PHOTO DIARY

Lockdown

March 2020

Everything cancelled

March 5, 2020

Painting is about flow state.

01/12/2020

Its 2020 now
things come in the order they come

December 27th 2019

First half of December, Two Thousand and Nineteen
Myles Starr came to visit
Walter Benjamin's monument Portbo
We made a day trip to see Sol Calero and Chris Klein in Montpelier, my first long drive
Looking slowly at things in town, in particular doors & backsides of buildings
A two hour long rainbow at Empuries
Old things in Castelló dEmpuries
New paintings for February in Mexico are coming along
Kaja is beautiful
So's life

Andrew Birk, Jenna Westra

Curated by Maurizio Vicerè

Text by Andrew Birk

12.10.19 – 29.02.20

THE COURT

Law Firm Di Pietro - Lucchi. Piazza della Rinascita, 24. Pescara

www.thecourtspeaks.com

THE COURT is pleased to present the fifth exhibition event Opinions of a Clown with the artists Andrew Birk (1985, Corvallis, Oregon, USA) lives in Espinavessa, Alt Empordà, Spain) and Jenna Westra (1986, New York) curated by Maurizio Vicerè and text by Andrew Birk.

Opinions of a Clown (1963) is a Novel by the Nobel Prize in Literature Heinrich Böll.

Clown is on the outside of all systems looking in. He is obsessed with art, his own. The space where his labour and life unfolds is precisely the place of leisure for others, they do for fun what he can only ever do, thus, he only relates other humans inside a microscopic sliver of shared social space. He dies on a beach, laying next to people rubbing bronzer into their legs, doing nothing. For him, every-thing seems to be lost in translation, he is floating above or below, but never among. So he carries on working, there is nothing else, practicing, inventing, expanding, loosening and sharpening; end-less production, yet, he is perhaps ultimately his only audience. Art is his only place. His only gear. He doesn’t need Catholicism or Protestantism, Art is God, too.

In twenty-something years he plans on ending up in a canal under a bridge. He is slowly self-destructing. I’m curious about this. Would this happen if his world existed inside the normal structure of everyone else's system? Is it some form of weathering that happens from opposing the forces and direction of the world?

Sure, it's an acknowledgment of the ridiculousness of everything. Time and gravity are total buzz-kills. I don’t see him to be an optimist, but its hard to think that anyone obsessed with art could be anything else, despite the cliché. Self improvement is a basal pillar of optimism and there cannot be art without challenges bested and self improved.

I have been producing non-stop for years and years and years and years. My landlord accused me of being a junky and staged an intervention. I very rarely do drugs. It was highly offensive. Their lo-gic was "how can you be so poor if you’re such a good artist?"

Clown says that good artists get paid badly and bad artists get paid well. I think this is just the universe's sense of humour. His work is an endless rehearsal for a piece of theatre or performance that potentially will never happen. The end result as some kind of a pretext for the process of being.

I live in a five hundred person town in the countryside in Spain and I can't drive. I spend all day, every day making watercolours now. These days I only leave my house to find new fragments to use. Im "going to buy bread", but really I’m hunting for shapes, colours, solutions, some stupid any-thing to juxtapose against something else, on top, under. I look for the perfect twisted old olive tree whose form converts into the abstract shape that will solve a painting. The SpongeBob Square pants mesh baby visor suction cupped to the inside of a minivan window. I had an orgasm the other day and precisely at that moment an image of a fluffy sheep exploded into my head and I ran to paint the sheep, solving a problem.

My girlfriend and I just bought a house in tiny village of 58 people. I’m waiting for the deal to go through. Everything is in flux. My studio is the dining room table. The wind is blowing. Everything is always in flux.

Clown says God rested on Sunday. Clown says that children don’t rest, and neither does he, full-time, they and he are always stimulated, open. This seems unbearable to him. Would he rather be a normal person? Too bad. He is a child. A man-baby.

Clown spends time observing gestures in the world and copying them, as would a child, or a complex bird, thus constructing particular moves or notes in his choreography, which are longer constructions of many moves and styles, copied, practiced, and perfected.

Clown protects his values at all costs, to the chagrin of even himself.

I very much relate to him. Well, less in his words than in his actions. His intentions. His values. I am obsessed with the pleasure of existing inside a channel of a pure non-stop working. I cannot believe how infinitely lucky I am to be an artist. I cant tell if he is pleased about this or not. Maybe hes folding under the chaos.

Either way, he and I and even you are stuck here, as this. Some people enjoy spending their lives on an island, others do not.

Andrew Birk

November 2019

Back to work

Barcelona Gallery Week, October 2019

some photos of Return of the Junker: JM2000 @ Bombon Projects

by Jordi Mitja and Josep Maynou, curated by Sira Piza

MOUSE IN THE PALAU

Castelló d'Empúries late September 2019

The Lights Are On But No One's Home

LAND

Kansas City, Missouri, USA

September, 2019

Hi Friends

I am wetransferring you scans of my final selection of 40 watercolors for the show, partially based on the ones you chose, but with some additions.

Emily Dickenson wrote "forever is composed of moments".

These watercolors were all made between 2018 and 2019 in a window of time after moving to rural Europe, buying a house, sitting on my hands enveloped in bureaucracy, sitting on my hands waiting for a baby, watching politics unfold from a distance, running out of money, having a reunification with the wonderment of nature, remembering that even though I am a father I am also a child.

I wanted the selection to run the gamut between color and texture, subject matter and application, insider tricks, formal tweaks, high and low, between trepidation and delight, dry and wet, between introspection and brute execution. The selection is indicative of the way my logic free associates quickly between seemingly unrelated references, and inside of my making practice I very seldom restrict the process from this same fluid shifting and pivoting. I have never made a playlist that contains one single genre of music.

