Cool Hunting

I Have Been Remembering: Half-Lives & Half-Truths by Tim Yu

A site-specific installation featuring hundreds of one-inch drawings of Seattle landscapes, each encased in a single puff of bubble wrap (above), Minneapolis-based artist Gregory Euclide's solo show, "I Have Been Remembering: Half-Lives & Half-Truths," is up in Seattle at OKOK Gallery through 7 August 2007. In the center of the gallery, a paper sculpture suspended from the ceiling depicts a 360-degree panorama of the gallery's exterior (below right).

Euclide's works on paper employ natural processes including burying the paper to produce indexical stains as an alternative way to inform. Bubble pieces, mounted to the gallery's front window, are injected with water from local sources and other bubbles glued to the floor of the gallery's front entrance prevent visitors from entering without popping the pieces. Taking the exhibit outside the gallery walls, additional bubble wrap pieces are scattered throughout the streets of Seattle. The exhibit opened this past weekend, 14 July 2007 and featured a live sound performance by Kamran Sadeghi—aka Son of Rose—composed in collaboration with Euclide.

Last week I helped put up the installation, roamed a few streets in the Emerald City and had a few party sodas with the artist.

How tall are you?
Last time I actually checked, 6'5"

You seem to be really in tune with your surroundings. Any thoughts on the environment?
People do not respect what they do not understand.. it is the "floating" principle. Being mindful of your surroundings produces respect. The idea that the environment is only here for our "recreation" is really disturbing, yet one sees it everywhere. Where there is money to be made there will always be abuse and misuse.

You work seems very fluid and now your even injecting water into your "bubble" installation pieces. Does water play an important role in your life?
The fluidity of water and the decomposing nature or roll that water plays in the breaking down of nature, has always interested me. I am very interested in the tween space. The marsh, the forest edge, the lake shore, the river bed. I have been using nature and entropy as a metaphor for experience and memory. Water, then, seems to represent time. Water has many interesting properties that one can look at with respects to a relationship with time. Flowing rivers, clouds, ice. When I work on paper I always work very wet. I let the paper become saturated and then start to paint, the whole time spraying it with more water. I will draw an element and then spray it away, so it all but disappears. The process of building up and tearing down, within the production of the work, is a meaningful one to me. It brings me satisfaction to not simply depict nature on a flat surface, but to direct it in a controlled way - to play the roll of nature...if only symbolically.

What is your favorite season?
I enjoy all the seasons...I love the fact that there even are seasons and change I think that is why I like the Midwest. There are four very different times of the year and there is music and activity for each one.

What do you personally take away from producing your pieces?
I love the process of making making work the most. The work is a way to remember and get back to landscapes as I live in the city. It reminds me that things can still be beautiful and that everything breaks down in the end...

What is your creative process? How do you work?
I used to have a party coke and a smoke...but when ever you develop a crutch like that...you know you better fix it quick or it will own your process...So, I try to keep it mixed up a bit...work in nature, work in the studio, work small, work large, work at night...work in the morning...

You told me you spend about half of your money on music. What are you listening to these days? While you work? Eating dinner?
Yeah, music is pretty important to me. Right now I have been doing a lot of driving so it is the more upbeat, catchy stuff that will keep me awake...so it has been, Spoon, My Morning Jacket, Of Montreal, Bob Dylan. As far as for pure enjoyment I like Part Timer, Solo Andata, Caribou, Panda Bear...I could go on and on with things I am into right now. There seems to be many new things that are kind of interesting.

What three things should I do/see when I visit Minneapolis?
Go swimming in a lake. Hang out on my deck and drink fancy. Catch a show at the 7th Street Entry.

What's on deck?
OKOK has been a really great experience. After this show I gear up for BLK/MRKT Gallery in LA in September, where I will be doing another installation and all new works on paper and lead.

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