Sundance Channel

It’s you, perfected!

Em and Lo — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:00:44 +0000

There are many reasons not to read women's magazines. One of the biggies? All the retouched photos. The genetic mutants we call models and celebrities can beat the shit out your average Jane's self image, but Photoshop can chop it up with chainsaw. This before and after cover of Red Book from a few years ago thanks to Jezebel.com says it all. In fact, Jezebel has made one of their crusades exposing the evils of Photoshop (here's their most recent "unveiling"). One of the funniest commentaries on how fucked up Photoshop is when it comes to setting impossible beauty standards is this recent parody of a beauty product commercial by Jesse Rosten on Vimeo: "Just one application of Fotoshop can give you results so dramatic, they're almost unreal...istic."

Creating spaces: Rolex mentor and protege Anish Kapoor & Nicholas Hlobo

Sundance Channel — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:00:30 +0000

Both Anish Kapoor and his Rolex Arts Initiative protégé Nicholas Hlobo had big years in the art world. Both mounted large-scale, interactive sculptures at the Venice Biennale in addition to solo exhibitions around the world. But the two artists still found time to meet at Kapoor’s London studio to develop the trajectory of Hlobo’s work.

Kaleidoscopic Manhattan

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:00:56 +0000

I'm really digging the new video kaleidoscopic works from artist Anne Morgan Spalter. She captures video footage of urban landscapes such as Rockefeller Center or Fifth Avenue in New York City and then digitally transforms them using a decidedly 19th century concept. The resulting view is a constantly shifting but rigidly geometric patterned series of images as you can observe in the video above (my fave!), which I think is an interesting juxtaposition with the inherent symmetry of Manhattan's streets. If you are around the Big Apple you should check out her debut NYC show at the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery.

Art Buzz: Freaky rhyming couplets & a farewell to the New Museum slide

Blair Pfander — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:00:44 +0000

The Syphilis of Sisyphus: Now on view at Fredericks & Freiser gallery, Mary Reid Kelly's newest video installation, "The Syphilis of Sisyphus," portrays the artist (with ping pong ball eyes) as a pregnant French bohemian reciting twisted rhyming couplets. Her keenest words of wisdom: “My blistering wit and its deep lacerations are signs of advanced forms of Syphillization."

Dali illustrates “Alice in Wonderland”

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:45:30 +0000

A couple decades after the initial 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, my favorite mustachioed, anteater-walking surrealist, Salvador Dalí, took a crack at illustrating the 1969 Random House edition with an image for each of the twelve chapters. Dali is always so predictable and yet paradoxically so unpredictable. Children be damned, you know he's going to create something that can only be the product of hallucinogenic drugs (or so I've heard)...

Fucking James Franco

Em and Lo — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:00:59 +0000

For those who don't follow our Monday Kickstarter best-of's, Kickstarter.com is a funding platform for music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative projects. If a project doesn't reach its stated funding goal before time runs out, no money changes hands. One art project that just met its $2,000 goal before its closing date this coming Saturday, thanks to over 100 backers, is "Fucking James Franco," a collection of erotic fantasies about the art world's golden boy (read: annoying dude) "that the world desperately needs," produced by Portland-based Social Malpractice Publishing and Container Corps Art Press.

Art Buzz: Buy art on your iPhone & real bullet holes from Iraq

Blair Pfander — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:06:42 +0000

Geert Goiris: For his latest photo series, "Resonance," Belgium-born photographer Geert Goiris offers up seemingly benign snapshots which, upon closer inspection, reveal uncanny, or off-putting elements. Most peculiar of all is an image of plastic office chairs arranged AA-style around an unremarkable wood table (which, you soon realize, has no legs)...

Opening night of Diego Rivera at MoMA

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:17:44 +0000

I felt lucky to attend the opening night party for the Diego Rivera exhibition "Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art" last Tuesday. The (always welcomed) open bar aside, I was excited to get a preview of some of the works of an icon like Rivera, an artist for whom I also have a sort of nostalgic attachment; his relationship with Frida Kahlo was the focus of one of my earliest group projects as a freshman at Brown. In tribute to their mercurial relationship, I tried to convince my friend to show up with a unibrow. Alas, she refused...

