art by K.I.A.

NSA Keyword Poem: Deadbeef Atomicraft (Immaculate Constellation tee shirt edit)

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New limited edition wearable artwork: a wordwork by K.I.A., a poem using only top secret keywords used by the CIA, NSA, (and so on), on the below (numbered) t-shirt. Guaranteed to start a discussion. Or a rendition. Or an abduction.

click to go to store

DEADBEEF ATOMICRAFT  KH-11

The chameleon man, the alchemist,
the eternity server, a mole;
with visionquest, by retinal fetish,
a scanner of the keyhole

Spies not daisy, iris, hollyhock, or rose,
but something maverick (or from the Weekly World News),
unclassified, anonymous, explicit, rogue,
veiled forthcoming but with an unlimited view

Pornstars plus ninja on calliope indigo,
(with a dazzler predator debugging the concerto)
a cowboy, redheads, and a sharpshooter with a glock,
and in the sidemirror, an elf, a gorilla, and sphinx with a lock

Eavesdropping jazz jargon and pinknoise passwords,
he flashbangs a merlin -- phreaking XS4all,
ramjets past  jupiter, then a megastar, and at last bursts
through diamondchips and galaxydust to breach nightfall...

There, in sugargrove sweetdreams to see
reddawn & bluesky crystallize a white sea
but suddenly, to stun, comes temblor, whirlpool, tsunami,
to scissor inspiration, sing disaster sagacity

Comes a crazytrain babblequest conundrum,
and thinkchew thunderweb doublevision,
no noblequest just atomicraft, warstock bullion
of immaculate constellation

Then the virus messiah — the tarot card reveal
deadbeef frozentundra, a blizzard,
a blacksnake in firelake with the 777 seal,
in derby hat with third chance, a mockingbird

The Sundevil, the Dragonmaker, with halo duress
white giant sorcery, in blackflesh,
using magyck and darkshroud, all trojan, to turn
offensive utopia into a chemical burn.

NOTE: The poem, now in quatrains (cuz Nostradamus), has been edited to include the latest UFO / UAP secret project name recently revealed by a whistleblower, and the rhyme tightened. The original poem appears in this painting (which also contains Area 51 landing-strip map, blueprints for a listening device bug, and digital camouflage patterns), more about HERE:

up the long slide (even jack black)

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TL; DR: below the surface & to the sun (Verticality, Part Two, by K.I.A.)

The original “Verticality” image arrangement (post) became concrete because of a synchronicity. I’d selected a series of photos of ephemeral moments — of disparate content, and taken with separate intents — which were captured over the course of a year, and then grouped them by elevation (how far the subject was from the ground). A vertical visual poem.

Just after I’d curated that grouping, by chance, I came across the poem “High Windows” by Philip Larkin. Here’s its last stanza:

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: / The sun-comprehending glass, / And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

The poem’s last stanza resonates with the themes of The Window (continuity, infinity, with hints perhaps of both despair and transcendence… ). And, of course, the main hook was that all the photos in this series (of series) are, literally, taken from a high window.

So I used the poem as the connecting thread for that first post some time ago, but for a while now I’ve wanted to do a Verticality sequel. (Or… or maybe a franchise, at some point merchandising the IP with toys, maybe a gin or a tequila line, and possibly a cologne or a perfume — with signature top notes of transcendence, and base notes of despair). But I’ve held off for dittophobia.

Then a few days ago, out of nowhere, this famous line popped into my head:

SEE THE REST OF THE IMAGES AND READ MORE (SUBSCRIBE!) AT THE K.I.A. SUBSSTACK HERE

All The Hills Echo Ha Ha He He (The Window by K.I.A. pt 54)

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An angst-antidote — excerpts from Songs of Innocence by William Blake, paired with images from The Window photo installation series:

Merry, merry sparrow!/Under leaves so green/A happy blossom/Sees you, swift as arrow,/Seek your cradle narrow, /Near my bosom
-THE BLOSSOM

Pretty joy! / Sweet joy, but two days old. / Sweet joy I call thee: / Thou dost smile, / I sing the while; / Sweet joy befall thee!
-JOY

When the meadows laugh with lively green, / And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene; / When Mary and Susan and Emily / With their sweet round mouths sing ‘Ha ha he!
-THE LAUGHING SONG

Nuns to Gnostics (Buddha, Baphomet, Jah, Jesus, Yahweh, Waheguru... ) The Window pt. 51 by K.I.A.

