Paddy has written 6 article(s) for AFC.
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Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit
by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit on December 3, 2013
- “Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz” will be the Chinese artist and former government detainee’s first exhibition to be held at a prison. [In the Air]
- Greg Allen (@gregorg) reports on Miami’s Perez Art Museum and why local collectors have yet to show much support to the museum. Opening day is tomorrow. When it was announced that the museum would be named for developer Jorge Perez in the wake of a $35 million gift of cash and art, four board members resigned. While Perez chalks it up to racism, critic Tyler Green points out that the institution needs to improve its relationship with local collectors in order to grow its own collection. [NPR]
- Laure Prouvost has been announced as this year’s Turner Prize winner, beating out David Shrigley, Tino Sehgal, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for the £25,000 prize. She was the underdog. [BBC]
- I love Ed Halter. Here he is, conversing with Lauren Cornell, talking about pop culture and art. “It’s like Pop Art in reverse: Warhol took the content of mass culture and brought it into art, while [Abramović and Lady Gaga] are using ‘art’ as content and spreading it through contemporary forms of mass media—but really they’re only producing a new form of kitsch, complete with mawkish sentimentality.” [Mousse Magazine]
- Narcoleptic dogs are one reason why we know so much about the science of sleep. A breed of narcoleptic dogs was bred by Stanford scientists, and now there’s a range of poodles and dobermans who can fall asleep without more than the drop of a pin. [The New Yorker]
- Kanye West is crazier than we thought. He thinks he’s more relevant than the President—because nobody cares what Obama wears. Hrag Vartanian points out this is untrue. (Paddy) [Hyperallergic]
- Extravagant much? Matias Faldbakken, one of 24 artists chosen to display public art works at Miami Basel, is putting the Peterbilt big rig truck from Steven Spielberg’s hell-on-wheels film Duel (1971) in the sculpture park. [Channel 16 Florida]
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by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit on November 22, 2013
- Adam Szymczyk, the director of Documenta 14, gets a write up in the Times for ‘his championing of unknown artists.’ He’s curated solo shows by Aleksandra Domanovic, Moyra Davey, and Lucy Skaer, so that’s a good track record. [The New York Times]
- Seapunk aesthetic for your tombstone? That and much more at Funeral Concept, a place that appears to specialize in the funerary objects for the young. [Funeral Concept]
- Paris Photo, which concluded Sunday, drew over 55,000 visitors this year. Carole Naggar wraps it up on TIME Light Box with a selection of mostly black and white documentary-style images from the 20th century, and notes that it rained inside the fair briefly. [TIME]
- Céline Piettre gives a nuts-and-bolts reflection of Paris Photo, crediting the increased presence of American collectors to last April’s inaugural Paris Photo Los Angeles. [Blouin Artinfo]
- Cheryl Newman fawns over Sophie Calle and shouts out Broomberg and Channarin’s much-shouted Holy Bible as a hot seller. [The Telegraph]
- Photographer Anita Totha makes the only edit of contemporary work I’ve seen from the fair. [Feature Shoot]
- Aperture’s PhotoBook of the Year award went to a self-published book, Rosângela Rennó’s A01 [COD.19.1.1.43] — A27 [S | COD.23]. Óscar Monzón’s KARMA won the $10,000 First PhotoBook award. [Aperture Foundation]
- On that topic, Wired did a Q&A with Leslie Martin, publisher of the Aperture book program. She makes it clear that the publishing industry is in flux: “There are 20 books in the Paris-Photo/Aperture First Book shortlist and 14 of them are self-published.” [Wired]
- ICI Benefits keep getting fancier. This one includes guests Dasha Zhukova, Sophia Coppola, and Marina Abromovic amongst others. [Blackbook]
- Looks like the Ad Reinhardt show organized by critic Robert Storr at David Zwirner is a must see. [The New York Times]
- An interesting concept from the Times: Retro Report; The truth now about stories then. The short video segments cover stories about 10-15 years old—the stuff that hasn’t quite left your consciousness, but isn’t exactly fresh either. Y2K is a pretty good example of this, a story that lives somewhere on the edge of nostalgia. [Retro Report]