Art Buzz: Getty’s massive LA art project & Tokyo’s squished subway riders

Blair Pfander — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:43:43 +0000

Pacific Standard Time: "Pacific Standard Time," the Getty-funded series of exhibitions throughout LA county, draws together tons of museums, private galleries, homes and commercial spaces in a crazy, semi-random celebration of creativity. There's literally no way you'll get to all of the featured exhibits, but Angelenos should try and swing through a handful this week...

The art of the baseball bat

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:30:39 +0000

Vincent Kohler interprets the art of baseball literally with his series of 30 unique and intricately carved baseball bats...

All the crazy things you can do Carsten Höller’s New Museum “Experience”

Blair Pfander — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:38:08 +0000

If you're in the NYC area and want to check out the Carsten Höller exhibit at the New Museum this weekend, here's a word of advice: You should walk outside, hail a cab and get in line, because otherwise you won't be in the building before Monday morning. I'm only slightly exaggerating, but after two attempts at "beating the crowd," I found myself shivering in the cold on both occasions, defeated by 2 hour + wait times. So no, I haven't yet had the pleasure of riding Höller's 2-story slide (which required serious renovations to the SANAA-designed structure to install), but as soon as I do, I'll amend this post with a description of exactly how afraid I was. In the meantime, here are a few of the "sensory experiences" we can get excited about together:

“52 bunches of flowers I bought myself”

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:15:07 +0000

Julia Schauenburg's photo series "52 bunches of flowers I bought myself" is one of the saddest art projects I've ever seen. This German-born, Australian-based photographer bought flowers for herself each week for an entire year and photographed them as they wilted and died. This project reminds me of something Liz Lemon might do if she was an artist instead of a lead writer for a fictional TV show. You can purchase these photos as a limited edition postcard set if you feel like sending your depressing thoughts around or, as an antidote, I recommend this photograph of a flower that might be the most joyous ever.

Tens of thousands donate to Ai Weiwei’s tax bill

Matthew Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:00:20 +0000

It's been a tumultuous year for one of our favorite artists, Ai Weiwei who, after his 81 day long detention, was slammed with a punitive $2.4 million tax bill from the Chinese government. In a testament to his wide appeal and support, The New York Times reported that "thousands of people have responded by contributing money in a gesture that is at once benevolent and subversive" and "more than 20,000 people have together contributed at least $840,000." This is unsurprising to any student of history or political movements...

Art Buzz: Hear 35,000 heartbeats, see painted people & a look back at 1980′s pomo

Blair Pfander — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:00:56 +0000

Heartbeat Island: French artist, Christian Boltankski, has recorded the heartbeats of over 35,000 people and stored them on a tiny Japanese island for his project, "Les Archives du Coeur." His touring booth is slated to come through Finland in 2012, so you romantic types should probably start booking tickets for Valentine's Day...

Remember the (crocheted) Alamo

Matthew Rodriguez — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:31:10 +0000

Previously spotted covering the Wall Street Bull, Olek created buzz once again by wrapping another iconic New York City sculpture, Tony Rosenthal's Astor Place Cube with her trademark pink and purple camouflage yarn, as seen in the picture above. Here's a video of her in action installing this piece over the cube, or the "Alamo" as it's officially named. If you walk around New York City long enough you'll eventually stumble upon her smaller, guerrilla pieces like...

Music for my funeral

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:00:09 +0000

David Kraftsow, an artist and programmer based in Brooklyn, has made waves on the Internet for his various projects that blur the line between culture jamming and art on the web, most notably his YooouuuTuuube.com (rearranges any YouTube video into a sequential series of images) and First Person Tetris (playable version where instead of moving and rotating the blocks, you rotate the entire screen) earned him quite a bit of buzz even with the mainstream press...

Full scale paper Mustang

Matthew Rodriguez — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:27:19 +0000

Photo by Laura DeSantis-Olsson

Hosfelt Gallery in New York recently hosted Jonathan Brand's exhibition "One Piece at a Time." The undeniable star of the show was the Brooklyn-based artist's full scale replica of a 1969 Ford Mustang constructed entirely from paper. As the exhibit's title suggests (it was inspired by the Johnny Cash song of the same name), Brand recreated everything about the iconic American muscle car by hand, "right down to the nuts and bolts, displaying it as the individual collected parts, rather than as a single object." The papercraft nature gives the installation an almost Americana-kitsch quality that appeals broadly, which is fitting, considering the role of the Ford Mustang in the construction of the modern American myth of muscle and might. However this was also a deeply personal project...

