Truth /  by Mirena Rhee

As an artist, I have always been interested in truth.

If I were to write an artist manifesto today it will contain only one word, truth.

I spent the first half of my career finding truth in pure making. I never really asked any of the questions until I developed all my instruments. When I got my instruments I started on finding out the truth.

Some days I found the truth to be a single word. Other days a word was not even necessary, it was just a thought. And then even a thought was not necessary but an all-encompassing feeling.

Watching Charles The Making of a Monarch 2023 created by the BBC, just for the pictures. LOL /  by Mirena Rhee

Watching this strange person put on a crown and an ermine cloak given by his mom, both clown and parent solemn and serious like a cabalistic clownade.

I fast forward without sound because I don't want to waste my time on evil but I do need to know what evil looks like.

In choosing kings and queens to worship people have to be very careful because it's human inclination to always look up to something. People are afraid to judge kings and queens. It could be that an entire nation could condone world's scale genocide, like we the US exterminated people around the world, because our kings and queens aka government and government Media like the New York times told us that they found weapons of mass destruction so we went to kill on all the peoples for no reason at all.

Media really likes spectacles of power and money and of course because they're a business and always have to make money to pay their employees, Media will never go against the evil of a government no matter what.

That's why I'm not surprised the BBC glorifies an institution that has committed planet scale atrocities. So when their chief media orchestrates, All the people bleet in unison like we all bleet, myself included.

I loudly laughed - I haven’t seen a prop comedy like this since the Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin. It is a fucking firm all right.

“I do enjoy ceremonies,
and I think that the British people do them so very well.”

“I think it’ll be a marvelous day, probably. As long as the weather stays fine.”

I think the BBC wanted to laugh a little too, at the end.

the US is invisible. An invisible word painting /  by Mirena Rhee

The US is invisible

Education is invisible

Wealth is invisible

Think tanks are invisible

Universities are invisible

Foundations are invisible

Smart people are invisible

Churches are invisible

Art is invisible

All the supermarkets are invisible

Media is invisible

Buildings are invisible

Invisible State

Homeless person

Homeless child

The state of the spiritual and material world /  by Mirena Rhee

I have no idea what could possibly be found on Instagram. I came to the conclusion that the only compelling reason could be masturbation. Okay, that is sorted.

It really is amazing how I quickly turned cold toward photography. Photography was my first art. Photography leaves me Stone Cold.

Now, when I see even the corner of a Rembrandt nose I start shaking. When I see ancient Greek marble I start shaking. When I even think of what I've seen from Michelangelo I literally start shaking. I'm 500/2k years out of touch. And I still like brown. I could sleep with brown under my pillow and I have to deliberately deliberate with myself about the next work that it shouldn't be brown. I've seen tons of contemporary art and have been shaken a few times but when I saw Salvador Dali's theater and museum I was in awe. Not because it contained the greatest works of art, but the sheer scale of really inventive products of the imagination. A lot of art today lacks imagination and they all look like they could be stamps.

Now when I see handbags and especially designer handbags I immediately start puking, the only thing - a faint red chalk Leonardo drawing of some folded fabric makes me feel better again. Always brown and always perfect.

I'm in Ecstasy over the rovers on Mars, they are works of art. Works of towering human genius. I worked in technology for 10 years 10 hours a day 6 days a week and I know how hard it is to do hard things.

I get goosebumps and profound oneness with the universe thinking about these tiny human creations made by the yearnings of our soft fleshes, crawling around this alien place carrying the desperate human questions

I don't have any respect for institutions but for NASA.

I feel ecstasy like in the Bernini sculpture but the angel is not holding arrows but a Mast Cam.

I feel deep emotion and my knees get weak when I feel emotion about works of genius and towering works of art.

It's pretty funny no one has learned how to paint better in the last 300 years, Dali and Vermeer are outstanding painters, I am in awe but not weak. I also get weak about tiny dirty rocks on a alien planet. I get goosebumps and profound oneness with the universe thinking about these tiny human creations made by the yearnings of our soft fleshes, crawling around this alien place carrying the desperate human questions.

Such is the state of my material and spiritual world.

Media has war, murderers and death front and center on their pages today rather than the fact that second set of private astronauts are at the Space Station /  by Mirena Rhee

Media has war, murderers and deaths front and center on their pages today rather than the fact that second set of private astronauts are at the Space Station. Kids growing up looking up to killers rather than astronauts and engineers. Why do we give our eyes to depravity rather than triumph?

Go NASA, Elon and SpaceX!

Four Axiom Mission-2 Private Astronauts Enter Station


Engineering is a bit like art, trying till it works. Good thing they don't announce it worldwide when I try /  by Mirena Rhee

Imagine the headlines

She tried again to make something silly in her room, cried bitterly all afternoon and then just walked in the park.

She tried painting, lol, she hasn’t painted in oils in 10 years, good luck doing that again.

Drawing is not like painting, dear heavens, we don’t need another Van Gogh drawing the outlines and suiciding weekly.

Don’t even bother unless it is about vagina, politics, trauma, or butt /tits combination.

Forget it - she never done a residency except that one time when near homeless stayed at an airbnb.

Oh not him!

Poor work ethic she spent more time thinking about art than doing art.

Poor discipline she spent more time thinking and walking than working.

Martian worries /  by Mirena Rhee

I know a lot of artists when alone take a deep look inside themselves. I do that too, I worry about who I am where I'm coming from and where I'm going. But my obsession is not any identity or gender or the state of the world but rather rocks and dirt as captured by a robot on Mars. I worry about the pebbles between the rocks, and look at the special glints that the Sun left on various stones.

I see that in some places the dirt has been ground into fine sand. Although some stones and groups of rocks are very close physically they seem with different patterns. Some rocks have been sanded smooth, some are very low to the ground and mixed up with dirt. Some are just triangles with shiny peaks and others are polished cuboids. I try to find the contact with the ground. I want to make sure I haven't missed any of the important dimples. And then, I freely put some squiggles where there's a lot of uncertainty in the surface.

Currently my painting has the varied surface of the surface of Mars. There's shiny places and very matte places which makes sense because the dirt doesn't reflect sun light, just grounds it. But the rocks because of their crystals do return sunlight.

I really like transparent glazes on deep shadows. There's a lot of scattering of light there. While the lit side is just light.

Painting a mysterious landscape of a otherworldly planet, captured fleetingly by a passing robot, with the chances that no one ever will pay attention to the tiny rocks just like there. It makes me feel intensely compelled to paint it knowing that it will be there long after I'm gone.