salt in my eyerony

Os Gêmeos

2010-04-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

video source: www.animalnewyork.com

I love graffiti, though admittedly I can really only identify/recognize a few of the big names. The video above is an episode from D.I.Y. America now on one said big name Os Gêmeos, the Brazillian twins responsible for the Deitch wall.

Not only do I love their huge craniums and love-able, dorky, nice-guys-finish-last look (guilty confession), but I also love their style and color palettes. I'm always impressed with people who find new ways of representation and new ways to make marks, new kinds of shapes. The compositions and visual vignettes of Os Gêmeos is always light hearted and fanciful, without being childish or immature...Like, I wouldn't be totally surprised if a Janet-Jackson-esque nipple were to make an appearance, or a stray phallus were to fall into the mix. Is it too much for me to say that I'm kinda hoping it happens? What? That's a nice shirt your'e wearing.

Why so blue Panda Bear?

2010-04-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is my all time favorite ad. Ever. It just didn't make sense to me, not one minute of it, and I was just blown away by how randomly and wildly creative someone could be, to string all these random events together. I suppose as a woman I should take more offense to some of the semiotics of this all, and I always think it's a Snickers commercial instead of a Milkway commercial because in my mind their branding is so similar (esp with the new Snickers commercials where the Snickers font is used to write other words....and of course, all of this is starting to blur now with the Twix time-freeze commercials...God, can't Whatchamacolits come back and redefine chocolatey-snack-bar-coolness? Boo cookie cutter models, no pun intended.)

So I suppose the question on board today is...effective or not effective?

Starting over again

2010-04-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

When two similar events happen within 24 hours of each other, I feel pretty confident that said events are cosmically linked, and therefore the universe is trying to send me a sign. I'm also pretty good at science and reasoning. So when I saw Where We Design and these LIFE never-bef0re-published photos from the day Albert Einstein died (due to internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an aortic aneurism--strong brain, not so strong heart), I figured now was as good a time as ever to revisit my "creative center," i.e. my cellar technopod that is hopefully more temporary than what science and reasoning might say, and get back to my blog.

The following are some photos from Where We Design that absolutely sent me into a mach-5 panic mode, curled into a fetal position and crasturbating in the corner, lamenting my awful, doomed existence to never amount to anything. Then I got over all that and just fell in LOVE with the ergonomic computer chairs!

Obviously SelgasCano is up first, because they're based in Madrid, and I love nothing more than España...

And Hans Liberg wins because I have a photographic series based on logs...

This one graphic design firm was in a an old church in Scotland, which was amazing to see--the juxtaposition of classical ecclesiastical architecture littered with Macs and couches--but they lost points for their terrible, terrible chairs. No joke. They were like old, totally perpendicular kitchen chairs. Poor choice! Also, if you haven't noticed by now, the judging for this blog was done by mature and totally impartial judges.

On that note, I chose this one for it's cleanliness--Albert Einstein's desk was such a mess I was having panic attax* for him. No piles arranged in increasing size order? No post its? No cups for pens!? Good lord.

I'm also a sucker for the white cube. So sue me!

*I think I'm going to try to make "panic attacks" cool and main stream, very à la Carles. What do y'all think? Can subbing an "x" for "cks" make anxiety altcool?

How do you keep your space energized and activated...and ORGANIZED?

Society 6

2009-06-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

society 6

I came across this site the other day when I was going through Art:21's twitter followers. It's sort of like deviant art, but Society 6 seems to be a little more directed at artists. I found a

lot of great artists on there, like Kelly D. Williams:

I was actively laughing to myself while reading these at work. I think all too often the inclusion of text in art can be very contrived, trying so hard that it misses the point all together and overshoots into "alienatingly pretentious" territory. Williams' work is self aware and self flagellating, achieving a gentle mix of humble sophistication through humor-- a modus operandi that is always subversive and effective.

Many other inspiring artists...Love the aesthetic. It's so easy and comfortable. Check it out!

Venice Biennale 2009

2009-06-08T19:46:00.001-07:00

Photos taken from The Daily Beast

Installation in Nordic Pavillion by Elmgreen and Dragset; "Fifteen Pairs of Hands" Bruce Nauman; "Think" Bruce Nauman

Everyone knows that the art world is a little on the ailing side (or did you not get that impression when the Whitney Biennale centered a lot of their curatorial discourse on the theme of "failure?") so with the 53rd Venice Biennale upon us hopes are high and breath is bated.

I haven't yet scoured through enough of the Biennale art to really note my high and low points, but I would like to comment on the curatorial theme. The curator for this year's biennale is Daniel Birnbaum, who's large group exhibition "Making Worlds" redefines art as representing a vision of the world rather than just another commodity.

I've recently read how the position of head curator of the Venice Biennale is sort of a mixed blessing and curse. On the one hand, it's a huge honor. On the other, you really can't win. No matter how much time and effort you put in to making the most perfect biennale the world's ever known, there are always going to be critics. And, further, fitting the worlds' best art under one analytical theme can inevitably only lead one to create a lamentably broad and vague theme.

And that's kind of the bone I have to pick with Mr. Birnbaums overarching idea. The idea that art is a vision of the world, or as some of us laymen like to say, a perspective, and not simply a commodity just seems ...I mean it just seems like such an underwhelming statement that I feel like I'm missing something very huge. Art is one's vision of the world. C'mon! Is that not law by now? I feel like someone taught me that in grade school. What am i missing!??!!!

I would have really liked to have seen a much more progressive theme to help jump start (or atleast give the impression of a forward-moving direction) contemporary art. Reasserting that art is the artist's vision of the world is so painstakingly safe that it just...I mean, really, before I continue--am I missing something??

From the few peices I've seen, there's a lot of dismemberment and discontinuation in the pieces being shown currently. I think a great theme would have been exactly that--Dismemberment. I think there are a lot of directions a word like that could go, theoretically and formally, and it could have really gotten into matters of artistic practice in an increasingly technological world.

Brooklyn is Watching

2009-05-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn is Watching

Salt in my Eyerony has joined Second Life as Salty Clarity!

This summer I will be guest blogging on Brooklyn is Watching, a hybrid Second Life/Real Life art project in association with Jack the Pelican Presents gallery in Brooklyn. BrooklynIsWatching.com is your essential guide to art works rezzed in the BIW sim, hosted by Popcha. Join us for regular podcasts

This is me. I'm so pretty with spiky hair, right?

Este soy yo. Que bonita, con el pelo puntado, verdad?

Salt in my Eyerony se ha convertido en Second Life como Salty Clarity!

Este verano estare blogger-invitada en Brooklyn is Watching, un proyecto artistico híbrido Second Life/Vida Real asociado con la galeria Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn. BrooklynIsWatching.com es la guia esencial a las obras de arte rezzed en el BIW sim, recibido por Popocha. Acompanese con nosotros para los podcasts echado con regularidad.

bienvenidos

2009-05-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

Acaba de occurarme empezar escribir mis blogposts en espanol para que practique mi espanol y, ademas, practicar analizar el arte en espano. De esta manera voy a acostumbrarme con el vocabulario de teoria artistica en espanol y claro empezar a construir mi propio vocabulario de teoria artistica en espanol.

Bueno, pues...venga! Os vere alla en el mundo bilingual....

PD. Como puedo annadir los accentos y tildes y todo eso en blogspot?

SADimation

2009-05-21T19:25:00.002-07:00

I love animation...This video by Aziz K. reminds me of the Kenna music video though. You may recognize Kenna as one of the case studies from Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Are questions of self, emotion, and social utility inherent to animation? Because they always seem to go hand-in-hand...

via videosift.com

2009-05-21T19:25:00.001-07:00

Masquerade from Aziz K. on Vimeo.

Middleman

2009-05-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

Precious little project. I wonder what it's for? The progression seems to be moving toward making more of these injured middle finger poses, which I think is a much stronger direction than the other more portrait-like ones. There's something decidedly un-kitsch about these photos, which I think is accomplished through the simplicity of the compositional set-ups.

I'd be interested to see where this project goes in the future. I don't know why this project works for me, but......it does!