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All the below so close (within a 15’ area), and not so far apart.

On the autumnal equinox the woman above and five others danced through the streets at sunset, wearing flower crowns, celebrating Mabon (“The Witch’s Thanksgiving”) in honour of nature’s abundance.

“May good thoughts come to us from all sides”, a Hindu prayer.

A Sikh principle is sarbat da bhala (“the welfare of all” or “may everyone prosper”)

This woman is going to a Powwow (an Indigenous gathering to celebrate culture, tell stories, sing, and perform traditional dances) somewhere downtown. On her regalia is the circular Four Directions symbol (white N, red S, yellow E, black W), one meaning of which is the interdependent relationship between all living things.

The tefillin is a small black box containing verses from the Torah, worn by Orthodox and traditional communities by wrapping the attached leather straps around the arm and forehead. The purpose is to keep one’s focus on spiritual development, not worldly desires.

An Apostle …...

READ AND SEE MORE ABOUT THIS SET OF IMAGES FROM THE WINDOW AT: SUBSTACK (and subscribe and share!)

Get the entire Nuns to Gnostics set HERE (and other sets HERE)

The Window as “networked” installation showing complex connections across images, time, people…

ᴉuʌǝɹsᴉou <-> inversion (a la Graham & because Baselitz)

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TL; DR: if the sky were ground
(ʇɥǝ Mᴉupoʍ by K.I.A., p.50)

“New York City 1 (After Mondrian)”

For 75 years, the Mondrian painting “New York City I” (a grid of red, yellow, blue, and black linear adhesive tapes) was hung upside down. Research eventually proved that it should be shown the other way around. However, due to possible damage, the painting would continue to be displayed the wrong end up. “If you were to turn it upside down now, gravity would pull it into another direction. And it’s now part of the work’s story,” said curator Meyer-Büser in 2022. “Once I pointed it out to the other curators, we realised it was very obvious” (italics mine):

“New York City 1” (Mondrian): Left: right; Right: wrong

Georg Baselitz is famous for exhibiting his paintings upside-down — or rather, right-side up, but with the subject matter inverted — to create unease and/or to make the content more difficult to interpret. His first inverted painting was in 1969, “The Wood on Its Head”. Flipping a traditional landscape of a tree made the work overcome representation, its artificiality highlighted, and left-brain analysis of it disrupted. The subject of the art was not as important as the work’s visual insight. It is immediately obvious that the tree, or in later works, the human being, is not the right way up. Genius, or gimmick? Bravado, or branding?

"Untitled" (Baselitz) - "Titled" (K.I.A.)

Rodney Graham is well-known for his photographs of trees hung upside down. (This presentation method evolved from his use of camera obscura, where a pinhole in a wall is used to isolate and cast the image —upside down and reversed, because light travels in a straight line — at large scale onto a facing wall). Of these works Graham said “I was also using a kind of readymade strategy based on the disputable assumption that a photograph is not art but an upside down photo is.”

"Welsh Oaks #1" (Graham) - "City Trees Two" (K.I.A.)

Some of the photos for The Window project/portrait/installation were shot upside-down. This was due to: 1) mistake, 2) the need to see around an obscuring object, like overhead wires, 3) not wanting the subjects to change their behaviour as a result of noticing the photographer’s movements 4) wanting to stay alive. (Meaning sticking the camera out the window without looking in order to avoid stray bullets from shootings, prevent rocks thrown from drug dealers or molotov cocktails from motorcycle gangs, and not garner a deadly look from that socialite after she stole flowers from a planter).

