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Two good shows glimpsed at the Chelsea Concrete Outlet Mall yesterday: Tony Feher at D'Amelio Terras and Tal R at LFL. One is sculpture, the other painting; both are relatively unmediated, primal, happy work. But here, let's let the NY Times' Ken Johnson deaden Feher's show for us:
Tony Feher makes wryly poetic and visually enchanting sculptures from the least promising of materials. His palette includes plastic and glass bottles and bottle caps, foam packing material, bent wire, fruit baskets, soda stacking crates, Windex and other colored liquids, marbles, colored string, crushed aluminum foil and stones. What he does with these and other materials requires no manual skill. He puts disparate things together or performs simple operations that produce something surprisingly more than the sum of its mundane parts.To put it a bit more casually, Feher has a super-light touch and an eye for putting together cast-off, post-consumer items so that they "pop."1 This show is less precious and more humorous than others I've seen by him. As for Tal R's work, the "mundane parts" are his influences, which are all right up front: Emil Nolde, Matisse cutouts, Art Brut. But there's something fairly "Chelsea Hotel ca. 1979" (i.e., punk) in the slashing, childlike way the paint is applied. Not visible in the jpegs is all the collaging with fabric, sticky-notes, magazine cutouts, etc. This is the type of work Donald Baechler might have done 20 years ago if he didn't have so much finesse. Here's an image:
1. I shouldn't pick on Johnson; his heart seems to be in the right place and he gave me a good review once. It's just that too often you feel in his prose the crushing weight of all the shows he has to write up. I couldn't handle that pace, even if I did want to give up my creative career to be a full-time critic, which I don't.
Outside the New York metro area people think ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani is some kind of 9/11 hero because he looked better on TV than George Bush did, but take it from someone who lives here: he's a prick. Apparently the 9/11 commission asked him a bunch of softball questions about his performance that day, and were surprised when New Yorkers started screaming from the galleries. Jimmy Breslin best expresses the anger many people here feel about this (now very rich) man's unjustified reputation:
Giuliani wanted a high security bunker, placed 23 stories high in a building at 7 World Trade Center. Anybody with the least bit of common sense knew that the bunker in the sky was insane and the price, $15.1 million, a scandal. But he said it would house "My Police Commissioner" and "My Fire Commissioner." In Giuliani's world, everything was "mine."Steve Gilliard, another New Yorker, has more here (scroll down).And on the morning of Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani's bunker went out into the air like a Frisbee.
The first thing he did, he was telling the 9/11 Commission yesterday, was to go out and search for a new command post. He walked away from the trade center and headed for the command post that made his career: the nearest television camera.
The Man from Planet Risk debuted last night at the The Lucky Cat in Williamsburg. Their CD Escaping Chixalub is what might be called "downtempo horrorcore" (or The Music Formerly Known As Triphop--more on this below) but the live set, substituting drums for old skool hip hop beat machines, changed the feel of the sound quite a bit. Live, drummer Cave Precise seems to be imitating a beatbox or drum instruction cassette, except he's trying as hard as he can to destroy the drums. His manic rigidity and intensity tipped the sound over from the hiphop column to rock-and-roll, a kind of minimalist psychedelic metal. "Minimalist" because each "song" is basically just a really cool metalloid riff--a big ungainly slab of doomstruck sound--played long enough for the audience to get the point and then ended.
For all its echo-y horror soundtrack atmospherics and Black Sab-like bass riffs, the CD is much lighter: the beats are spryer, with turntable twists & jazzy piano riffs livening up the doom and gloom. I mentioned triphop because the sound is truly trippy: keyboardist/laptopper Jenghizkhan approaches music like a painter (and is in fact a visual artist, exhibiting under his real name John Parker), taking advantage of all the filtering and timestretching capabilities of modern keyboard tech to make layers of artfully mangled sound. Imagine Ennio Morricone eclectism shot through with the kind of dreamy, smeared psychedelia of San Francisco post-punkers Chrome, or the European hardcore tech of The Mover set to a hiphop beat. But also none of the above. You can check out samples of the CD here.
Below: a couple more screen grabs from A Beautiful Mind, previously discussed here. Ronny Howard's art installation(s) are at once exotic, invoking the crazed outsider look of Thomas Hirschhorn's work, and familiar, amplifying the hoary Hollywood cliche of the "clipping filled shrine" from a hundred serial killer films. I wonder if anyone ever photographed the real John Nash's "codebreaking rooms" and if they looked anything like this? According to critic tedg (who took a class from Nash after the mathematician was first hospitalized), "Nash's madness was almost certainly caused by his 'breaking' his mind by straying too far from reality to get outside th[e] large problem he was working [on]. The conspiracies came not from cold war silliness but something far deeper: Phil Dick science fiction and Kabbalah. Not stupid numbers but topologies (forms). Not codes but manifold patterns in higher spaces. Literally extraterrestrial voices."
On the subject of extrinsic connections, you might recognize the male actors above as the "student newspaper nerds" from Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, a film about random but meaningful collisions (as was Linklater's Slacker), and of course the lovely, wholesome but somewhat cypherish Jennifer Connelly, who has served as the emotional constant in a topological maelstrom of quirky films. Quite a career she's had, from eclipsing Elizabeth McGovern as McGovern's younger self in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time In America, to sliding into a pool of maggots in Dario Argento's Phenomena, to besting Goblin King David Bowie in Labyrinth, to famously skinnydipping in Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot, to wrecking Nick Nolte's marriage in Mulholland Falls, to recoiling from a mutant poodle in The Hulk, to doing heroin and a "double dildo dance" in Requiem for a Dream, to competing with Russell Crowe's imaginary friends in this film. What explains such a rich filmography? Is it just because she's "purdy"?
DEVELOPMENTAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT LUNCH MENUS FOR THIS WEEK
Copyright 2003 by Phil Austin
Plain Elementary School
Mon: Paper Stack; Boneless Burrito; Paste; Kitten on a Stick; Milkaroni
Tue: White Bread on Toast; Glass of Sugar; See-Through Lettuce; Liquid Milk
Wed: Sponge; Sugar Sandwich; Butter Plate; Cloth Pudding; Milk
Thu: Simple Pie; Banana Splat; Sugar Mound; Blanched Cookie; Milk
Fri: Diaper Surprise; Clear Peaches; Steamed Cereal Boxes; Sugar; Milk
Mystery Island School for Girls
Mon: Soft Eggs on a Mirror; Hard-boiled Hollow Birds; Handful of Tacos; Milk
Tue: Rack of Clever Hans; Whisked Apple Fly; Coronation Ham; Nylon Bunnies; Big Carton
Wed: Mystery Potato; Curd; Slippery Tart; Milk Pie; Leg Salad Sandwich; Clear Liquid
Thurs: Oysters Frightened by Chickens; Liver Mounds; Nest of Interesting Spiders; Mai Tai; Pack of Camels
Fri: Breast of Clam ala "Eddie"; Wieners in a Basket Under a Blanket; Teacher's Surprise; Milk
Earnest Boys Academy
Mon; Beef Throats; Smoked Leg; Hind Quarters; Gros Livers; Old-Fashioned Milk; Cigars
Tue: Flat Motor Pies; Fisherman's Regret; Loin of Fat; Stunned Ducks in Alcohol Sauce; Milk
Wed; Tart Bottoms; Slick Fritters; Breasts of Toast; Sweetbreads in Hand; Cuckoo Punch; Cigars; Milk
Thurs: Roast Puffins; Revenge Pudding; Pancakes in Water; Baked Salad; Ring of Fire; Milk
Fri; Ducklings ala Moron; Smothered Rodents; Closet Pie; Turbo Skeletons; Champagne; Brandies; Cigars; Milk
Willy Loman Public High School
Mon: Horse Butter Sandwiches; Hot Jello Salad; French Kisses; Curb Cake; Milk
Tue: Toads in Blanket in a Hole; Complicated Salad; Ice Bread; Lomax Pie; Milk Cocktail
Wed: Hat with Cheese; Insurance Salad; V6 Bread; Field Surprise; Milk
Thurs: Battered Vegetables; Wax Wrappers; Wallet and Raisin Salad; Adult Milkshake
Fri: Fried Chuck; Paper Salad; Responsibility Pie; White Dessert; Retirement Milk
Alternate Current Magnet School
Mon: Eco-Veggie Bar; Rainbow Krazy Krunch; Twig Sticks; Turkey Straws; Cow Milk
Tue: Helpless Nuggets with Sour Sauce; Gator Tots; Trial Mix; White Milk
Wed: False Rabbit Wedges; Farm Dip; Sloppy Joans; French Acid; Goat Milk
Thurs: Meatless Hot Creatures; Sweetened Cherries; Meltdown on a bun; Squares; Mother's Milk
Fri: Refried Fries; Early Dismissal Cup; Hemp Wheels; Party on a Bun; Dip; Sheep Milk
Past as Prologue: Meat Space Curating
About ten years ago I solo-juried a show at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, an annual "open to all comers" event called The Big Show. Artists bring work to the gallery and it's selected (or not) on the spot; everything not picked is moved out of sight to a large storage room. This is much better than judging from slides because you have more control over the outcome. The fee was decent so I hung around and designed and supervised the installation, in effect turning it into a curated rather than just juried show. The event got mixed reviews; one writer suggested I was using the art as fodder for my own work as an artist; this was incredibly flattering and not 100% wrong (theory omitted for now). I'm posting these installation shots because I'm thinking now about how the web gives us the opportunity to "curate" others' work and have it be "ours" at the same time. As usual, DJs were years ahead of the art world on this issue. 1 For an example of a web-based "mix" of artist's images, see this roughly chronological assortment; not all but most have appeared on this weblog. Some earlier thoughts on DIY web curating are here.
1. [UPDATE] The issue got an airing in the art world in the '80s with arguments about Christian Leigh's and Collins & Milazzo's "curating as art." But it's been on the back burner, as if everyone collectively decided that having quasi-objective "scholarly" curation was a necessary evil in the all-important personal validation process. DJs didn't have this kind of discussion--in that realm, assembling work you like sidesteps issues of "expert status" and will likely be recognized as an art in itself without a lot of neurotic hand-wringing.
Here's what some of us are saying about [that movie with LA being destroyed by tornadoes and NY being destroyed by a tidal wave]. My first reaction on seeing a trailer in the theatre months ago was "Hey, I thought after 9/11 we didn't do that self-hating Independence Day shit any more." Corporate America has mobilized all forces of modern communication to let us know that it's OK to self-hate again, with saturation TV coverage, print ads, internet streams, tie-in programs on the Discovery Channel (even though the science is dubious), an endless loop on the video billboard at the Holland Tunnel--everywhere you turn there's some sign that this is an unmissable (pseudo) event. The "money shots" do look intriguing but you have to be suspicious when that's what all they show in the ads. Also, let's face it, Roland Emmerich's previous movies--Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla--blew chunks.