In Praise of Paul Laffoley

that last one is a minute detail of the one right before it. the jpegs don't do justice. they're really big with lots of text when you get up close. not sure what he's on about. i just like the colors and symmetry and obsessiveness.

― Ô¿Ô (eman), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 03:09 (twenty years ago)

ok now i see what you mean, it's not so bad

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 03:11 (twenty years ago)

Do you like Gilbert And George?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 03:31 (twenty years ago)

SO NOIZE. A lot of his paintings are diagrams are conceptual blueprints from machines -- one of the ones above is a time machine, i think -- and then some of his paintings actually ARE machines. A good example is THANATON III:

http://kentgallery.com/img/LafTha.jpg

You're supposed to place your hands in the outlines and stare into the eye and download cosmic knowledge. Amazing.

― elmo (allocryptic), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 03:43 (twenty years ago)

I interviewed him once. One question, three hour answer.

― Tigerstyle Shamanic Vision Quester (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:06 (twenty years ago)

adam - not like i used to, but they're cool

tigerstyle etc. - haha awesome, what was the ?uestion

― Ô¿Ô (eman), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:12 (twenty years ago)

Paul Laffoley was born into an Irish Catholic family in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1940. He spoke his first word, "Constantinople," at six months, then remained silent until the age of four (having been diagnosed as slightly autistic), when he began to draw and paint. In his senior year at Brown University, he was given eight electric-shock treatments. He was dismissed from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but managed to apprentice with the sculptor Mirko Baseldella, before going to New York to apprentice with the visionary architect Frederick Kiesler. In 1968 he moved into an eighteen- by thirty-foot utility room to found a one-man "think tank" and creative unit called the Boston Visionary Cell. Laffoley supports himself with a job at the Boston Museum of Science, returning to the BVC not only to eat and sleep but to work on multimedia renderings of his visions of alternative futures and complex realities. During a routine CAT-scan of his head in 1992, a miniature metallic implant, 3/8 of an inch long, was discovered in the occipital lobe of his brain, near the pineal gland. Local M.U.F.O.N. investigators declared it to be an alien nanotechnological laboratory. He has come to believe that the "implant" is extraterrestrial in origin and is the main motivation behind his ideas and theories.

― Ô¿Ô (eman), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:13 (twenty years ago)

If you question this "official" story whatsoever you get the royal shutdown chez Laffoley

― Tigerstyle Shamanic Vision Quester (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:17 (twenty years ago)

the cat-scan part and after is obv. crackpot, but the rest seems sound.

― Ô¿Ô (eman), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:23 (twenty years ago)

wait, is your interview online somewhere?

― Ô¿Ô (eman), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:24 (twenty years ago)

These look like screenshots from an "arty" linux distro.

― PHOIOEI (blastocyst), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:25 (twenty years ago)

xpost: no.
he had me banned
I said he might be sane...

― Tigerstyle Shamanic Vision Quester (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 04:27 (twenty years ago)

six years pass...

just saw an exhibition of his stuff in person in berlin. so rad to see up close. paint strokes, stuck on letters. amazing
http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de/exhibition.php?id=31947&lang=en

― jaxon, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 20:21 (fourteen years ago)

and huge. like 6-8 feet tall

― jaxon, Wednesday, 16 November 2011 20:21 (fourteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.