Wim Delvoye’s X-rated, X-rayed stained glass

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:45:52 +0000

Artist Wim Delvoye plays the trompe l’oeil card with visuals that prudes might find perverse, like his scatological ceramic tiles or pigs tattooed with the Louis Vuitton logo. The pigs earned him quite a buzz online along with the ire of animal rights activists earlier this year. And the blogosphere is buzzing once again over one of his installations in a Gothic-inspired building. What, at first glance, appears to be the kind of kaleidoscopic stained glass found in old towering cathedrals throughout Europe are actually anatomical X-rays. And Delvoye really puts the "X" in X-ray - many of these macabre designs are pretty racy...

12,235 tin soldiers

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:07:33 +0000

On display at this year's Istanbul Art Biennale 2011, an event on par with Venice and São Paulo (or so says The Guardian - someone needs to send me there so I can judge for myself!), is this sensational, politically-charged installation by Kuwaiti artist, Ala Younis. Younis neatly arranged a total of 12,235 toy tin soldiers hand-painted in the military uniforms of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey...

The uncanny world of Philipp Igumnov

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:15:03 +0000

I want to highlight Russian artist Philipp Igumnov and his intriguing collection of collages. His dream-like landscapes are oddly familiar; He takes an image as common as a family posing in a field and imbues it with a certain uncanny quality. My favorite is the one pictured above of a child leaping out of the back of a C-130 transport plane. It captures what it feels like to be a child joyously jumping into a pool, but Igumnov ups the stakes by launching the kid out the back of a plane.

The Virginity Project: a blog, a book, a play

Em and Lo — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:00:06 +0000

We first heard from Kate Monro a few years ago from across the pond when her Virginity Project was just a fledgeling little baby blog. Today, that blog, which collects and publishes first time tales of all sorts from all over the world, is shortlisted for the UK Cosmoplitan Blog Awards 2011. She's also got a book out now based on the blog, "First Times: True Tales of Virginity Lost and Found," and this month her blog/book is being turned into a play at the...

Art Buzz: Warhol gets his own app and Tom Sachs goes to Mars

Blair Pfander — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:15:35 +0000

No time to scan all the blogs in your Google Reader? Never fear! We’ve rounded up the five art world happenings that have bloggers and gallery-goers buzzing this week. Tintype Photography: San Francisco photographer Michael Shindler is reviving the lost art of tin-type photography with his new portrait studio, Photobooth. Charging just $50-$80 a pop, subjects have to sit perfectly still while...

Men-ups!

Em and Lo — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:05:58 +0000

We once did a photo shoot for The Sun, the super trashy but widely popular UK newspaper (you know, the one with the "Page 3 girl"). We were promoting the British edition of our book, The Big Bang. We were young and naive, the photographer was old and pushy, and as he gradually encouraged us to get into sillier and sillier poses, our publicist was there pressing us on. We felt like Coco in the original "Fame." Don't get us wrong: we were dressed. But at one point we reluctantly ended up on a bed with one of us holding the other's bare leg straight up in the air like a lightening rod. It was not what we'd consider sexy, feminine, or us. Fortunately, our inner horror must have radiated out of every pore, because they ultimately ran the article without the pics. (There was a God that day.)

Reinterpreting of the $100 bill

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:11:07 +0000

I'm really digging Make Your Franklin, an online community art project featuring a variety of creative reinterpretations of the $100 dollar bill, which the website's French creators call "a symbol of modern society." Many of the designs are overtly, and understandably political, reflecting the current state of affairs and the world's complex and dysfunctional relationship with the United States. Some took their cues from pop culture icons while others are just straight up hilarious and, at times, even sublime.

Illustrated missed connections

Matthew Rodriguez — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:30:26 +0000

Since 2009, artist Sophie Blackall has been illustrating very artful and charming depictions of submissions on Missed Connections, one of my favorite time-wasting features of Craigslist. If you aren't familiar with this subsite because you've been quarantined from the Internet in the past decade, it's basically a message board for the hopeless romantic-optimists who were too shy to ask out a person when they initially saw them. Or as Sophie poetically describes: "Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I’m trying to pin a few of them down." This is nicer than what I like to tell them, "You'll all be FOREVER ALONE!" Kidding.

