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"Slowing time" at Space 1026

From Nov 4-25 2022, my show "Slowing time" was up at Space 1026, Philadelphia. The show's printout and various images of the install are below.

Thanks to Lance Simmons for the invitation and the essential production support thruout! Thanks & much love to both space 1026 & the city of philadelphia, forward & backward thru time.

I produced a little video tour for the show you can watch here:

And here is Corey Qureshi's writeup of the show on Artblog.

Show text, works list, and various pics below.


Who am I

Tom Bubul, b. 1983; lived in Philadelphia 2001-2009, Providence 2009-2012, NYC 2012-2020, Judy's interzone 2020-2021, Minneapolis 2021-present.

Why am I here

- the interstellar conversation of influence & inspiration

- the possibility for temporary utopia inducible by shared art experiences within communities

Slowing Time

Ideas move in the mind at ten million miles an hour, but with paintings from the tube to the surface via many intermediate steps little by little, in an extrusion process that can sometimes take months, just as the whole of the future is gradually extruded into the past thru the pinhole aperture of the present, second by second, inexorably & unrushably -

When you make a painting you might spend a hundred hours looking at it, and all that seeing washes over and soaks into its surface ... sometimes you feel like it's not the paint that makes it a painting, that that's just the construction of the golem's body, that the spell that animates paintings & gives them their life is all of that hard looking & time ...

For newly-finished paintings it'll be a long time before the cumulative viewing of all other people equals your own individual viewing during the making hours - maybe a hundred people will see a given art show irl with any luck, and maybe look at each of these paintings for a little while each & you'll still have looked at all of them total just by yourself for twice as long ...

But then for people who live with a painting, looking at it 5 or 10 seconds a day, passing by it over and over, ten years pass, and those seconds add up, until eventually it's they who've looked at that surface the longest. Paintings are like movies, short if you turn them off, but endlessly continuing across uncountable viewings if you leave them on, unspooling over hundreds of years for you, day by day ... they're the same, you're the same, then somehow you're different, then somehow they're different ...

"Slowing Time" contains a selection of paintings from the past 10 years along with a collection of related serial drawings. All of this work was made with the intent of being viewed irl; most of it is exhibited publicly here for the first time.






























Works list

title, materials, where produced
left from entrance:
(lower)
1. versailles is not too large... or infinity too long, oil on panel, studio judy
(upper)
2. president street theme, gouache on paper (framed), providence, newport, president street

cousins #1-37 (except one), pencil on paper, various locations
(above)
3. armored sculpture idea (subway panic attack version), oil on canvas, the white page
still working on my zine, oil on canvas
4. whiteout '21, oil on panel, studio judy
(below)
5. no title (lorimer street), oil on panel, lorimer street
6. heading to jfk at 5am, oil on panel, lorimer street
7. no title (vision in a forest grove), oil on panel, lorimer street
8. castle tower landline (it's for you) (take one), oil on panel, president street
9. castle tower landline (it's for you) (take two), oil on panel, president street
10. acid #2, oil on panel, president street. courtesy of Lance Simmons

(upper)
11. no title (joe's advice (last lockwood painting)), gouache on paper, providence
(lower)
12. beowulf painting, gouache on paper, president street

(upper)
13. studio chair, gouache on paper, president street
(lower)
14. pillar for Joe Buzzell, gouache on paper, president street

---- back wall:

15. philadelphia is burning and watermelon is all that can cool it, so there they are, oil on canvas, lorimer street
16. infinite jest painting (president street eschaton version), oil on canvas, president street

smalls:
(top row)
16. wiggleworms of night twitter / prime ministah's beam, oil on panel, lorimer street
17. default avatar nightmare, gouache on panel, president street
(2nd row)
18. birthday painting (president street system #11), gouache on panel, president street
19. pennsylvania cousin, oil on panel, lorimer street
(3rd row)
20. four organs (president street system #4), gouache on panel, president street
21. markal (trains behind pathmark), gouache on panel, president street
(4th row tiny ones, clockwise from top left)
22. no title, oil on panel, president street
23. no title, oil on panel, president street
24. no title, oil on panel, president street
25. no title, oil on panel, president street
(the other one in the 4th row)
26. noise music (president street system #7), gouache on panel, president street

right wall
---------

from left.

27. studio judy theme (dance mix), oil on canvas, studio judy
28. for fate in a pleasant mood no rolling off the table, oil on canvas, lorimer street

(top)
29. dracula painting (cedar ave "leave dracula alone" version), oil on canvas, the white page
(bottom)
30. robinhood takes an L ~OR~ friar tuck's yoyo trick is an op, oil on canvas, studio becca

31. taking a bath, watching a movie, having an idea, & worrying about money, oil on canvas, president street

(from top)
32. study for mars gas 1, oil on panel, president street
33. study for mars gas 2, oil on panel, president street
34. sufficient complexity (all current tactics), oil on panel, president street. courtesy of Alex Fringes.
35. the best reading's done underground (poland spring piss bottle), oil on panel, lorimer street
36. mars gas painting (brand new dances like the nuclear bomb version), oil on panel, president street


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