General Interest

Some people may have conflicting opinions about the work of John U. Abrahamson.  After all, it is not every day that a solo exhibition is mounted featuring the artists' harvested flesh and blood as a creative element -- viewers who let that one element overwhelm them will quite possibly be doing so at the expense of the overall message, however.  To appreciate the whole, one must resist the urge to focus on the individual elements.

The exhibition, titled "Flesh and Blood" (showing at Bert Green Fine Art), is an impressive combination of painted work, installation, and writing (there is also an audio component, created by another artist) -- in total the product of a years' creative efforts.  Taken together, the elements form an interesting representation of being: highly surreal paintings as the imagination, written work as the intellectual, and harvested flesh and blood as the physical -- in a way, the artist has presented a very intimate representation of himself.

I had the opportunity to pose some questions to the artist -- the answers are very candid, and hint at the ongoing artistic process.  

Disdeinen.net: Tell me a bit about your background as an artist...

John U. Abrahamson: Background... Well, I was born in Chicago which I mention only because the essence of the city has stayed with me in my work even though I left a long time ago.

My mother disappeared with another man when I was 7, leaving myself and my sister who was 5 at the time with my father.  Again, I mention because I have not done a single series my entire career that didn’t include at least one painting that was devoted to good old mom.  

My father on the other hand was great.  Human but great.  He indulged my every artistic whim.  When I wanted to board up all the windows of my room, paint the walls to look like stone and build a life size coffin to sleep in at the age of 12 he didn’t blink an eye.  He just said “draw up some plans, figure out what you need and we will go to the lumber store and buy it together.”  He has championed my work ever since.  He even helped me get the installation together for this current show.  

From my earliest days until I was 20 something I was deeply religious.  I was swinging incense the good majority of my young life.  A relationship that did not end well although the influences of the Church and my fight with my own faith have played heavily into my work to this day.

College was a joke.  I went to the Art Institute of Chicago for my studies, worst years of my artistic life I might add.  Actually, I take that back.  I was taught one of the most important things that anyone has ever taught me.  Write 3 pages a day, everyday in a journal.  No dates, no sketches nothing but thoughts via words. This show is a direct result of that one suggestion.

I moved out of my home town and lived in numerous other cities such as San Diego, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles and then San Francisco where I reside today.

JUA: I had not painted for a long time.  Divorce, marriage, the birth of my first and only son took front stage.  But I had been writing furiously as it was the one thing that kept me from completely falling off the edge.  I knew I wanted to do something with the 30-220 page journals that resulted from this 1 year period of my life.  Painting wise, I remember the morning.  I just started to paint again and woke up after about 3 hours of sleep to face the day, looking in the mirror and basically saw the painting “Bathroom.”  I was crazed to put it down in a sketch.  That is how it started. I began to explore the regrets, the sloth and waste of my life coupled with the horrible witness to the decay of my own body.  

I do see a progression but not in the traditional sense.  I usually try to break with the work that came before.  My last series before “Flesh and Blood” was the “Icons” series.  That series dealt almost exclusively with my own spirituality and my anger at a god I no longer believed in.  “Flesh and Blood” was very much grounded in the corporeal and the temporal.

D.net: Writing seems to play a central role in your latest work -- is there a specific theme you identified in your journals that relates to the human body?

D.net: The paintings in this exhibition carry some strong and abstract imagery -- explain how this imagery relates to the journals and harvested flesh...

JUA: This is a complex relationship. The journals documented moments in my life.  The paintings brought those moments to life but not as illustration but as shorthand to the experience the pages evoked.  The flesh was necessary because of the dialog between the paint and the word.  How could I not have included it?

D.net: I imagine there would be rather polarized opinions about this exhibition -- what is the message or emotional impact you hope your audience will take away from viewing this work?

JUA: I don’t want anything to be blunt.  I create these angels or monstrosities for my own reasons.  When they leave the studio they then belong to whom ever is viewing them at that particular moment and time.  Why I painted them no longer has any meaning because the viewer will look at the work through the filters of their own life experiences and may have a completely different meaning to them than I had at the time of creation.  And I believe is just as valid as my own.

D.net: I understand there is a "soundtrack" to this work -- how did you come to the decision to incorporate audio?  Did you have a specific "sound" in mind?

JUA: Again a complex relationship.  We found each other and the relationship grew from a common desire but it was not a planned partnership.  Just two sets of artistic energies feeding off each other in a positive way.  I know that is vague but I suppose that would be the best way to describe it.

D.net: Do you see the themes you have explored with this exhibition being part of your future work?

JUA: I have no idea where my work will take me next.  Where I must go I suppose.  So the answer is, I don’t know.

Read more about Flesh and Blood and the work of John U. Abrahamson on his blog.

Unfortunately the Gothic: Dark Glamour exhibit at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology is over but the website lives on.

Curated by Valerie Steele, author of "The Corset: A Cultural History" (Yale University Press, 2001)and "Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power" (Oxford University Press, 1996) her latest book and publication is also titled "Gothic: Dark Glamour" (Yale University Press in conjunction with FIT, 2008).

"Gothic is an epithet with a strange history, evoking images of death, destruction, and decay. It is not just a word that describes something (such as a Gothic cathedral); it is almost inevitably a term of abuse, implying that something is gloomy, barbarous, and macabre. Ironically, its negative connotations have made it, in some respects, ideal as a symbol of rebellion. Hence its significance for youth subcultures. Today the words "goth" and "gothic" are popularly associated with black-clad teenagers and mascara'd rock musicians. But the gothic has many layers of meaning.

The third movie in the Underworld series appears to take place before the first film, and will hopefully explain the origins of the war between the vampires and lycans.

Less than one week until the film opens!

"Any mad scientists planning to genetically engineer Dracula this Halloween should look to the vampire bat for inspiration. New research pinpoints some of the genetic changes that allowed them to evolve to subsist on a diet of pure blood..."

Read the full article here.