21.12.08

can't even imagine reproducing


H e looked at me with blank eyes today. Guess they always were but I used to fill them with my imagination, with conch shells and rocking chairs. stupid. That's what I get for inviting the corpse.
On a brighter note, nuclear fallout at BMOCA. Badass.
I actually drove to the arian city today to check out video's from CU's video collection (in and out of time) Even though this contained videos that explore the exact things that I've been visual researching-- so exact, I felt a bit nauseaus...not sure why. This is what art is, right? RIGHT?

sigh for now, I found more interest in Erika Wanenmacher's installation " The Science Club: The Boy's Room, NOw, Forever, Then, Part 1 . The boys room installation devoted to the Atomic melted my metal heart. I spent far longer than was dictated by the quarters in my meter reading blackened books and metal desks. Even the stitching on the quilt screamed obsession.

It'll be there til the 27th.

15.12.08

sex dreams

violin & candlestick, 2008's ending

ever since i've been practicing tibetan dream yoga  (and haven't left my nest for weeks), i've had some strange dead guy visits.
the other evening, aa showed up at my hotel carrying a giant slab of raw, shrink wrapped meat as if he was delivering room service...i'll spare you the details of the second portion of this dream.  Then loandbeholdtightly, georges braque appeared and presented me with a gorgeous cubist rendition of my cunt, he said that licking it was getting him nowhere...
apparently, all of this time had passed without anyone having the balls to tell the man that painting was long dead around here.  Well, I've got Big Balls...

if


realized that 'if' keeps showing up in my bathwater in order to destabilize the past and its unceasing analyzation.  
Maybe the detective that cares for nothing but the present is a futurist.

13.12.08

evidence (1987)

time stills, sequence 4, 2008

time stills, sequence 4, 2008

time stills, sequence 4, 2008






23.11.08

dreams & dust & dust & dreams


Lately, I've been attempting to contact Raimundas Malasauskas from a lucid dream state to ask him if he'd be my virtual bridegroom. Somehow, instead, Guy Debord shows up and says that he'd like me to help him with some guerilla re-arrangement of a grocery store. He hates how the insidious fucks manipulate one's experience of Dérive through the calculated control of product placement that forces you to walk past a bunch of unnecessary expensive shite in order to get to the essential items. We're going to stack things to the ceiling, piling everything on top of the useless, pricey, impulse buys so that if a mesmerized consumer attempts to buybuybuy, they have to pull the item from the bottom of the commodity totem causing everything else to come crashing down on top of them. I suggested a climbing rope to get to the toilet paper at the top of the product sculpture, but he told me that that was an unimportant detail and that I was banished from the SI for at least 3 nights.

The phone woke me at 9am and it was Vito Acconci (I'm sure it was him, who else would do this?) vocally masturbating on the other end of the line. Unfortunately, I was no longer dreaming.

The following images are excerpts from a recent series titled
(I figured Raimundas Malasauskas wouldn't mind sharing the title of his narrative since we're going to be electronically and cosmically linked if all goes according to plan)


from time stills, Sequence 1, 2008
from Time Stills, sequence 1, 2008


The Center for Photography at Woodstock is exhibiting the provocative work of Toni Pepe. I enjoy this work for its incredible use of light to evoke mystery and the suggestion of narrative. Powderydust concatenates the images while metaphorically suggesting time, memory and absence...

Toni Pepe, Untitled, 2007, from the series, Angle of Repose
Toni Pepe, Untitled, 2007, from the series, Angle of Repose
"Absence and presence is a recurring theme within this series, implying that each image works to reference something beyond the frame. Photography best portrays this thematic approach since by nature; photographs possess a fundamental quality of absence. All of the elements within the frame—the props, costumes and gestures prompt the notion and tangibility of loss and memory. If we had never met could I still have a memory of you? Can we make present something that is absent?"

11.11.08

I had this dream,

I've selected the following self- portraits because they speak nothing of self.  The pastel colors appeal to me on occasion in the same way that cake frosting appeals to me on occasion.  In addition to this, I'm interested in the way that the mirrors offer a multiplicity of reflection,  the drama of the wigged courtesans, and my isolated voyeurism combine to create an odd allegorical abstraction.    
mirror1, fall, 2008

mirror2, fall, 2008

mirror3, fall, 2008


28.10.08

videoKilled the radioStar



girls just wanna, 2008 


yellow cake, 2008


nikeFace, 2008

The above images are indicative of the way that I view contemporary society.