These images would usually be re-oriented when editing… unless visually it would enable two or more simultaneous readings — that is, a perceptual shift: is the skater dropping down into the flowerbed as if descending from a balcony above, or across it, launched towards the bottom of the photo from a crash…

READ & SEE MORE about the “Inversion Set” from The Window by K.I.A. (& SUBSCRIBE) AT THE SUBSTACK HERE

The Geometries of Taylor Swifties (THE WINDOW by K.I.A. pt 45)

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TL; DR: Taylor Swift Dance Party participants, in polygons (PRINTS HERE & BY REQUEST)

I hear shrieks outside. It’s early evening, spring. Shouts, cries, and loud exclamations in big cities are alarming… but in rare cases, like this, they are joyous — the sounds from down below The Window are emanating from a flock of Swifties, in line for a Taylor Swift Dance Party. They are laughing loudly, and eager to shake it (off).

According to statistics, there are about a shibillion Swift fans worldwide. Here are a few of them — sequinned, blue-jeaned, braided, cowboy’d, lumberjacked — free-range, in their various geometries:

SEE THE REST OF THE PHOTOS AND SUBSCRIBE TO SUBSTACK click> HERE

IMAGES:

heXXagram

acute triangle

90,100, 60, 120 degrees of swifties

quadrilateral non-parallelogram with purses

biPhonic right angle

15 degrees ensequinned

theoretical investigations on geometrical structures of swiftie clusters


Geometries and glyphs of fans and fame, and the infinite mystery and magic of celebrity — Taylor’s a symbol, or sigil, for positivity, that’s why the lineup.

I go downstairs and join it.

love vector

I shriek a little (but joyously).

The Window w/ Swifties Geometries

NOTES:

-“Siri, Siri, in my hand, who is the famous-est in the land?”
“Taylor Swift, Of Course, is the famous-est in the land. There were 10,751,000 searches for her on Google this month, twice as many as the next famous-est, Ronaldo.”

- in the pic w/the pink cowboy hats, if you could “enhance enhance enhance” (as they do in movies) the girl’s iPhone image on the right, you’d see me leaning out the topmost window, 25’ above, taking photos. The only person to actually notice my actions was the girl who gave me the peace sign.

-The Window (all images in the photo series 24/7/365. from the one window) is mostly about interconnections across single images over a span of time. This post is one of the few showing multiple photos of a single moment (others were of a shooting, and a fire; while How Far the Man and UHaul Psalm were multiples of a single subject, but across a span of time.)

-the panoramic photo shows a few people in the lumberjack phase

-re: Google AI debacle, I queried it to generate images of a Swiftie & it made this:


-apparently the next Taylor Swift album “The Tortured Poets Department” comes out April 19 2024. So I asked Chatgpt to write a tortured haiku using Swift song titles, and it gave me this: Endgame without you / Haunted by blank space, lost love / Teardrops on my guitar

in praise of fails: Weatherworks - land art installations by K.I.A.

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TL; DR: 30-foot art done-30° (“The Window” winterlude)

On Horizons

The newly frozen bay, somewhat snow white, sounds out as it warps — ringing, and singing, like an ice siren, alarm and allure. I jump, stomp, and kick down while walking onto this winter canvas. I’m holding a broom sideways — if I fall through, maybe it’ll save me. Should I be wearing a life jacket?

F1: Cities in Dust

Every December I make enormous weatherworks. The process is physically demanding — a duel, a sport, a dance — due to the difficult conditions (which are different every year). This art is always in cooperation with acquiescent to nature; i.e. this year, for the first time in ten, there is no ice. So “going-with-the-no-floe”, I shifted my colordrifts and glyphs to nearby snowy fields and frozen flora. But because the art is not at the time-honoured site, and I can only work at a much smaller size… all attempts are fails. (F1-F4):

F2: Color…Elide

Every December I make enormous weatherworks. The process is physically demanding — a duel, a sport, a dance — due to the difficult conditions (which are different every year). This art is always in cooperation with acquiescent to nature; i.e. this year, for the first time…

READ THE REST OF THE POST & SUBSCRIBE TO THE K.I.A. substack HERE

The Window: a portrait in a thousand parts

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Below is a view of The Window art project installed as networked photographs, showing the connections across the images, subjects and themes (diversity, time, technology, velocity, beauty, movement, dance, Tarot, entanglement… etc).