Maybe it doesnt matter, but for the sake of background info,

I make these things because I have no better to deal with the anxiety of wanting to be great at something, with a blue collared obsession to be productive, with the fools errand of progress, with the confusion of not being able to contribute to my family in any more pragmatic way, being born with a workers body and a poets heart, with the hope I will drag something back from the bottom of the water that will change me and us. I live inside my mind, inside future hypotheticals, inside perhaps childlike dreams, textures, smells. They are the dreams Ive organized my reality around and fight to protect at all costs, as ridiculous as it may be. Somehow there is a connection between making these paintings and the future, as if while making them Im time traveling. They are sketches for the future. I have always felt this way about my work.

I wanted to name the show after some term my dad would say. I have been thinking about my dad alot, now that Im a dad. Simply put.

I thought of couldnt throw his way out of a paper bag and couldnt hit the broad side of a barn.

Baseball terms. Having the show in Kansas City makes me think about Baseball above all else.

In retrospect, I dont know how I feel about those, though.

I also thought the lights are on but no ones home *at the moment I prefer this one* and treading water.

The truth is Ive never cared about the titles of works or shows, its not interesting to me. Titles seem like marketing, nothing more. If you guys have any input on this, that would help me alot.

Ive also been sleeping like shit and everything is fragmented and Im running on autopilot, I cant think, I cant make, everything is fuzzy. Thus, the lights are on but no ones home

*POSTSCRIPT: a double entendre that also refers to our country having hit an iceberg.*

Making the work was about one thing, and happened in one moment and on one wavelength, but conceiving and executing the show is another thing altogether, in another moment, wavelength. I am feeling apathetic, or rather, too fatigued to be enthusiastic, and I want to utilize that enthusiasm as part of the framework of the show. Lets try to solidify a logic to follow, based on which the two of you can feel comfortable make executive decisions, althewhile keeping the shows logic in mind. Like how Judges use Law.

Wes, Ive already mentioned to you that Id like one watercolor placed in the mathematical center of every wall in the house, if possible. If that includes the shower wall, it includes the shower wall. If that means overlapping furniture or decorations, so be it. The attic, the basement, et all. If there are moments where too much work is hung in a particular room, or the center of the wall doesnt make sense, you are welcome to edit this formula. I do not, however, have any justification for this decision. I just think it will look clean, offset with the context of an actively lived in house. Another thought I had was hanging the paintings at the 5/8 to 3/8 ratio of height and width on each wall, each piece following the golden ration. Again, why?

Any suggestions here?

Im sending alot of kinds of images, some might work better in some rooms for some particular reason than others. Some might work in low light, on white walls, next to or across from other pieces, et cetera. These are the kinds of relationships and decisions that I charge to the expertise and responsibility of the two of you.

Shows and shows and shows come and go and we take photos and send them to blogs and put them on our websites and then the shows are over and the only remnants of anything are a harddrive full of digital information thatll one day be corrupted and the bonds we make with people in this shared ritual. I dont want to respect images or social media or websites anymore, as I once did.

I want to preserve how this moment in my life felt, an exhibition is the best way Ive ever found to do that.

I am excited for you, Wes and Jeff, to hold these paintings in your hands, to get excited about them. Everything else is a cherry on top.

Andrew

all photos taken with this camera by Wes Landis, seen above selfieing

I find these photos and their framing to be really beautiful and confusing.

The paintings would be naked without all the information that surrounds them, like a shaved cat.

In some cases I wish it was all a white cube, but lifes not like that.

There are too many things hung on other things.

In same cases I wish the paintings had their own space, like the blue swirly abstract one with Peter from The Family Guy hung over the Tyvek bag. Surprises are important in life, even if they are disappointing and/or not what we expect. We have to protect the potential to be surprised at all costs.

its a weird show.

Doors are open, like ghosts are walking around.

I love that in these images Im not sure what I should be looking at.

My brain is not working at the moment and the show doesnt either in the same way in a way the makes the show a round and full expression of my current listlessness. Its honest.

September 21st, 2019

Coming soon

Laia Estruch at Fundacio Miro

La Tartana at Can Puig Massanet, Vilafant

El mejor grafitero de Figueres

RIP

Boys and Girls Club Southeast Portland, Oregon, USA, 1995.

also

September 2019

Its an amazing dream come true to have finally designed an album cover for NAAFI!

Thank you @n_a_a_f_i & @wrack90 💋💋💋

WRACK'S EP Despertar is out today!
Despertar 醒 #OUTNOW #NAAFI (link here: https://naafi.bandcamp.com/album/wrack-despertar)

01. Despertar 醒
02. Tres Mil 界
03. Espada 刀
04. Danza Fantasma 霊
05. Quema 燃
06. Fiesta Del Diablo 魔

Arte: @andrewbirk —Por Donde Da Gana
From #Ebullición at @kunstraumamschauplatz

Add caption

https://www.factmag.com/2019/08/26/tokyo-producer-wrack-despertar-%E9%86%92/

SUMMER SHOWS

EBULLICIÓN, KUNSTRAUM AM SCHAUPLATZ, VIENNA, AUSTRIA

UNSUPPORTED MESSAGE FORMAT, GALERIE VALERIA CETRARO, PARIS, FRANCE

SWAMP HORSES, SPIRIT VESSEL, ESPINAVESSA, SPAIN

JELATO FOR ALL, JELATO LOVE, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Summers almost over

Castelló d'Empúries, August 2019

Summertime b-sides 2019

CAPITAN MI CAPITAN!!!

clark kent

SUPERMAN!!!