Yay for letting the middle finger shine in a non road-violence scenario!

ohh...the benefit of hindsight.

2009-05-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

1973. The Catholic Church's Archdiocesan Youth Commission.

Yes. This logo is real.

The power of art is real!

UBU-er interesting!

2009-05-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I came across Cory Arcangel's video on UBU web, but after some further perusal, UBU.com is pretty great website. Some highlights of my favs...

Anthology of Conceptual Writing
1. Richard Serra's "Verb Compilation List: Actions to Relate to Oneself"

2. John Baldessari "I will not make any more boring art"

3. Gertrude Stein "Five words in a line."

annnddd another video, Paul McCarthy's "Painter" (1995)

which, for me, calls to mind that Yelle music video "A Cause des Garcon"

small note: the videos aren't from ubu web (though the links will bring you to the videos on ubu web) because for whatever reason the embedding codes weren't working on blogspot. ohhh well!

Video Game hack

2009-05-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

From UBU WEB this is Cory Arcangel's hacked Mario game....I guess while Mario was in nap mode Cory added the visuals and later Paul B. Davis added music.

This video is like, 1/8th of my wet dreams. Nintendo, technology, techno, THE? Awesome.

Oh, yea, and one day I'll finish that Shepard Fairey post...bleech.

Super Exciting...

2009-05-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

Even though I'm such a terrible blogger I can't even finish the post I started below I just wanted to announce that SALTINMYEYERONY.COM is now mine, ALL mine!

Hope to see you all there soon...

Shepard Fairey. Ehhhhh. [in progress]

2009-04-29T15:25:00.000-07:00

I recently went to the Shepard Fairey survey, "Supply and Demand," at the ICA in Boston. "Supply and Demand" probably generated most of its hype from Fairey's arrest at the opening. Two warrants had been issued on January 24 after police discerned that Fairey had tagged two properties with his Andre the Giant/"Obey" stuff. Essentially, Fairey took a polaroid and taped it to something with his name, phone number, and the best hours to reach him, and the Boston police casually "decided" to "arrest" Fairey at his big museum "opening." How awkward for Fairey, no? To be a self-proclaimed guerilla graffiti artist who's constantly criticized for being a pussy and then to get arrested at your own opening? Oh, how awkward. How awkward indeed. And totally not pre-planned and advantageous to Fairey. Oh no. Nope, not at all.

In any case--on to the art.

I know that in the throes of Obamania it's going to be a very unpopular stance to criticize Mr. Fairey, but I just can't help it. I'm salty (teeheehee!) Much like my discussion with Tom Sachs, I found Fairey's work to be a little careless with visual semiotics. The punch that a picture of George W. Bush or Lenin packs is powerful enough, and layering these kinds of heavy visual symbols with other equally weighty symbols (i.e. vampire teeth, peace signs) really muddles with the message of Fairey's work. On the other hand, sometimes Fairey really drove his messages TOO far home, as in .....he beats the fuck out of a dead horse, then spits on it, then makes a wood cut out of it, prints it, and hangs it in the ICA. The visual representation of an American dollar bill introduces maaanny items to a conversation; including text that enumerates what these items are is just a little bit over kill. I can't entirely fault Fairey; it seems to be the graphic artist in him

Words from the Press Release:

"Shepard Fairey's powerful and varied body of work has reached into all aspects of our visual culture, from political posters to T-shirts and album covers, and now museum installations," says Jill Medvedow, Director of the ICA/Boston. "His integration of design, popular culture, and politics places him in the current of artistic and cultural forces that shape our world today."

"The content of Fairey's work is a call to action about hierarchies and abuses of power, politics and the commodification of culture," says exhibition curator Pedro Alonzo. "Fairey is committed to creating work that has meaning for his audience-by using familiar cultural iconography that people can relate to and by constantly bringing his work into the public sphere."

Fairey gained international recognition in the early 1990s with his Obey Giant campaign, seen on streets around the world on countless stickers and posters that Fairey produced and disseminated. Since then, Fairey has created works of art of all types-on the street, as part of commercial collaborations, and, increasingly, for gallery presentation. Fairey has broken many of the spoken and unspoken rules of contemporary art and culture. Working as a "fine" artist, commercial artist, graphic designer and businessman, Fairey actively resists categorization. Through the Obey project, he has created a cultural phenomenon, but more importantly, a new model of art making and production. He builds off precedents set by artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, as he disrupts expectations about art and business, and muddies the distinctions between fine art and commercial art.

Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand features work in a wide variety of media: screen prints, stencils, stickers, rubylith illustrations, collages, and works on wood, metal and canvas. These works reflect the diversity of Fairey's aesthetic, displaying a variety of influences and references such as Soviet propaganda, psychedelic rock posters, images of Americana, and the layering and weathering of street art. While his provocative imagery draws in his audience, Fairey uses his work as a platform to make statements on social issues important to him. The artist explains his driving motivation: "The real message behind most of my work is 'question everything.'"

This landmark exhibition, co-curated by guest curator Pedro Alonzo and Emily Moore Bouillet, former assistant curator at the ICA, examines prevailing themes in Fairey's work. "Propaganda," "Portraiture," and "Hierarchies of Power" look at the many ways the artist urges critical thinking about the images that surround us, whether advertising, portraits of heroes, or symbols of wealth and power. In the works grouped under "War and Peace," Fairey, responding to recent U.S. military operations, reveals the many faces of conflict. "Stylized" investigates Fairey's Warhol-like blurring of popular culture and fine art, while "Music" illustrates some of the artist's earliest cultural influences. "Question Everything" presents the myriad forms and vehicles for the artist's work, whether stickers, large-scale murals, or framed work on gallery walls.

Shepard Fairey was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1970 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He received a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. He has had recent solo exhibitions at White Walls Gallery, San Francisco (2008); Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles (2007); Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York (2007); Stolen Space, London (2007); and Galerie Magda Danysz, Paris (2006). His work is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. Fairey is also the founder of Studio Number One, a graphic design company.

limbo-teque

2009-04-08T19:17:00.000-07:00

I think its safe to say that I'm not a blogger. I think it's also safe to say that I'm not employed. I'm what the French like to call "in transition." Some of my little doodles and projects:

For kicks

2009-02-27T11:41:00.001-08:00

Here's some of the stuff I make when I'm playing on splashup instead of working

DAM those are some biiiiig DYKES!

2009-02-26T20:17:00.000-08:00

Fear not: My love for all people, places, and things homosexual (said, of course, in a veryhomosexual way) has not been cast to the wayside. I use "DYKES" in reference to this little gem: Dyke Action Machine.

DAM is the brain child of Sue Schaffner and Carrie Moyer (no turkey baster necessary.) It's self-described as a "two-person public art project" though I think we'd all be remiss in not adding as an addendum to that "two-person public activist project." There's been a huge boom in Obama work flooding the market currently, but in terms of text book activist art there seems to be nil. (Side note: When's an artist gonna whip us all up a faux Obama --or as I've been calling him ever since his tabloid pictures in Hawaii, ABSbama-- sex tape? Maybe some nudie pics? Anything! C'mon guys, TECHNOLOGY IS ON OUR SIDE for this one! Until then Allen Cummings and I will be waiting with bated breath.)

But I digress. DAM is the kind of public "art" project that I think represents a growing trend in what can be considered "contemporary activist" art. I attended a symposium on Environmental activist art organized by ecoarttech.net, aptly titled "Environmental Art and New Media Technologies: Imagining Sustainable Futures." Without getting into the nitty gritties of the experience (though please click the link attached to "symposium" to read more) one of the main objections to many of the artists that presented that weekend was their general impotency. Audience members felt that though the artists' efforts in promoting environmental awareness were well-intentioned they seemed forgettable at best. In addition, the visual and/or more traditional "fine art" components of their projects, i.e. the packaging design for seeds being distributed, tip-toed that very fine line between art and graphic design. With all this ambiguity it was hard at the end of the day to confidently be able to say "Yes, what these people are doing is art, it's a movement that is largely performance based, it includes these visual elements," etc. It all just seemed like the charming activities of small grass roots organizations working to do their part to help an overwhelmingly large cause (though again, side note, do check out the work of the symposium's key note speaker Natalie Jeremijenko, who was, without a doubt, the highlight of the weekend.) Returning to DAM, one is faced with the same question: the visuality of the posters and bumper stickers are undoubtedly lend a visual quality to their activist efforts, but is that alone grounds to regard this duo as a "two-person public arts project?"