“The Window”, institutional installation view of themes branching and massing from linear spine (proposed)

The Window is a 24/7/365/1 photo project capturing life in the 21st century city. (See more of the images and ideas-behind: HERE). Above is just one of its many infinite arrangements.

Much of the art by K.I.A. is one larger work composed of smaller elements, allowing iterative presentations. Here’s an installation whose content changes according to setting and arrangement; here’s a painting whose 30 individual paintings are to be decentralized; here’s a recombinant sculpture composed from many discrete parts, and here’s an intercombinant wall installation (this same approach later arrived at by El-Anatsui).

Possible Pareidolia

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TL; DR: A pairing of enigmatic images of couples from The Window project, third one at bottom.

Pairings, juxtapositions and patterns. Across the time span of The Window series (LINK), context emerges which generates (accretes?) considerations beyond each individual image.

Two photos taken months apart, at different times of day, of different situations, when juxtaposed within the context of an exhbition (virtual or institutional), suddenly obtain more layers of meaning.

For example in the project there is a photo of a woman in high heels and fur at 11 p.m., arms outstretched, smiling and posing for a photo as she leans back against a stretch limo. Months later I captured an image of a woman at 6 a.m crammed into a kid’s bike trailer, immobile (sleeping, sick, dead?), as her partner cycled from dumpster to dumpster looking for bottles.

Placed side by side, each image becomes a tuning fork that resonates to the other.

Another example: separate shots over months of 3 different groups of 3 women crossing the street together. Each group is ethnically homogenous and of the same age within their triplet, but when the photos are placed sequentially you notice that each group’s pattern of walking is significantly different — one group is close, almost shoulder to shoulder, arms and legs in synch; the next group somewhat matching in stride and arm movements, but a little farther apart from each other; and the last group of three is dispersed and with no physical cohesion of motion. Is it culture, age, season, setting, time of day, or happenstance that causes this phenomena?

One of the images by itself is just a word, but the three together are a poem.

The Window: Poetic Sets

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Themed groups of images from The Window: Velocity, Dance, Motion, Walking, Woman, Men, Trans, Night, Smokers, Selfies, Technology, Diversity, Equity, Beauty, History, Weddings, Dogs, Verticals, Time, U-Hauls…
Ediitoned signed archival prints: https://www.nu4ya.com/store?category=02+The+Window

morse-code forest, general stealth and argent armor

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“e dot tree dot” by K.I.A. , is 84” x 60”
-black/gold/silver oilstick on scratched and scored aluminum.

Whenever I see a birch forest, the patterns of white and black feel like an encoded message being sent by the earth. So I took a poem by e.e. cummings “when by now and tree by leaf”, translated it into the dots and dashes of Morse code, and overlayed and image of a birch forest with it. I then translated key nouns from the poem (i.e. “snow”) into secretarial shorthand symbols for the cursive part of the painting.

The lines that make up the drawing are more than just decorative or structural -- they are themselves information. (The broader implication: behind everything we see there is a higher, or at least different, order of reality.) They are palimpsests — information layered on information.

General Stealth Car River 84 x 60”, oilstick on aluminum by K.I.A.

Tom Thomson x Emily Carr ÷ General Idea x Agnes Martin = genetically modified Canadian art. Taking the forests of Thomson and splicing them with organic shapes of Carr over the t.v. bands of General Idea, and beneath the minimalist lines of Martin.

There is a horizontal, as well as a vertical, tracking of light as the aluminum reflects with movement and illumination, contrasting the velvety matte of the oilstick.

Argent Silk Armor 84 x 60 x 5"” oilstick on faceted aluminum

A palimpsest— layers of textile shapes from Japan, Africa, Victorian era Europe, and a North American Indigenous breastplate, overlayed. The bends in the aluminum are the folds used on a kimono for storing.

CRISPR SILVR - genetically modified paintings

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New work in the CRISPR series of genetically modified (spliced) paintings, “CRISPR SILVR” 50 x 40 x 2”, acrylic on paper on panel. The sculptural painting consists of thousands of discrete slices of paper spliced togethe, with the work shifting and optically changing with the light and angle. See the ongoing series HERE

(The work below is the yang to its yin, same dimensions)

The Window by K.I.A.: compilation images

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Compilation of photographs as grouped by theme into a single image.