YO BJORN! :^P

July 3rd, 2019,11:49pm, Kaja Birk Pizá enters the world

Vienna

34 years old

June 2019

<3 Rothkowitz <3

Jelato For All, Jelato Love

Beautiful Palma de Mallorca,Spain

Sira and I's last vacation before our daughter is born!!!

End of May 2019

Shoutouts Ché and Javi! and thanks Veronica for the great flat <3

100 Sculptures, Anonymous Gallery & Todd von Ammon, Paris, 2019

Two weeks ago I went into the middle of a forest near my house in Espinavessa, Spain and recorded the sound of birds singing in the evening sunlight.

Once the forest fell completely dark and silent, I stopped the recording.

The next day I shipped the digital recorder to Paris where it was displayed in the second rendition of 100 Sculptures, an exhibition organized by @anonymousgallery and @vonammon .

It is hard to document sound work in photographs.

So here’s the SoundCloud link for your listening pleasure:
https://soundcloud.com/user-814771880/sundown-in-bird
Thanks to Joseph and Todd for creating the parameters that forced this solution.

https://soundcloud.com/user-814771880/sundown-in-bird

An adult trying not to be scared in a dark forest

9 to 5, KIRSUBERJATRÉÐ, Reykjavík, 2019

I went on a long walk into the forest outside of Espinavessa, Spain, while they tracked me on a cellphone in a gallery in Rekjjavik, Iceland. I am still working out how to make walking, hiking, (doing) a possibility in terms of art "production" and how best to present it in an ephemeral way. They say if you have lemons make lemonade-- we have cell phones and our legs and that seems about enough.

Is what we see our art? Is what we do our art? Is how we live our art? Or is it just what we "make"?

Im not sure.

In the space of about an hour, I saw a beautiful rainbow, got caught in a heavy deluge, recorded birds and cows, sat next to a humongous pine tree, was genuinely surprised/scared by a hunter emerging from an olive grove, and got lost in the waning light of the evening.

I found my way.

I dont know what art is, but I think and hope that walking in the woods and being moved, count.

Thank you so much to Hugo Llanes for the invitation

#LELUCKY, HVW8, Berlin

February 2019

Muchos besos to Josep Maynou

the first person to invite me to participate since moving permanently to Europe

<3 <3 <3

things embedded with spirit

another gr8 painting by Victor Jaenada

March 29, 2019

Today

Our bank loan is accepted.

We are buying a house.

Im working on curating my first show in our new space.

In July, Sira will give birth to our daughter

March 14th, 2019

^Victor Jaenada painting^

February 19th, 2019.

Not having a studio is starting to affect my balance

February 3rd, 2019 - Aiguamolls de l'Empordà

Post-Christmas road-trip to Bilbao, San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, San Sebastian, Hondarribia.

<3 Peace and love <3

Andrew Birk, Every Ending is a New Beginning

Galería Karen Huber, Ciudad de México

November 2018

In a postcard, the sunset pours impossible colors onto the ocean and the land. With the small piece of printed paper in his hands, the new romantic subject imagines himself alone and shrunk before the wonder of nature, staring into the distance, beholding speechless and breathless.

The sunset is the image of a promise, an expectation, the dream of a future; the breaking day brings brand new possibilities wrapped in the veil of dawn. We imagine the new day as the Paradise that the postcard was trying to sell: cutting off everything that falls outside of the vision field, it turns into an idyllic framed image.

When we think about what our desires will be like, we take things that we already know and organize them in new compositions that excite us and soothe us, against the background of unknown fate. Every time we draw onto nothingness we move forward. With every trace, new branches are born. Every void is a canvas and every line can be a horizon.

Andrew Birk presents a series of large-scale paintings for his first exhibition at Karen Huber Gallery in Mexico City. Going back to one of the most rejected materials in contemporary art, reserved for amateurs, Birk uses watercolor in large format to paint enormous bodies of water and air. These two elements, of ever-changing appearance and total dependence on the light projected on them, are shown in Birk’s work in the whole spectrum of their possibilities. Embracing the corny quality associated with both the material and the image of the postcard, the artist shows a candid optimism before great life changes, the end of a cycle and a new start. After all, bound by the spectator, dusk and dawn are only two specific points of one same circle.

Sira Pizà

October 2018

Climb.

Heres a photo from my current show at Karen Huber, Mexico City

Thanksgiving in Rome

Here in the corner where you can see the best Caravaggio

I spent the majority of time I was in Rome trying to take a picture of how it felt to be there

Fabian Herkenhoerner at T293

First time I ever saw a Merlin Carpenter IRL <3 <3 <3 @ Emanuel Layr

Adam Stamp at Indipendenza

It is a super interesting feeling to have your work 1:1 copied by another artist.

Check out Jon's work on Insta: @jml.wav

Xochimilcowboy from 2015 at Johannes Vogt Gallery NYC

Today I entered an old house overrun with chickens. On the second floor there was a makeshift bar where the neighborhood kids would come "do drugs". These flags are priceless.

November 14th, 2018

A fuckload of watercolors

;^)

OCTOBER IS ALMOST OVER

I HAVE A SHOW AT KAREN HUBER GALLERY IN MEXICO CITY NEXT MONTH

(NOVEMBER 15TH)

SNEAK PEAK

BABY CHIKEN INFINTE L00P

OKAY HERE ARE SOME PICTURES FROM FRANCE - OCTOBER 2018

haha

picasso

saw this Jesse Dunahoo piece in Atlanta Contemporary booth at Paris International fucking amazing deaf artist losing his eyesight sewing grocery bags into wall hanging "quilts".