The 20th century did a lot in the way of exploding traditional conceptions of art and what it should or should not be, but in doing so it may have opened pandora's box. Now, even the most open minded of art professionals must, on occasion, ask himself, "Where does art end and life begin?" I recently read a quote on Eyetooth that described the Bernie Madoff scandal as a more effective performative art critique than Damien Hirst's straight-to-the-auction-houses approach with regards to his work (read more here). Of course, on the one hand the statement makes sense and it's well supported, but the question you've got to ask yourself is is that a comment we can afford to take lightly? Bernie Madoff? Art? Though art has always been a totem of excess capital (and who knows excess capital better than Wall Street honchos?) I for one would like to draw a prominent line in the sand to separate the fruits of my creativity from the scheming of that greedy devil-on-earth money-monger. I cringe at the notion of producing a performance piece that would enter into an art-critical dialogue, or perhaps--gasp!--even worse, compared to the Bernie Madoff scand-performance. No thank you.

SO, to end on a food-for-thought note: while DAM are just two bitches laughing their strap-ons off about a not-so-funny subject and having fun with subversive public art projects, the question on the table for us art-minded folks remains the same as it always has: Which one's the artist?

Kako Ueda

2009-02-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know why but this name is reminding me of saltines. I have this vision of saltines next to the words Kako Ueda in faint, gray writing. Would have been a great inspiration if I were in charge of the marketing for this artist, but alas, I'm what the French like to call "une nobody," and instead I'm just making the comment on my lowly blog for lack of being able to better tie in the saltine idea to my own writing/post, but finding the imagery noteworthy nonetheless. Maybe its because of the tension between simplicity and complexity that are present in both a saltine and Kako's paper cuts...I mean, you never really crave a saltine, but if you do ever reach for one and let it melt in your mouth you quickly realize there's a lot happening there. Salty salt; sweet, sweet carbs...it's as exciting as a dinner party amongst new neighbors on a suburban cul-de-sac.

But on to the art works!

Honestly? Have you ever seen something so cool? Whimsical in their narration, light-hearted in their execution...I'm inspired!

Note to self: Stock up on band-aids for next "inspiration"project

Unrelated note: Bat for Lashes--do I like them? I hate their songs whenever I first hear them and then I find myself going back to play more. Damn you bat for lashes, DAMN YOU! You make me dance with your overly-dramatic vocals and hypnotic beats, and I hate you, I REALLY DO! I HATE YOU!

An open letter to future art generations at the expense of one poor young man:

2009-01-28T19:58:00.001-08:00

Removal Studies (4) from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.

I love this video...I think the statement is a little inflated. Judge for yourself (taken from rhizome.org, btw):

"Removal Studies" are a series of videos made using time-lapse photography. These videos are sleep studies that observe the reaction of the unconscious body to the negative stimulus of removing the covers. The covers are removed by a machine that attaches to the bed and tugs a slight amount off in increments throughout the night. By studying the sleeping body, my aim was to capture something very honest and very animal about human beings. I was interested in this gesture of removal -- and subsequently, exposure -- and how it could function as a larger metaphor.

THIS is the persistent battle between artist, statement, and art object. Unless there's a real synergy between your words and your creation (humor me while I pretend you're an artist and scold you through my blog post) DON'T MAKE A STATEMENT! Artists should not have to be held to making a statement about their piece if they don't want to (not saying that Michael here didn't want to or not.) The old "less is more" adage is sometimes a very useful strategy: less statement-making, more possibilities! Don't limit this to your own "capturing something very honest and very animal about human beings" (read: mental masturbation and we should expect your next piece to be equally self-celebratory--or, as some might call it--honest.) What a great video this is! Gorgeous. Simple. No frills, no fuss. Wonderful. And now, after reading this stupid passage, I am FORCED to hate it. I don't want to hate it, Michael! I love it! But this stupid bit of writing...ugghhh couldn't you have just waited for an interview to verbal diarrhea all over your audiences? At least then we could have taken the whole thing with a grain of salt...But this!

Oh, THIS Michael! A larger metaphor???? No no no no on. No. I say no. Removal and exposure aren't metaphor for anything. And maybe this is my problem with contemporary art as a whole--it's just far too passive! REMOVAL and EXPOSURE are action words!!! LET THEM ACT AS ACTION WORDS! And let their actions spurn other actions! Let REMOVAL and EXPOSURE REMOVE and--horror of all horrors!--EXPOSE!!! Let these two actions INTERRELATE and PRODUCE meaning! Let them SUGGEST further EXPLORATION! Don't castrate these virile action words (i think once upon a time they were called verbs?) in an attempt to speak the same inflated language the rest of us art mongrels are yapping about. Be better than us! Rise above us, Michael!

Michael, my darling, my pet, my beloved: There is no METAPHOR. Your video is wonderful and perfect in its DEMONSTRATION. Get behind your work and force your ideas down our throats--lord knows its better than half the other stuff we're washing down the gullet, so BE LOUD and BE PROUD!!

With the constantly-critical yet overwhelming and overpowering love that only a Jewish mother could have for her sons,

Salt In My Eyerony.

A thought on things that probably hurt worse than waxing your legs.

2009-01-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

An interesting point to muse on: The art market is largely unaffected by the economy at large. Has been for quite some time. So while most of America is struggling to keep their jobs or to make ends meet or to keep the box of pizza we found in that elementary school dumpster away from all the other homeless people, big fancy collectors out there are racking up paintings and sculptures and farts for more money than we'll ever know in our entire life. But living with that little fact doesn't make our life suck as much as it does for artists; by the time these paintings are sold for the major bucks they're usually being taken out of the hands of another collector, so the artist who made the damn thing gets nothing. That sucks.

Norwegians, faced with new "block home design," now face new challenge: genetically engineering population to fit.

2009-01-20T09:59:00.000-08:00

Loving me this Box home concept. It seems esp wonderful for us yuppie folk who wanna move right on into the most trendy and happening parts of the most happenin city in the world and lap from the silver plate of luxury without even reaching into our pockets to fish out the change necessary to pay for said life.

"Boxhome" by Rintala Eggertsson Architects...

It's such a Polly Pocket-inspired piece of work. An original and, really, fairly practical solution to a growing problem of urban overpopulation. I wonder how well these might stack...They're not exactly handicap friendly, of course, but I imagine by the time the powers that be really start investing in the production of homes like these we'll have robots to do all the walking and moving and etcetera's for us, so that's a sort of non-issue.

I think its time to move this proposal along to the next step and soupe it up with all those fancy gadgets The Learning Channel would have us believe are SO CLOSE to being in our homes (but I know the truth, muahaha!) I want to have a refrigerator in my box home that has a touch screen surface to write my grocery list on and from which i could download into my phone and carry my grocery list with me everywhere I go. Do it. DO IT! DO IT NOW!

Nicole has spoken. Hear my truth. OUT!

the absolute best

2009-01-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

I think half the reason why I love this is cause of the music, but nonetheless, an entertaining bit of internet-performance-art....(is that what the kids should be calling this??)

My personal favorite is Cunnilingus in North America.

Heh heh...isn't it.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

Oo, so close!

2009-01-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

A two-day streak. Good? Not so good? Forgivable?? Yeaaaa. That one.

From San Francisco's Needles and Pens gallery, I bring you Paul Urich from his show "Folks":

I'm a personal fan of the way the show was installed. It's very true to the title: sort of a cozy, down home installation, with, what I at least thought, some references to the form of a family tree. The line quality of his drawings (and prints? not sure..) is eery and phantasmagorical, pointing to the more ephemeral qualities of human social/familial networks.

