Thomas Doyle

Art by Thomas Doyle. Fantastic.

We Don't Want Ads, We Want Art

Applauding unauthorized public art. More!

http://www.cronicasbarbaras.com/2009/04/we-dont-want-ads-we-want-art.html

Courtesy TP at work.

Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill

The latest from Banksy, can't wait to go once I get my life back!

A Man Needs A Garage

May not warrant watching all 8 minutes, but here's a pretty cool old fella making some pretty old-style machinery. Love it. Courtesy JP.

Reminds me, so slightly, of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millenium General Assembly. About that here.

Pechu Kucha

"The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art."

Yeah, right. Well, actually, I'm intrigued. Although I'm never sure why PowerPoint became the subject for art. Oh, right. It started as a joke.

Truth is, given that I live regularly with the form (and hate it), I think that the poetry slam transformation of a business meeting should become a de facto standard in the meeting rooms of the world. What is a virtuoso performance? Say what you want, quickly, directly, and get the hell out. We'd be better for it, and less spiteful of our jobs. Come on, America!

Rave: Sze Tsung Leong

One of the best shows I have seen this year. A couple of weeks ago, ED and I took a break from being perpetually stressed out by our jobs to wander around Chelsea on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. We saw a few good things, a few less good things, and one incredible show. Sze Tsung Leong's Horizons at the Yossi Milo gallery.

Admittedly, the collection was right in my sweet spot, but the photographs worked at so many levels for me. First off, they are gorgeous - expansive landscapes, evoking the basic geometry of the horizon, all sharing a common framing and visual syntax. The subject matter, impressive in its global scope, ranged from cities to people to landscapes to seascapes, all bleeding into washed out skylines of gray and white. Each of the photos evoked a common density, bleakness and dullness, which certainly characterizes one aspect of a world overrun with industry, people, buildings, and things. Within the scope of this commentary was enough room for the constant, irrepressible beauty of people and of nature and, at some basic level, of the capacity of human industry. From the good comes the bad. All of this wrapped up in a wonderfully curated show, where the prints were all hung level, to create a common horizon across all of the photographs. Well worth a look, and while much of the photos can be seen online at the artist's website, they are even more powerful when viewed together.

Mike Ross: Capitol Hill

Friend and sculptor Mike Ross, responsible for the monumental and mercurial Big Rig Jig, has created a bit of undeserved controversy that is apparently jeopardizing his new sculpture, proposed for the interior of a Seattle subway station. The sculpture, which would involve disassembling two decommission fighter jets and re-assembling them into a configuration that was supposed to represent (I believe) doves is clearly intended as a critique of the military-industrial complex and the war machine, in general. Apparently not what local Democratic activist groups think.

Learn more here.

Blessings

What is going on in China? Overall, the Zhang Huan show Blessings at the Pace Wildenstein gallery didn't move me much, but the centerpiece, a sculpture over 15 feet tall and 25 feet long, made entirely, and very clearly, almost nauseatingly, of cowhides, was pretty mind-blowing. I'm not sure I fully got what was going on, either as art or as commentary, but in terms of causing a visceral reaction, it certainly caused one.

Altmejd's Monsters

Last weekend (or maybe even the weekend before, it's hard to tell these days), ED and I wandered out to Chelsea to drink some lemonade and look at some art. A handful of galleries had shows bearing mention, but we'll start with David Altmejd at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, which CD had previously recommended. While I could describe at length the odd creatures that had been assembled in the service of art, I'd recommend you swoop through and see for yourself.

MUTO

An incredible animation of street art, courtesy JJK:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Theo Jansen's Kinetic Sculptures

More...

Teaching a Plant the Alphabet

By John Baldessari. His "Six Colorful Inside Jobs" was a huge hit at the MoMA "Color Chart" show this weekend, capturing, color by color, an entire floor-ful of the intrigued.

Color Charts from Richter

A tiny bit more on the Color Chart show at MoMA at a later time. In the meantime, four from Gerhard Richter, which are available on the eponymous website.

Empty Cities: Five From Robert Olsen

Went to the Gangbusters show at Plane-Space to see CD and NG's work and, of course, drink free beer, and stumbled upon (yes, courtesy RM, who I totally usurped in purchasing the book, but he didn't need the extra weight heading back to Europe, really, did he?) the paintings of Robert Olsen.

What can I say about the collection Empty Cities? It's spectral, luminescent, and reminds me of those great, useless artifacts of modern urban convenience that shine on bravely through the night while also representing the loneliness and danger of being gunned down anonymously on an empty street. They shimmer and they shiver from the darkness. They are really great.

Five from Marcel Dzama

I was a fan of Marcel Dzama before I knew I was a fan. Wandering around an otherwise largely dull Armory Show in 2004, MM and I happened upon Dzama's weird, whimsical, amusing, and strangely sinister drawings and installations. We both loved them, of course. So even though HH demanded that I go the Dzama show ("Don't you know the cover for Beck's Guero!"), I didn't know who he was, hadn't placed a name with the drawings that so amused me, and didn't go. Not until ED and I were wandering out of the New Museum and ED pointed out the Dzama books to me did I put two and two together. Yes!

Still haven't seen the exhibit at the David Zwirner gallery, and I guess if I don't make it this weekend, I am out of luck.

In the meantime, here's an interview.

Five from Edward Burtynksy

More at www.edwardburtynsky.com.

Five from Jim Lambie

Yeah, I like colors. Yeah, I like patterns. I guess I've got to make a trip up to the MoMA...

Four from Shrigley

Why? No reason. It's going to be a shit tomorrow, can't wait for the weekend...

Bears

Here's the presser on Kent Rogowski's sufficiently fucked-up art project, Bears:

Bears, is a series of portraits of the most unusual sort: ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed. Each animal's appearance is determined by the necessities of the manufacturing process. Simple patterns and devices never meant to be seen are now prominent physical characteristics, giving each one a distinctly quirky personality: their fasteners become eyes, their seams become scars, and their stuffing creeps out in the most unexpected places. Together these images form a topology of strange yet oddly familiar creatures. They are at once hideous yet cuddly, disturbing yet endearing, absurd yet adorable, while offering a metaphor for us all to consider. These bears, which have lived and loved and lost as much as their owners, have suffered and endured through it all. It is by virtue of revealing their inner core might we better understand our own.

Emphasis mine. Via the stumbled upon, and likely to stumble upon again, blog called "The Breadboard"