ALPHABET SOUP

 

NEW WORKS BY KIM NEUDORF

 

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BY JENINE MARSH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                Fümms bö wö tää zää Uu,

                                                                                                  pögiff,

                                                                                                                        kwii Ee.

 

 

                                                Oooooooooooooooooooooooo,

                                                dll rrrrr beeeee bö

                                                                dll rrrrr beeeee bö fümms bö,

                                                                                rrrrr beeeee bö fümms bö wö,

                                                                                                beeeee bö fümms bö wö tää,

                                                                                                                bö fümms bö wö tää zää,

                                                                                                                                fümms bö wö tää zää Uu

 

 

                                                Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The machine that produces nothing, whose gears softly, thoughtfully chew and mouth inarticulate sounds, and whose sputtering gutters of whose sudsy organs breathe inks and oils and staining vapors without necessity or gain, is a machine retired, at the beach, out to lunch, set loose, down and out, on the run. The paintings in Kim Neudorf’s exhibition the fold-up, the get-up, the move about are just such machines, whose only task is unwittingly taken up again and again.

 

 

 

"I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none. … What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them."

 

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

 

 

 

 

Neudorf’s paintings earnestly ask “WHAT ARE YOU MADE OF?” The out-of-work, out-of-order machine looks to itself as a strange space not of functions but of potentials, of parts, holes, and buttings-up against. Foamy stains and blotchy shapes crowd the canvas like dozens of cardboard boats soggily bobbing on the small soupy sea of the machine body. First seen from close up, these gear-dinghies, these free floating organ-boats, can check out, touch and join up with their neighbors. Now looked at from a distance, the machine concedes a response to its self-posed question, and coagulates briefly into the changing expression of a floating poem.

 

Shrugging off literal, linear tow lines, Neudorf’s work facilitates tactile communiques between an internal anatomy and a painted surface. As the machine hums, the gears mouth out a form.