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by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit on November 11, 2013
- The Internet is not dead, but if you pose the question, then you’ll be sure to pique the interest of many an art and tech nerd. In the latest issue of e-flux, artist Hito Steyerl ponders about the death of the Internet and finds that it’s “undead and it’s everywhere.” Like a zombie. [e-flux]
- But the Internet has killed “the underground.” [The New York Times is on it]
- I guess this is what the Russian police do when they’re not beating up gay people. [Youtube]
- More on Russia: On Sunday, Performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky nailed down his testicles in the Red Square to protest Russia’s police state. On the one hand, this could just be an instance of WTF Performance Art. More likely, though, it points to the increasingly desperate measures taken by artists against the State; Russian theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov called Pavlensky’s act a “powerful gesture of absolute despair.” Pavlensky is due in court today. [The Guardian]
- A warning for non-profits: Make sure you know who the bidders at your fundraising auction. A Banksy painting donated to Housing Works received a bid of $615,000, but the work’s bidder quickly ducked out of sight. The non-profit eventually found a buyer, but not after irking many of the other bidders. [The New York Times]
- This is the best seventh-grade fan fiction I’ve ever heard. Ashton Kutcher needs to pay this girl a visit. (Paddy) [Wifey-TV]
- The founders of the Dia Art Foundation have filed suit to stop the foundation’s current administration from selling artworks in Dia’s collection.That sale is scheduled to take place this Wednesday at Sotheby’s, and could raise up to $20 million to build an acquisitions fund. [Art in America]
- This fish in a life vest. [Blackpool Gazette]
- Brian Eno talks with Grayson Perry about art. Both claim to be terrible at delegating. [New Statesman]
- Gallerist Janet Borden’s thoughts on the Aperture Foundation’s Instagram auction, held two weeks ago: “Instagram pictures tend to be stupid, but then, so did Xeroxes of people’s butts.” [Matthew Leifheit for Feature Shoot]
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by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit on October 18, 2013
- Raymond Pettibon and Marcel Dzama get interviewed and talk about urine paintings because it’s VICE. [VICE]
- The Moving Image Fair granted its second annual Art Award to artists Rollin Leonard and Jessica Faiss; their works will be acquired by the 53 Art Museum in Guangzhou, China. Congratulations! [In The Air]
- Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) gets it from the New York Post. They claim it’s more ubiquitous than James Franco. [The New York Post]
- What happened to 3rd Ward. According to this report, Next Street, a merchant bank, held the company hostage after it failed to come up with promised funds for the expansion project. Something about this part of the story seems fishy to us. Since when are banks unable to come up with the funds for their investments? [The Observer]
- Gene McHugh profiles artist Nate Hill as though he were a fictional character. Pretty brilliant. [Rhizome]
- Best headline and subheader of the day: Brooklyn Man Giving Away Life-Size Hamster Wheel to Make Room for Some Friends. UPDATE: It was a hoax. [Time]
- Cody Foster & Company, ornament wholesale manufacturer to the world, might be ripping off the designs of craft artists. A Flickr has popped up documenting the company’s copycat designs. [Jezebel, Consumerist]
- Jesus. Holland Cotter sure likes the Mike Kelley exhibition at PS1. “Plainly put, the Mike Kelley retrospective, fresh from Europe to MoMA PS1, knocks everything else in New York this fall right out of the ring.” [The New York Times]
- Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has greenlighted construction for up to 10, 30-story-tall condominiums along Greenpoint’s waterfront. Current residents are especially not happy that Greenpoint’s turning into New Williamsburg. [The Brooklyn Paper]
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by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit on October 10, 2013
- A mobster’s art collection goes on view at a museum in Southern Italy. On display are “18 fakes.” The exhibition’s curator describes the criminal-collector as “a not particularly refined auction-goer.” [Frieze]
- You’re not having a bad day—Scot Haney, the weatherman for CBS’s Hartford, is. He ate cat vomit on broadcast TV. [New York Magazine]
