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    Found Objects 05/11/13

    November 5, 2013

    Apologies for sporadic posting of late, anyhow I’m back on the trail:

    • It’s the “art find of the century” (consequently the best Found Object ever). Hyperallergic reports on the discovery of 1,500 degenerate art works in the flat of an eightysomething hoarder
    • Mordovia sounds like the complete opposite of a holiday destination. BBC News explores the worrying whereabouts of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from Pussy Riot (h/t @kristoncapps)
    • Pedro Velez (@PDRVelez) calls this a universal MUST READ. Critic Philip Kennicott and artist Alex Rivera debate the usefulness of the term Latino in any discussion on art
    • Here’s a #longread grizzly enough to keep your attention to the very end. NY Times reports on football related ultra-violence in Brazil
    • Robert Atkins does an invaluable service compiling dictionaries of art speak. But Robin Cembalest does an even more sterling job picking the least ignorable terms
    • It is fair to say that artist Ron Throop doesn’t care much for artist Robert Zimmerman. Much worse than going electric, Dylan is still making paintings
    • Only up until Nov 8th: sit back and endure a 50 minute film by Ryan Trecartin (as seen in Venice this year). Hysterical, in all senses.
    • Since Tapas is for sharing, perhaps we can get away with this slick presentation on Spanish food design. A feast for the eyes, etc
    • These Impressionist Zombies are turning up late for Halloween, but you won’t want to miss them if you haven’t already checked out Animal NY
    • Remember remember this day in November. Since it’s bonfire night, I’m linking to an appropriate ditty from Magic Markers. Catchy.

    contemporary art, film installation

    Jordan Baseman, A Cold Hand on a Cold Day (2013)

    October 30, 2013

    baseman

    It is all very well writing with a skull on your desk (I don’t). But you might still wonder how much thought the saints of old gave to the more practical aspects of death.

    Now, however, American artist Baseman brings you right into that seldom-explored margin between death and burial/cremation, via an interview with funeral director Cara Mair.

    Mair is a disillusioned embalmer who now runs a holistic service in Brighton. This means she and her team take a greener approach to the presentation and disposal of your loved one.

    As might be expected, she is quite at ease talking about decomposition, leakage, physical trauma and sealing eyes and mouths to suggest her own deceased subjects appear to be at peace.

    But one thing she cannot do is warm bodies up. Hence the shock many relatives feel when touch a lost family member and feel them as cold as the title of the piece suggests.

    So much for the soundtrack. The footage here, running over Mair’s narration, might best be described as a time lapse cloudscape with plenty of visual noise on the film itself.

    At times it looks to feature breaking waves. And both clouds and waves pass swiftly; their inexorable motion offers the chance to dream about death as abstraction.

    It glows yellow and ends with an abrupt cut at the end of the narration, at which point Mair states in a manner of fact way that death is a termination; there is no afterlife.

    The piece is site specific for deconsecrated fishing chapel Fabrica. And yet Mair says religion plays little or no part in her own life, but often plenty in the lives of people she deals with.

    You might want her to tell you the opposite, to proffer a ghost story or two, to explain why she sounds so upbeat. But no, she is a realist. Perhaps such a thing is what death should make us all.

    Jordan Baseman, A Cold Hand on a Cold Day, can be seen at Fabrica, Brighton, until 24 November 2013.

    cinema, contemporary art, performance, photography

    ASCO, Asco (1975)

    October 25, 2013
    © 1975 Harry Gamboa Jr
    © 1975 Harry Gamboa Jr

    Patti Smith, writing in her memoir Just Kids, says that by walking a city you can come to own the very streets. She and lover Robert Mapplethorpe attempted and achieved as much in New York City.

    But that was Manhattan and, to point out by way of a cliché, nobody sane walks anywhere in urban sprawl Los Angeles, home of East Coast art ensemble Asco.

    Here you see a daring alternative strategy for owning a boulevard. Put bodies on the line, spell out your collective identity, and shoot the entire scene with a cinematic gloss.

    Of all the photos shot by Asco in the 1970s, and 1975 is a peak of sorts, the one above is perhaps exhibits the most exemplary mix of horseplay and bad attitude.

    And in the same way we project ourselves into certain movies, an Asco photo can make you want to be there. Oh to be young, glamorous, and at large among the bright lights.

