45 days remaining in san jose, and let me tell you what i really think

this is one of my consumer fetish objects on an acrylic shelf that brooke made for me
So the show i am installing at work is called Gerald Walburg, Looking, Thinking, Making, which is also the title of the accompanying book. After spending some time with the work and skimming the catalog,and meeting the artist and hearing him talk about the work, I was left wishing Mr. Walburg had done a bit more looking and thinking and a lot less making. The work on the whole is the kind of mediocre modernist derivative penis period sculpture that northern california excels at. the work falls into a category i like to call Branguchi's( Brancussi+ Noguchi= generic office decoration sculpture) For the most part according to the book and the work Mr. Walburgs greatest accomplishment was that he secured a job teaching 40 years ago and essentially stopped thinking about pushing his work, and instead enjoyed the luxury that comes with this form of artist's welfare. It is important to note that curator Jo Farb Hernandez's argument for this survey and the accompanying catalog is that it was mr walburg's teaching position that afforded him the "luxury to pursue his muse free of market influence" Yeah a great accomplishment especially since the work is incredibly dated and it is difficult to distinguish the work from 2007 from the work he made in 1967. At best this show is a prime example of how california loves itself and supports bad art to the fullest. Mrs. Hernandez's approach to writing about this artist relies on a classic california approach to art scholarship, that of genius artist by association. In her book she says that since mr.walburg and his sub par work were closely associated with and shared studio space with Bruce Nauman that some how there is a commonality. The story that mr walburg tells, like the ones that so many loser artists from california tells, involves some passing encounter with nauman, apparently Walburg had the studio across the hall from nauman in grad school, and that somehow there work has some connection. In the book Mr walburg is even quoted as saying that in Grad school he asked Nauman why he didn't finish his pieces and nauman told him he only does what is necessary, Walburg confesses that he has always kept that thought with him. I find this hard to believe since the majority of walburg work is covered in the kind of overwrought surface treatments, artist signatures, and bases, that generic california public art excels at and seems incredibly unnecessary. This obsession with the surface is the pinnacle of the stupidity that guides much of the mediocre crap that comes from mr Walburg's studio. But what do I know I am just some guy from South Carolina being paid by the hour to install this work.