Kjell Hahn

well, the free stay at jimmy kuehnle’s Nagoya resort has run out. he’s put me out on my own, shoved a pocket knife and compass in my hand and pointed me east. tomorrow I go to tokyo to see the new studio space that awaits but I really have no idea what condition its in. hopefully something usable.
anyway, there probably won’t be another post for a week or so here is a drawing from a group of studies I’ve been working on while staying with jimmy.

in conjunction with his installation at weissraum gallery in kyoto jimmy kuehnle also did several performances in his taffeta balloon sculpture, “big red.” in kyoto we were mostly confined to the area next to kamogawa river because of the danger of low-hanging power lines in the city. the river runs along a popular restaurant and shopping district so even with a shorter course we managed to interact with many people.

kuehnle was assisted by sayako tsunekage, kjell hahn and to a lesser extent george zupp.

for more information on kuehnle’s work, visit jimmykuehnle.com

a few weeks back I worked with jimmy kuehnle for his show at weissraum gallery in kyoto. there were two parts to the exhibition: an installation and a performance. this post covers the installation, “stuffed full” which took up two rooms of the gallery and even some of the sidewalk. visitors were encouraged to touch and even enter the sculptures. a modified version of this exhibition is now on display at the Laredo Center of the Arts in Laredo, Texas.

for more information on kuehnle’s work go to jimmykuehnle.com

jimmy kuehnle and I decided we needed yet another vacation a few days back. Tani, a friend of his told us there was a good river for swimming across the mountains to the east so we rode our bicycles 15 km down to the end of the Green Road expressway to kill an afternoon and see what kind of trouble we could get ourselves into.  the bike path along the highway was ridable but not exactly the best course.  i’d personally like to thank the city of Nagoya for requiring bicycles to take every exit ramp, then ride back on the next entrance ramp.  very efficient use of my time.  knowing the cars had to pay to go along the same course was some comfort but this town generally has a pretty shitty attitude toward bicycles. sometimes it feels like amerika with the narrow shoulders and lack of crosswalks,  but what can you expect from the largest car manufacturing city in the world?

anyway, after riding though 37 degree heat for an hour we finally came to our destination, a huge (by japanese standards) rushing river complete with beach and shade trees.  while slow-moving on our side the river was was an absolute torrent on the opposite bank so we had a great time swimming out and seeing how far we would dare to go.  we couldnt get out far enough to get a good picture of the current, but it was incredibly fast and deep.  jimmy had the impulse to kick me as i struggled against the river and it was impossible to regain my footing. before I knew it I was bouncing off boulders 25 meters downstream.

i went out and got some more supplies and started re-working the crowd images. so far things have been moving along nicely. jimmy is being quite tolerant of me using up half the apartment and splattering paint all over his kitchen table.

THANK YOU JIMMY.

using my new arsenal of acrylic paints I’m able to build up and reduce areas in the drawings which has given them depth where they need it and allowed me to take out areas that were too busy.  It will probably take a couple more days to get through all of them so the only thing I have to show for my work is this stupid bunny.

“stupid bunny”

pen, pencil, pastel on paper

____The other day I went to a party with Jimmy and many of the sculpture majors from his school, Aichi Geidai. It was an odd experience meeting so many Japanese that acted so very different from the rest of the population on the island. In a land where punctuality and following the rules dictate every part of life it was

refreshing to show up 10 minutes late to a dinner party and be the first there.  I was quite excited about the prospect of hanging out with young Japanese people with interests outside of shopping and dieting.  Could they actually exist?

_

____Sitting down to dinner with 60 sculptor majors I tried to express this excitement to the first person I spoke with.  “Isn’t it great to be around so many like-minded people in your field?” I asked her.  She politely disagreed, saying artists shouldn’t  be around other artists all the time because they need to integrate with society.  At work her co-workers find her odd and she has trouble fitting in there, so spending too much time with other artists only serves to escape the problem rather than deal with it.  Its interesting that I have been riding my bicycle thousands of kilometers all over the country for the last year and a half trying to spend as much time as possible with other artists, and this girl just wanted to get away from them.

Aoki  -  "portrait of kjell"

pen on paper

____Well, with a couple drinks in our bellies after that the conversation kind of went downhill, but I had a great time. Our group became incredibly rowdy- with girls climbing around under the tables, groups of guys wresting around in the middle of the restaurant and some boy rolling around in a professor’s lap and licking everyone that didn’t physically beat him away.  They actually made a bigger scene there then Jimmy.  And with everyone being art majors someone brought out a sketch book and a group of us were always passing it around, drawing everything we could think of and having other people vote on the best. Aoki, a good friend of Jimmy’s,  drew the included picture.  He said that the dots in the right-hand corner were my beard flying away in the wind.

a little more work and the lawn bike might actually be ridable. right now the rear wheel has too much weight on it so we are trying to figure out some way to beef it up so we can take it out and see what kind of trouble we can get into out in town.

still trying to work out the kinks with Jimmy Kuehnle’s lawn bike.
In the meantime here is a recent sketch of three figures i like.
untitled crowd sketch
pen, pencil ink and acrylic on paper

Jimmy Kuehnle has come back from his performance of “stuffed full” and “big red” in Laredo, Texas so this week we are working at his studio at Aichi Geidai University. Jimmy and I are trying to finish his lawn tricycle as soon as possible with the end of his Fulbright scholarship just around the corner. Its a beast of a bicycle roughly 230 cm long and 130 cm wide and over 200 kgs. The next couple days we are going to hammer out a few problems with the brakes and drive train and should be able to do a performance next week.

Here are the “completed” crowd drawings, though i haven’t decided if they really are finished.

I have found many exciting things going on in these drawings. The crowd theme continues to grow and develop its own dialog and I enjoy pushing the formal elements to new areas but something feels incomplete with them. So even though the series has a good start to it, there are still some parts to iron out. I think it has to do with the situation I am in and having limited resources. It can be quite frustrating trying to work without a proper studio. I’ve been moving around for months now trying to get work done whenever possible and there are constant inconveniences. In two weeks I am going to see a potential new studio space outside Tokyo.

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