    But at the time of making, Harry Gamboa Jr., Patssi Valdez, Gronk and Wilie F. Herrón III and their associates were anything but superstars. In Hollywood, Chicano superstars did not exist.

    In response Asco made promotional stills for movies that did not exist. The photos, dubbed No Movies, press the same buttons as the real thing. This is conceptual art with magic dust.

    Yet the word spelled out above, Spanish for nausea and disgust, becomes a real spell. Here where they own the city, where they own the night, who can say what reconfigurations are taking place?

    We now have Chicano A-listers. Uma Thurman, Jessica Alba and Salma Hayek are all of Mexican descent according to IMDB. Say, they would really be great in an Asco No Movie.

    ASCO can be seen in Asco: No Movies at Nottingham Contemporary until January 5 2014.

    contemporary art, sculpture, war art

    Steve McQueen, Queen and Country (2003-08)

    October 21, 2013

    mcqueen

    In terms of medium, Steve McQueen is in unusual territory with his celebrated philatelical artwork Queen and Country. Just don’t expect to see any of this piece come through your letterbox.

    179 sheets of stamps now occupy a large filing cabinet at Imperial War Museum North. Visitors can pull out trays and encounter, one by one, British soldiers who departed this world in Iraq.

    The scale of the work is both intimate (stamp-sized) and endlessly reverberating (each stamp has been printed up as a sheet of around a hundred).

    The other head in each perforated frame is of course Elizabeth II, in regal profile. And by this juxtaposition you realise that McQueen has, for some, brought the war too close to home.

    A glance at recent themes used by the Royal Mail is edifying. In 2013 so far we have had Football Heroes, Classic Locomotives and Andy Murray Wimbledon Champion.

    We have also had a run of Great Britons, but none were actually killed on their way to assume this status. And surely, who the Royal Mail commemorate is a matter for public debate.

    Yet beyond debate is the national pride whipped up on Remembrance Day or, rather, Week. Unlike these stamps, the dread occasion appears to validate and glorify our various illegal wars.

    Given all the poppy wearing and flag waving, there is surely a double standard in the decision to exclude named and pictured servicemen and women from circulation in the public realm.

    Stamp issue may seem a marginal sphere of activity. But if nothing else, the images on our covers shape or at least reinforce our sense of national identity.

    If you don’t think this matters, consider the recent campaign to put Jane Austen on a £10 note and the subsequent vitriol of the backlash against instigator Caroline Criado-Perez.

    And take a moment to consider passport design. At the moment British subjects, when called upon to brandish their little red books, are treated to oak leaves, owls and freshwater fish.

    Another exhibit up North, the Jeremy Deller production at Manchester City Gallery, did leave me wondering why urban or industrial Britain finds so little representation on our passports.

    There are no doubt good reasons for all these decisions and who are we to doubt their wisdom . . . But stamps and passports are vital parts of our social fabric, in other words: a battlefield.

    Queen and Country can be seen in Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War at Imperial War Museum North until February 23 2014.

    contemporary art, sculpture, Uncategorized

    Alex Hoda, Schliere (Streak), 2012

    October 2, 2013

    alex hoda 2

    This sculpture makes a meal of a piece of gum. It may be marble, but it was once a remnant piece of a habit-forming chew. And now it is the size of a torso.

    Visitors may be struck at the muscularity, which marble will always suggest. There is a body trapped in here, perhaps a Michaelangelesque dying slave.

    These sinews may be rock hard. But you may still want to chew over the results of this fleshy piece of work, at the risk of breaking a tooth.

    The stone comes from the maestro’s onetime favourite quarry at Carrara in Tuscany. I was told it has been chiselled with high pressure water from a 3D map scaled to 0.1 of a micron.

    Were the artist to use said technology to render a figure from myth, it might be horribly ernest. Gum reassures us that he is insouciant enough to make contemporary art.

    But we can still admire the stone along with the concept. The veins and luminosity are just beautiful. You want to stroke it, but isn’t chewed gum as tactile as it is repellent.

    This piece has been splatted on the wall, as if the classical world never happened. Certainly, machine technologies have cut all the traditional craftsmanship out of the equation.

