SESC Pompéia is a cultural center in Sao Pauo offering a range of services, from library, internet, restaurant, concerts, swimming pool and exhibitions. The center was full of life when I went there, with a very heterogeneous user group. Old people, young people, disabled people, it seemed like everyone was there. Lina Bo Bardi's retooling of the already existing buildings are prime examples of brutalist architecture, with concrete and violent ramps connecting the two main towers of the compound. But it works! yay!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
My new home
on the 22nd floor!
The copan building is located in the center of Sao Paulo and houses around 5000 people. Oscar Niemeyer mixed different sized apartments in the hope of mixing different social classes in a holy heterotopia. Yum!
The S shape swirls its way through the concrete jungle and stands next to one of the tallest building in Sao Paulo, Edificio Italia. You can see the peak to the right in the photo.
This shot was inspired by my friend Fredrik Værslev and his photographic series called "My Architecture."
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
ahhhh, capacete!
This is the main space at the capacete residency in Rio. We're almost done with our stay here in Gloria, but headed for more Capacete adventures in Sao Paulo at the end of the month. I've been conducting a workshop here and the third and final session will take place next week. The workshop is called Case Study: Art and the luxury goods market. For the first session i screened the opening scenes of an episode of Sex and the City, where Carrie and Charlotte head to the Sean Kelly Gallery to see the Marina Abramovic performance House with an ocean view. This episode introduces the topic of the art market and how it functions. The second session looked more closely at the gallery and art fairs, while the third and final session will summarize and hopefully make us all a lot smarter. ha!
http://www.capacete.net/
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Inhotim
in the middle of nowhere....that's where you find them. Precious jewels. Expensive stones. Inhotim is an upgraded sculpture park located a few kilometers outside the small town Brumadinho in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where the artwork on display is not limited by the usual confines of sculpture or park. Most work is shown in a custom built dome or gallery space and the park opened nine new projects a few weeks ago. One of them, Beam Drop by Chris Burden, is located on a hill top with a beautiful view over the horizon.
more photos from the opening of Nove Novos Destinos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thefuturistics/sets/72157622399205897/
Friday, June 19, 2009
aa xxx
I've seen Peaches a few times, mostly just after her first record dropped. The second and third albums kind of passed me by a bit.........BUT we went to see her perform in DC and she blew me away. She could have blown me every other way.
She managed to combine the different strands from the earlier live performances with the new material and the extravaganzas from the albums in the middle. Rich from fourfour wrote about the album, and gave it a relative thumbs up, so that's one thing. The album is good. BUT live she rules and will beat down any other electroclash act. Not that electroclas needs more beatings. please.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
naked guy on horse
i just saw the best installation ever. In my dreams. It was at a shopping mall. I remember passing the Virgin mobile phone section, before I came to the project space they usually reserve for artists. I walk into the space and there's a projection there, so the room is pretty dark, to the right there's a another little space, where a small cabin has been erected. Outside the cabin is a horse, a sculpture, made out of plastic or just papermache, but on the horse is a naked guy. He has long, dark hair and is made out to look native american. I walk around and look at the horse, and the guy, wondering if I should take a photo. After a few seconds, the horse starts to move and the guy on the horse gestures for me to follow him. I do, and the horse shifts through the space, out through the projection room and into a great big hall, where there's an artificial waterfall and a forest scene. The horse starts to fly towards the ceiling, where daylight is coming through. It's lifted of the ground by some strange mechanism. The guy gestures for me to follow, and I'm puzzled as to how. I see a huge wine, and the guy on the horse passes it to me. I grab it and wonder what will happen next. I can't hang onto the vine all by myself. The vine has a mechanical contraption which rotates itself around me, but I'm doing something wrong. The vine is supposed to envelop my body, but it only caught one arm. The guy on the horse is trying to fix the situation and tells me it's going to be ok, just let the vine wrap itself around your other arm.
I do, and the whole vine lifts me up after the horse and pulls me up. The horse and the naked guy disappear through the glass ceiling, and I'm pulled up through a skylight and left on the edge of the roof, on a rafter. What a ride! And I see myself lying on the rafter. I have long, straight, blond hair, and pale, pale skin.
what a nice trip to the mall.
Monday, April 27, 2009
I smell second place!
sorry Allison, but you're not America's Next Top Model.
I want to be friends with you and have share a nosebleed or two, but you are getting a Jenah'fied. Or Lauren'ized. Or something between quirky and a personality.
love you!
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
c'mon over!
I'm curating a show at Landings, opening the first weekend of May. Which is pretty soon, come to think of it. I will have Landings 1 and 2 to my disposal, while Andrea Geyer will occupy Landings 3.
My show is called Case Study: Art and Biography and tackles the work of Cindy Sherman. Cindy Sherman has presented in many different ways, but I've chosen to look at her work in relation to who she was dating at the time. It's pretty rude, but I do believe there's a lot of interesting things about Sherman's work that will be uncovered. Especially with an artist that denies the autobiographical.
Anyway, check out http://www.landings-projectspace.com/ for more details and please come down for the opening. There will also be a launch for Landings Journal issue 1 pretty soon. Fingers crossed.
younger than jesus
The generational at the New Museum is opening tonight, with Ida Ekblad, Ryan Trecartin, Lizzie Fitch, Cory Arcangel, Aids-3D, Tauba Auerbach, Keren Cytter, Ryan Gander, Matt Keegan, Adriana Lara, Emily Roysdon, Josh Smith, Trish Vonna-Michell and plenty of others. Plenty of familiar faces, but quite a few I don't know that well. Or at all.