- 20-year-old “artist” Petra Collins has designed a t-shirt for American Apparel with a girl touching her bushy vagina. While menstruating no less. [VICE, of course]
- Tattooed Librarians of the Ocean State 2014 calendar now available for pre-order! [Rhode Island Library Association]
- Boston NPR interviews MFA curator Kristen Gresh on her show “She Who Tells a Story,” which features work by 12 women photographers from Iran and the Arab world. [WBUR]
- Hrag Vartanian talks to the organizers of the Phillips digital auction Paddles ON!, which takes place tonight at 8:30 pm. [Hyperallergic]
- Damien Hirst displays perhaps his fugliest sculptures of all time in perhaps the one part of the world that’s not sick of him yet—Qatar. Ah, but these 14 bronze sculptures display science in motion: christened “The Miraculous Journey,” they each show a stage of human development, from fetus to birth. [The New York Times]
- Art funds pool money from investors to purchase works, and industry is deteriorating. “Of the 36 funds that Noah Horowitz, now the director of the Armory Show art fair, lists in the appendix to his 2011 book Art of the Deal,” writes Melanie Gerlis for The Art Newspaper. “Ten had been abandoned by the time it was published and a further seven have since joined them.” [The Art Newspaper]
- German print magazine Du devotes its October issue entirely to Maurizio Cattelan—the cover is particularly tasteless. [Du]
- Alice Munro, an 82-year-old Canadian novelist, wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Her daughter called her this morning when she heard and informed her of the good news.) We’re thrilled, as she’s a favorite here at AFC! [The New York Times]
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by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch Matthew Leifheit on October 4, 2013
- What looks like a great model for community funding has been going on in Detroit for the last three years. SOUP, a public program in Detroit that serves $5 dollar dinners, asks four people to give presentations on how they would better the city. At the end of the night, attendees vote on which presentation should get a grant. A recap of one such evening. [Michigan Daily]
- Michael Kimmelman observes that community centers served us well during Hurricane Sandy, and thinks we should use some of the federal emergency money to build libraries. We’re not sure they’re used quite as much as community centers, but we’re happy with any proposal that keeps New York’s libraries in the public eye. [The New York Times]
- Twitter’s not making money and they’re losing users. [Dealbook]
- We’re thinking about making Gravity a required viewing for all AFC staff and recommend readers join us. This movie looks great. A.O. Scott has the review. [The New York Times]
- “Abstract Expressionism is overrated,” begins Holland Cotter, in his review of Robert Motherwell’s early collage show at the Guggenheim. Um, no. Motherwell is overrated. Spend an hour in the Albright Knox, and you’ll remember why people care about Abstract Expressionism. Viewing the best of this movement is truly moving. Anyway, he explains that while much of Motherwell’s work was repetitive and predictable, these collages are not. -PJ [The New York Times]
- And the reviews of the New Museum’s Chris Burden show begin. Roberta Smith loves it. [The New York Times]
- The Alice Austen House opens a show of Melissa Cacciola’s tintype portraits this Sunday, titled “War and Peace.” Situated in a Victorian Gothic cottage on Staten Island called “Clear Comfort,” the museum was home to one of America’s earliest woman photographers. Deputy photo editor of TIME Magazine Paul Moakley is curator in residence, and the museum features sweeping views of lower Manhattan. Try and think of a better way to spend Sunday afternoon. [Alice Austen House]
- Restoration Hardware, a shop that sells everything from salvaged-wood tables to funky drawer pulls is unveiling RH Contemporary Art, “a platform that includes an interactive Web site, which will blend e-commerce and editorial; a print journal; a series of short documentaries; a residency program; and, yes, a Manhattan gallery.” These are the guys that brought you The Rain Room, so set your expectations low. -PJ [T Magazine]
- Thomas Jefferson has a call-in talk show. Okay, he’s actually an historian who likes to impersonate Thomas Jefferson. [The Thomas Jefferson Hour, h/t @gregorg]
- Calling all sandwich artists! Katz’s Deli is opening up a pop-up gallery space to feature works by artists living in the heart of the LES. All the exhibitions will be “deli-inspired.” [Bowery Boogie]
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