Art Buzz: Cow tongue sculptures and an alien obelisk in the Tuileries gardens

Blair Pfander — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:00:23 +0000

No time to scan all the blogs in your Google Reader? Never fear! We've rounded up the four art world happenings that have bloggers and gallery-goers buzzing this week. Adrián Villar Rojas 300-foot Alien Obelisk Buzz has been building around 31-year- old Argentinean sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas ever since he was chosen to represent his country at this year's Venice Biennale...

Shredded money, money, money

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:24:58 +0000

"Shredded Money" is an older piece by Christodoulos Panayiotou, but I think it's relevant to the current times with the controversy over the Eurozone bailout fund and related financial crisis plaguing Europe. There's more than meets the eye to this dune-shaped installation which stands 5 meters high and 7 meters wide. It's a pile of shredded Cypriot pounds from the Central Bank of Cyprus that were of no value after the country entered the Eurozone by adopting the transnational Euro currency on January 1, 2008.

Berliner Liste: 126 galleries in an old power plant

Blair Pfander — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:45:49 +0000

Continuing their recent tradition of up-cycling abandoned nuclear centers, Berlin hosted a three-day art fair, dubbed Berliner Liste, in a former power plant with works from 126 galleries in 26 different countries. For those of you who didn't see my review of Wunderland Kalkar, the amusement park operating inside a giant nuclear reactor, Germany announced it will close all of its nuclear facilities by 2022, many of them repurposed as public centers. So, this is kind of their thing.

Abramovich’s art island to include outdoor hot tub

Blair Pfander — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:01:52 +0000

Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian businessman who owns (among lots of other things) the Chelsea Football Club, recently purchased an island off the coast of St.Petersburg - like ya do when you're the 11th richest man in the world. Last winter, Ambramovich announced he would dedicate $400 million to converting the island - previously used as a military base - into an enormous art center, complete with offices, hotels, restaurants and boutiques along with a new museum. A "Starchitect" search soon followed, with submissions from top architects all over the world. Just last month, New York-based firm, WORKac, was given the nod - probably because theirs was the only design to include a giant jacuzzi in the courtyard.

Dead Drop your files into random USB flash drives

Blair Pfander — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:47:56 +0000

Not sure if you've heard this around the water cooler, but apparently we're living smack in the middle of the Free Information Age, which means we have unprecedented access to (random, often incorrect) knowledge and ideas more than any other generation. Go us! To give the whole "free knowledge" concept a more literal twist, Berlin-based media artist, Aram Bartholl, launched his latest project, "Dead Drops," by mounting USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs. The idea is that folks can come plug-in and download goofy, anonymous files, or share a few of their own.

Olaf Brzeski’s solid plume of smoke

Blair Pfander — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:49:06 +0000

Poland got a pretty bunk deal as far as the 20th century is concerned: reconstituted as an official country only after the First World War, citizens suffered through Nazi invasions before being jammed behind the Iron Curtain for decades. This summer, an exhibit at Brussels' Palas des Beaux-Arts showcased work exclusively by Polish artists who grew up under Communism, but only began working after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Entitled "The Power of Fantasy: Modern and Contemporary art from Poland," the exhibit tried to engage with Poland's painful history in a new way.

The world of David Byrne, squished beneath the Highline

Blair Pfander — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:21:47 +0000

Yesterday afternoon I went to check out David Byrne's latest installation, "Tight Spot," at the Pace Gallery's new lot beneath the Highline. Having seen preview photos of Byne's "squished" planet Earth floating around the Internet, I assumed I'd be able to wander through Chelsea guided by the sight of a massive blue orb that would be my final destination. Alas, the work is not so immediately apparent, tucked away in a relatively small space that's invisible to surrounding streets, and so I wandered aimlessly for twenty minutes. The take away: be ye not so stupid.

A thousand naked people floating in the Dead Sea

Blair Pfander — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:20:10 +0000

Many things in life are best enjoyed in small doses: a glass of red wine at dinner, or a twenty-minute power nap. When it comes to full-frontal nudity, however, artist Spencer Tunick is guided by a "more is more" philosophy. Honestly, who cares about one clammy pale butt when you could feast your eyes on thousands? So last week, Tunick convinced over a thousand people to strip down and float buck-nakey in the Dead Sea, creating one of the most bizarre, un-Photoshopped images I've encountered in awhile. Apparently, the project was meant to draw attention to Israel's efforts to have the salt-saturated sea - which geologists predict will dry up by 2050 - recognized as a natural wonder of the world.

