The Nostalgic Sublime: Eric Zimmerman at Art Palace

Robert Boyd

Before blogs there were zines. Before the iPod, there were mix-tapes. It's always struck me as weird that some of the signature aspects of the internet were anticipated in the years before the internet took over. In 1963, Xerox introduced the first desk-top photocopier. The first commercial cassette tape was introduced a year later. These two analog technology breakthroughs enabled new grassroots subcultures to emerge, stealthily, right at the moment when intellectuals were fretting over the loss of regional cultures to the unstoppable bulldozer of capitalist mass culture. Of course, zines predate 1963, and the underground trade in non-mainstream musics has been going on since the introduction of the 78 RPM record. But the cassette and the photocopier made this kind of thing much easier.

This is not only important as a part of our culture, it's personally important to me. I produced my first zines in 1976 (after having read a zine by some older kids at my school), and started making mixtapes almost as soon as I had a stereo to make them on. (I even made 8-track tape mixtapes because my first car had an 8-track player instead of a cassette player.)

My first zine, Superghost #1, predates Eric Zimmerman's birth by three years. By the time he reached adulthood, the great flowering of zines had ended (the golden age of zines could be defined as the period when Factsheet 5 was being published, 1982-1998). The death of the mixtape might be said to coincide with the founding of Napster in 1999. Zimmerman is a product of the internet age.



Eric Zimmerman, Endless (Disharmony), graphite on paper, 26 1/4" x 38 3/4"

So the show, Endless Disharmony & Telltale Ashes at Art Palace is for him an examination of the recent past, a period he partially lived through but probably didn't participate in in any meaningful way because he was too young. Endless (Disharmony) depicts a particular type of cassette tape. Instead of a tape with two distinct ends (which was typical), this one is a tape loop that would only hold a small amount of sound. (This kind of contraption became obsolete with the introduction of auto-reverse tape recorders, which turned all cassettes into endless tapeloops.)

What first intrigued me is that Zimmerman drew this. Aside from exhibiting his bravura drawing skills, what would his reason be for drawing a opened cassette instead of just photographing it? The process of drawing it in such a realistic, detailed way must have been painstaking. It seems tedious. ut perhaps it makes sense to employ such a method when depicting an obsolete object. The time he took creating it honors the cassette tape.


Eric Zimmerman, Endless (Horizon), graphite on paper, 26 1/4" x 39"

Endlessness is a theme running through the work here. How can a horizon be endless? It can't--by definition horizons are where the vidible part of the land ends and turns to sky. No horizon suggest no land--a void. Perhaps a void with the word "endless" superimposed.


Eric Zimmerman, Oblivion, zine, edition of 500, 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"

Zimmerman's zine Oblivion (hilariously described as a limited edition of 500--far higher than the average print run of the average zine) is a zine in the classic format--photocopied on 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages, folded, and saddle-stitched. The seeming randomness of the contents reflects a lot of zines. It has a highly idiosyncratic glossary. It has pages and illustrations that have to do with mountains and mountain-climbing but other photos that seem to have nothing to do with the rest.

The work doesn't easily open itself up to the viewer. My interpretation, that it deals with a kind of nostalgia for pre-digital era, is inherently flawed. I'm seeing the work through a personal lens. In the other zine in the show, Telltales Ashes, Zimmerman writes a rambling, disconnected essay. One sentence stands out for me: "Here we are looking for the modern sublime--nostalgia for something lost or not yet obtained--wandering through territory along a trajectory in a transitory state."

The sublime is a key. But I disagree that it is modern. The modern sublime would leave the word "ENDLESS" out of the picture. It would be just be the pitch black drawing. The void.  Adding a word--especially one so redundant and yet contradictory--makes this a postmodern exploration of the sublime. Zimmerman's use of such postmodern media as the zine and the mixtape (which he simulates with an iPod in the piece Grid - Old Coyote Calls - Void) place his search for the sublime purely in the realm of nostalgia and history. This work doesn't pretend to achieve some kind of ultimate state. Instead, it looks backwards and forwards at the same time.

Zimmerman's nostalgic quest for the sublime is visually best expressed in a series of collages called Fields. The images are formed from cut up photos from nature magazines. Zimmerman uses these fragments to create images of forest deeps, caves, chaotic vortices, etc.


Eric Zimmerman, Field No. 13, 2012, collage on paper, 8" x 7 1/2"


Eric Zimmerman, Field No. 1, 2012, collage on paper, 8" x 7 1/2"

And looking at these, one can't help but think of Casper David Freidrich, an early artistic seeker after the sublime in the Kantian sense. But unlike such contemporary seekers as, say, James Turrell or Olafur Eliasson, Zimmerman's quest for the sublime is without hope. He is too arch and ironic. He can't permit himself to be a "pure" seeker of the absolute. He knows how the magic is done. The work is a quest for the sublime and is about a quest for the sublime. This latter part undermines the former. But the work is more intelligent for containing this contradiction.

