Paddy Johnson is the founding editor of Art Fag City. In addition to her work on the blog, she has been published in New York Magazine, artreview.com, Art in America, The Daily, Print Magazine, Time Out NY, The Reeler, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, and New York Press, and linked to by publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Boing-Boing, The New York Observer, Gawker, Design Observer, Make Magazine, The Awl, Artinfo, and we-make-money-not-art. Paddy lectures widely about art and the Internet at venues including Yale University, Parsons, Rutgers, South by Southwest, and the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 2008, she became the first blogger to earn a Creative Capital Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. Paddy is also the art editor at The L Magazine, where she writes a regular column..
Does anyone understand what this means: “Art fairs do not struggle or close because of competition from other fairs; they close because of competition for their client galleries’ and visitors’ money and attention, such as rising rents or larger spaces, supporting museum exhibitions, publications, and so forth.” So fairs close because the rent is too high and museum exhibitions and catalogues distract from their events? [The Art Newspaper]
A McDonald’s in Italy may become a tourist attraction. During construction of a new McDonald’s restaurant an ancient road was discovered—along with three skeletons. Rather than halting construction the restaurant sponsored a dig to reveal the road and even cast the skeletons in resin. According to the Times, though, the location is unlikely to become a huge tourist attraction due to its remoteness. [The New York Times]
Someone attempting to take a selfie in Yayoi Kusama’s mirror infinity room stepped back a bit too far and fell over one of pumpkin sculptures. It broke. [Hyperallergic]
Is Sotheby’s turning itself around? The company boasted a profit of 65.5 million in the fourth quarter, beating expectations. Still, there is a market downturn. Sales have slipped 27 percent compared to this time last year. [ARTnews]
Another Alice Neel show at David Zwirner—he launched one last year too. This one’s getting some love from Christian Viveros-Faune. [artnet News]
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton says that that recent sexual abuse allegations lodged against her opponent, Donald Trump, may you want to “unplug the Internet or look at Cat GIFs. It turns out, we’ve seen a few cat GIFs in our day. Here are a few of our favorites.
Some curatorial statements are more clear than others. Based on the one curator Osman Can Yerebakan produced for the exhibition “Night’s Days” at AC Institute, we’re not sure what the show is supposed to be about. Judging by the content, I’d guess it has something to do with technology and what people do at night. A lot of fuck. As it happens, fucking and technology is the focus of Faith Holland’s work, so she’s a natural fit for the show. A few GIFs after the jump.
When Elektra KB spoke about animated GIFs at a panel we were on together at NYU, she told the audience she made a flying uterus GIF because she could not find one on the Internet. This is the perfect reason to make almost any art work.
She’s featured today as an artist we worked with to produce our online animated GIF show at Providence College—Galleries, Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies. The exhibition looks at artist who render full-realized environments, so naturally KB fit in. These are clearly imagined spaces.
The GIFs also reminded me of a review Michael Anthony Farley wrote back in September mentioning KBs show The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless, at BravinLee programs. An excerpt to take you into the weekend.
But perhaps the passive politics of the left have thus far failed the most vulnerable members of society. Across town, at Elektra KB’s solo show, an embroidered banner politely asks, “Liberals: can we riot now? XOXO” There’s a palpable frustration in KB’s practice, which responds to the unfulfilled neoliberal promises of globalization and multiculturalism. As someone who already possesses a sort-of post-identity, she seems impatient for a world that still very much clings to borders, genders, and authority to catch up. KB spent her childhood between the notoriously unstable Ukraine and civil-war-ravaged Columbia. She now lives between Berlin and New York, and works primarily with migrant women and trans people. As her biography would suggest, KB seems to have no flag to call her own—except the ones she sews herself.
Far from the cold sleekness of the 3D-printed gun and polished video, KB’s work presents an alternate take on DIY production as a rallying cry for resistance. In xerox prints, hand-embellished fiber pieces with titles such as “The Otherness” and “Spatial and Gender Migration”, and endearingly guerilla videos; her craftsmanship is visible in an impressive array of media carried out with a somewhat anarcho-punk design ethos. These works feature unlikely combinations of pre-Columbian architecture, ominous female figures, and militant aesthetics that flirt between fascist and rebellious.
Art F City’s 10th birthday has finally arrived. We’re celebrating TONIGHT at Lightbox (339 West 38th Street, 6:30-10:00 p.m.) by throwing a party to remember, our 10th Anniversary Power Women benefit and live auction.
Over gchat today, we weren’t sure what to say about Sally McKay’s GIF “Peer Review“.
Whitney Kimball:I think this GIF is really smart but I don’t get it.
Are we scanning over each other’s art too fast to give it a real review?
