In an attempt to feed the curiosity that will forever be the hunger of my mind, in recent times I’ve delved quite a bit into the world of art. My fascination with the creative process has led me down an interesting path of some interesting contemporary artists, gallerists, curators and many others in the world of fine art. This past summer I shot a short documentary with abstract painter Robert Wilson which led me to attending the group show “Become a Collector” at the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery. This is where I saw the works of Gordon Skinner who had a painting and some drawings in the show. What stood out to me about his work, was that it was raw and full of detailed ideas and personal statements. The kind of art I liked was always rough around the edges and took a while to examine and absorb. I was never moved by paintings with precise lines and perfect shading, to me those things lacked imagination, personality and as far as I was concerned I might as well be looking at a photograph. So when I saw Gordon’s portrait painting “Fotolia”I felt instantly connected to it. It was simple, it was complicated and some of the elements boggled my mind as to how they were conceived.
I didn’t know what Fotolia meant, as it sat written just over the shoulder of this colorful figure, but it reminded me somehow of one of my favorite films City of God. City of God is a foreign film recorded in the Portuguese language about a kid who wants to be a photographer, growing up amidst the poverty and violence of the notorious favelas in Rio de Janiero. I think the connection may have come from the concept of watching a film in a language you don’t understand but visually seeing what’s going on and comprehending. That was precisely my reaction to Gordon’s Fotolia painting. I vaguely knew what the word meant, the obscurity made it more interesting, but the expression in the figure in the portrait was evident. It drew you in.
Before the reception was over I met Gordon and talked to him about his work, where he was headed as an artist and the things I do with video at Take Notice Productions. One of the things that stood out immediately was his choice of shoes that night. A multi-colored pair of beaded shoes by Donald J. Pliner, just as expressive and colorful as his paintings. I would later come to find out that he has an extensive collection of unique shoes and loafers. Once I showed him the short artist documentary video I did for Robert Wilson, weeks later we began talking about shooting one for him.
The process after that was an in depth discussion, a dialogue about ideas and concepts for the doc. He had a clear vision for what he wanted to convey about his art, we talked about these things, I took notes.
Original Notes for Stolen I.D.
He already had the title for the doc, he knew how he wanted to open with quotes in text about his purpose as an artist. I knew I wanted to include a lot of b-roll footage of the inner-city environment, regular folks living. I knew I wanted the majority of it to be in black and white with small elements of color for emphasis of it’s importance. I knew the music I wanted to use was going to have a dark tone to it. I used the music from one of my favorite artists Gil Scott-Heron, the song Me and the Devil from his last recorded album just before he passed away last year. Later I would find out that Gordon and Gil shared the same birthday, that’s what I call one of my omens. We hung out, talked about art some more, current events, fashion, looked at other full length documentaries, we even went to the one weekend only Watch The Throne store in NYC that I wrote about in a previous blog (both of us are huge fans of Kanye West and Jay-z). I felt like one of the writers from the New Journalism movement that I read about years ago. After all that was done, I compiled all those elements together and this is what I came up with: Stolen I.D.:Fragmented, Colonized and Lost:
louboutin spikes, rollerboy, Basquiat, Picasso, HIV,