Christoph Hüppi and Carlos Rosales-Silva at Box 13

There was a lot of exciting art in the new collection of shows at Box 13. Seriously, go down and check it out--lots of it need to be experienced in person to get the full impact (I'm thinking of the especially cool sound piece, Sounds for Stairs by Lina Dib). The Kenmore had a more ambitious than usual program (although not much can beat what it had at the Big Show this year). The Kenmore, recall, is a small refrigerator owned by artist Emily Sloan. She usually keeps it in her studio, but occasionally gives it duty as a micro-exhibit space. This time around, Ariane Roesch had a light installation inside, and a painter named Christoph Hüppi had tiny magnets and small paintings on the outside of the refrigerator. Hüppi's presence may be the result of a little evangelizing by Paul Middendorf, the guest judge of the Big Show. Evidently he liked what he saw in Houston and came down later in the summer to hang out and meet artists. Hence Hüppi, not to mention an upcoming performance at Skydive.

Hüppi's art is latter-day op art. It is abstract, and he uses exotic paints, including metallic paint. It's really hard to photograph--I took a picture with no flash and with flash, and it's like I shot two totally different paintings. I think he uses some fluorescent paints in his work, and my flash must include ultraviolet light in its spectrum. The thing about this kind of art--geometric, optical, etc., is that it has a kind of lowbrow appeal. A friend of mine once referred to it as "van art," and I've heard the term "dorm room decoration" in relation to this kind of thing. (Ironically, I had a little Kenmore fridge just like this one in my freshman dorm room.) One thinks of Victor Vasarely and the optically vibrating rock posters of Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso. There is also another influence that people associate with this kind of art.

Which reminds me of a story. I was a freshman in college, and I got it into my head to do a Victor Vasarely-style piece of art with red and green markers (colors that totally vibrated when placed next to each other). It was a grid with an undulating, bubbling surface. The markers really reeked though, so my roomie kicked me out of the dorm room for the duration. So I was sitting on the floor in the hall, patiently drawing this ridiculous piece of work, when two guys walk up. They weren't people I knew, but they were obviously students. They asked me about the piece and we chatted and then they invited me to lunch the next day. I went, and it turned out to be an evangelical Christian gathering, filled with people like me who had been likewise tricked into attending. But why did they pick me? One reason was that I was alone, and it's easier to gang up on a lone person. The other was that I was doing this freaky, psychedelic drawing. And the only kind of person who would be doing that is a druggy in desperate need of being saved, right? Ironically, while I wasn't a drug virgin, I was close. Certainly I wasn't the acid-head that this drawing might have lead them to believe.

So that's the other influence for this kind of art--LSD. And mushrooms, I guess.


I have no more notion if Hüppi's work is influenced by drugs than the two wandering God-botherers had about me. I make no assumptions. However, in honor of this psychedelic lineage, I have made a gif of one of Hüppi's pieces consisting of the version shot without a flash and the version shot with a flash.


Christoph Hüppi, Pipe No. ?, acrylic on board

All these pieces are named "Pipe No. XX", but I can't remember what number this one was. Actually, giving these abstractions a name like "Pipe" suggest one other influence: Peter Halley, whose geometric abstractions were given a pomo gloss by being identified by the artist as paintings of "cells" and "conduits."

The big show up in front was by Austin artist Carlos Rosales-Silva. He takes as his subject Hispanic and Native American identity. He plays with cliches that come from Anglo culture, but also from Hispanic culture. For example this untitled piece:


Carlos Rosales-Silva, untitled, custom fleece blankets, latex paint, wood, found objects, 2010

I'm guessing the guy on the right is Rosales-Silva himself, in all his highly unidealized glory. Show him a cultural cliche or two dealing with Native Americans, and he'll take a whack at it as well.


Carlos Rosales-Silva, Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before..., modified found objects

This next one I don't get. I see the op art quotation, but I don't see how the lowbrow text, an update of "No Viet-Cong ever called me nigger," has any particular relationship with Op Art. The only thing I can think of--and this is a stretch--is that Mohammad Ali made his famous statement in 1966, more-or-less at the same time that Op Art was at its height, and Op Art was definitely a kind of apolitical art. So maybe Rosales-Silva is taking non-engaged art to task. (I told you it was a stretch.) See for yourself:


Carlos Rosales-Silva, Op Art, archivally mounted digital print

If this is a jab at unengaged, purely optical art, it is ironic that it is being displayed in the same place as Christoph Hüppi's optical semi-abstractions.