Olafur Eliasson gets it

love these Tobias Spichtig paintings man hes so good http://www.tobias-spichtig.com/

<3 LA COSTA BRAVA <3

THANK YOU VIENNA I HAD A BEAUTIFUL TIME!!!

(September 2018)

SORT!

Clandestine places

Katharina Hoeglinger's studio

Following a nun through the painting gallery

I love Sira's face when shes looking at art

Nobody puts Louise Lawler's corner in a corner

Mexico inside an aquarium

Painting by Paulina Semkowicz & Myles Starr (sorry guys its too good not to share)

Beautiful show by Anthea Hamilton at Secession (LOOK AT THE TITLES arrrgghhhh <3 <3 <3)

The last paintings of Monet

Gonna get this pierced onto my ear #Shakespeare

Hermann Nitsch inside of random restaurant

Horse's ass

peace.

A Finger Pointing at the Moon is an eye trying so hard to find what it’s supposed to see, that it can’t see far or wide enough, blinded by its own focus. The purpose of the Finger is it’s potential to aid awareness, to behold the world it exists in.

Like a current of water and a whirlwind, self-generating a circular force, Andrew Birk describes an inward trajectory only achieved by watching the immense and slow movement of matter around him. In this cycle, the body is an instantaneous presence. As an iconic representation or a fast imprint, it appears as a moving thing, unfixed and alive. Dirt, spray, ink, enamel and water are leveled to converge the organic and immaterial, synthetic and artificial, in one all-encompassing sweep. Going back to the very stripped down essentials of painting, Birk presents a body of work made of simultaneous paths of action, a picture of a panoramic present.

PROCESS. BORRASSÀ.

@SORTVIENNA

http://www.voidvision.com/pc/index.html

Summer 2018. Made it to Tenerife. Spirals, Lizards, Holes, Horizons.

Oregon

Saying goodbye to Mexico xINRIx 2011-2018

PREVIEW FOR SORT Vienna, September 2018:

May 22nd, 2018

Its raining hard outside so Im using this time to write a press release for a show I can envision in a space I can predict in a city and a country I cant predict or envision. Ive written down some words, titles, ideas. Some things stick out more than other things; they italicize.

A delivery guy is stuck in my studio waiting for the monsoon to die down. A collector is trying to haggle on WhatsApp. I am leaving Mexico in just over a month and everyone is coming out of the fucking woodwork.

About leaving: I cried like a baby two weekends ago with Rodrigo, one of my best friends. Obnoxious baby tears, in an AirBnB’d house in Valle de Bravo covered in vines and modeled after Tuscany. I cut my teeth in that town. I saw things that I want to model my life after. We waded through a 12 inch swimming pool thinking of surreal business ideas. I want to tell jokes with Rodrigo when we are old men.

Myles Starr has been a friend of mine for many, many years. I have met his mom and dad and sister and aunts and uncles. We have survived next to eachother. I suppose thats why Ive been invited to exhibit in his space. He follows my progress with a level of intimacy that keeps him clinging on when most people get bucked off or change the channel. Its hard not to be fascinated by people when you know how to really look at them.

I dont know too much about Austria other than Mozart and Altaussee. I used to listen to cassette tapes about Mozart’s life when I was a small boy having temper tantrums in a grey Plymouth Voyager driving through Oregon. I imagined his taped, bleeding fingers pouring over the ivories under candlelight.

In art you really have to decide how to present yourself.

Somehow, the work you make matters, it absolutely matters, but, somehow, what you say about it matters more.

Or how you say it? How you live it.

The rain died down and the sky turned yellow.

I’ve grown into a man and a real artist in this place. Or, have learned how to manifest something I was always or was always going to be.

Somehow Ive also found peace.

I made these paintings to show me and you that peace.

Not how smart or weird or different or great or normal or human I am. Well, all of those things too, but you cant build Rome in a day.

Over the years Ive told a handful of people that my work is about being alive. I see their eyes roll. I dont think theres a more simple explanation that better encapsulates any of this. I dont think theres a more complicated one either.

I am scared about the world.

This summer I am going to a small island next to the west coast of Africa to buy land and eventually build a house. I want my children to be able to learn to ride bikes and explore the outdoors.

My girlfriend says that we cant do anything else than what we do.

Here are four paintings about being alive that are jammed into a room that only fits three.

They are the best thing I can make.

<3Hi Dennise<3

Going away party

Jacob Wick is the new owner of "Fly", 2018^^^

my friends house vvv

33rd Birthday

Combine all National Anthems

Front side, front wave Zeitgeist

Im such a sensitive little fuck

May 29th, 2018

Mexico: Pintura ReActiva @ Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil

http://www.revistacodigo.com/arte/resena-mexico-pintura-reactiva/

Pictures are up from DWELLING POETICALLY: Mexico City, A Case Study @ ACCA MELBOURNE

http://acca.melbourne/exhibition/dwelling-poetically-mexico-city-a-case-study/

Installation view, Dwelling Poetically: Mexico City, a case study, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2017–18

Photographer: Andrew Curtis

READ THIS:

http://www.artandaustralia.com/online/discursions/floating-megalopolis

An old friend just sent me this:

May - photographing everything in the studio and preparing for Europe!

APRIL 2018

Revisiting a body of work that I started in 2009

in the wilderness at all times

March 2018

Went to Managua, Nicaragua to participate in an exhibition called Una Manta de Sudor (a blanket of sweat) at a space called Macula Malagana. Its an artist run project space thats existed since the 80s. The only of its kind in the whole country. Met amazing, amazing people. Made some trolls.

