jeremy tessmer | curator & designer

I flatter myself with the idea that I have keen insights.  Thus will you ever find me wading into a conversation with observations, opinions, and other socially maladroit offerings.  On my personal crest might well be written, Quod habeo tibi aliquid dicere.  (I have something to say about that.)  It’s both a blessing and a curse.

On a fairly regular basis, my opining takes the form of prognostication.  Again, I flatter myself: I am often good at predicting about how technology adoption will shape and be shaped by culture. As an example, I pitched the idea of “PANDORA FOR ART” to some web developer friends of mine.  (They insisted that I misunderstood the nature of my business.)  Months later, there was a new art sales site being funded by Peter Thiel whose pitch was, “PANDORA FOR ART.”

More recently, I mentioned that I thought Pinterest was ideally suited to forming “virtual” collections.  Today, my colleague Diana sent me a link to Pictify. Another friend of mine thinks that I am getting closer to the zeitgeist, but that I am not actually far enough ahead to capitalize on it.

He’s probably right, but in the meantime, I should really learn when to shut the h@ll up.  Honestly, some of these ideas might actually have a cash value in the right circumstance.

In other news, I had dinner with Howard Fox last night.  He is absolutely WONDERFUL - a model for how to balance kindness, curiosity, intelligence, and discernment into one easy manner.

This weekend, my sweetheart and I set off on a quest of semi-mythic dimension to the land of beautiful people and business parks, the OC.  What could compel us to drive 320 miles when gas is $4.15 a gallon?  Four words should suffice, but I will offer more (in the spirit of generosity and self-importance): RICHARD DIEBENKORN, OCEAN PARK.

Southern California was gracious enough to provide an appropriate meteorological overture to our adventure with a fine mix of sun and fog.  Indeed, to see the sun’s light and color mediated by fog was to be perfectly primed to see Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paintings.

The painting at left greets you as you enter the exhibition.  It was the easy painting to love, with almost every color represented in a more or less pleasing proportion and with large forms organized into a composition that nods, at least, to a traditional understanding of perspective.  I stood transfixed for quite a while, but it later struck me that it verged on pandering.  The exhibition designer made a smart choice for an introductory work, but there are other paintings in the show that reward a good long stare more richly than this one.

Everyone in California should see this show.  Until recently, Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paintings were among the most valuable California works available.  Of course, the recent Clyfford Still sale at Sotheby’s basically buried that reputation under an avalanche of headlines and cold hard cash.

Thus, the minor tragedy that this earth-shaking exhibition (and critical component of PST) is located at a tiny museum in Orange County with almost no signage at the edge of one of Southern California’s preeminent malls.  I’m so grateful to the Orange County Museum of Art for mounting the exhibition and I don’t fault them for their lackluster signage or diminutive size.  No, I fault the larger institutions closer to Santa Monica (hint: I’m staring at you LACMA) for not making a larger space (and a larger audience) available.  On a Sunday afternoon, there were about sixty-five people in the museum.

These are my favorite works by one of my very favorite painters, so I could easily make this post too long telling you why.  I’ll spare you (mercy AND generosity… how’s THAT folks?).  In the meantime, get thee to the OC. The exhibition runs through May 27th.  RD: 1 :: I5: 0.

Yesterday, I happened into a kitchen where the radio was playing “The Dog Days are Over” by Florence and the Machine.  I mentioned that I seemed to hear that song everywhere.  The cook agreed, noting, “Especially on Pandora.  It plays like four or five times a day on Pandora.”  Indeed.

I, myself, heard the song for the first time on Pandora, which is how I hear most music produced after 2002.  I don’t listen to the radio, or watch MTV, or follow any of the music blogs.  I exist in a cozy little cocoon of carefully selected music (classical, jazz, blues, bluegrass, hip hop, and various electronic forms both common and esoteric).  My own playlists form one half of the cocoon and Pandora the other half.  Every once in a while, YouTube manages to slip through my little chrysalis, but mostly I remain blissfully unaware of new music.

To correct for my growing curmudgeonliness, I created stations for the Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs and Phantogram.  Both stations play “The Dog Days are Over” about four or five times a day.  Thus, the “curatorial” role that Pandora plays in my life has been compromised by “payola” - an old radio model where music publishers pay broadcasters to “push” a certain song.

This is an ongoing issue, isn’t it?  We’re searching for good curation, but commerce pays for those people and services that provide it.  Whether it’s Google or a gallery, there is some financial imperative to “push the fish.”  As a gallerist, I will always give people the truth if they ask.  Pandora, on the other hand, feels otherwise.  I guess the dog days are over, whatever that means.

One of the ongoing conversations I’ve had with technologists (ie: web 2.? developers), curators, and collectors concerns the increasing value of curation (ie: content filtration.)  Google does it.  Bing apparently does it.  So do my friends, Kevin, Ben, and Noah, who are occasionally kind enough to point me towards music that I should know about, but don’t.  I do it, too.  (You do it. We all do it. I just did it and I’m ready to do it again.)

Enter: my map of this weekend’s art fairs in Los Angeles.  Woo, is there a LOT of art that’s going to be shown.  Art Platform, PULSE LA, the Brewery Art Walk, and Beyond Eden.  I am going to try to make it to at least two of these events. (I am also going to go to the Edouard and Luvena Vysekal show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.) Reviewing the offering, you can see that further curation may be necessary. Put simply, we live in a world of too much stuff.

Enter: Pinterest.  This is a very cool new piece of software that allows you to “pin” things to your virtual “cork board” and share it with an undeserving world. See, for example, my mate’s Pinterest Board.  I see huge possibilities in this idea. You could become a freelance curator of Pez Dispensers or vintage Saabs. You could also forgo buying things in favor of putting them into a virtual space where you can stare at them all starry-eyed.

Finally, a little help in becoming a curator of Eames stuff. Remember friends, good curators have both knowledge and taste. You should either educate yourself to where you have both or find a friend who already has them.