014) and Public Art Fund, New York,

NY (2011). These exhibitions received numerous reviews, in publications such as

Art in America, Artforum, ArtPulse, Art Review, Bomb, Frieze, The Last Magazine,

Modern Painters, The New Yorker and TimeOut NY. JJ PEET received his MFA

from Yale University School of Art in 2006 and his BFA from the University of

Minnesota in 1999. He currently teaches ceramics at Columbia University and the

92nd Street Y in New York.

JJ PEET - “BOOK REPORTS“ July 16- August 09, 2015

Shiview

(2015)

Artist Book20 pages

4 x 6 .5 inches

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HOMELY'S PRESENTS

JJ PEET

BOOK REPORTS

The Vacant American

(2015)

Artist Book

4 x 6.5 inches18 pages

The Ceramics Manifesto

(2014)

Artist Book

18 pages4 x 6.5 inches

Book Reports

HandHandDevice

(2015)

Artist Book

8.5 x 5.5 inches24 pages

Shiview

(2015)

Artist Book20 pages

4 x 6 .5 inches

The Ceramics Manifesto

(2014)

Artist Book

18 pages4 x 6.5 inches

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JJ PEET

BOOK REPORTS

“Floating on the grass of doom

finding my due course. The

viewing opticles are wide open,

the recepticle for reception is

collecting all info the vacant

american”

“Magic happinstance time

connections, its about paying

attention, kinky moments on the

planet knoting the moment in

memory, fucking stop...”

“The Vacant American is a_Way.

It is a Way of Collecting information, it

is A_Way of Looking at our world and

taking a stance on our current state

of the planet as Humans or Lifeforms,

this will be done by first traveling to

locations: drive, train, bike, fly, walk, the

moments collected on these journeys

will be filtered and processed, theses

will than lead to production. “

JJ PEET’s book “The Vacant American” is

a series of notes, handwritten, or typed,

connected to the series of drawings and

photographic images inside. Drawings,

like annotated codes - an old-fashioned

radio-like device, JJ PEET’s umbrella-

like logo, folded paper, geometric

form. Tools, or devices, photographed

under red light.

The “Vacant American” is a viewfinder,

through which the narrator implicates

himself into the image-based post-

internet landscape.

From the “Vacant American” taxi sign in

California, to an image of a single classic

statue in Europe, to his own image,

shaman-like, in motion, across the

borderless greater “America” he travels

through, a magnanimous roaptrip of

“happenstance /magic/happenmagic/

magicstance”.

Vacant American

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The “Vacant American”

as a model

The Vacant American as a model for the

condition of “America” as all of the above:

a borderless, slippery state of witnessing,

somewhere between what is seen and what is

the vacant, the partially absconded present.

The Vacant American as a mirror of America

of here today and the America that slips away,

decaying in layers within and without borders.

The Vacant American as a verb, The Vacant

American as continuous “becoming”.

The Vacant American has no fixed residence,

except through the images he witnesses, the

coded drawings he makes

The Vacant American as a persona in motion

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“...there will be Vacant American I,

Vacant American II and so forth. and it’s

not...it doesn’t have to be in America,

it’s the world, basically...”

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“Sometimes it tends to be

bloody, other moments

flowers rise”

“there are many ways to

pay attention, a viewer is

our way. are a way of payin

fucking attntion, shiview,

shiview news.”

Shiview

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Shiview is a way of seeing , a collection

and an exhibition of images, a witness

and pro-active position on the

collecting, dismantling and occupying

of images in the “post-internet” era.

Shiview is a viewer, a viewfinder and a

exhibition of historical dots and points

of reference of images originating

from the world, the world of the

computer screen, the notepad, the

art historical canon and the shared

beheading video. Shiview bears

witnesses the equalizing effect of the

flattening of physical experience into

the rootless, endless sea of jpeg’d-at-

a-loss information.

Shiview takes a position in the

compass of our amoral mass of

images. It registers that these images

have been seen. It registers that the

authorship lies in the massing of these

images and in the fucking up of them

into something greater.

HOMELY’S: So tell me a little bit more

about this Shiview book

JJ PEET: So shiview news is like...it’s

a way of viewing the world...I try not

to view the world that way but a lot

of people do view the world that way

where it’s like, you know, excess and

overcome and take what you need and

fuck the rest, that sort of deal...

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so i started to make these viewers, these

cameras...some of the viewers were

considered funny and like clown-news

and some were considered Shiview and

Shiview is like...

related to...one of the cameras that I

made..with a gigantic blade coming

out of it and that was sort of the object

version of this...and what do we do with

this sort of weapon...

And we’re...people, beheading other

people and then they are shooting a

video of it and they are capturing the

image...so that is a total shiview point of

seeing things.

I sort of embody or encompass a point

of view that may not be my point of

view....but it is...I think about that and I

filter that point of view through my own

being and my own work so shiview news

is fucking heavy...but it’s also about

paying attention...