Marina Abramovic: the video game experience

Matthew Rodriguez — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:47:57 +0000

In the overlapping center of a Venn diagram between the art and video game world is this 8-bit side-scrolling online game adaptation developed by Pippin Barr of Marina Abramović's live installation, "The Artist Is Present," which was presented earlier this year at MoMA. In one of the more buzzed about art exhibits this year, Abramović sat silent and still in the atrium of the MoMA, where visitors lined up for the opportunity to sit across from her, thus "becoming participants in the artwork."

Deck of cards honoring NYC creative royalty

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:45:08 +0000

Class up your next poker game and pay homage to some of the artists, writers, thinkers and provocateurs who injected New York City's DNA, either directly or indirectly with their creative genius with these casino quality playing cards from Shipley & Halmos. Who said gambling can't also be both inspiring and educational?

Run for your life – it’s the shredded newspaper man!

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:36:02 +0000

I really love this new costume/sculpture "We are all here to do what we are all here to do," by Fabio Lattanzi Antinori and Alicja Pytlewska. Resembling something that emerged from the imaginations of Maurice Sendak and Guillermo del Toro, it was constructed using "shredded newspapers found around East London" and is perhaps an unsubtle visual metaphor for the declining state of the traditional print news industry and the ongoing Murdoch/News International phone hacking scandal.

Political rock-paper-scissors

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:29:08 +0000

Our design crush Christoph Niemann's latest illustration for his Abstract Sunday art column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine takes the hand gesture game of "rock, paper, scissors" and updates it for the modern political era. If kids can use this classic game to settle disputes such as who gets the last piece of pie (I will fight you to the death if it's strawberry rhubarb) or as a tie breaker in the game of shotgun aka who-gets-the-front-seat, then perhaps it can work for the gridlocked politicians in Washington by following some of these new additional gestures invented by Niemann. I feel like President Obama has been using a lot of "pretty please with a cherry on top." Not permitted: the middle finger.

A glowing army in Hamburg, Germany

Blair Pfander — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:26:30 +0000

In the wake of the Japan's tsunami and subsequent nuclear meltdown disasters, people were extra skittish about the threat of radioactive poisoning (especially Lindsay Lohan, who promptly evacuated herself from Los Angeles even though her hair already looks like a victim of toxic fallout). To poke fun at our paranoia, art collective Luzinterruptus installed 100 "radioactive" figures in a field outside Hamburg's Dockville Festival. The effect is surprisingly eerie, each figure outfitted in protective white clothing and lit from within. With their heads pointed at the ground, it appears to be a giant alien army advancing from the forest.

Museum of Broken Relationships

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:58:49 +0000

Croatian artists Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić developed "Museum of Broken Relationship s," a touring exhibition of artifacts from past relationships. It emerged out of their own relationship of four years, after which the break-up inspired this museum, as Vištica explains in an interview with NPR. "When we were deciding to split up, every time people do that it's connected with something ugly, something awkward, so we didn't like that way of dealing with our own past, which was once really beautiful. We got this idea, maybe it would be a great idea to have a museum where you could store your emotional heritage."

Jasmin Schuller’s “Sweet Meat”

Matthew Rodriguez — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:30:10 +0000

Jasmin Schuller's "Sweet Meat" series combines three things I love dearly in life: 1) Dessert, which is my favorite course of any meal. 2) Fulfilling my carnivorous diet of meat. 3) The deceptive humor in trompe l'oeil art, which the New York Times once summarized as such: "There is no art more elementary (or more seductive) than trompe l'oeil. Truly a people's art, it requires skill to produce, but no conditioning to appreciate and, as a branch of pie-in-the-face humor, it must be one of civilization's oldest jokes." In this case, Schuller tells a hilarious joke. She uses raw meat to create shockingly realistic and familiar-looking desserts like sundaes, pies, popsicles and delicate pastries. The reaction to the candy bright photos of these treats becomes unsettling revulsion once the viewer recognizes that there is more to these desserts than meats (pun always intended!) the eye.

Automotive cross-stitch embroidery

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:46:06 +0000

Lithuanian artist Severija Incirauskaite-Kriauneviciene incorporates delicate, cross-stitched floral patterns into common household objects like plates, lamps and (unexpectedly) car doors, which are particularly impressive. The effect is especially awe-mazing in the close-up photos.