Will return for the next Biennial of Nicaragua (fingers crossed)

el paisaje desde el patio de la casa del Caballero

Thank you Leah 4 the invite and Malagana Macula 4 hosting us <3 <3 <3

I got a studio assistant

THE BEST (ONLY GOOD) PART ABOUT THE FAIRS IS FRIENDS VISITING FOR THE FAIRS

DUH

The architecture of Material was amazing. Congrats yall

TONS OF FUN IN XOCHIMILCO

didnt go to zona maco this year INRI

also didnt vote for Trump ∞INRI∞

February 2018

Allan Villavicencio, Myself, and Matias Solar opened a space dedicated to painting called FUEGO.

Here are some shots of the brand, the exhibition, the opening, and the construction.

For the three people reading this ;), you can follow the space on instagram @fuegocdmx

Everyone usually looks crazy in opening pictures.

Thats bc were drunk and the lights are too bright.

Luego the line for the bathroom :/

Fotos x Cat Donohue

nu walls

nu lights

working out nu stuff in nu space

My very good friend Myles Starr sent me this.

He wrote it for class about when we first met.

The feeling is mutual.

2018

New House

New Studio

December 2017, Norway

Regañando curated by Dorothee Dupuis, Squash Editions, Mexico City

VVV http://www.ojwwep.com/portfolio/oj-presents-paradise-mars-group-show/ VVV

I am the body of a human

Malta Contemporary Art

September 21st, 2017

Valletta, Malta

Watercoloring at Għajn Tuffieħa

The best picture I took in Valletta

The car-bombing of Daphne Caruana Galizia

The independence of Catalunya

Borrassá, Spain

Tlalpan

Me and Julian and Fela and lightning and thunder

Catskills, New York

September 19th, 2017

Six years ago I was living and working in Brooklyn and taking baths out of a Home Depot bucket. I would heat up water in my coffee maker and scrub myself clean with an old t-shirt. I boiled pasta in that same coffee maker, and the water I used to wash my clothes, too. This experience taught me about fortitude.

I've been living in Mexico since then, cooking on a stovetop and showering properly.

Six years ago I moved to a place that I’d never before stepped foot in.

Six years ago I took a huge risk.

Six years ago twelve pesos traded for one dollar, cigarettes were thirty-eight or thirty-nine pesos and you could smoke them inside of the shopping mall that I frequented.

Six years ago I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and wearing hand-me-downs from friends in New York. Today I have white hairs in my beard and grey hairs on my head and I wear hand-me-downs from my friends in Mexico.

Six years ago I was painting like my life depended on it. Because it did.

Today my life still depends on painting, financially of course, but so much more, and so much deeper. Art is now the whole part of me, it is inside of my DNA.

I couldnt believe it when I saw all the fire extinguishers in the Museo de Antropologea, right next to gorgeous, priceless objects made by humans long gone. I couldnt believe all the perfectly sanded-down cars, the speakers blasting out of the pharmacies, the peeling walls. The hugs, the kisses, the food, the customs.

Six years ago I came to Tlalpan and started a new chapter.

In the last six years I have shown my art almost one hundred times, in fifteen countries, maybe more. I dont know what the next six years will bring, but Ill be damned if its not going to be the most fun Ive ever had.

In the last six years Ive constantly seen and learned about things that I never could have imagined, found myself confused, shocked, amazed, hearing new languages in new places with new friends and family. Ive fallen off the horse over and over and gotten back up every time. The ups and downs have never stopped, neither has the growth, nor the investigation. I am more passionate about life than ever. My paintings have gotten better and better and have become more a part of me and I have become one-thousand percent more a part of them.

This coming Friday, the 22nd, I will show some new watercolors at Regañando (Squash editions) alongside the company of a very solid group of artists. After that Im off to Malta (by way of Berlin), where Ill show a new body of works at MALTA CONTEMPORARY ART that Ive been silently working on for one year. I dont know where my path leads, but I will continue to take steps forward, with fortitude, exactly as my legs and my heart and my soul ask of me.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of my story. Friends, enemies, lovers, haters, teachers, and students. Your words and thoughts and kindness and help and inspiration have meant and continue to mean the world to me. I am proud to be living at the same time as you.

I love your tramp stamp.

Laying on a beach chair at a decadent, collapsing hotel blasting Pitbull too loud, screaming across the patio to your child, the sweet cherry chemical of your e-sig drifting out to sea. The sun sets. You were alive in the 2000s and I was alive to see you.

I bought some fancy Italian flip flops. A waiter at the beach proposed a threesome scenario on two different occasions.

If Americans donated all the money they wasted on their stupid eclipse glasses, they could change even the most dire of situations. But they wont. Its like when people in the arts with every possible privilege in the world destroy themselves with their own egos

There are so many reasons for hope

We dont have much time

SUMMER 2017

FOUND IN TEQUISQUIAPAN

David Bowie said that the Internet is an alien life form

I am listening to Guns N Roses

I slept outside because I was slighted that you would invite me to the middle of nowhere and not provide hospice

foto x Joseph Henrikson

I had a dream about buying this bucket hat @Teotihuacan. So I did. If I had more dreams, I would do more things.

See?

32nd birthday. June 2017. Jiutepec, Mexico

photo credit Adam Stamp <3

MAY 23RD 2017, TWO RECENT SHOWS

"LIFE SHROUD" AT BURBUJA, GROUP SHOW @ FRIENDS' STUDIO 2017

^^^^STRIP DOWN AND BREATHE @ LADRON GALERIA, MEXICO CITY, 2017

http://www.aqnb.com/2017/04/06/the-choreography-of-simply-doing-things-andrew-birks-strip-down-and-breathe-at-ladron/

BODY USE

Sitting in a bush holding a dog’s paw

The spider web that swept in during the mystery of night

Leveling mountainsides

A blackberry seed caught between teeth

Solemn shivering rainstorm, clinched hands, fog rising, smoking under umbrella

A way to stare piercingly into each other

Humans breathing under cantilevers, through pouring water, hope reflecting from everything, alone, together, looking

Screaming hard from the deepest part of your guts psychotic irrational primal breakneck tarpaper spear dirtbath forevernap
Jaguar red indelible furious sunrise
One thousand mile diffuse effusive spiritual pine mountaintop

Infinite sapience eclipsing, collapsing

Spit crimson into the shower

Church organing Kawasaki serrate air chattering off the landscape Worms curl in Scuffed boat hull Disparate granularity Wavering teenage voices Polynomial objectivity Manic bliss Mahler Sludge Fingerprints Rocks

I heard once that life is a dream inside the mind of God.

Art is us telling ourselves that we are alive, inside this dream, inside this mad mind. I dont give a fuck where we are- here in some philosophical solipsist I can hear birds at 5am take pharmaceutical h-dab in airports nod out typing and drink coffee wind is in trees behind my head Im alive

Nothing about us is about stasis it is all about the language of life bursting in every direction from every fucking thing

WALK

Do things

THINGS THAT HUMANS CAN AND SHOULD DO

Contemporary use of technology

LIFE SHROUD, 2017

Life Shroud

Fixed Michoacan soil on denim

2017

Photo by Wes Landis

DO THINGS

FEEL THINGS

Y DO WE FIGHT THAT WE R FOOTPRINTS IN DUST?

https://soundcloud.com/andrew-birk/vamos-bien-oye

^IMAGE OF FEET COURTESY OF: FMPT / PromociónCDMX

http://eleconomista.com.mx/entretenimiento/2017/02/14/artista-las-largas-caminatas

MY DAD IS CAMPING

MY SISTER IS HIKING

MY MOM IS CRABBING

THIS IS WHERE I LIVE IN 2017

AND HERE

I WAS BORN HERE IN CORVALLIS OREGON

THIS IS MY FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD SUNRIVER OREGON

I KNOW THAT ART IS BIGGER AND BETTER THAN HANGING PAINTINGS IN HOUSES THAN COCKTAIL SOIREES THAN MONEY THAN POWER THAN SEX WITH SEXY PEOPLE THAN STIFFNECKED LECTURES IN PRESTIGIOUS HALLS THAN ALL THE STACKED CVS IN THE WORLD NO AMOUNT OF NAME DROPPING AND COLLECTING CAN COMPETE WITH THE OCEAN BREEZE I KNOW THAT THE BEST ART IS NATURE AND IS WORTHY OF NATURE I FEEL THIS IN MY HEART AND WILL WORK MY WHOLE LIFE TO PROVE IT WE LIVE WITH CLOUDS WE LIVE WITH GRASS WE BREATHE OXYGEN WE CAN HEAR BIRDS <3

I DONT KNOW IF I WILL HAVE A CHOICE BUT ID LIKE TO SPEND THE END OF MY LIFE AT THE OREGON COAST

PROOF:

*in the collection of Colin Douglas Grey

Something about sports
Something about the Shroud of Turin
Something about my grandfather

Something about Oregon/nature

Something about the (my) body/physicality
Something about footprint/outdoors
Something about labor
Something about painting
Something about death and something about life

*Screenshots of footage taken by Rodrigo Quintero, 2016*

^I TRIED TO MAKE A PAINTING WITH BLACKBERRIES^

THANKS AMANDA WONG FOR POINTING THIS OUT <3

SPEAKING OF AMANDA WONG HERE IS A PROJECT THAT SHE AND <3XUTI<3 INVITED ME TO HELP WITH

The year ended. I slept on grass looking up at Orion's belt and feeling the wind on my shaved head. Crickets and frogs and moisture and the smell of wet plants. I'm wearing wool socks that I bought in France. Tonight I drank a caldo de borrego out of a simple coffee cup that was the second best meal I've ever had. I spent the last two days smoking opium. Adult life looks and feels like theatre but it's also real- the decisions that we take land us in the places were in with the people were next to. I've asked as many people as I could about parenthood. The wind is blowing through my chile-bit lips. This year has been intense for you and me but we've all grown. If everyone knows themselves better today than they did yesterday than maybe we're moving in the right direction. We are the world and the world is us, and sure, there's a place for fear, but there's a place for everything else, too. Love is not ironic it's a word and idea that represents a search for better things.

I woke up in the grass with a Belgian Shepherd pawing into my face with its wet nose.

My friend Dennise told me last night that Im going in the right direction and that something great is going to happen and I drank from the conviction in her eyes and knew she was right.

One experience feeds another.

One ripple precedes another.

Imagine a chalky turquoise waterfall in the green density of Chiapas.

A beam of light fights its way through the pine needle canopy and lands soft and yellow like the back side of a hand on the forest floor.

Unassuming soggy weathering, a trillium unfurls.

This year head shaved, eyebrows shaved, soul shaved, bullshit and defensive mechanisms also shaved.

Deportation knocked at my door again. My friends laughed about it.

This year I bleached the bright colors from my clothes.

I slid in dirt. The knees of my jeans ripped. Bugs bit. I plucked sour blackberries and dug holes in orange landscapes.

I stripped away my pretexts and decadent gringo shit and learned to walk quietly.

I dont mind being in-between places.

My tongue can make those beautiful whispery windy little noises that close the words and sentences one hears talking about deep shit with taxi drivers at night driving fast at the south.

A clear consciousness is worth more than all the gold in all the hills.

Walking is music.

Kindness is omnipotence.