I'm not sure how to read the black spots, though. I like them, I think they're interesting and they lend the prints a relevant, contemporary aesthetic, but I just can't grasp how exactly they fit in with the plans of things. Perhaps it was just a purely aesthetic choice?

Some other pieces from Eleanor Harwood gallery speak to Paul's engagement with binaries. The black bits are kind of like large, zoomed out views of the universe, and when laid side-by-side with the family sketches, the experience feels like Urich is yo-yo-ing you in-

and-out of the very-large and the very-familiar.

It certainly is snowing something fierce outside....

See? Better already.

2009-01-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

A little Zarina Liew, a London-based illustrator, to brighten your day.

I find her illustrations to be quirky, almost satirical, snapshots of the visual landscape of British pop culture. This last illustration here is one of an Alexander McQueen evening gown, which I was hesitant to include because I do want to stay away from fashion illustrations, but Liew's fluid mastery of her Ph markers made me go back on my own avowal....

Liew has said the bulk of her work has been inspired by "Japanese art, contemporary design, and 1920s fashion." She is self-taught (isnt' everyone, now-a-days?) and does a lot of comic book illustrations. Some other work of Liew's is featured on this website. She seems to have a limited aesthetic range that she works from within, all of which unified common characteristics: fluid lines, languid stance, and large organic color forms.

Resolution 2k9: Must maintain blog regularly!

2009-01-12T12:20:00.001-08:00

I've been a naughty girl. No apologies--it's just so trite, and that aint my style, poodles. I'll just try to produce results.

Just a little cultural-caldendar update: The NYC Armory Show is rapidly approaching! March 5-8th, 12th Ave. at 55th Street. General admission tix are 30, students are 10, and a four-day pass is 60. Not too shabby, eh? Visit the website for more details:

Armory Show

The Armory Show is also the catalyst for Armory Arts Week, a series of arts events and shows happening in and around NYC; more info available here.

I did a little artist perusal and I'm not super stoked by anything I see, which brings me back to the Whitney Biennial, which, although I myself, was unable to attend, was reported back to me as kind of a disappointment....But, I suppose we'll all just have to wait and see.

Body L U V

2008-12-20T18:18:00.001-08:00

I've just come across the artist Bill Durgin on my google reader (courtesy of ponyxpress). While this post is yet another reminder that I need to vary the mediums I post on, I couldn't help but include Durgin's work....

I love the minimalist aesthetic and the clean, bright lighting. I think it goes without saying that the subtlety of the figure studies is what makes them so wildly provocative. Gorgeous.

The figure studies formally remind me of Marc Quinn's amputee sculptures. They have that same "double take" quality, though I think Quinn's peices are much more forceful with their message than Durgin's. Also I suppose I should note that Quinn's sculptures are based off real people who have lost their limbs while Durgin's subjects seem to just be really good at yoga. A small point with some major sentimental impact.

Talk about a man with a bloody head! ..Or is it a big head?

2008-12-16T08:03:00.000-08:00

Every five years, Marc Quinn produces a sculpture of his head made from his own blood. The last head released was in 2006.

The Man

The Bloody Sculpture

(teeheehee, pun!)

Quinn uses 10 pints of blood for each sculpture, and it takes him a full year just to produce enough blood. Perhaps if he were a more logical man, he would have chosen to sculpt a skinnier part of his body.

The latest head is being offered to the National Portrait Gallery in London for 350,000 pounds, with an estimated market value of one million pounds. I saw Quinn's bloody baby head in Montreal, and quite frankly, after seeing the high-tech kegerator that they used to preserve and display the damn thing, my biggest questions is how the daily maintenance fees stack up against the value of this piece.

The internet is being AWFUL. Read more here.

Deadlines Spark Creativity

2008-12-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

With school application deadlines drawing frighteningly closer, my quest to familiarize with the contemporary Cuban art scene has become proportionally more acute.

"Respuesta al Enemigo" 2004

Yaima Carrazana is one of the voices of artists in this new generation of contemporary Cuban art. These artists have been "forced to identify with the existential condition of a state and nationality" (see review for Salud, Deporte y Control, curated by Lillebit Fadraga) and now struggle to understand how an art must forge identity. Must an artist be political? Must an artist be apathetic?

this is why we can't have nice things.

2008-12-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

You remember Miami, right? Commonly misquoted as a small hispanophone country located at the tip of God's waiting room? Well, I'm here to tell you that actually Miami is not, in fact, a country at all, but rather an entire empire of rhinestone-studded everything, D&G lame bikinis and a small naval flotilla of silicone breasts. They also happen to be a very clean people, given recent news in the art world. According to New York Magazine, officials have barred the installation of Cooper's Dark Fountain for Miami Art Basel. Why? Oh, maybe just because Cooper's Roman-style fountain spew black ink that doesn't wash out of clothes, and you know mis socias down there won't be tolerating no black ink stains on their culitos ni tampoco their metallic chanqletitas. Officials were willing to proceed with the installation if Cooper had opted to give more consideration to the fact that the piece was a public installation, however Cooper insisted on using real ink.

The fountain quite literally spoke to the current state of environmental affairs. In contrast to the light and breezy Miami backdrop, Cooper's sculpture serves as a reminder of the human stain left on a once pristine planet Earth. It also stained clothes and sprayed everywhere depending on how the wind was blowing.

So yea. Great idea in theory but perhaps a locale that dripped less in diamonds and more in rain coats would have been a better choice. Or, better yet, a nudist colony! Lord knows that 85% of nudist colonists could use a little ink stain cover up......

Jaume Plensa

2008-11-23T17:05:00.000-08:00

These are some of my shots from Chicago...I think these are the Crowne Fountains from Jaume Plensa, though they weren't spitting any water, which makes me wonder if either a) they're different sculptures b) the fountains, only transplanted c) the exact Crowne Fountains just with the water turned off. It was a rainy and absolutely frigid on the particular day that I was touring, so I had the good fortune to capture the full effect of these installations. With the rain on the black stone ground, the reflection of the videos was practically flawless.

The artist responsible, Jaume Plensa, is a Catalan artist born and trained in Barcelona. He is world renowned for his outside, large-scale, public installations that are peppered in Canada, Israel, Japan, France and Germany. He was recently unanimously granted by St. Helen's Council in September of '08 to spearhead the construction of a new landmark chosen by a group of local ex-minders. Said installation will be titled, "Titled Dream," and will measure 65.6 feet high.

humour noir

2008-11-22T19:37:00.000-08:00

Like I've mentioned before, photography has never been "my thing." I was never the girl in high school walking around with her camera around her neck and her guitar slung on her back, dragging her Birkenstock clogs around and chewing on mini hair braids as she looked around for artistic vantage points and good lighting. No, no, no, mon frere. This was not me. So now that I'm in the throes of adding my second (verify?) photography post, I want to emphasize to all of you how awesome the photography must be for me--apathetic and ignorant to all things shutter speed and milimeter--to be moved so much to post on it. And, with that being said, the star of the show today is.... Christophe Gilbert!

I pulled most of these images from the beginning of Gilbert's online portfolio...I felt that images more towards the end of scrolling were more pretty than they were provocative. Gilbert is a Belgian photographer with a sharp eye for subtle subversiveness (I totally missed the white ear on the black portrait!) His photographic preference seem to lean toward solitary subjects paired against stark and stark sterile backgrounds (color choice does get more bold in serie 4, however).

Am I crazy for thinking that some of these are intentionally darkly humorous? With special consideration to the rapper spinning on the electric stove and the woman with the presumably urine-stained pants, Gilbert seems to be simultaneously critical and snide about contemporary culture and its photo subjects. Gender roles are exaggerated to a point where they are balancing on ridiculous/laughable, and serious, almost deserving of our serious consideration (ref: the female suckling the three children). Certainly, the boundaries between object and organic object, alive and inanimate, is blurred, so that the two categories seem to coexist without calling too much attention to the discrepancy.

Gilbert calls our attention to the tension between these two categories of objects perhaps in an effort to tease out our dependence on them? Perhaps our dependence on inanimate objects is not so far off from the way we grow to be dependent on people and pets? Is this paragraph reading like a guilty confession from a girl stuck in suburbia who gets her kicks from cuddling with her puppies and cooing at her leather and buckle boots?

