Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Gaga for Philip Treacy
Philip Treacy takes millenial millinery to new heights! His outlandish creations play with the sculptural nature of hast- which, in Treacy’s world aremore like sculptures that play with their site-specific locations on people’s heads. Hats don’t just hide bad hair days, but become floral landing pads for butterflies, another face, or a gloved hand, the moon and stars, and beyond. His designs are favored by everyone from Lady Gaga to British royalty. Talk about a heshin’ haberdasher!
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
William Lamson
I know. Anyone can string banana-hostages to a perfectly innocent tree; the gesture is simple enough, but who ever would’ve thought to do this? The playfulness, exuberance and creativity in William Lamson’s little “interventions” make you reconsider space, how we interact with it, and how we see the world. I just imagine attempting to climb to the top of these slippery slapstick yellow rungs only to discover what I’m dealing with is not a playstructure tree but…bananas. And if that’s not enough, check out the vid after the jump that shows the artist in a Hell-raiser style mask, made entirely of bananas with dynamite wicks on the end. One by one he lights them, causing them to explode in Chiquita’s ultimate pimple/fruit popping extravaganza.
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Bobo
Bobo is an art collective that emerged out of the Providence scene post-Fort Thunder. I really love Bobo’s poster “The Global Order of the Youngbloods,” it’s an overdose of occult and conspiracy infotainment. Bobo has managed to create a fun scene on their own terms. They ran a space in Philadelphia for a while, but now seem to be arranging/curating shows in New York, and performing as a band. Annie Pearlman brought them to my attention when I was doing a studio visit with Brian Belott.
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Recognize this Scene?
If the still above seems uncannily familiar to you- it’s because it’s from Michael Jackson’s unforgettable music video, “Thriller;” sans MJ, flesh-eating (choreographed) Zombies, or any sign of human life, for that matter. In the video “Untitled #100, (Fantasia),” artist Josh Azzarella took two years to meticulously remove everything but the murky rolling fog of a smoke machine and ominously ambient noises. The full length feature can be viewed on the humorously titled Funk of 40,000 Years. The result is a haunting look at a seeming post-apocalyptic landscape; robbed of its ghoulish face paint and kitsch, the video is a frightening look at what is left behind. The film is certainly imbued with new symbolic meaning now that the prince of pop himself has left the building, so to speak.
Josh will be showing this video at Mark Moore Gallery this Saturday, from 5-7pm. They will also be showing artist Kim Rugg (who has a similarly “systematic” practice of cutting out every single letter from newspapers and arranging them alphabetically). Shown in conjunction, an interesting dialogue regarding notions of truth and fiction within the media ensues between the two artists. If you are in LA, this exhibition is not to be missed!
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Richard Hughes
Loveseat, 2005
Richard Hughes is an artist living and working in London. Although there hasn’t been any recent work from him, one of my favorite pieces would have to be Loveseat, 2005. From 2003 to 2008, he has produced a variety of works that one way or another seem to address this methodical juxtaposition between urban decadence of objects and organic matter.
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Ben Schumacher
"Head For The Stoic," wood,veneer, jeans, concrete, streamed video loop "emo blowjob" 2009
Ben Schumacher creates art in many traditional and non tradition forms, whether it be through drawings or exploring new ways to conceptualize and present art via and about the internet with an ironic sense of humor that could only have been developed by long hours mulling over the way we use and relate to the tools specific to our cyberspace generation. Ahh, the day I’m tired of it is the day I’m dead!
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Hasan Elahi Gets Naked
Well, not literally, but in Hasan Elahi’s project, “Tracking Transience,” he lays bare an almost overwhelming amount of personal information on the internet. Inspired by an intensive FBI investigation (brought on by false accusations of a misinformed neighnor), Elahi records and makes available everything from his exact whereabouts in the world via Google maps, his bank statements & history, photographs of every meal he eats on planes, etc. The result is a Kafka-esque experiment that examines a post 9/11 Orwellian world with a kind of depressing humor. Elahi’s excercise in self-disclosure seems both dangerous in its honesty, but also symbolic of our information-overload and the question of privacy in the digital age.
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