Paddy Johnson: I suspect it’s just a reflection of the concerns her own job as a professor brings up.
Actually,
It’s probably not an accident that the paper scrolls in the direction of the blog.
I like that the peer review runs in two second loop.
You rehash the same conversations, watch the same image go by.
There’s an interpretation of this GIF, that’s really critical of how we discuss and make art.
And you never see the whole piece at once.
You’re forced to piece the text together (which isn’t that hard).
Whitney Kimball: Mmm. And the picture itself is a pretty standard geometric doodley thing torn out of a notebook.
Photographer Mary Ellen Mark and her husband director Martin Bell are crowdfunding a follow-up to their 1983 project Streetwise, which documented the lives of eight teenagers who lived on the streets of Seattle. Bell’s original film was nominated for an Oscar, and Mark’s photos were published in a monograph by Aperture. [Kickstarter]
Ryan McGinley profiled in the New York Times , focusing largely on his role mentoring younger artists. The piece ends “I’m learning just as much hanging out with Petra [Collins] as she is hanging out with me.” [The New York Times]
Mathilde Aguis and Reto Schmid’s new show “Daze Daze” available online for those of us not in Zürich. [Novembre]
The New Yorker on Alain de Botton’s new book, Art as Therapy. The book advocates for museum curators thinking more like therapists, organizing galleries around “human-scale themes, like marriage, aging, and work.” The website for the book includes a tool for finding a work of art that might improve your day. [The New Yorker]
Martha Stewart has been tweeting some truly gross looking food. Buzzfeed picked up on this, and Stewart responded via twitter with an image of some grey pasta and the comment “Now if any one thinks this is a bad photo you are ridiculous.” It is a bad photo. Anthony Bourdain hashtagged it #deadpastababy and #stopmebeforeikillagain. Very entertaining. [@petewells]
Last night’s Youtube spelunking introduced this Canadian to Schoolhouse Rock. Some favorites: Figure Eight and the classic, I’m Just a Bill. This came out of the revelation that this kids video on Pi is an imitation of 70’s public access television. [Youtube]
Occupy has purchased $15 million worth of American medical debt. Incredible. [The Guardian]
Cole Books has sold the site that is home The World’s Biggest Bookstore to a Toronto developer. The store, (which is not actually the world’s biggest bookstore, but large none the less) will close this February. [The Toronto Star]
Jerry Saltz calls for an end of what he calls Neo-Mannerism. You know all those tropes that make art look like art? Saltz is tired of all of them. The offenders aren’t named though, which is a bit of a disappointment. [New York Magazine]
We use Google Docs all the time to edit on the blog, but we’ve been noticing a bunch of bugs lately. There’s no better alternative to working in the cloud with all your other editors—yet, but Draft’s one alternative we’re curious about, especially since it doesn’t immediately let other collaborators delete your original copy. [Draft, via @Choire]
Having trouble figuring out whether we liked your show? Try plugging the text into Stanford University’s live demo for predicting the sentiment of movie reviews. It creates a diagram to reflect how positive or negative the review actually was. [Stanford]
Mike Kelley opens on Sunday. In anticipation of the show, The New York Times has a profile on the artist which talks about his position to education (he thinks he’s been brainwashed), pop culture (he thinks it’s garbage), and mud wrestling (he’s fascinated by it). [The New York Times]
On NPR this morning, we got to hear some fluff about “3-D Printing a Masterwork for your Living Room.” From the sounds of it, 3-D printed sculptures might be an affordable way for art to reach the masses—and maybe a way for museums to make a buck. [NPR]
The Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Film Festival is hitting the road, and stopping in Brooklyn. Surprisingly, the museum’s fest isn’t going to be at an art spot; rather, on October 25th, you can grab seats at the Warsaw, one of Greenpoint’s largest music venues. [The Walker Art Center]
Update on 3rd Ward’s closing: tenants are trying to stay in the building. [DNAinfo]
Only the Wall Street Journal would name Natacha Ivanova, Hugo Wilson, Denis Darzacq, and Luka Fineisen “rising art stars.” Those are four of the five names cited in an article that profiles terrible art by artists you’ve probably never heard of for a reason. Nina Beier, the fifth artist chosen, looks like a reasonable pick. [The Wall Street Journal]
MoMA has purchased Occupy Wall Street’s print portfolio, a series of 31 screenprints organized by the Brooklyn Artists Alliance. [ArtInfo]
We know what we’re doing this week. We’re stopping by this summer’s neo-feminist-queer-sex-positive-anti-institutional performance festival “Emergency Glitter,” which, among many others, features AFC’s own roommate Rebecca Patek.
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com