In any case, the photographs are pristinely worked and wonderfully imaginative.

shoechitecture

2008-11-22T00:29:00.000-08:00

Zaha Hadid, STARchitect of glamorous proportions, has recently collaborated with shoes designer Melissa to create a delicious blend of the two creative heavy weights' signature styles...

Hadid is an Iraqi-born, deconstructivist architect. She is theoretically super progressive--perhaps accounting for why many of her original plans were never constructed. She also sits on the editorial board for Encyclopedia Brittanica. If I sat on that same board I'd be a lot more pompous than I already am. She's recently had a retrospective spanning the entire breadth of her work at the Guggenheim in NYC.

Ideal house:

Pavilion bridge in Zaragoza, Spain:

! EMOCIONANTE !

2008-11-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to our new and ever-so-charming president BARACK OBAMA!

Portrait by Terry Richardson. Cool+Cool=Awesome.

The joys of EDIT

2008-10-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sooo let's talk art and not-art.

On deck for the art portion of this discussion is Petah Coyne's "Vermilion Fog," now showing at Galerie Lelong. I can't seem to find any more pictures of the work online, and I didn't bring my camera to the opening...But here is one awkward aerial shot from the Lelong site:

And on deck for the non-art portion of this segment is the Gareth Pugh Spring 2009 collection:

Fashion and art have long been not-so-secret kissing cousins, so I hope this post comes as no surprise to anyone. I wanted to write on Gareth Pugh not only because I love love LOVE his work, but also because I think it's a great positive example of something I would have liked to have seen from Petah Coyne in Vermilion Fog, which is a heavy eye toward editing.

To paint you a literal picture of Coyne's work, the Galerie Lelong is littered with Coyne's sculptures. Studies in wax, velvet and taxonomical animals puncture the space with various accoutrements not too far away on the floor. The sculptures themselves are warped, ebbing and flowing organic shapes covered in velvet, flowers dip-dyed in wax, feathers, twigs, and other natural materials. Woven into these forms are stuffed Geese, ducks, and other fowl, with an occasional squirrel. The gallery spaces divides the darker pieces from the lighter sculptures--birds covered in white wax--by a portable wall expertly cut to provide a skewed viewing window. Peering through this window provides a similar experience to looking through a hand-held slide viewing machine.

The workmanship of the sculptures is exquisite, with a high attention to detail. One assistant to Coyne explained that the flowers posted on the sculptures are grouped according to flower color, and that the vats of wax that they had dipped them in were numbered. Even then pins were spray painted and dipped in wax so that they might seamlessly blend in to the larger structures. Indeed, Coyne's workshop was no less a well-oiled machine than a well-oiled machine is. Unfortunately a well-oiled machine has no powers of edit and removal, and neither did Coyne.

The velvet, the feathers, the chandeliers, the wax, the roses, the black and deep crimsons and eggplants--Yea, ok, Petah. We get it. You're digging the goth scene lately. Every single material Coyne used was so supremely rich that you almost wanted to go outside and puke a little before viewing the rest of the show. Not to mention that this is all before we take into account the dead stuffed animals! Had it been one duck here, one duck there, or perhaps just one kind of duck, or maybe just ducks covered in black wax, I DONT KNOW-ANYTHING! I wouldn't have had such a problem with it. But dead stuffed animals brings enough semiotic baggage to the table without the homage to Manson-esque Gothicism. By the time you reached the sculpture tucked in the back left corner of the gallery and your eyes fell on the one errant squirrel emerging under billows of velvet and feather, it really became almost a joke. Atleast for me I kept thinking of that ridiculous youtube video of the dramatic hamster or whatever it is they call it.

And now let's go back to my main squeeze Gareth. These clothes are ridiculous. Lets say it. If it wasn't Fashion Week and he wasn't the progressive marvelous WONDERFUL designer that he is, we'd all submit the person donning this garb for "What Not to Wear." I mean, ready-to-wear shoulder pads that extend vertically to your ear? Riiigghhttt.

But yet, here we are, and I'm not alone when I assert that we're in love. Pugh's collection is just the right amounts progressive, forward-thinking, architectural, modest and minimal to hit this ball right outta the park. Largely, I think his success can be attributed to the limited (though no less interesting) strict, muted color palette. Pugh created pieces that are largely outside the perameters of what is normally considered ready-to-wear but managed to keep them relative to ready-to-wear by virtue of EDITING. Black and white keep space-age flaps and layers chic. Wearing a Pugh piece means taking only the modest risk of wearing new shapes and volumes that have yet to be explored in fashion, which is why I predict they will be wildly successful.

In my humble opinion, Petah could have taken a page out of Pugh's book and made not just one but several wildly successful shows if she had only learned to edit. Formally I've already discussed the ways in which the look of the show was just too much--the artist's statement only served to further confuse the concept and cohesiveness of the collection as a whole. Coyne drew thin connections between her pieces and large and abstract concepts such as "chaos," "life," and "death" that the show seemed out of control, unmanageable and, perhaps worst of all, unsupported. Had she tightened her focus to just one or two elements--using stuffed animals is a show entirely on its own, is it not??--she could have made much more concrete statements about her pieces and their relevance to the world at large.

I encourage all to check it out for themselves.

Tara Donovan @ ICA

2008-10-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Boston may be one of my least favorite cities, but I'll give it this much:
1. It's gorgeous in the fall (but, I mean, so is all of New England, so this really is a gift)
2. The Institute of Contemporary Art is awesome
I love the ICA for many reasons, although admittedly some might be solely motivated by nostalgic and sappy reasons (it's been a steady "date place" for my biff and I for as long as we've been together.) Romance and kittens aside, they really do manage to attract some great exhibits and the architecture of the building itself is fantastic. It seems kind of plopped in the middle of an abandoned parking lot right on the water, but it has this industrial feel that is pushed up against by an incredible overhang that looks directly on top of the water. It's just a really gorgeous and architecturally interesting space on the inside--lots of spaces for installation artists to explore. Which leads me to my next point...So this weekend my biff took me to Tara Donovan's first museum survey on exhibit till Jan. 4th, 2009. Donovan is a Brooklyn-based sculptor who works with large amounts of common place items such as scotch tape, buttons, plastic cups, etc., to form large-scale sculptures in repetitive, organic shapes. The site-specific installations that Donovan chose for the survey are those that she felt best represented her perspective and the breadth of her work. They were nothing short of amazing. The following is an installation made entirely of varying stacks of plastic cups that was replicated at the ICA (the picture below is not from the ICA, however.):
The pieces were almost maniacally organized and restrained while at the same time remaining free-flowing and unpredictable. The duality of this aesthetic quality gave the impression that the material form itself was in a constant state of equal parts bound-less expansion and stagnation.
You also might have expected that with work like this one of the most interesting parts would be tied up in tension between installation form and material form, but I was quite surprised to find that this was not the case at all. Though the materials themselves had a nice organic form already, the shape that they took on once put into a population seemed absolutely natural...You almost wanted to say, "Oh right, a wave of plastic cups. Why wouldn't they be arranged like that?" I think the seamless flow from part to whole is where Donovan's pieces garnered a lot of their element of surprise and impressiveness.
Again the picture below is unfortunately not one from the ICA exhibit (the ceiling at the ICA was much lower, which I think makes the installation a ton more successful) but you can still get an idea. That ebbing and flowing structure is made entirely from styrofoam cups placed with their open-side out.
What evolved as almost an accidental result of the sculptures was probably just as interesting, if not more interesting, as the sculptures themselves. As I was saying at the start of this post, the ICA has an incredible open, airy floor plan. Because of the beautiful view of the water, most of the building is made of windows, which allows for a lot of natural light. Now, I don't know if this was something that came from practice or if it was unintentional or what, but these sculptures did things with light that was just so subtle and gorgeous it was almost a piece in and of itself. One wall of the ICA that is still inside the Donovan exhibit divides a hallway in half, so on one side is the interior of the museum and the other side is an entirely window-ed wall that looks out onto the ocean. In this small wall-window, Donovan had twisted and turned and layered polyester film so that the natural light filtered in through these honey-colored loops and curls. (Unfortunately, as has become a pattern with this post--damn me for forgetting my camera!--I don't have any pictures, and seeing as this is an installation specific to the ICA, well, I suppose you'll have to see it for yourself.) Another installation that achieved a similar effect was Donovan's installation involving an entire wall of clear straws:
The picture does it absolutely no justice. As you would walk the width of the sculpture, the light would catch a small grouping of the straws and make a honey-comb shaped, metallic brown sheen. And the sheen would follow you as you walked along and moved your head! Then when you approached the piece up-close (and everyone had their noses literally pressed into the straws--no one could believe that such an installation could have been made from drinking straws alone!) the mass-grouping of the straws had such a dizzying effect it felt like one of those seeing-eye books or some kind of mind trick. Awesome.
Now the only question is whether I'm more taken with Donovan or Anish Kapoor. Hmmmmm. Also, having two sculptors like these back-to-back--are mind-trick sculptures the way to these curators' hearts?

you're a funny f*ck, arent'ya, SPLAN?

