The sonification of trains are

Result #1

The sonification of trains are ersatz form-reliefs of the three-dimensional train running past a square-jawed German girl. Both spectacle and image are homogenized by this simplified figure, whose relationship to the space in which she is displayed is at once complicit and other-worldly. Oosterbaum sets the figures in clear lighting. And they are silent. No sounds, no identity marks. Only two lines of dialogue, both subtly edgy, appear in this picture: a short, demure, and a longer, suddenly dominant, one. These lines are in fact the exact opposite of the way the trains images have been. For there is no loss of individuality, only of the impulse to represent oneself as image.The sixth image, however, demonstrates another parallel to the artists earlier projects, the representation of an empathetic relationship to the naked female body. It shows a woman who is unmoving, though the images cast off her long-haired wig, which reflects the viewer into the empty space of the other three-dimensional bodies. There is a big difference between the actual depictions of this woman and the stylized depictions. The stylization does not duplicate the reality of the picture; it is the affirmation of a reality so exactingly represented that it becomes the de facto reality of the work. Thus, the most elusive image is that of the projection of an intimate awareness of the female body. But Oosterbaum suggests that the body is a medium through which we can recognize and relate to the other—an intimacy so private that it sometimes seems too personal for the image to be authentic. The embodiment of intimacy is thus the most direct method for the erotic transformation of the image. The concern with the private dimension of sexual relations is further articulated by a dense, laborious scribbling. The pen is an interesting key to the work. It is shown not as an observer of the individual image but as the recording of a personal notation of an intimate relation.

Result #2

icky in the broadest sense of the word. The only possible conclusion is that the associations of latent eroticism are the vehicles for the nefarious and entirely within reach of public taste.

Result #3

vernacular objects, as are the other things in the room. Both are simple by design, but do not seem simplistic in the slightest, and their integration makes no fuss.In the last room a large expanse of wall in the room is almost floor-length, like a single wing of a small airplane, and is covered with a collage of silkscreens, sometimes rolled up, sometimes rolled up, and decorated with paintings in an unexpectedly flashy sequence of colors, crayon, and acrylic. The entirety of the wall consists of slides of a mannequin standing outside a city, apparently in a park, where the sun is literally shining, even though that is merely the backdrop for the figure on the outside. The films slow fades and dots of color are looped so that only a small portion of the landscape is visible in the photographs; as a result the city, the park, and the mannequin in front of it are not very prominent.One can say that the piece is a melancholy tribute to the strangeness of life and an amusing, though in the end pointless, attempt at strange perspective. There is no attempt to be truly original or even original in the piece; it is an essentially memoir of the world. The results are more or less charming, but do not add up to anything. It is a little too smart to be effective as a nostalgic sentiment, and too smart not to be entertaining as pure silliness. It is a small and pretty but awkward and uncomfortable piece, and one of the more compelling aspects of this show is that there are a number of people in it who, by virtue of their art, are being recognized. When the work is presented in a museum setting it might be thought too cute, but the show will go on and on, and the work will eventually be better than it was yesterday.

Result #4

The sonification of trains are vernacular because they form, like metal foil, an absent frame. Sometimes the train itself functions as a figurative figure, as in Early Man, 1992, in which the object in front of the painting is shown kneeling. Elsewhere, there are no abstract forms. There are, however, several sketches of trains and their attendant drivers, some of them still life models, some of them steamrollers. These drawings are, like the drawings, small drawings of drawings, and they feature the same compositional reference as the trains themselves. In each of the drawings, there is a distinctive grid, an alphabetic arrangement of asymmetrical lines, a standardized format. These arrangements are vaguely familiar in earlier photos by the artists, but at first they are not immediately recognizable as such. The grid forms an idea of social structure, a schema for classification and identification. The drawings are, then, images that substitute grids for maps.These drawings are equally concerned with the contemporary and the fleeting, with the head and the tracks. In part, this concern for and sensitivity to the nonhuman, for the amorphous and the ethereal, is apparent in the figure of the passenger, a scribbled note attached to the wall behind the figure. In another drawing, an overhead view of a train is blurred by the branches of a nearby tree; these are hardly more than lines that might be on a map. There is also a creeping, rather nihilistic lightness to these drawings, as if, for example, the train could itself have been a map and its destination nothing more than a line from A to Z. But the trains are no more traces of a passenger in the world. Rather, they symbolize the invisibility and absence of human presence.The Last Train, 1992, again shows a train, this time heading toward Zurich.

Result #5

The sonification of trains are ikebana motifs, as in Masatoyo Yaris At the Deli, 1987, and in Tatsuo Murakami and Hideki Yamanouchis Rock, 2, a mirrored wallpiece, straddling two walls, resembles a sailboat. These closely observed groups of things weave together, and, like Kim Dancls phonograph, the works form a mesmerizing system of mass communication.Perhaps more than a suggestive gesture, the notion of linear movement is the crux of the work; the axis is the form of a no-man-strade, the distance of a line. One cant help but see this as a reflection of Blocher, his reification of Cubism. In this, he was one of the few artists to have explored the subversive potential of Cubism, and his interest in the space of the city was also significant.This show was divided into three sections. The first, presented in a gallery setting, was composed of objects that had been reproduced in a model that was then used to create abstract paintings on the walls, like Blochers own works. This show was an important and interesting celebration of the life and career of an artist who, through a careful life of contradiction, opposed the assumption that any of an artists work is already a kind of art. The exhibition was accompanied by a list of Blocher works by artists who had also made abstract works, for example, Jannis Kounellis. In fact, there were no works by Blocher on view in this show. A curatorial decision, apparent in the second section, was to relegate the rest of the objects to a different room. The only room in the show that had been used for Blochers abstract paintings was the narrow room of his office, which contained his work from the 70s.