...there are lots of points of view in

here so this first page is like...a viewer

as a whole, a point of view, a way of

collecting information...time collector,

capture device, filter, a shiview, a flower

view, a way of seeing, so there’s lots of

like, all these different points of view

and shiview is one point of view...and

it’s fucking heavy duty...and it’s like sad-

ness and it’s been going on through our

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time...and we have been seeing that

through a lens or thorough painting or

through sculpture or through media that

way so this is my way of re-collecting

that information, putting it back to the

world and then filtering it through my

own hand

HOMELY’S: So in a way...I’d almost

describe it as an image exhibition...you

know how there is that Joy Division song

“Atrocity Exhibition” which is of course a

direct reference to JG Ballard’s Atrocity

Exhibition book. “This is the way, step

inside”. Except that in your case we are

stepping outwardly onto this world of

images that end up re-contextualizing

into a re-worked, blended narrative.

...it’s different of course, but it’s almost

as if you’re a blender and you put

information in and you mix it and it

comes out...

It’s so interesting to consider this

process in light of what we come to

see as the so-called “post-internet” art,

where there is a sort of refusal to take

a position when it comes to receiving

and witnessing images. What I find most

fascinating about your work is that you

insist on taking a position, even if that

positioning means that you are dragging

images onto a ceramic/bodily physicality

that eludes them by definition of their

“virtual” condition.

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The Ceramic Manifesto documents the transformation of a found

copy of the “Communist Manifesto” into a ceramic receptacle of

JJ PEET’s ideas about ceramics and sculpture. “The Contemporary Ceramics Manifesto is a way. A

life form thinks, this thinking may come from the gut,

or the brain it moves to the hand into the clay. The

clay is the direct material, the transpher of the hand

into clay will lead to the creation of the object To the user gut to hand to object.”The (found) book’s writing was crossed off with a sharpie pen and

a partition cut out, where the “brain to hand to object” ceramic

part was inserted into. There is a brief introduction into the Proxy

Cup, a “Transfer of life form into a functional vessel” and the

“Viewer”, a half-ceramic-half-functioning camera that registers

the images that inform JJPEET’s worldview. The Viewer is “a hole,

a point of view, it is a way of collecting information, time collector,

The Ceramics Manifesto

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BOOK REPORTS

capture device, filter, a shiview, a flowerview, a way of seeing” and

the VOP “vitrified objects held in one’s pocket”. The Ceramics Manifesto embodies the basic premise of JJPEET’s

practice, to bring into lasting, durable form, elements of

contemporary culture and lived, ephemeral experience through

an active engament of content, performance and material, into

petrified, energized-through-gut-to-hand, object.

“This book is ... a lot about how I use material ceramics

and what ceramics means as material...it’s the communist

manifesto that my neighbor was throwing away I made

it into the contemporary ceramics manifesto and within

that I blocked everything out and I made a piece of

porcelain, petrified that and I put my manifesto in there

so brain to hand to object, so that’s my manifesto for

ceramics... it’s the best material we have for making

sculpture in my point of view...”14

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The “Handhanddevice” book outlines the purpose, definition and hierarchical value of the four important sculptural outcomes in JJPEET’s sculptural/ceramic practice:

• The Proxy Cup• The Decoy Cup• The Brickvace • The ViewerIt is a detailed companion to the Ceramics Manifesto, featuring precise descriptions and images of these four categories of production.

HandHandDevice

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BOOK REPORTS

JJ PEET: So the proxy cup is the basic for all that

stuff...that is where...I take a ball of clay and start to

pinch it into a cup form and when I am doing that I

am transferring my life form into that vessel

PROXY_CUP_------------------------------------

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DECOY_Cup------------------------------------“a DECOY_Cup first and foremost is a PROXY_CUP_ inbedded with in is a VITRIFIED PORCELAIN BLADE

TO THE USERThe Decoy Cup is a way,Water, Defend, or End”

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THE BRICKVACE---------------------------------“TO the USER_BRICKVACEBRICKVACE - a FOCOLIZED BRICK, into VACE.BRICK holds the WEIGHTVACE holds the FLOWERBRICKVACE”

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ViEWER_---------------------------------“a VIEWER is a HOLE, a POINT of VIEW, IT is a WAY OF COLLECTING INFORMATION, TIME COLLECTOR, CAPTURE D-VICE, FILTER, A SHIVIEW, A FLOWERVIEW, A WAY OF SEEING.”

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JJ PEET

“book reports”

Thanks to jj peet and

on stellar rays gallery

Text, design, production,

artist interviews

Manuela Leal

Homely’s Exhibition and

Icecream Entertainment

Summer 2015

New York, N Y

HOMELY'Sexhibitions and icecream entertainment

jj peet - book reports