Monthly Archives: November 2006

Pharmacopia

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Keith50max.jpgMy last studio Patron called me a few months ago and informed me that my painting is hanging next to a Damien Hirst. I couldn’t imagine why I should care, as I’ve never been a huge fan of his. However, there was this one series of prints he did using Swiss Pharmeceutical design. He replaced the brand names with food names. This one I just altered said, “Chicken”. There were also ones that said, Fois Gras, Steak, Caviar, etc. One should have said Mushrooms. Food and drugs are related for sure and I have always been intrigued by how Swiss pharmacology seems to have grown out of Swiss food science. The whole act of making chocolate and or cheese is a very complex act of chemical engineering and leads nicely to making any sort of drug. It is an issue of being Chinese and making Tea. You put nature into solution and then percipitate out crystals of the compounds you want. It is sort of Alchemy. Though this time not lead, but something like Coca leaves that you suspend in petroleum solvent tea and then percipitate out the purified (what did Sherlock Holmes call it? Seven Percent Solution) cocaine. T being the symbol of Switzerland always seemed fitting to me as it’s less about Christianity and more about T and Tea and TNT and all the permutations that cruciforms have meant to man long before some desert Jew named Jesus started making trouble in the Empire.
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SermontheSlope

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They exit the train station and parade up the wide Geneva Boulevards past the chrome and the gold and the cheese and the chocolate and the watches and knives and the cheese. It reminds me of the start of this whole thing which was an opening in Dumbo under the gothic arches of the two bridges just after the dual steeple fell and gave way to the single protestant spire of Empire. He was out of her depth by the water taxi and she was in too deep. They hated eachother at first sight, but somehow wanted to fuck like wild animals and maybe spend the rest of their lives fighting and fucking at turns… but at that moment it was more about brunch and trying to fix the hangover from the cheap art wine at the opening. Had they met at the opening and maybe snuck off to her loft? Or had they only met on the ferry? I’m not certainn but it certainly refers to Whitman’s On Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and the idea was always that the ferry, at Fulton landing would somehow relate to the cable ferry at Basel and the way the cathedral looms over the Rhine with it’s double spires would echo in the conspicous absence of the twin towers… only leaving the gothic arches of the bridges.
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