Sure glad time is speeding up so that we can get this era over quicker.  I'm worried we're going to loop back though... The guy in this photograph on exhibit at the Contemporary Art Centre, Lithuania was worried about the same thing in 1970...


Despite the fashion photography style of this image, which I dislike, I dig the way the frame renders the subject's near limbless and the way the man looks irritated by this.  Or maybe he's irritated because a photographer has cut a hole in his ceiling to to take his picture.  OR perhaps he just glimpsed the future, and despite being dressed appropriately and having a socially acceptable haircut, was disgusted by the political climate and his previously hot girlfriends sagging soul. 


Martha Rosler, Point and Shoot, 2008

I appreciate Rosler's new series for its glaring juxtapositions as well as its utilization of new digital media.  It is on view in conjunction with the lecture series, OUT NOW!, on view at e-flux until November 8th.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence http://www.vcnv.org


Emily-Jane Major, Marie Claire, R.I.P, 2004-6.

Beyond the social critique, I appreciate the necessary obviousness of this series in the way that it gives the viewer no choice but to shatter the illusion. 

It is part of HpF 09 Helsinki's festival of photography, that aims to revisit fundamental questions regarding contemporary photographic practices.  
 HpF 09 opens 21 Jan and runs through 24 May 09. 




Does time go slower for people who live in the past? 

27.10.08

"modern women cry, modern women don't cry"


The following images are of my creative collaborator, María Félix , a.k.a. nervosa cringe.
They are representative of Maria's passion for film, mexican wrestling, and soaps 
In addition to the fact that they I feel that they really express the wants and desires of the modern woman, I chose them for their expressiveness.

nervosa's new man, 2008


despite all my rage, 2008


hairballoon, 2008




Chiharu Shiota, Waiting, 2008

I love the unmistakable work of Chiharu Shiota for its release of trapped emotion and
for its hugeness.  


Magdalina Abakanowicz, Red Abakan, 1969

In addition to its historical relevance, I appreciate this piece for its ability to simultaneously impact me physically, emotionally and intellectually.
It is 1 of 120 included in the Vancouver Artgallery's homage to Art and the Feminist Revolution running from 4 October - 11 JAnuary 2009.





I'm interested in this work for its boundary pushing integration of new media, text, and human interaction. Camille Utterback's recent work explores the same concept using color and organic shape.
The Milwaukee Art Museum is housing the work of Camille Utterback as part "Act/React", an exhibition dedicated to "intuitive, digitally developed art".

18.10.08

when images stutter

sequence 73, 2008

The above grid contains images that find their weight in color.  Together they stutter a primary
sequence that rhymes with Bataille.



The experimental work of 

Zbig Rybczynski
is currently a part of The City Rises, an exhibition at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.
I like this piece because it reminds of  dada collage, digitalized.

Walker Art Center is presenting the first solo exhibition showcasing work by
multidisciplinary artist, 
Tetsumi Kudo.


I like this sculptural work for its suggestion of the alive and organic.
Tetsumi Kudo seems to have managed to escape being categorized or boxed in by cultural style labels and art market fashion.



Nalini Malini's paintings/ installation at the Arario Gallery in the Chelsea district also suggests the organic, as well as eternal narrative.  
Her work reimagines the Greek Myth of Cassandra, a figure Malini understands as symbolizing "unfinished business of the woman's revolution". 






9.10.08

this is the time

and this is the record of the time

The following photographs of photographs are important to me because they document the decades leading up to the recent 50th birthday of my friend Teresa Vito.  Teresa's a role model and an inspiration to me as the first woman I met making a living as an artist.  I met her when I was one quarter of a century alive.  Our families both come from the mountains of Abruzzi.  We shared a porch, and many stories, at a house on Madison and Colfax for many years. 
 
Teresa Vito is one spectacular human.





The following images are from the
They appeal to me because they represent many pieces of work, created from many mediums, understood as a multitudinous, layered, visual archive that echoes a plethora of voice and time.



Sarah Lucas, Bunny Gets Snookered #3



"A comparative reading of the literary oeuvre of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges forms the point of departure for this investigation. Borges’s oeuvre and its conceptual as well as narrative landscape is used as a methodology to build up a sequence of potential narratives (and fictions), continued (as if) en abîme in a collective archive of visual imaginary. 

