The L Magazine’s Best of New York issue came out yesterday, and it’s filled with all kinds of carefully researched evaluations and case studies detailing the best and worst culture, politics, bars, and virtually anything else in the city. Want to find the best festival for celebrity art citings? Of course you do! Worry about throwing up in the wrong bar? Who doesn’t? Need to identify the best unintended art works of the city? Well that’s where we come in. You can read the our full contribution to the feature in the online scan, but I’ve provided it below in html form for ease of reading.
Photo by Saul Chernick
527 West 22nd Street. In the spirit of self reflective 70's conceptual art, a Chelsea store front at 527 West 22nd street places a canvas in the ground floor window and a sign that reads “This is not a gallery.” Clearly, this work was inspired by artists like John Baldessari, Mel Bochner, and of course, Rene Magritte.
The Apple iphone Galvanizing consumers across the city on June 29th 2007, Apple's release of iphone sparked the best unintended collaborative performance piece of the year, as consumers waited in line for hours to purchase an item they could get a few days later in a fraction of the time. The work speaks to the absurdity of commercialism while simultaneously functioning as a meditation on the banality of line waiting.
Wild Life Control An interest in functional retro sculpture returns this year in Park Slope, as evidenced by the well known Wildlife Control ambulance. Promising to rid Brooklyn residents of unwanted skunks, raccoons and other pests, the car not only sports graphically appealing animal iconography on its facade, but countless paw prints, a underused and under appreciated motive in fine art circles.
USE OF FAKE ID IS A CRIME Taking cues from conceptual artists like Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, New York city workers set up a movable sign in Chelsea earlier this year that read USE OF FAKE in one frame and ID IS A CRIME in another. Parsers of sentence fragments no doubt appreciate the public notice discouraging the over emphasis on individualism in the city.
Bond No. 9. Coney Island perfume. Naturally, we're all waiting for the art world to turn fragrance into a limited edition item, and the time may well be approaching as downtown perfumer Bond No. 9's “Coney Island” marks the advent of the city's first conceptual perfume. Like much good art, the scent imagines more than it mimics, leaving behind the smells of hotdogs and fish for “Margarita mix, tequila, chocolate, caramel, cedarwood and cinnamon”. Obviously, nothing speaks louder to the idea that art imitates life and Coney Island than like smelling like a liquor cabinet.
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }