Penguin June 29th, 2008

Dali is at the MoMA.

The show tracks the traffic of images, themes and ideas between Dalí’s films, both realized and not, and his more static efforts, including paintings, drawings, letters, illustrated notes, scenarios and other ephemera.
[...]
Dalí grasped that film’s capacities — for depicting irrationality in action; for dissolving, continually mutating images; and for an intensely real unreality — were all ready-made for his sensibility and his desire to reach a mass audience.
[...]
“Destino,” the sprightly animated short of love and loss that Dalí worked on energetically for Walt Disney in 1946 [runs continuously].

- NYTimes

The show runs through Sept 15 at the MoMA.

-Penguin

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Tags: Art, Exhibits, Film, MoMA, NYT, Salvador Dali

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Penguin June 27th, 2008

Paul McCarthy’s “Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement: Three Installations, Two Films” at the Whitney:

The show focuses on a core strand of McCarthy’s work: the use of architecture to create perceptual disorientation in the viewer through spinning mirrors, rotating walls, projections, and altered space.

the show of about 22 works dating from 1966 to the present includes three major sculptures, two early short films and assorted drawings, photographs and videos.

Two basic motifs connect the various pieces: the room and rotational movement, or spinning.
[...]
“Spinning Camera, Walking, Mike Cram Walking” that Mr. McCarthy made by rotating a camera on a tripod in a mostly empty room. The view goes round and round, alternating bright windows and dark walls and occasionally giving a glimpse of a man walking in circles in the room.

“Mad House”… consists of a large steel-framed wooden box mounted on a powerful motor. A door in the box reveals a room with a padded seat inside. (There are also three square windows.) When turned on, the room rotates at high speed while inside the chair rotates too, though not necessarily in the same direction or at the same velocity.

[In] “Couple”,… Mr. McCarthy set the focus on his camera at two feet and then roamed around a room with it, creating a blurry, aimless tour. Two naked people, a man and a woman, appear intermittently.

In “Spinning Room,”… [f]our video cameras rotate on a gleaming high-tech machine within a square, walk-in enclosure made of rear-projection screens. Images recorded by the cameras pass through computers and then to projectors stationed outside the enclosure. The projectors direct streaming video pictures of people inside onto the screens.

- NYTimes

The show runs through Oct 12 at the Whitney.

In July, the Whitney will open “Paul McCarthy: Film List”:

McCarthy began making films as a student in the 1960s, and his current exhibition on the Whitney’s third floor includes two rare 16mm films screening for the first time in decades. In conjunction with his exhibition, McCarthy has curated a film program that brings together works by, among others, Stan VanDerBeek, Francis Picabia, Walt Disney, Kurt Kren, Yves Klein, and Bruce Conner.

This portion runs from July 11 through Sept 28.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 27th, 2008

There’s a new show opening today at the Guggenheim. Louise Bourgeois.

Bourgeois is best known for her sculptures, which range in scale from the intimate to the monumental, and across a diverse array of mediums including wood, bronze, latex, marble, and fabric. Moving freely between abstraction and figuration, she has developed a richly symbolic visual idiom that encompasses totemic forms, ambiguously gendered anatomical fragments, and towering spiders, as well as the assemblages of found objects that are encased in her environmental-scale installations.

- Guggenheim

For her art is not a job; it is a life. It is what you do when you get up in the morning, and what you continue to do all day, through headaches and phone calls, breakups and breakdowns, silences and celebrations. It is what you keep doing after dark, and when you can’t sleep at night.
[...]
She has said that she works in response to emotions: fury at the past and fear of the present among them.
[...]
Your daily life is propelled by fear? Draw fear. You can. Impossible to sleep at night? Make night your studio, the cloth you embroider with needs and dreams. The past is an obsession you can neither embrace nor release? Make an image of obsession, any image will do.

- NYTimes

This is pretty much how I approach the stories that I write. Sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously. But I deal with my internal struggles and issues through my characters. I put them in the same situations, force them to deal with the harsh realities that I face. In a way, when they overcome it, I overcome it too. Of course, there are issues that are huge and require several stories to overcome, but it is extremely cathartic for me.

Luckily or unluckily, I don’t have the sort of issues that Bourgeois struggles with.