Fuck anything gained from being bad to people.

In cage fighting they say iron sharpens iron.

Nature makes nature nature.

Ana Mendieta should be our hero.

Anish Kapoor should design our flatware.

Things die. Forces act. Energy shifts. Lovers turn their backs on each other. Friends reencounter.

Money enters one pocket and leaves the other.

I looked at a 500 peso bill and it didnt make me feel a single fucking thing and it never has and it never will.

Stars explode into dust.

We are flying through space at an insane speed.

Frederick Douglass said in 1857 that there can be no ocean without the awful roar of many waters.

He says there are no crops without plowing up the ground.

Nothing can steer you from your path if you say otherwise.

Dont tell me to take off my hat and I wont tell you to take off yours.

My grandparents met at the deepest most sapphire staggeringly beautiful ghostly lake in the world in the 1930s and that story is on its last legs and things die and forces act and that lake is so deep inside my heart it is under my heart it is under my heart in a lurching old hotel in Valle de Bravo it is under my heart in a shitty drunken email it is under my heart when I eat Caldo de Borrego and lie down happy on the cold wet grass staring into the limits of stars.

Personal objects Ive placed into exhibitions (so far):

Two hats,

Two baseballs,

One woolen plaid shirt,

One woolen work sweater,

Three hawaiian shirts,

Two pairs of blue jeans,

Two pairs of socks,

One pair of flip flops,

Three pairs of underwear,

Two photographs taken during University,

Two picture frames,

Nine speakers,

One garbage can,

One coffee cup,

One lighter.

(etc)

<3 AMOR <3

sleeping outside as much as possible

On New Years a dog taught me how to meditate also my friend Diego got stabbed with a broken bottle

foto x Alana Burns

Blood Brother. A mosquito filled with my own blood. Exhibited in No One Paid For This @ Stolen Art Gallery. The piece blew away in the wind. September 24, 2016.

Me in studio February 2016

A BIT L8R

MOM WOW

Adrien Missika sent me this

MY SISTER KAJA WITH MY WORK IN COPENHAGEN

WALKING IS THE BEST ART

Hello. This is my website. ~~Its a .blogspot because its free and I can update it as I wish. Sometimes function beats form.~~

~~"What do you even make?"- people ask.~~

~~Alot of culture happens because we see holes where no one is taking advantage.~~

I tried to make an explanation for my website but too many god damn explanations everywhere. It makes sense to me

I love my life and I take art dead serious

http://www.ofluxo.net/bentleys-owners/

steve u rool

I REALIZED THE OTHER DAY THAT MY GOAL IS TO BE A SAINT

AIM FOR THE STARS AND YOU WILL MISS AND HIT THE MOON

ART HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HOW WE LIVE

OR HOW WE WANT TO LIVE

PAINTING

A MUDSLIDE IN MY DRIVEWAY TO MAKE PAINTINGS WITH

Art is traveling through the world gathering up magic power from experiences and shooting it at a singular empty point in time to make a new experience thats both totally manufactured and perfectly organic

IF OBJECTS WORK AS A TOOL TO TRANSMIT EXPERIENCES OR INERTIA THATS GREAT

IF NO OBJECT IS NECESSARY FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF EXPERIENCES THATS MAYBE EVEN BETTER

HERE I USED A WATER BOTTLE TO DRINK OUT OF THE MACKENZIE RIVER OUTSIDE OF EUGENE OREGON

I just got an industrial sewing machine

Also Im doing alot of whittling with a swiss army knife

Something is happening where the past doesnt matter and plans dont matter. There will always be the past and there will always be plans, but we have to move forward and keep exploring. I am so thankful that art allows me to approach life in the way that it does.

A picture of the artist hoping to appear attractive

hey so more and more just doing fun things in your life is the best art. i am sure of it.

art is not really all that impactful at the end of the day homeboy with $700mil’s work is still boring and will not affect my life whatsoever other than the 5minutes I spent last night making a meme about how hes lamer than Thom Kinkade. but meeting that old man from the Bolshoi ballet or that other old man who saved priceless art from the Nazis during ww2 or doing backflips in stunt planes or getting your foot run over by your drunk friend or riding a donkey down to the bottom of the grand canyon or taking some big risk that doesnt pan out or reading some incredibly mean thing about you that someone wrote or failing out of school or throwing a tv off of a bridge or riding your bike through a tall grass field or licking a sculpture or having skype sex or driving backwards past a line of cops in riot gear screaming at the top of your lungs all these things are good art and give us a reason to rethink what we are doing while we are here and put the gloriousness of it all into soothing perspective so yes

i am trying to reconcile with the idea of making objects. just making objects that follow a canon that let you know that I am competent enough to build a brand and sustain it. act the part. mack the part. Then you will give me money for my objects because we are both freaks. if people want to make money well rock and roll but that doesnt validate shit

My website and work and clothes and sleep schedule and interests and diet and love life are all equally, perfectly, all over the place, tightly radiating from me, and I have zero shame or guilt or worries or fear about this. What I do is done either with conviction or not at all.

My "brand" is secure because I say it is. Its that simple. I am going to keep making art at an elite level for the rest of my life because I choose to.

you will die so I hope that activity you are obsessively engaged in is the most fun you can have.

my mom wants me to figure out a middle ground so that I can have money to eat and buy polo shirts. pretty sure I will probably get kicked out of the house im living in. I am not tame or polished or punctuated because having a 36th chamber command of art allows me to take advantage of every systemic loophole that i find. Something about seeing waves crest.

every single experience I have makes me a better artist.

selling, not selling, fucking, not fucking, crying, not crying, thinking, not thinking. I am not just acting like a dick because Im a spoiled punk. A curator came to a show of mine once and essentially asserted that I am immature and acting out of shock value. Life is too grandiose and horrifying to waste time trying to shock people with whacky objects. A really important part of culture which commerce likes to sweep under the rug is making what you want to see but that you havent seen. That extends so far past art objects, into behavior, language, presentation, the way we treat eachother. Etc etc etc. Look at this website carefully. Im sorry for asking so much of you, but I think its important that you take art seriously. I want you to get the most out of your life. I demand this of myself as well.