The compilations range from two up to 60+ images. Dimensions variable and flexible — portrait, landscape, square, etc. Inquiries welcome.

Here are a few examples of the “visual poems” compilted from The Window, a 24/7/365/1 project documenting the diversity, velocity, and humanity of life at this moment.

See more of the compilations HERE (and more being added over time.)

“ultimulticulti” (39 image compilation):

“Views From the Six” (36 image compilation):

“Happiness Is Motion” (aka “Wheelers and Wheelies” (6 image compilation):

Other compilations: Gravity/Antigravity, Wraiths Below the Window, Sequences….

General Stealth Car River

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General Stealth Car River 84 x 60”, oilstick on aluminum by K.I.A.

Tom Thomson x Emily Carr ÷ General Idea x Agnes Martin = genetically modified Canadian art. Taking the forests of Thomson and splicing them with organic shapes of Carr over the t.v. bands of General Idea, and beneath the minimalist lines of Martin.

There is a horizontal, as well as a vertical, tracking of light as the aluminum reflects with movement and illumination, contrasting the velvety matte of the oilstick.

Genetically Modified Found Wind (Acquired)

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This work is from the ongoing CRISPR series. They are GMAs (gen mod art), with their visual DNA — taken from multiple paintings — sliced and spliced together to create new works. They are also digital/analog hybrids, in that each of the 1000s of spliced elements are discrete, like a pixel, but they are analog (exist IRL, cut from paper). The component pieces are meticulously placed together to create a cohesive abstract with a complex and optically-shifting surface with a type of retinal rhyme scheme.

This particular work is actually made from found wind from various geographical locations; that is, the wind (mountains, a lake, a prairie, etc) was used to drift the paint on various flat substrates, which were then chopped up and intermixed.

(Acquired recently by Canadian art collector).

A recent work in the series CRISPR BLU (50 x 40 x 3”) , acrylic on archival paper. Thousands of hand-cut units of paper, each entirely unique. This particular work presents hyper-blue from the front (with silver edging), but at oblique angles multiple colors are subtly revealed (magentas, purples, oranges, reds).

EXHIBITION VIDEO - architectonic auras, unstatic art, wall jewels

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Static photos don’t show the work well (nor does seeing the work online, the in-person person experience is much more transformative), so here’s some video walk-throughs… (CONTACT to see IRL)

The works are about ephemerality, instability, transformation and awe… (see web pages for more info)

L.A. Art Collector: "No There There" acquired

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“No There There / No Hear Hear” by K.I.A. as installed a at Los Angeles art collector’s home. 84 x 60” Oilstick on industrial reflective tape on aluminum. (Part of the Transformer series.)

The work is transtemporal (like much of my work) -- there is a complex bas-relief texture of a Victorian petit point motto that reveals beneath the 21st century material. This work fuses the silver palimpsest series, and my linear mandala/DNA spectrogram/sliced collage approach.

The text reads "No Hear Hear, No There There", expanding on the Gertrude Stein quote about unreliable memory and perception of place, and emptiness, to include 'here/now' and not just 'then/there' ('Hear' aurally sounds as 'Here'). The mirror tape is utilized for another layer of the palimpsest, forming an abstracted digitalesque map of Oakland, GS's hometown. (Re: a map is not the territory, never is the actual place, just like memory...)

The reflective quality of the work allows the colors in the room, or the viewer, to resolve/dissolve into the piece. It also creates a shifting or unstable optical appearance as one moves around the work, with the different textures or sections luminescing at different angles or time of day.)

No set Time. No concrete Place. No set Meaning* -- interpretation of the phrase shifts when using a different sense -- one hears "Here" but sees "Hear", so the text can simultaneously be understood as  "No praise, No comfort" (no encouraging claps of "hear, hear" from the crowd, no comforting pats of "there there" from Mom.)

*Final feint: the title of the work is actually "Here Her, There He"

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