Aleph – the cosmic point that contains all times and places in the universe, a fabled observatory that figures the endlessness of all things – frames the sequences of potential structures and possible fictions: from the issues concerned with the principles of identity and meanders of authorship through paradoxes of language and space-time confluences down to conjunctions of universe and utopia, reality and fiction, mirror and encyclopaedia. The exhibition 
emphasizes the processual reading of the act of collecting as practice(s), in which combinations and permutations of arrangements create ever new meanings, contexts and relationships between artworks."



Matthew Ritchie with Aranda\Lasch and Arup AGU: The Morning Line

Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville


"The Morning Line is challenging architectural convention: The team of collaborators has designed the first semiasographic building, an architectural language that directly expresses its content through its structure – a structure that is simultaneously generating itself and falling apart, enclosing an interactive environment inside which a possible future can be seen – and changed."

This work exemplifies, in unconventional and dynamic architectural expression, concepts that are gripping me at this time.



and cockroaches that crawl out of your dreams and onto the sidewalk to be stepped on by a boy, in front of your eyes, the next day.]



 


1.10.08

Interactive exhibit #2

.you know you want me to take your picture.

25.9.08

aboutFace


antonio, the great,  fall, 2008.






nervosa cringe, fall, 2008.

The above images are brilliant because they spell out something that smells like love.  A constant exchange of energy and support from people who like me even though I'm usually an annoying and demanding dick.

Outside of my apartment, in Lakewood Colorado of all places, theLab recognizes art that eschewed galleries.  Ironic, no?


Poetry and polaroids aligning with the pulse of the city and creation.

I think that Jung would be intrigued by Hannah Weiner's project that involved waiting to meet the only other Hannah Weiner in the phonebook.  The other HW was a psychotherapist and never showed up.  In 1972, Hannah, the poet went to Bellevue.  She turned the words she saw on people's foreheads into poetry.  



All night jazz session at the Cy Laurie Club, Great Windmill Street, 31st March 1956

The above image from the Soho Archives, currently displayed at The Photographers' Gallery, appeals to me because it documents a dynamic time and place...I've never been to London in the mid-20th... 



Nor have I visited Pakistan in 2008...  


A Pakistani woman gestures next to a burning effigy of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders during a protest against a recent Dutch film that portrays Islam as a ticking time bomb aimed at the West in Karachi, Pakistan, Sunday, March 30, 2008

Clearly, this image, its contained spirit that raises fists against racism and oppression, contains Benjamin's notion of the aura.  

15.9.08

Interactive photo exhibit after Jeanne- Claude and Christo!


September 18th, 2008, 7 pm, Novo coffee 13th ave between Broadway and Bannock   

14.9.08

Outta the gallery: Artistic Disruption of the dull



tour de fat: puppets, denver, 2008

tour de fat: pile of bikes, denver 2008



I took the above images at City Park at New Belgium Brewing Company's, Tour De Fat. bikes, music, food, beer, people dancing in costumes on Saturday afternoon in the park...Someone even traded their ugly rav4 for a bicycle! This event restored a bit of my faith in things human. The images can't come close to capturing the energy, but they acknowledge and revere that energy, and that is why I like them.

+++++++++ + +++++++++



THE XIU XIU POLAROID PROJECTS #4: THE FINAL BLOW, David Horvitz

Having an undying adoration for Polaroid, (still, I can't let go, need an analyst to help me deal with the grief), I love David Horvitz's above images because they combine instant film and street performance.
In addition to all the wonderful things you can buy From/ For David, you can be a part of a happening, a celebration, and instant image making, and who the fuck wouldn't want to be a part of this?

+++++++++ + +++++++++

The Scale of Intervention
I feel that BIG SPRAYPAINTED messages are often the best way to get one's point across. This image is great because the cyclist included in the frame allows you to really get the picture.

"Co-organized by Conflux, an annual festival dedicated to pyschogeography, and moderated by the founders of the celebrated street-art Web site Wooster Collective, this panel will look at possibilities for artistic disruption within urban environments. Taking its name from a film by the London-based Cutup Collective, which plays with the viewer's perception of a street scene, the panel will feature artists whose work ranges across a variety of mediums and materials. From reformulation of billboard advertisements into powerful, politically oriented collages to the subversive reformulation of street signs, such as pedestrian crossings and bike lanes, the featured artists will demonstrate how they dislodge the customary navigation and perception of urban space."

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VINCHEN

I like this piece because it's photographic record temporal work indicative of contemporary street art.
This ain't your parent's visual lexicon.