2008-10-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, a piece of art comes along and shocks you. I mean really shocks you. It doesn't just cover a giant picture of the word "FUCK!" in pink paint and glitter; and it doesn't precariously (or clumsily?) toe the line of art and pornography; and it doesn't leave Serrano's ass(Wow I'm just ripping on him recently, aren't I? In my defense though I've gotten a lot of slack from the people belonging to my art-neophyte social sphere who have read the blog. After careful consideration and making sure to weigh the emotional damages of carrying the burden of defending Serrano and his poochie's poopies against pitchfork carrying non-believers, I do believe we can write these subtle jabs at the Shit exhibit off as "worker's comp.") But I digress. So anywho, shock art. To get to the point short and quick, the sheer logistics of this piece blow my mind. The artist is Laura Splan, and either the woman is either a vampire, or the human body really is a well oiled machine.This beautiful, exquisitely detailed piece of wall paper is made out of blood. Ok? Blood. This raises a few questions for me:
Number 1. Is this human blood? Number 2. If it is human blood, than is this Laura Splan's blood? Number 3. If it isn't Laura Splan's blood, than whose blood is it? Number 4. Was it Colonel Mustard, in the living room, with the candle stick?
Regardless of where this blood came from or who's blood it is or who's killing Laura Splan and using her as a corpse marionnette and painting with her blood as a sick, sick jok THE POINT IS that the wallpaper is made of out of blood. G-ddamn blood, people. And you know what? To be quite honest with you I'm too busy worrying about HIV, the Hepatitis's, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the millions of lives that could have been saved were this blood not absolutely wasted making effing wall paper instead of being donated to a blood bank where it belongs to even care about what good 'ol BloodySplants was trying to say with this series.
But on to the art. We must always move on to the art, no matter how ridiculous the artist.
Note to self: Test last line as potential new catch phrase to friends smaller than me. Wear padding in case of ankle biters.
These shots were taken from Splan's 2003 Wallpaper/Samples exhibit. Of the exhibit Splan writes:
"In Wallpaper/Samples the painting in blood follows the patterns and designs on actual wallpaper samples. This series of paintings explores the fluctuating experiences that images can evoke. The pleasant and familiar patterns on the wallpaper are in opposition to the visceral and unsettling medium with which they are outlined."
A simple and controlled approach to an exploration, though I'm tempted to suspect that the "unsettling medium" that Splan used brought a lot more to the discussion than what she originally intended. The ethics alone of using blood--human, animal, whatever--raise issues of life, biology, religion-the list goes on!-that really far and away exceed the perameters of artistic discussion and exploration that Splan has presented for us. Fluctuating experience as it is inspired by images can be represented and understood through a variety of different channels; chosing bloody wallpaper was biting off a bit more than one can chew. (Ha, ha. Did I make an inadvertent vampire joke? Two vampire references in one post? UGH it MUST be the Halloween season!)
What's more is that (and of course, not to be the token square or anything) but honestly the thought of that blood--assuming, of course, that it is human blood--being robbed from sick men, women, children, maybe even soldiers?, to do this, gorgeous and viscerally exciting wallpapers, is really just a spit in the face at the sanctity of life. I'm not pro-life, bomb-toting zealot, but I don't think you'd really have to share those fanatical feelings to find these actions a bit selfish. And disrespectful. What's more is to put pieces as absolutely socially charged as these under one weak and bland umbrella statement, "the fluctuating experience that images can evoke blah blah blah YEA YEA YEA WE GET IT pictures make you feel stuff--CNN and National Geographic have been exploiting that little gem for a while now, sweetie. The jig is up!--just seems....puzzling.
Splan certainly seems like an artistically sensitive and acute individual and yet the gap between her work and what she purports it to be exploring is h u g e. Blood! SPLAN, YOU USED BLOOD! I mean...really?? The only logical explanation I can come up with to tie the loose ends together is that the whole thing is an act. That Splan is actually the smartest of us all and she is just absolutely poking fun at the art world--living for your art, the archetypal starving artist, Abstract Expressionism as the realization of the unconcious, all that stuff--and underhandedly exposing it for how absurd, insulting, and infuriating it is. If the latter was true, I would applaud her and sincerely hope she used fake blood and just told everyone it was real.
However.....A brief parusal of google hits on Laura Splan turn up that she is, in fact, interested in medical technology and "otherworldly drawings," so I'm feeling a bit hopeless at moment that Splan's pieces are all a big subversive hoax. But atleast I'm not feeling as hopeless as Splan is probably feeling woozy! Badumbum, chhhh!
Oh thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

No, but yeaa. I really hate a lot about this series.

Can anyone shed some light? Agree? Disagree? Let's open this sucker up for some virutal round tabling.
Double note to self: do not test new catch phrase on Splan.

NYU Visiting Artists and Scholar talks

2008-10-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

All of the following information is available on their website, but just to spread the word...NYU's scheduled artists and scholars who will be lecturing for free at their Stuyvesant location

All talks are free, open to the public, and take place at 5:00 PM in Einstein Auditorium, 34 Stuyvesant Street, Barney Building. (At 9th Street between 3rd and 2nd Avenues.) This schedule is subject to change and more visiting artists will be added throughout the year. Contact Ricardo with any questions.

Such an incredible lecture series--and for FREE!--deserves a blogpost-especially on a blog that let Serrano's morning dump fly as art. I have no standards in art or life. Sigh.

Oct 11: Seth Kelly

Oct 18: Huma Bhabha

Oct 25: Joao Ribas

Nov 1: Jason Fox

Nov 8: Lynne Cooke

Nov 15: William Brady (ATM Gallery)

Nov 20: Catherine Lord

Nov 29: Matt Keegan

Dec 6: Mike Pare

Jan 24: Adam Pendleton

Jan 31: Benjamin Godsill, NewMuseum

Feb 7: Alexis Rockman

Feb 14: Nicole Eisenman

Feb 21: John Miller

Feb 28: Sarina Basta, SculptureCenter Curator

Mar 6: Michael Connor

Mar 13: Matthew Ronay

Mar 27: Philippe Vandenberg

Apr 3: Rita Ackerman

Apr 10: Adam McEwen

Apr 17: Jordan Wolfson

Apr 24: James Fuentes, Gallerist

May 1: Jim Hodges

May 8: Michael Portnoy

Times are tough

2008-10-09T15:34:00.000-07:00

Ain't no denying that. For those of us strapped for cash and unfortunate enough not to be working in an environment where one can easily rip-off the Adobe Suites from their company, I present to you getpaint.net. It's essentially the PC bootleg version of Photoshop, and is totally free. There are plenty of plug-ins avaialable to help recreate the Photoshop experience, though I still found the whole experience a bit more clumsy than Photoshop. It's a great hold-over, and a good attempt by PC to thwart the ever-s0-cool Mac empire....but as they say in business: Good is the enemy of great.

book cut out sculptures

2008-10-01T22:47:00.001-07:00

Another tribute to my love of paper sculpture: Su Blackwell. She even did commissioned window work for Harvey Nicholls, a huge huge HUGE luxury department store in London.