ARTISTS STATEMENT

A ssketch

CALLEJERO closing party w Mexican Jihad in foreground

My moms garden

Rancho Chipicas en Valle de Bravo

******************A PROTOTYPE FOR AN EXPERIENCE******************

^EATING HAMBURGUESAS CON MIKE^

If we are not having fun we are squandering a miraculous opportunity

Ian Swanson holds a book that I wrote

ID LIKE TO THANK KAYLA FANELLI FOR PUSHING ME TO PUBLISH MY FIRST BOOK

POETRY ^^^

ANDREWBIRK@GMAIL.COM

CURRICULUM VITAE

TUMBLR (MUCH LESS CURATED)

FACEBOOK

@INSTAGRAM

NOSPACE xRIPx

CULTURED YOUNG MAN MAKING CULTURED THINGS FR CULTURE

I did ballet as a child which in retrospect was probably my introduction to "High Culture"

THIS

B4 I FOUND THE RABBIT HOLE

MY STEP DAD AND MY DEAR FRIEND SOL LOOKING FOR WEIRD SHIT IN OREGON

Will art ever be as impactful as putting ones feet in the ocean? Is putting ones feet in the ocean art?

I used to only walk with an objective and now I walk for the sake of walking and something about this is art. I should figure out what

casa de toño duh

SOME STUFF ID LIKE TO DO IN THE FUTURE

looking 4 use of institutional bathrooms 4 a serious piece

HAIR CAN BE A DISTRACTION, INNIT

Im getting older. I found some white hairs in my beard. I made work about it.

IN 2015 I GOT DEPORTED FROM MEXICO. THIS IS ME HAVING MADE IT BACK. DEEP RELIEF

I pulled this crumpled up newspaper out of the trashcan of the bathroom inside of the airport jail at Benito Juarez International Airport and spent all night drawing so as not to have to sleep with the other weirdos also being deported in the morning.

LA BURBUJA

I dream of having a world renowned hat collection

AINSWORTH

I hope to make fashion one day

We stole turtles from horrible conditions and released them in a lake in Jiutepec

HUMANS IN OREGON ^

MORE HUMANS IN OREGON

EVENTUALLY MY WORK IS GOING TO BE ABOUT THE ACT OF WALKING THROUGH FORESTS
IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ME AND THE SPACE THAT I AM IN = ART

I wonder if art lays simply in decision making

Sol

genius

In my experience this is very very typical. Why is sound such a slept on medium?

shot by Eduardo Maceda

My work @ Ryan's house in very good company

foto por Hernan Cortes

I find this foto to b particularly beautiful

I like this picture because it illustrates the difference between hypothetical and reality

Anonymous

Xuti

BHQFU

amigis en Cuernavaca

amigis en Valle de Bravo

IT IS PROBABLE THAT FRIENDS ARE THE BEST PART OF LIFE

one time some1 in guadalajara turned 1 of my fb statuses into a hotdog box ok

everyone in my family is a gardener

One of my favorite paintings that Ive ever made. FOR SALE jajaj

Do you see that underwear hanging from the piping?

Huey took this pic

yo Kuby

In this show I was thinking about caves and graffiti buffs, among many other things

it looks like im wearing a pearl necklace wuts w that

multnomah falls

Image shot by Nate Hitchcock

studio

WUT WULD U DO?

hood river oregon

People always say that art is about questions and when I hear that I wonder if that is what their professors told them

WHY WOULD A PROFESSIONAL ARTISTS WEBSITE LOOK LIKE THIS?

WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE I AM GETTING AT?

IS IT WORKING?

fashion is important

Hats are one of the most important things in my life if you havent already gotten that its a baseball thing

PROOF:

Hi Leslie

Portland Japanese Garden

sometimes "incomplete" things are better than "complete" things

i put a soundpiece in a show in wisconsin look how bad the documentation is i absolutely love it. Sean J. Patrick Carney curated this one. I also put sound in another show that Bradford Kessler curated. After that I bought nice speakers jajajajaja

studio

My work with Amy Sillman sculptures in the foreground remixed by Alfredo Salazar Caro

I mean be real this is the best thing ever ever ever

Robert DeBois and Tada Kono http://hawaiianshirtbro.tumblr.com/

Welcome Screen (shoutouts Michael Pybus thanks for the opportunity)

RIP NYC

† and everyone knows it

My work with Debora Delmar Corp's work @ Treize Paris

http://andrewbirkmexicanpaintings.tumblr.com/

http://andrewbirkmausoleum.tumblr.com/

There was a time when I really pondered the implications of wearing hawaiian tshirts. The topic no longer interests me.

La Merced

http://andrewbirksoundcloud.tumblr.com/

Toca

http://vimeo.com/93056729

MACO Oaxaca

http://andrewbirkvinyl.tumblr.com/

Next shot is by Gillian Mansonhing Staples!!!! vvvv

Image by Andre Smits

http://andrewbirkwriting.blogspot.mx/

coapa

this was my first studio next to cooper union in the basement id run there on the lunch break @ utrecht art supplies on 14th and 4th to glaze shit with polyurethane and almost passed out all the time from 0 ventilation the good old days