    Gum may seem too ephemeral for a lasting statement. But evidence suggests we have been chewing bark, etc, for 5,000 years: a pillar of civilisation. More ancient than the Ancient World.

    Schliere (Streak) can be seen in Alex Hoda: D-Construction at Edel Assanti, London, until 26 October 2013.

    contemporary art, painting

    Bosco Sodi, Untitled (2013)

    September 26, 2013

    bosco sodi

    Neo-expressionist painting, if that’s what this be, often has literal depth. Layers of paint come between viewer and canvas. And layers don’t get much thicker than those of this Mexican artist.

    When you square up to it, there is a material heaviness. And this translates (in our primitive minds) to a metaphorical heaviness: in other words we feel the pull.

    Drawn closer to the surface one can lose oneself in the cracks and crumbles as if every square inch was ripe with intention and hard won expression.

    But it is not known how much angst this work caused Sodi. None, it is always possible. It is possible he has hit upon a decent trick to provide that instant gravitas.

    Like many painters of a certain ilk, he is all about process: spreading on a trademark mix of pigment, sawdust, pulp, fibres and glue. He lets the cracks work themselves.

    Indeed Sodi has spoken of relinquishing control. With an element of chance in all his paintings, he works on the floor a la Pollock. Then he leaves it to dry for at least two months.

    Most results in this show include a certain furriness, a certain glitter, and a sense that you could pull the paint away from the wall in chunks. As itchy as a scab.

    So there may yet be an existential wound behind this work. But equally, there may just be a painter with a technical niche and a Taoist approach to finished product. I’m not sure which to prefer.

    Bosco Sodi: Graphein can be seen at PACE London until October 4 2013. See gallery website for more details.

    conceptual art, contemporary painting, fashion

    Hannah Knox, Buff (2013)

    September 22, 2013
    courtesy of the artist and Ceri Hand Gallery, Photographer Anna Arca
    courtesy of the artist and Ceri Hand Gallery, Photographer Anna Arca

    Painting is an empty pocket. The content it once contained, the paint itself, has in many cases gone. In all cases now, a stretched canvas is a blank canvas. Put in it what you will.

    So the unadorned white t-shirt you see here, the unifying image from a show which shares its name, is more than a sly joke. It is a comment on the nowness of its chosen medium.

    It was made in 2013, but it echoes the 1980s which in turn echoed the 1950s. As Knox has said, it could make you think of Marlon Brando. It could even make you think of the band Bros.

    Those of us on the wrong side of history, during that turbulent decade, may have shown a preference for a darker, or more fey, English look. But here is the triumph of a cotton icon.

    It is as large and wide as any buddha and all the more potent for its facelessness. Buff is a strong word for it, suggesting the ripped muscles we cannot see. The muscles of thought.

    Because this is a show fully engaged with the body and the world of fashion. No two works are much the same. And the artist has even named one after the season, Fall 13.

    Fashion is a threat to anyone with artistic leanings. It implies that any success is temporal. It implies that your audience has the most superficial of relationships with your work.

    But Knox is not afraid of catwalks and collections. She grew up in what you might call a fashion household. This could be her greatest strength, acceptance.

    So again the Buddha smiles. And given that Knox has spoken about her mother’s death in relation to her show, is Buff not also a ghost of sorts? And if it be a ghost, might it not be the zeitgeist itself?

    If so, it is still waiting for your input. You might not find a better receptacle for your own ideas about art than Buff in the show BUFF at Ceri Hand Gallery. At least not this season.

    Hannah Knox: BUFF can be seen at Ceri Hand Gallery, London, until October 26 2013. See gallery website for more details.

    animation, contemporary art, Japan

    David Blandy, Anjin 1600: Edo Wonderpark (2013)

    September 13, 2013

    edo wonderpark

    Japan has multiple ways to say “I”. Artist and multiple-self David Blandy tells us this half way through his new film Anjin 1600: Edo Wonderpark, a film itself part autobiography.

    The Japanses have a dynamic way of speaking in first person, which relates to the present company; and what artist keeps such interesting company as gamer and hip hop geek Blandy?

    But despite immersion in these cult-like worlds, an artist will always report back to an art audience, as embedded reporter from a land some would rather ignore.

    Perhaps Edo Wonderpark is the first time that hat tips like Ulysses 31 and MCM Expo have made complete sense. The artist has long demanded you give them some attention.