The Quiet American, 2006; Alice through the Looking Glass, 2007

Elsa Mora

2008-10-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

I read in the NYT that the new director of the Guggenheim wants to put Latin American art on the map, which immediately sent me into panic mode because he is encroaching OH-SO-CLOSE to the research i want to do for my thesis......So in an effort to do some "exploratory research" I've started browsing and snooping about the Cuban contemporary art scene...

For the first installation of this series I bring you the delightful, playful, quirky Elsa Mora:

Paper Sculptures:

More and more I'm really falling in love with paper sculpture. I find Elsa's works in particular to be an interesting blend of Frida Khalo and Kara Walker. Which is interesting because of this..I'm having a bit of artist deja vu..I know I've seen this piece before. Is it super famous and I'm just brain-farting all over?More "artwork," as she says it... Recent drawings..Illustrations (because illustration is my life-long love)...I've decided to include her Toys and Jewelry because I find them to be just as representative of her perspective and skill as anything else...And they're so fun.

She also plays around with plant creations, and there are plenty more pieces of each of the categories posted, so its definitely worth exploring her (now debunk, womp!) blog..

CT Biennial

2008-09-24T09:11:00.001-07:00

The CT Biennial is on show now til January 9th, 2009 at the Mattatuck Arts and History Museum. The exhibit is entitled Speak To Me, and is guest curated by Salvatore Scalora and Janice LaMotta, of LaMotta fine arts.

LaMotta and Scalora scoured the fine state of CT to pick work by forward-thinking artists who each had a piece that could speak to a viewer. Kerri Quirk is one CT artist born with autistic symptoms and hearing impairment that require she sign to speak. Her paintings thus result in a sort of retinal communication. Olu Oguibe, who has also contributed work to the Venice Biennial in 2007 and is the author of The Culture Game, compares 19th century clocks with African fetishes. Christopher Mir mixes paint and collagee to render Jungian images and allusions.

Kerri Quirk

Olu OguibeChristopher Mir

It's a fine sampling of work that LaMotta and Scalora have gathered together, but my favorite from what I've seen thus far is artist Steven DiGiovanni. I'm a little partial to two-dimensional works, especially painting, because I'm always so in awe of what people can render. I find DiGiovanni's paintings to have the moodiness of a Hopper, the textured color application of a Lucian Freud, and the playful airiness of Chinese artist MinJun.

Tonight at 7pm is Nathan Lewis's q&a session for his new exhibit, Where Heaven Made Fun: A Selection of Works by Nathan Lewis, at the Seton Gallery in West New Haven. He will be speaking to his first solo show since a show in NYC in Feb 2008. The exhibit features four new pieces by Lewis. The collection as a whole focuses on popular topics in politics, society, religion, etc. Through his works, a mixture of sculpture, installation, and painting, Lewis addresses the changing role of the African and Arabic man, man's tenuous relationship with nature, and the state of the troops in Iraq.

Who'da thunk?

2008-09-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

My idea for a (solo?) exhibition submission was going to be titled "Wallflowers." It was going to be study of the collision between high-brow and low-brow, ambition and entrapment, urban-souled graduate stranded in suburbia. It's physical realization is still very inchoate, however the theme keeps popping up in various corners of my life, reasserting time and time again that it is a worthwhile venture to explore. Take, for example, my discovery of THIS blog: Connecticut Art Scene. While I thought there were only samplings of galleries in New Haven at best, it turns out there is a whole world a-happening right here in my quaint little home state--and it ain't too shabby. I don't know if this necessarily means I have to rethink my exhibition perspective but it certainly does take away some credibility from my moans and laments that there's no art scene in CT and that's why I'm wasting my post-grad days away on the couch....(Guess I'll just go back to relying on that small little bit about when the Dow crashed 1000 points in two days and everyone went bankrupt.) Couldn't help but feel jealousy and crushing dissapointment in finding out that a CT-focused art blog (which I was just planning on doing) was already well established (ughhh I guess I'm not the only one with good ideas, huh?) but pettiness aside it's an incredible resource. Between the three contributors it's regularly updated and they seem to have their finger on the pulse of all things current, creative, and Connecticut.

One place that I discovered is Hygienic Art, which is entirely run by volunteers. It's in New London, CT. The current exhibit running until Oct. 11 is entitled Towards an Apollonian Expression showcases the talents of various Latin American artists, and is the first in Hygienic Art's annual guest curator series. Featured artists art: Guido Garaycochea, Jaime Romero, Pedro Hernandez, Juan Bernal, Lilian Cuenca, Carmen Gloria Maristany.

You know I love me anything Latino. Get out there and support la raza!

Perfect. This is literally the PICTURE of PERFECTION.

2008-09-17T19:52:00.001-07:00

I've never taken a photo class. I've never been moved by photos. I always glaze right over--if I don't just immediately pass through--the photography wing of any museum or exhibit. I guess you could just say I've never really been sold on the idea of taking pictures as an art form. UntilAlison Brady came into my life by way of notcot.org.

Perhaps a lot of my un-appreciation for photography was begot by photographic ignorance; I was never quite sure what made for a good picture, a beautiful picture, a mediocre picture, etc. With painting or drawing there's always something there to anchor your criticisms and praise to: that was well rendered, that's disproportionate, the paint is applied well, etc. With photography the middle (mortal) man is taken out of the equation....It always seemed to me that if by the will of God there was a beautiful day or a perfect spider web then anyone privileged enough to have a camera (especially one with a black and white option--YECK!) could be photographer extraordinnaire. It almost seemed unfair to give photographers credit for beautiful photos when most of the work had been done for them--all they had to do was point and shoot. When I viewed Alison Brady's work none of the factors came into play. The images that Alison both creates and shoots are incredible, unlike anything I have ever seen:

Brady clearly has an eye and killer instinct for photography. Color and composition are obviously well-thought out and executed flawlessly, however it's the subtle narratives that are so implicit in the shots that just continues to mesmorize me.

Who are the people featured in Brady's portraits, and what are they feeling? We very rarely see shots that expose the face. One might thing that a woman who's hair covers her face would be expressing shame or remorse, yet Brady always seems to inject light-heartedness through color or sparkle into these shots that make you re-think the tone.

I think even more important than those subtle narrative undertones is the sophisticated, underhanded way in which Brady tackles loaded themes head on. Violence and sexuality are certainly prevalent in Brady's shots, yet they are never the first things upon which we focus. And they are certainly never the first thing we focus on in that pop-culture sort of way: a flash of women's nipples or a man in briefs don't signal sexuality in that course, crude sort of way. Instead I find these brief encouters with nudity and violence as narrative in their own sense; as if by some strange turn of events we've come across these vignettes and taken even the subjects by surprise.

Le sigh. Is this not so perfect?? Alison Brady, will you marry me?

shots in the park: exploring color options on my cam

2008-09-02T21:35:00.000-07:00

the color swap with the purple on our faces came out a bit creepy....too eerily resembling the burn victims unit :-/

not for the weak(stomach)

2008-08-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

Has anyone read about the new Andres Serrano exhibit?? Opening at the Yvon Lambert Gallery on Sept 4th, eight-foot high portraits of feces will grace the gallery walls in the name of art. The first time I got wind of this exhibit was on Art Fag City (see links to left), and honestly I almost threw up on my laptop looking at Self Portrait. However after parusing the Yvon Lambert Gallery website a bit, the other pictures aren't quite as nauseating...They lack the close-up detail of Self Portrait, and I think the fact that they're not from a human helps to ease the blecch-factor. Serrano traveled all the way to Ecuador to scoop the poop of a Bull--because, after all, what's an exhibit of portraits of shit without the archetypal "bullshit?"

Of the process, Serrano had this to say to the Village Voice :
"I always said I wouldn't work with children and sex, and I wouldn't work with shit, so when I came up with this idea [which dawned on him, to the best of his recollection, during the nude wrestling scene in Borat], I had to put myself in a special place. I had to prepare myself mentally—it was a scientific and aesthetic investigation."

