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Friday Links: Expansion Is in the Air

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on June 19, 2015

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Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is moving to Harlem. Wow! What changes will this art gallery’s move signal for the neighborhood? Perhaps not too many as Gavin Brown already lives in Harlem—now he’s moving his business closer to home. The location of the move will be 461 W. 126th Street, a building listed on Chashama’s website as being home to 42 artist workspaces. What will happen to those studios when GBE moves in? [The New York Times]
Here’s a reason to visit Northridge, California: a 10-story-tall Michael Jackson mural from the early 90s will soon go on view at the Museum of the San Fernando Valley. [Los Angeles Times]
Andrea K. Scott finds enchantment in a fashion-art show in the Lower East Side. Fashion-art hybrid Susan Cianciolo has a retrospective at Bridget Donahue in the form of 30 cardboard box “kits” installed on the floor. That’s pretty minimal for a fashion designer, but for those who want glamour there’s a wall lined with costumes Cianciolo recently designed for a German production of Hamlet. [The New Yorker]
Space law from 1966. [The British Library]
There are so many factual inaccuracies in this Bloomberg feature on how dealers, collectors, and artists use Instagram it’s hard to know where to begin. But surely the most hilariously blooper of the whole segment is the running slideshow of Instagrams taken by “Kadar Radar,” artist Kadar Brock, which includes images of art and his gaming miniatures from a D&D knockoff game called Pathfinder. [Bloomberg Business via Timothy Hutchings]
New York City’s expired rent regulations have been given a five-day extension, until Tuesday. [Crain’s New York Business]
Free dance in the summer! A list of recommendations and interviews with the artists behind those works. [The New York Times]
The Alamo has a new official kitty. Meow! [My San Antonio]
Sony stopped making replacement parts for Aibo pet robots, which leaves many Japanese owners anxious. This video documenting the connection between the owners and these pets is so worth eight minutes of your time. [The New York Times]
David Liss, the executive director and curator of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA), has finally found his institution a new home. It’s a doozy! They’ll occupy the first two-and-a-half floors of a renovated Tower Automotive Building in late 2016 or early 2017 at 158 Sterling Rd. [The Globe and Mail]

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Thursday Links: Bouncy Boobland

by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on June 26, 2014

Ben Davis takes a closer look at the Whitney Museum’s wall labels in the Jeff Koons retrospective; he finds some naive ideas about race. Apparently, “Equilibrium” had to do with hoop dreams, and Koons thought Michael Jackson’s skin-whitening was “radicality” and “abstraction” because it was the ultimate appeal to the mainstream white middle class. We all know that Jeff Koons is about quasi-religious celebration of the mainstream, so that doesn’t bother me. It’s the lack of Koons’s critical intent that can be disturbing. [Artnet News]
You may have heard that the U.S. is playing in the World Cup today. Do your patriotic best by watching this video of a bald eagle in slow-motion. Or you can just watch the Muppets get down with the stars and stripes. [YouTube]
Beluga vodka is sponsoring MANIFESTA; curator Kasper König, um, developed a cocktail with them. “Adoring the talent and authority of the chief curator of MANIFESTA 10 Kasper König, Beluga together with him created a special König Cocktail which according to the curator’s idea is a bit spicy, expressively bitter and dry, with bright fruity notes.” [Rhiannon Pickles PR]
Picking up on our airdancer GIF from last week, is this terrible tough-guy song on floppy guys. [YouTube]
ArtsGreensboro has agreed to underwrite the arts coverage in the Greensboro News & Record for a year. This seems like a good start, but we can’t get through the subscription service to view the article they’ve written on the subject of the arts. According to Hyperallergic, CEO and President Thomas Philion says they are looking for ticket sales (for their grantees?) from this venture. Does this mean we can expect “criticism” that reads like ad copy? [Hyperallergic]
Conceptual artist duo Bompas & Parr have created an installation of carnival attractions meant to reveal the sexual subtext of these fairs at the Museum of Sex. This includes a photograph of cotton candy over a woman’s crotch. [Museum of Sex]
Activist and community organizer Justin Wedes tweets that Cecily McMillan might be released from Rikers Island soon. #rumors [Twitter]
Chinese millionaire buys an ad in the New York Times saying he’s going to give out $300 cash to New York’s homeless and treat them to lunch, too. At the lunch, he doesn’t give out the cash; the homeless diners start yelling. Strangeawfulwtf. [The New York Times]
Blast from the past: Cory Arcangel’s kittens playing Arnold Schoenberg’s “Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11-II.” [YouTube, via @CliveHolden]
Between 7:15 and 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, somebody broke into the Metropolitan Opera house at Lincoln Center and began spray-painting obscenities on sculptures and paintings. Very likely, it’s a disgruntled employee. [New York Post]

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Tuesday Links: This Is a Serious Listicle

