aboutFace

antonio, the great,  fall, 2008.

stevel knievel, 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?

In Plain Sight: Street Works and Performances, 1968-1971

What's most interesting to me about the above group is that they came together to create without concern for product.

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.  

Interactive photo exhibit after Jeanne- Claude and Christo!

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

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?

OUT OF THE CORPSE THERE IS A (DIGITAL) FLOWER.

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

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."

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

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.

bod;food;porn;

 

    Eat Me, Fool Moon, End of Summer, 2008

Opening September 13th, Brooklyn Gallery,

 VertexList  presents “New Blood”, a group exhibition which "probes the empty, vacant, and vacuous nature of a world full of things where perception and the direct experience of “real-life” are blurred by the dense atmosphere of media,

consumption, and entertainment."

New Blood will feature a performance by the bad-ass- fabulous

NAO BUSTAMANTE

Indidigurrito, 1992

"That's how Nao kicked off her infamous 1992 work "Indigurrito" in which she strapped-on a burrito to her loins and called for white men to come up on stage, take a bite out of the burrito and absolve themselves of 500 years of the white man's guilt. There was no shortage of enobled participants, who knelt in front of the protuding offering, some taking delicate bites, others deep-throated chunks. "

(I want Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Nao Bustamante to become King and Queen of the Universe)

This powerful image from Bustamante's upcoming performance strikes me for its rawness and the way she still manages her composure and stare despite the bizarre get-up.

"Given to Want", a live performance by Nao Bustamante 

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

Had my family the foresight to leave me a trust fund, I would fly to Denmark to see Body Berserk at  Kunsthallen Brandts

Body Berserk 
Five international video artists 
show works focusing on the body
September 12 - January 11, 2008

Pipilotti Rist, Pickel Porno, 1992

Cecilie Dahl, Clothes for a Summer Hotel

These videos appeal to me for their dream- like

imagery and visual metaphor as well as their critical inversion of the mainstream. 

They've inspired me to continue

experimenting with layering my own images...

For Instance:  

Eat Me, End of Summer, Full Moon, 2008

Layering imagery, to me, is like a pile of grid.  I like the element of chance involved in randomly stopping the video, and the gauzy stuttering reminds me of his dreams.  

visual culture: there must be O d eROr d Er

The Order of Things, 11 september- 4 January, 2009, at MuHKA begins its reading of classificatory image collections with a project by Vancouver artist,

Roy Arden.

The images below are 2 of 30,000+ archived for Arden's online project titled

The World as Will and Representation.

Roy Arden, The World as Will and Representation, 1989-2007

In addition to the aesthetic and connotative power of the color red that dominates the images above, I'm interested in these images because they are a small part of a larger whole. ...An overwhelming urge to collect, corral and attempt to create order where before there was seemingly none. In our present state of visual overload, the internet taking it to gluttonous extreme, we begin to organize images as if they are words...Well, they are aren't they?


Employing the logical, old alphabet as a "curatorial trigger",

The Order of Things

will also be exhibiting the work of Julian Rosefeldt

Julian Rosefeldt, Global Soap, 2001-2002


Like Rosefeldt, I love trapping the electronic animal. I am intrigued by the formulaic, programmed emotion people are being conditioned to adopt. Are these physical expressions innately human, or is globalization McGenerifying the world?




... e-flux has translated Muhka's musings on the classificatory impulse...

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

Manifesta7, running from 19 July- 2 November, will be revisiting

Michael Snow's 1982 film So is This.

I appreciate this humorous piece for its amalgamation of film and text as well as the ironic suggestions within.

+++++++++... in case you're not sick of reading yet...

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of PA will be displaying new work by Douglas Blau from September 5-December 7.

I like the way that people stand together and read these images as if they were a giant, communal newspaper.

"The big picture is depiction itself. Centuries of picture making appear distilled through Blau's art into an essential cast of characters and repertoire of plots, periods, styles, locations, and genres."

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

OhlimpX.live, 2008

bedroom at 2nd ave, 2008.

My contribution to the whole creates an odd, fragmented narrative, I think.

The bottom grid contains images inside of images inside of image, of my own surroundings. The contrast to TV land is astounding.