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Artist in the Sky with Crystals

avant garde art review vol. 1, no. 3 AUGUST 1988

Aerial event over the Hamptons

Malic cutting clouds

Rain crystals (50X mag)

EUGENE MALIC, member of the enigmatic art group, protoArt, has attempted, here at this steadfast community, to execute the largest work, thus far, of his unique form of ecological aesthetics, weather Art. Pioneer in this area, Malic, in past works has always created his "atmospheric pastels" (his words) in parched regions thirsting for rain, a neat dialogue between the aesthetic thirst of a parched art world and the more real thirst of withering crops. Malic, a competent pilot, flys immelmans and chandelles over rain-laden clouds in an intricate, planned pattern, trailing a spray of cloud-seeding crystals. The crystals fall through the clouds, condensing the vapor into rain and leaving miles-long swaths and gaps, Malics art form.

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Weather Art by Malic

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"a furious wind, but the pattern existed..."

Executing his pieces over areas which have already arranged with commercial rain making firms to seed their clouds, results in a de-rarification of art. Grateful, wet farmers gaze appreciatingly at Malic's sky works, debating the relative aesthetic merits of each work, conceptually, while very real water slowly descends as rain to nourish their crops below. The major art value of Malics past work has been to generate concepts and influence other artists, since all of his works have been executed in areas remote from art-centers and have existed, for the public, only in the form of magazine photographs or television images. The current work, for the first time, has been executed in an area where literally thousands of artists, collectors and viewers could see it, high over the beach at the Hamptons in Long Island in the United States. Malic has had to forgo the ecological benefit of his by-product, rain, and execute his piece in such a manner so it would majestically drift out to sea on prevailing winds, since rain was not needed for the local potatoes at this time and no one wished even the most advanced art to ruin a good beach day. Executed at noon on a partly-cloudy day with a tremendous amount of publicity, Malic's weather work appeared slowly in the sky last week over the beach here in the Hamptons. Though Malic is a pioneer, and to be lauded for attempting to place art in a de-mystified, useful new niche in our ecology, from the art point of view, this attempt was a dismal failure. Due to high winds which shifted at a disastrous moment, Malic's developing pattern of sunlit cloud-cuts was swept inland, drenching onlookers and sending them dashing to cover while raising a furious wind. The pattern existed for only five minutes before the amazing fall of unseasonal sleet closed all the local beaches and forced the unlucky Malic to an undignified landing on route 25(the local autobahn). Despite the plague of lawsuits from merchants and farmers in the area, Malic has declared that, "art which demands exact control, artistry, of the parameters of creation, will give way to a releasing of control over these parameters, allowing exposure to intervening forces, a collaboration with which, modified by unpredictable temporal processes, will become the new art statement." Malic's next piece will be executed in October over Saskatchewan in Canada.

avant garde art review 79 Mercer St. NYC 10012

stephen s'soreff, editor

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