    And so we come to his latest assimilation: the “I” of 16th century explorer William Adams. Yes, this figure was a well paid European samurai. But no, he was always an outsider.

    (Some modern comparison with Japanese footballers who sign up for the PL. It is not clear what the gaffer has in store for them. Perhaps the marketing departments know.)

    It has been said that artists must be outsiders. But in a networked society with mass media and hives of trade and blockbuster exhibitions, this tradition maybe on the wane.

    Blandy has found an imaginary land, somewhere that, on account of his height, his looks, his tongue, he cannot fit in. His art, in that sense, is really outsider.

    Another strong point made by the film in question is the discovery, “300 years after the Renaissance”, of Japanese prints. Blandy is one who credits them with the birth of modern art.

    If that be true then our ignorance about Japan is an ignorance about our own visual culture. Seen thus, the confessional script of Edo Wonderpark says is of urgent importance.

    The least that might be said is that all artists need a Japan of the imagination, an uncanny home from home. “A cypher, a receptacle”, says Blandy, who may yet be as captive there as Adams.

    Anjin 1600: Edo Wonderpark can be seen at Rose Lipman Building, 43 De Beauvoir Road, N1, until October 26. See Create London website for more details.

    Read my 2010 interview with David Blandy here and/or a post about an early video work here.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 02/09/13

    September 2, 2013

    Greetings cybernauts:

    • Interview of the week, possibly the month, the Guardian speak with ‘wrecker of civilisation’ Genesis P. Orridge
    • Meanwhile the Telegraph keeps it light with the trailer to a new feature about the most famous cat on the webz
    • These are a pure joy. Music videos chosen by Prosthetic Knowledge. Just why is the forefront of tech so uncanny and funny?
    • PhD funding shocker. Now two post grads have put their heads together to beat Facebook addiction.
    • Mostafa Heddaya (Hyperallergic) wonders what it meant to be alternative at the Alternative Guide to the Universe at the Hayward in London
    • Here’s a journey I have made thousands of times but never with such an ace vantage point and satisfying sense of historical continuity. London to Brighton
    • The Onion are first with the story behind the story. CNN explain why they went big on that Miley Cyrus performance
    • Just possibly the best infographic ever, director Alfred Hitchcock’s myriad obsessions: falls, journeys, deaths, blondes, etc
    • The Guardian carries a video of a day in the life of the world’s most expensive footballer. There is something a bit humdrum about the whole thing
    • Finally, poet Paul Muldoon eulogises poet Seamus Heaney in the New Yorker. Saddening.

    conceptual art, contemporary art, science art, space travel

    Katie Paterson, Second Moon (2013-14)

    August 30, 2013

    paterson

    The moon is to be howled at. When it comes to our planet’s only satellite, we have been-there-done-that. If there was a concession selling t-shirts, we missed it.

    Our arrival, let’s face it, was a disappointment. We struck neither oil nor gold. Bored astronauts batted around golf balls and American footballs in an inspirational void.

    We dreamt about her for millennia and she turned out to be a cold, dead rock. Well, so be it. Now, however, artist Katie Paterson has got the revenge we all wanted.

    The Berlin artist has got a fragment of said rock and is sending our moon on an accelerated orbit of shame. In one year it will travel freight-class around the earth 30 times.

    Now that’s a moon we can get behind. In a crate marked fragile this lunar specimen will have to deal with customs, baggage handlers, hold ups and the inevitable potential of getting lost.

    Twice as fast as the cheese-that-never-was, Second Moon will better reflect the pace of 21st century life. Especially, if you are following its progress on one of the accompanying apps.

    As you can see from the accompanying press shot, anyone could get a (literal) handle on this project. And that is something we have consistently failed to do with the ‘real’ thing up there.

    Sure, we have mapped it. We have painted it. We have taken stunning photos. But we have failed to exploit it, in the manner which offers daily proof to us that we exist here on earth.

    But who knows? Perhaps this durational, labour-intensive and futile project may one day help us to finally understand the moon. As yet, she remains a cipher at the heart of a logistical nightmare.

    ‘Second Moon’ will launch from the British Science Festival in Newcastle upon Tyne on 8th September. For more on this artist, see her website.