Yogi Proctor’s gold painted Canon copy machine

Matthew Rodriguez — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:28:03 +0000

I freaking love this piece: a gold painted and fully operational office copy machine and printer by Yogi Proctor, titled "Canon 2011." I love the visual impact of a common or utilitarian object covered with the completely unnecessary self-indulgent luxury of, in this instance, gold.

Passport photos and reality

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:20:09 +0000

"Passport and Reality" is a photography project by Suren Manvelyan and Biayna Mahari "about how different a person can look in real life and his own passport photo." The contrast is made all the more striking when you consider that passports often don't expire for years. Case in point: I don't think the guy pictured above grew into his features too early (pun totally intended). It's probably because most of the subjects are smiling in their non-passport photo, but reality seems so much more pleasant. I finally had to renew my passport last year and gladly forked over the money to the US government because it meant I could finally update the photo of me with the buzzed look I thought was a really swell idea back in college.

Application for art reality TV show

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:00:49 +0000

For Frieze Magazine, Jen Dalton created this pitch perfect application (Click here to see the enlargement) for artists interested in being cast for an imagined art-focused reality TV show titled "The Biggest Ego." In defense of the artists I'm friends and acquaintances with, not a single one fits the narcissist, pedantic stereotype that Jen humorously suggests in the application's questions. However, this might just mean I actually don't know enough artists. It does recall the art-focused reality show on Bravo called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, where artists competed for a $100,000 prize and an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. The show was on my pop-radar at the time, but alas did not make my to-do list. However, I did read this essay by Jerry Saltz, one of the show's judges, that was published in New York Magazine a month after the show's finale. Saltz writes:

The hidden skeletal frames of common objects

Matthew Rodriguez — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:04:01 +0000

This Canadian artist carves amazingly detailed skeletal designs into everyday objects, including the axe shown above as well as wooden picture frames, tables, bed posts, and even stacks of newspapers. Considering his subject matter, the artist, Maskull Lasserre, is aptly named. Speaking of appropriate names (slight tangent alert!), it reminds me of this lawyer's name which I blogged about a few years ago. Anyhow, Lasserre's sculptures look like something from the imagination of a Guillermo del Toro film, and I find their effect rather uncanny and eerie, especially the way the bones are partly revealed. As cool as the artist's carved coat hangers look, I think it would freak out my special lady guests if I was to have these hangers hanging in the closet of my bedroom (or as I now call it after The Bachelor/Bachelorette series on ABC, the "Fantasy Suite").

Poetry bombing

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:50:35 +0000

For O, Miami, a poetry festival held in April, Agustina Woodgate visited various thrift stores and stitched small labels with various verses of poems printed on them, such as this one by Li Po: "Life is a huge dream why work so hard?" And that is your deep thought for the upcoming weekend.

DC Comics introduces gay characters

Em and Lo — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:00:44 +0000

We're not comics fans, but even we know DC Comics. So now that they're introducing a bunch of gay characters this fall, it'll be nice for us to finally have a serious counterpoint to SNL's Ambiguously Gay Duo. According to The Advocate:

DC Comics grabbed headlines last June when the company announced its entire line of comic books would be overhauled with 52 all-new #1 issues in September. Not only would iconic characters such as Superman and Wonder Woman restart with a fresh number, but costumes and origins for the entire universe of characters would be updated as well.

Abstract sandwich paintings

Matthew Rodriguez — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:00:45 +0000

I’m liking artist Dan Kenneally’s “Lunchbox” series of acrylic paintings, which are “light-hearted, abstract sandwich paintings that use a single colored stripe to represent each ingredient.” It’s a pretty extensive collection that covers a wide variety of sandwiches for all different meal times. [Via]

A spooky story told using CAPTCHA words

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:00:42 +0000

Captcha from Gabrielle de Vietri on Vimeo. Gabrielle de Vietri narrates this haunting story using the nonsensical words found in CAPTCHA, the authentication system in place on many websites to try to weed out spam bots from real people. (Or to make a cinematic analogy, a text version of the Voight-Kampff test administered in the [...]

Why did Warhol paint Campbell soup cans?

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:25:19 +0000

Christopher Knight of The Los Angeles Times wrote this interesting exploration into what compelled Andy Warhol to paint Campbell soup cans, which “was first displayed publicly at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in July 1962,” as opposed to painting countless other canned goods that reflected the mass consumer US culture. When asked Warhol’s “canned” [...]