So, the premise: Youth. No big surprise, seeing as the art world is gearing it's attention to people just out of, or still in, grad school. The three curators have asked 150 informants from all over the world to supply them with fresh, local meat. I put forth three names, one of them made it to the show. The rest will be featured in an artist directory with 498 others. I'm curious to see what the directory will look like. Charley's special Berlin Biennial edition a few years ago could potentially compare to the megacatalog of young artists. The three curators compiled a page about each artist they had considered for the biennial, whether it be a press release or a crappy jpeg.
The triennial will hopefully turn their eye to older than God for the next show. Or something. The show is up until the first week of July. Good luck.
http://www.newmuseum.org/ytj/
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Where are all the ladies??
Norway. Bastion of equal opportunities? Maybe.
BUT, there are a few things that annoy me at the moment, and I guess the blog will suffice as an outlet.
1. Where are all the female artists at the Astrup Fearnley museum? They are a private museum for contemporary art and are known for their shows of white, male artists. They have followed 'trends' in the art market and taken into account globalization or whatever and exhibited Chinese artists, but their current exhibition, Rotasjoner #1, is almost totally lacking in women artists. Ann Lislegaard and Jennifer Allora are the only women in the exhibition. The total list of artists>>>>>>>>
Allora & Calzadilla, Matthew Barney, Frank Benson, Cao Fei, Paul Chan, Chu Yun, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Olafur Eliasson, Gilbert & George, Douglas Gordon, Shilpa Gupta, Guyton \Walker, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Ann Lislegaard, Liu Wei, Bjarne Melgaard, Shintaro Miyake, Adam Putnam og Yang Fudong.
Anyway, that's their profile and they can keep it.
2. Platekompaniet, the Norwegian version of HMV or Virgin, have bi-weekly sales and this time it's "Retrospektiv 1938-2008" and they only manage to find room for Joni Mitchell and Carole King? Ok, so Blondie and the White Stripes are in there too, but agggghh!
Norway.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
the rinse cycle?
cycle 12 of America's Next Top Model is on the doorstep, banging hard on the door, waiting for some poor fool to open up. And that's me. And this is my favorite, without even knowing anything about her. Except that she is an artist and that she has posted tons of photos on photobucket that are witness to her artistry.
AND rich over at fourfour has started writing again! I can't wait to go to .gif heaven!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Marcia Tucker
one of my favorite professors at Bard was Marcia Tucker. She was honest and taught us quite a few important lessons. Her biography recounts her successes and failures on equal parts. There's something valuable about the failures as well and avoiding the streamlined trajectory of success. One of her mottos as a curator was "a lifetime of bad reviews." Not doing shows just to get a good review, but finding out where prejudices, established notions of what's right or wrong, challenging orthodoxies and doing what tickles your fancy. Act now, think later. That way you will have something to think about.
The biography is important. Not just to remember Marcia, but also to remember her work as a curator. The show she did with James Monte at the Whitney Museum (as the Whitney's first female curator), Anti-Illusion, was installed while Szeemann and Hultén were working on their approach to contemporary art of the late 60s. After being fired from the Whitney (something Marcia was proud of) she started her own museum, the New Museum. It's evolved and changed into the superstructure it is today, but the 32 year old museum has a unique history.
READ THE BOOK.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Poetry must be made by all! Transform the world!
Exhibition curated by Pontus Hultén at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1969. Initiated by Ronald Hunt and assisted by Katha Waldén. The show consisted mostly of photographs and reconstructions, but also a heavy program of films, meetings, concerts and other initiatives that just utilized the museum as a space, not necessarily an exhibition space.
The intersection of life and art, viewed through the lens of radical politics of '68. The exhibition traveled to the Kunstverein in Münich, where the local art academy took part in scheduling activities and debates. The exhibition was closed down by local politicians after too much criticism of the establishment. wha-wha. The show traveled to Vancouver and to RISD, where the show remained in storage until the 80s. The show was part of an anniversary at the Kunstverein and put on display as an important show that changed the political landscape and how art and politics interacted. Anyway. This was a large institution organizing and touring a radically different type of exhibition. Where did that all go?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
commes des garçons rip off?
no wonder this shirt is 70%. It's horrendous. And a part of the commes des garçons line at H&M. I saw most of the stuff and thought it was pretty plain and simple. Got the wool scarf and cardigan because the wool was thick and nice. Now that the sale is on I got two shirts as well and I think the simple shoes are nice, but not for the full price. SALE>>>>
Anyway, I thought I was pretty familiar with the whole collection until this one popped up. Wow. The stripes are weird and the diagonal line is not doing anything for me. And I only saw one. I thought it might just be H&M trying to be sneaky and copying Rei Kawakubo, but no. It's official.
criminal hair
Lewis Powell tried to assassinate the secretary of state, while his buddy John Wilkes Booth did the deed with Abraham Lincoln. Powell was caught and hanged alongside three fellow conspirators. I saw a photo of Powell while I was working in a library in London round the Millennium. And thought he looked like a nice guy. His friends called him doc, because he took care of animals and nurtured stray animals back to health. A horse kicked him in the head when he was a teenager, but I don't know if that explains why he later would think assassination would be a good idea. A more probable explanation would be the war. He was wounded and captured at the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
And how come he looks like he is in a fashion ad?
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