The show runs through Sept 28 at the Guggenheim Museum.

-Penguin

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Tags: Art, Exhibits, Guggenheim, Installations, Louise Bourgeois, NYT, Sculpture

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Penguin June 26th, 2008

MoMA’s celebrating with Zeitgeist: The Films of Our Time, running from June 27 through July 23.

To celebrate [Russo and Gerstman's] ongoing success, MoMA presents a selection of works by critical figures in the company’s history and catalog—from artists they embraced at early stages of their film careers, including Bruce Weber, Todd Haynes, Deepa Mehta, François Ozon, Olivier Assayas, and Guy Maddin, to established masters like Agnes Varda, Yvonne Rainer, Derek Jarman, and Jacques Demy. This monthlong series includes several introductions and post-screening Q&A sessions with some of the filmmakers, along with appearances by Gerstman and Russo.

-Penguin

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Ninja June 19th, 2008

The Australian Centre for Photography’s current exhibition, Hijacked, features the exciting, new work by 44 of Australia and America’s emerging photographers! Their work has a sense of wanderlust and documents subcultures, alternate lifestyles, and urban landscapes. Hijacked runs until July 19.

Australian photographers
Brad Rimmer, Caitlin Harrison, Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy, David Griggs, Duncan Barnes, Emily Portmann, Fiona Morris, Flavia Schuster, Gareth Willis, Graham Miller, Greta Anderson, Jack Pam, James Mellon, Janelle Ryan, Joshua Webb, Juha Tolonen, Mark McPherson, Martin Mischkulnig, Michael Gray, Nathalie Latham, Toni Wilkinson, Tony Nathan and Karron Bridges

American photographers
Brian Cross, Jonathan Gitelson, Shen Wei, Amy Stein, Angela Boatwright, Todd Fisher, Timothy Archibald, Nick Chatfield-Taylor, Bill Sullivan, Dean Karr, Lisa Kereszi, Alana Celii, Ed Zipco, Tod Seelie, Robin Schwartz, Grant Willing, Suzy Poling, Sarah Small, Jennifer Juniper Stratford, Jason Lazarus

If you can’t trek to Sydney, the book, Hijacked: Volume 1 Australia and America, will be launched with accompanying shows in Fremantle, New York, and Berlin.

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Penguin June 13th, 2008

Now, after studying some 45 works by van Gogh that are linked to the painting and scores of letters and drawings from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Mr. Pissarro has ended up with something far bigger than he had envisioned: a sweeping show charting the artist’s obsession with the nocturnal world.
[...]
Van Gogh would often hand-copy pages from novels he was reading that referred to both the physical and mystical aspects of the night. “As an imaginative force the night was a very big catalyst in his mind,” Mr. Pissarro said. “He lived his life by the night.”

- NYT

The show runs from Sept. 21 to Jan. 5 at the Museum of Modern Art

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Ninja June 9th, 2008

There are 3 great exhibitions currently showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Jeff Koons on the Roof, Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium since 1960, and Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy.

It was a bright, sunny, 95 degree Saturday at the MET, but the Jeff Koons rooftop exhibit was well-worth the wait (long line to the elevator) and the heat. The rooftop garden was quite crowded, but I managed to snap a shot of the balloon dog statue without anyone else in the frame (you can see some of the crowd in the reflection though).

Jeff Koons on the Roof

Exhibit runs until October 26, 2008 (rooftop access ends at 5 PM)
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden (weather permitting)

+ View images from the MET for this exhibition

+ Jeff Koons
+ Balloon Dog (Yellow), 1994–2000
+ High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating
+ 121 x 143 x 45 in. (307.3 x 363.2 x 114.3 cm)

It’s about celebration and childhood and color and simplicity—but it’s also a Trojan horse. It’s a Trojan horse to the whole body of artwork.
– Jeff Koons, on his Balloon Dog

Photography on Photography

Exhibit runs until October 19, 2008
Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, 2nd floor

+ View images from the MET for this exhibition

+ Hiroshi Sugimoto
+ Fidel Castro (Wax Figure, Madame Tussaud’s Museum, London), 2001
+ Gelatin silver print
+ 58 3/4 x 47 in. (149.2 x 119.4 cm)

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy

Exhibit runs until September 1, 2008
Special Exhibition Galleries, 1st floor

Inspired by Superman’s costume, Rossella Jardini, the creative director of Moschino, substituted Superman’s iconic letter “S” with the letter “M,” for Moschino. For the men’s version, she placed the “M” into a heart-shaped field, a symbol used in Moschino’s branding.

