5 matchs for paul+laffoley:
Later this month at the Kent Gallery:
Paul LAFFOLEY
UN APERITIF DE L’ABSINTHE
(a brief display of new work)
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, January 22 thru January 26
In tandem with the Outsider Art Fair at the Puck Building, one block from the gallery.
Exhibition hours 10 to 6 daily FREE.
Evening Lecture Admission $10.
plus
A lecture on Various Themes
(accompanied by Paintings, Drawings, Slides, Readings and Video Verite)
PART I: Saturday Evening, January 24 from 7 to 9 p.m.
PART II: Sunday Evening, January 25 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Topics
Dimensionality, with a reading of Robert A. Heinlein’s (1907-1988) story “…and he built a crooked house” (1940) The story of a California architect that builds a Tesseracht House (a fourth dimensional (house).
The Principles of Geezer Art
The Earth-Moon Link up leading to physically alive architecture with video
The origin of my family name with slides
The current information on Time Travel
The History of Le Theâtre du Grand Guigol
The Zeppekolin or where I should be living right now
A working model of The Anthe Hieronymusbox Two. The three-dimensional version, combined with some palm reading, tarot reading for healing
The story of when Andy Warhol asked me to do some set up material and pictures for a Project on Hart Crane (1899-1932) and Brooklyn Bridge.
and other subjects to be announced
Dave has been loaning us DVDs from his rather extensive collection. Last night we watched The Day The Earth Stood Still. I was not expecting too much from this 1951 sci-fi picture, but I remember Paul Laffoley mentioning that this movie had a huge influence on him as a kid. Especially the spaceship whose shape holds some sort of golden mean beauty to those with mathematical eyes. So I figured what the heck. And it turned out to be a great film. It's dated, sure, except not so much as you'd think. Very interesting.
Also we've seen a lot of crap. Not from Dave of course, but from the little video store across the street. One exception to those misfires was Secretary. Fun movie.
Not sure why I'm not putting this on the movie page.
Interesting article in the March/April 2002 issue of Juxtapoz magazine by painter/visionary Paul Laffoley titled "Fables of the Reconstruction: Gaudi's NYC vision." In it he presents his latest painting which is itself a sort of proposal to erect the Gaudi designed Grand Hotel on the site of the former World Trade Center. Laffoley explains:
In 1908 the great Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudí was retained to design a grand hotel for New York City. The location chosen was the site upon which the twin-towered World Trade Center would eventually be built between 1962 and 1974....Included with the fascinating back story of the unrealized Grand Hotel is a reproduction of a new painting by Laffoley titled Gaudeamus Igitur. It deals with both the Grand Hotel, and the World Trade Center disaster. Laffoley seems to take the destruction of the towers as the end of post modernism. From text in the painting:
According to the architectural critic Charles A. Jencks, the heroic first phase of modernism died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 5:32 P.M. central daylight time when Minoru Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe public housing project was demolished for its negative social impact. In a final paroxysm of irony postmodernism ended with the destruciton of an other building by Minoru Yamasaki - The World Trade Center in New York City, 09/11/2001 at 8:45 - 9:03 am edst.Apparently Laffoley thinks that Gaudi's Grand Hotel should be erected on the spot and that this will signal the dawn of the next period which he calls the bauharoque:
The Bauharoque is the third phase of modernism, sometimes called post-post-modernism, trans-modernism, or neo-modernism - the word means the utopian impulse of the bauhaus is united with the theatricality of the baroque. This period in history transcends science-fiction... and all technology will be actual living structures.Gaudi, in Laffoley's view, "is the perfect precursor of the bauharoque with his gothic bio-morphic metaphor of architecture." See here for some examples.
Strange stuff, for sure. I find him incredibly interesting, if not entriely convincing. Or even understandable. Here are some photos I took last year at a show at the Kent Gallery which will give you an idea of his style. Google, of course, points to a lot more information on this interesting man.
I recently loaned a Paul Laffoley book to a friend, and this has apparently turned out to be quite a big deal. Her enthusiasm has caused me to take another look, and while this probably comes as no surprise, I am way into this guy. Anyway, I dug back through my amazingly unlabeled video tape archive, and eventually found the tape I shot of his speech at the disnifo.con conference (last fall?) He is completely over the top, and it's funny to hear myself laughing nervously at some of his more unbelievable claims, but I'm very impressed that he appears to actually be trying to say something. As soon as I get my video set up back on line I'll make a little mpeg of this talk (or at least an mp3, it's pretty long.)
It didn't reduce very well, but today's picture is a piece by Paul Laffoley. A bigger version of this picture is here (112kb) I first heard about him at the disinfo conference a few months ago. In my opinion, the most interesting speaker at that strange event. Anyway, I bought a book of his work at that time, and then MB gave me an original for my birthday. I'll try to get a picture of that up. Here's some more info about him. And here's a reproduction of his piece "Geochronmechane: The Time Machine from the Earth." Yes, he has actually designed a time machine, and I don't doubt that it will work. Unfortunately, to test his idea, we'd have to put this huge machine into orbit, and then drill a hole all the way through the earth. I'll guess there will be a little delay before the jury comes back in on that one.