From the category archives:

The L Magazine

Art Fag City at The L Magazine: The Coolest Fort I’ve Ever Been In

by Paddy Johnson on October 9, 2013
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This week at The L Magazine I discuss Jeila Gueramian’s “Let’s Go Further” at Allegra LaViola. It’s the best show up in the LES. Here’s why.

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Christie’s Should Know The Difference Between New Media and Digital Art

by Paddy Johnson on September 25, 2013
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This week at The L Magazine, I rant about Christie’s online-only auction, “First Open: New Media”. With a bit of smart marketing, this company could actively be working to expand a digital market. Instead, they’re producing bullshit copy and lazy auctions.

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Transfer Gallery: Where The Digital Becomes Physical

by Paddy Johnson on September 11, 2013
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What’s the hottest arts space in Bushwick? For my money, it’s Transfer, a gallery that focuses on artists who live in the digital world and make work in the physical. Since founding it six months ago, owners Kelani Nichole and Jereme Mongeon have launched shows that have included hundreds of gifs, large-scale digital prints, poetry readings, and wall-sized paintings of computer desktops. They have a show opening October 12 with Rollin Leonard, a figurative artist known for the digital disassemblage of his own body. Also, from November 1-2, Transfer will act as The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale’s AFK-Embassy in NYC. Given all this activity, I thought it was an appropriate time to chat with cofounder Nichole.

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8 Museum Shows You Need to See This Fall

by Paddy Johnson on August 28, 2013
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This week at The L Magazine Paul D’Agostino and I calibrated our crystal balls for the fall, and came up with eight museum shows we’re sure are gonna be worth a view or two. Mike Kelley’s been a theme today, so I’m including our blurb for his retrospective at MoMA PS1 below.

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Art Fag City at The L Magazine: Gramsci Monument Talks

by Paddy Johnson on August 15, 2013
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To form an opinion about Thomas Hirschhorn’s GRAMSCI MONUMENT, you only have to hear about it. In my first significant conversation about the project, a curator friend lit up as she excitedly told me Hirschhorn would host a daily lecture by philosopher Marcus Steinweg for the residents of Forest Houses, a housing project in the Bronx. Whatever the rest of the work was about, I instantly had concerns. The value of imposing scholarship on a group that would likely have few means of interpreting it seemed limited at best. After all, wouldn’t such alienating lectures do more to discourage people from self-education than encourage it?

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Art F City at The L Magazine: Biennial Fail

by Paddy Johnson on July 31, 2013
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What does a biennale look like when it’s run by a group of businessmen and politicians? If Denver’s Biennial of the Americas (July 16-September 2) is any indication, like some awful, biennale-length franken-conference in the service of multinational corporations. Art, when it was given a place at all, was used primarily as a branding tool for the event; it’s not surprising then that it has little to offer art lovers or businesspeople. Even the Biennial’s expressed aims—idea exchange, and looking to booming economies in the north and south—weren’t achieved.

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Art F City at The L Magazine: 7 Tips for MFA Graduate Job Seekers

by Paddy Johnson on July 18, 2013
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This week at The L Magazine, I give advice to MFA grads on finding a job.

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Art F City at The L Magazine: Bogus Journeys

by Paddy Johnson on June 19, 2013
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This week at The L Magazine I forever debunk the idea that travel for the arts is at all glamorous.

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Art F City at The L Magazine: MonkeyTown 3.0: Monkey Business

by Paddy Johnson on May 8, 2013
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Hurray! MonkeyTown, the avant garde screening, performance and dining venue is back! This summer, MonkeyTown will enjoy a 60 day run at Eyebeam. There’ll be chefs, there’ll be videos, there’ll even be an all terrine menu. I spoke to MonkeyTown Founder Montgomery Knott this week, and asked him about the program. Our interview is now up at The L Magazine.

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Art F City at The L Magazine: Don’t Move to New York

by Paddy Johnson on April 24, 2013
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“Don’t move to New York,” I told an audience of young students at the University of Georgia last week. To my surprise, most of the students were already familiar with my thoughts on the matter—I’d forgotten about a conversation I’d had with local artist and MFA graduate Layet Johnson, who’d called to ask me if he should move to New York. That conversation became part of an installation in a hotel show. It’s a small town, so by the time I’d arrived, the entire student body had listened to the piece.

Still, the topic came up again and again during my stay, and part of it was my own doing. I’m sad that New York, the city I’ve lived in for more than 10 years, is now barely hospitable to those making the kind of art I love. It’s my job, though I don’t like it, to tell young artists thinking of moving that without connections, their job prospects are dim. The ugly reality is the cost of living is prohibitively expensive in New York.

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