Meet William, the MET hippo

Photo of William from the MET website

+ Statuette of a Hippopotamus, ca. 1981-1885 B.C.E.; Dynasty 12; Middle Kingdom
+ Egyptian; Middle Egypt, Meir
+ Faience
+ H. 4 3/8 in. (11.2 cm), L. 7 7/8 in. (20 cm)

If you have some spare time, you should also visit William, the MET museum’s mascot. You can find William in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian galleries. He is made of faience and is covered with lotus blossoms, which represent the hippopotamus’s creative forces in nature.

An Englishman, Captain H. M. Raleigh, and his family owned a picture of the hippopotamus, which they named William. In 1931 the captain wrote an article for the magazine Punch about his picture of William. The name caught on, and since that time the little blue hippo has been known as William to almost everyone.

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Tags: Balloon Dog (Yellow), Exhibits, Fashion, Fidel Castro, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Koons, Jeff Koons on the Roof, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Moschino, Photography on Photography, Rossella Jardini, Superheroes

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Ninja June 6th, 2008

Amy Sol’s Thinkspace Art Gallery solo show, Karmic Magic, features new paintings and an installation. Her show runs from June 13–July 4, 2008. You can sneak a peek of some of her paintings here.

Opening Reception
Friday, June 13th, 2008
7:00 PM–11:00 PM

Thinkspace Art Gallery
4210 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90029 map

Hours
Thursday–Sunday | 1:00 PM-6:00 PM

Migration
Acrylic on Birch
19 x 20″ (48 x 51 cm)

Kokiri Carousel
Acrylic on Birch
19 x 24″ (48 x 61 cm)

Everything
Acrylic on Birch
20 x 26″ (51 x 66 cm)

Flying Fish
Acrylic on Birch
24 x 20″ (61 x 51 cm)

Trampoline
Acrylic on Birch
20 x 24″ (51 x 61 cm)

Little Brown Bird
Acrylic on Birch
15 x 19″ (38 x 48 cm)

Dust Wings
Acrylic on Birch
12 x 16″ (30 x 41 cm)

Keep Us Together
Acrylic on Birch
12 x 16″ (30 x 41 cm)

Sophie
Acrylic on Birch
11 x 14″ (28 x 36 cm)

Dream Begins
Acrylic on Birch
8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm)

Medicine Girl
Gouache & Graphite on Paper
8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm)

Let’s Call This Home
Gouache & Graphite on Paper
10 x 8″ (25 x 20 cm)

We’ll Be There When You Wake Up
Gouache & Graphite on Paper
10 x 8″ (25 x 20 cm)

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Ninja June 4th, 2008

Come check out the MoCCA Art Festival this weekend on June 7 and 8 at the historic Puck Building in lower Manhattan! Guests include Chip Kidd, Jessica Abel, Becky Cloonan, Hope Larson, Kean Soo, Rebecca Donner, David Hajdu, David Heatley, Chip Kidd, Alex Robinson, Frank Santoro, and Brian Wood.

Please note: All Saturday-Sunday programming will be held at the MoCCA Gallery, 594 Broadway (Suite 401), just below Houston.

Hours
11:00 AM–6:00 PM

Admission
$10 each day / $15 weekend pass (weekend pass only $10 for MoCCA members)

Related links
+ MoCCA exhibitors
+ Schedule of programming and panels

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Tags: Alex Robinson, Becky Cloonan, Brian Wood, Chip Kidd, David Hajdu, David Heatley, Exhibits, Frank Santoro, Hope Larson, Jessica Abel, Kean Soo, MoCCA, Rebecca Donner

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Ninja May 26th, 2008

Amy Sol has started posting process photos on her blog. Here’s a taste of her upcoming show at Thinkspace Gallery on June 3 in LA. This exhibit will feature 13 pieces by Amy.

Keep checking her blog for more photos!

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Tags: Acrylic, Amy Sol, Blogs, Exhibits, Process, Thinkspace Gallery

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