Serrano, who's notoriety was begot by the infamous Piss Christ which featured a crucifix submerged in urine and provoked Jesse Helms to not only demand that such projects not be government funded but also to call Serrano "a jerk." With a past such as that and an exhibit such as this one, Serrano had to really sharpen his artistic devices if he was going to pull off shit and still walk away with his dignity. For many "cutting-edge" artists (damn the limitations of language but thats the best qualifier I can use for the whole lot of them, so apologies to those who do pull-off "cutting edge" well), echoes of Damien Hirst can often be deafening. There is shock art for the value of shock art, and then, as I think Serrano demostrates to us rather well in this exhibit, there is shock art for a purpose. This type of art usually doesn't take itself too seriously, and leaving that sort of breathing room for audiences is crucial. Art as it is already stands as a sort of super-inflated luxury of the thinking masses, and in that way it's very alienating. Something like Serrano's SHIT exhibit is a little more accessible, a little more human:

“My ego as an artist says I can make anything look good, even shit...The show is
also very basic—in a way, what I’m saying is that we all think we have the best
shit.”

But for those audience members with a more discerning eye towards high art, Serrano's shots (from what I've seen on the web) do not fall short. Photographing shit had to have its aesthetic difficulties (at this point I'm gonna go ahead and assume we can all imagine what other difficulties might have been involved in photographing shit--Serrano has said that human shit smells the worst, with dog in close second) and yet, Serrano manages to transform pure shit into gold. The shots are aesthetically complex, rich (ewww I can't believe I'm saying this!),
and compositionally interesting. Serrano further compounds this kind of artistic success by giving each of his 66 images titles...:

"Not all literal; sometimes symbolic, sometimes funny...This show is very
conceptual...I realized how ingrained the word shit is in the English language.
My work is all about language."

I think this show is yet another testament to how successful hybrids of low and high culture can be in our society today. Serrano has literally taken shit and sophisticated it through a precise artistic eye and a soun conceptual base.

We're really just responding so well to irony these days. Wonder why? Hm. Anyways I'm hopin to go to the opening next Thurs, 6-8, and I'm super excited. Hope I can find someone with a strong enough stomach to go with....hell, I hope I'll have a strong enough stomach to go :-/

i won't be playing with your tinker toys today, sir.

2008-08-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

In a stewing-in-your-own-annoyance-until-it-becomes-full-on-rage-act of procrastination (a tiff with my darling--sad but true, they happen to the best of us....especially when your veins run thick with boiling blood like mine do), I decided to clean out my lesser-used gmail account. This is the account that I use to make user names for various websites or the account that I have all my ezines and Urban Outfitters mailing list sent to..you know. That email address we all have that doesn't get checked fooorrrr daayyyssss.

Anywho I was going over the roughly nine thousand emails and I came across the most recent issue of ArtKrush, featuring a littl e diddy on artist Tom Sachs.

It caught my attention only because I recently featured a picture of Tom Sach's Chanel Guillotine (2000) as my facebook profile picture. I personally was drawn to the piece as a sort of joke referencing my once-reluctant-now-deep love and passion for a French history class I was strong-armed into taking at university. Side by side with the other pieces that follow in this vein of work, the concept seems a bit big and unmanageable.

In the interview with ArtKrush's editor Paul Laster, Sachs speaks to his self-dubbed title "Bricolage Tinkerer" and Chanel Guillotine:

Sometimes bricolage relates to a conceptual efficiency, and I'm just
recontextualizing an idea, or changing the application. Making a Chanel Guiolltine is putting together a brand image and an icon of death, and
combined in that way, one plus one equals a million.

For the purpose of our discussion, bricolage is defined as: "construction (as of a sculpture or a structure of ideas) achieved by using whatever comes to hand; also : something constructed in this way." Now, maybe I've just been to one-too-many GRE classes, but to me something about this statement seems like it should be true but falls drastically short of making a coherent thought. My first complaint is with bricolage relating to "conceptual efficiency." In the sentence prior to this one, Tom explains how working in the bricolage tradition has forced him to be more efficient with materials. The first part of his quote here seems to want to express that Tom feels his work to be conceptually bricolage (which personally I think if he read that in a review or blog he'd probably be offended.) The whole thing makes these pieces sound slapped together, acts of chance and haphazard happenings. And therein lies my problem with these brand series! What is haphazard about McDonalds? How is Chanel in any way shape or form just laying around, waiting for you to make something of it? These are not passive concepts. These words have active, combustible meanings. He's not playing with the formal brand CHANEL or MCDONALDS;

Sachs's pieces are contingent upon the very thing he is denying his work to have: precise images, precise connotations, precise applications. Putting a brand image and an icon of death--which, again let me interrupt and say that calling the guiolltine an "icon of death" might just be the understatement of the century--does not "make a million." The guiolltine I would venture to say most commonly conjures images of the French revoltuion, and in this sense the guiolltine simply cannot be limited to an "icon of death." It is systematic death; it is organized death; it is large-scale deaths (and I think with these descriptions we're all also thinking of its successor the death camps?); it was part of the fall of a deeply troubled monarchy, the end of a severely oligarchical era, the rise of the underdog...well, now I digress. My love for Frahnce just gets the best of me. The guiolltine was quite possibly the worst weapon Sachs could have chosen for a quote-unquote bricolage conceptual piece. A knife probably would have had far less social and historical baggage than the guillotine.....and yet still, there she is. Blade propped high, Chanel visible on all sides, and not even one WHISPER of acknowledgement of the historical period in which this weapon even originated.

Do you look at Chanel Guiolltine and think its kinda funny? Kinda ironic? Ehh, yeaa. You think you should be laughing, you dont know why entirely....Its kind of analogous to those shirts you get at roadside rest areas in spackled colors like purple and dusty cornflower blue with big rubbery images of wolves howing at the moon and eagles soaring over mountains. They're so ridiculous and awful yet you pair 'em with some skinny jeans and wayfarers and all of a sudden you've got yourself a picture at the Misshapes party.

I think my biggest complaint is that Sachs seems to use semiotics in a clumsy, almost oafish sort of way. Can conceptual bricolage actually exist? That's something I'm not entirely quite sure of. There is that age-old anthem of optimism "Never say Never!" but conceptual art requries such a self awareness and acuracy...conceptual bricolage to me at this point is the same as saying a mish-mosh argument. Conceptual art must prove itself. Conceptual art by its very definition is forced under fierce scrutiny in an effort to make sure that all its parts hold up--after all, if you can't even get the concept right then what do you really have?? McDonalds and Tiffany's. Hm. Does this read to me as random and and recontextualized? Or does it read more like yet another comment on gluttonous capitalism? I'd like to answer this rhetorical question but honestly the whole thing's so boring I'm afraid I'd fall asleep mid-sentence. I feel like the next logical step from these pieces would be to make an anti-Bush or anti-war installation. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

I invite anyone who's got a better handle on the direction of these concepts to plead their case to me. Otherwise I really just find these pieces, while amusing on atleast a superficial level, to lack direction. Careless, really. Bricolage Tinkerer. I will give him this--what the man seems to lack in understanding of the word bricolage he more than made up for with tinkerer.

Read the article HERE

dar la luz

2008-06-23T17:47:00.001-07:00

Setting up a blog is really easy. Making it cool is quite another.

IN ANY case, here i am: contributing member of cyber society--less so of actual society. summer has me rotting away on my couch getting cheap thrills from adventures such as "cooking with tofu" or "riding my bike" or, best yet, "willing myself to levitate."
In case you didn't already notice, i used the word "adventure" in the loosest sense.

So just to get the hang of things, I'm going to post some of my stuff that I've saved on this 4share website, which I'm pretty sure I'd lose track of if I didn't re-post it here.

Although, who's to say I won't lose track of this one? Oy. Here's a pic I think is appropriate to post in celebration of my first post on my brand-spanking-new blog.

Above: A titillated freedom stance, which lamentably preceeded an oppressive captivity dance. Womp Womp.