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on May 27, 2014

Man in the Mirror, Image courtesy of http://www.fanpop.com

A 150-point listicle that attempts to create a schlock song cannon. Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” takes the 23rd position. Boyz II Men’s, “End of the Road”, takes #26. This is a thoughtful listicle! [Vulture]
Charles Saatchi plans to sell Tracey Emin’s My Bed at Christie’s. Though she thinks its valuation at ~£1m could put it out of reach of museums, Emin hopes this is the last time it’s sold. “It’s still my bed,” Emin tells The Art Newspaper. “I love it.” [The Art Newspaper]
Famed choreographer William Forsythe is stepping down from the helm of his own company, Forsythe Dance Company. [ArtsBeat]
Tiernan Morgan criticizes Jayson Musson’s show at Salon 94 for being not specific enough in their critique of the art world. [Hyperallergic]
Around the country, 50,000 billboards will be transformed into art. [Fast Company]
An article mostly without a point, but perhaps about MoMA’s expansion? The whole piece seems to be built on wrong headed assumptions and is backed up by anonymous quotes without any explanation for why they are anonymous. [Quartz]
Looks like Creative Time’s seeking more unpaid volunteers to basically act as security guards for its massive Kara Walker show. This, one month after it raised $1.3 million at its benefit fundraiser. [NYFA]
Godard made a 3D film, and people are freaking out. Rhett Jones reports that one shot, which makes people’s eyes inadvertently cross, blew away Cannes audiences so much that the entire audience stood up and applauded. [Animal New York]

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Wednesday Links: Urinating in Someone’s Mouth Not Considered Helpful

by Paddy Johnson on March 26, 2014

Always good to get a little context. Patricia Morrisroe, Robert Mapplethorpe’s biographer, on the reception of his work while he was alive: “At a time before gay marriage, when most gay men were still in the closet, pictures of leather men in chains hanging upside down, or urinating in someone’s mouth, wasn’t considered helpful in furthering gay rights.” [Dazed]
LOL. “post-Internet artists have moved beyond making work dependent on the novelty of the Web” [Artspace]
24 year-old Lucien Smith was scouted by Jeanne Greenberg-Rohatyn at his Cooper Union thesis show. Now his work is selling at auction for 6 digits and there’s speculation that David Zwirner will pick him up. Smith is now dating Zwirner’s daughter Marlene (though we hear that relationship is no longer). WTF? [Artnet]
Christian Viveros-Faune on William Powhida’s “Overcultured” at Postmasters. “As most artists and the majority of critics scratch their heads, Powhida has effectively conceptualized several novel ideas and forms to better illustrate our confounded present. In that spirit, Powhida makes art out of the normally utilitarian press release, where he defines “overculture” as “a small cultural group (artists) within the larger culture, often affirming the beliefs or interests of the ruling class (collectors),” and also as “a negative or ambivalent feeling about culture often in relation to socio-economic conditions.” [The Village Voice]
Felix Salmon thinks Mark Zuckerberg is the Warren Buffet of technology. [Felix Salmon]
OMG. Tonight, a burlesque tribute to Star Trek at The Slipper Room. [The Slipper Room via City Room]
For those who can’t attend, but want to pay tribute at home, we sourced these Star Trek Insignia Pasties. [Etsy]
Give me some Jeff Koons Banality Service Plate please! My favorite is the Michael Jackson and Bubbles plate, but a whole set is available. [MoMA Design Store]

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Carolee Schneemann’s Body Is A Battlefield At PPOW Gallery and Galerie Lelong

by Emily Colucci on November 21, 2016

A week after the election, women’s bodies are a battleground yet again. Donald Trump hinted at overturning Roe v. Wade on 60 Minutes and Paul Ryan thought birth control was a “nitty-gritty detail” of the dismantlement of the Affordable Care Act. This isn’t even taking into consideration the pussy-grabbing rhetoric of the campaign. With President-elect Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, women–like many diverse populations–feel newly under siege.

This danger to women’s health and civil liberties inadvertently breathes new life into art that engages with the female body and its subjugation. While using the body, in the recent past, may have felt like Feminism 101, art now needs to reflect and reject this patriarchal threat. Feminist art stalwart Carolee Schneemann achieves just that in her dual exhibitions Further Evidence–Exhibit A at PPOW Gallery and Further Evidence–Exhibit B at Galerie Lelong. In these dual shows, Schneemann depicts the female body as contested, controlled and imprisoned. And it couldn’t feel more timely.

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IMG MGMT: Freddie and St. Cosmas

by Jaimie Warren on July 14, 2016

These images are pulled from my personal database of thousands of saved jpgs, gifs and video clips from Internet memes, pop culture, and art history, collected over a ten-year period. Deceased saints and celebrities, horror movie victims and victims of plague, pop culture monsters and cartoon characters form a cast of silly and somber subjects who cameo in my large-scale community reenactments of art history.

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IMG MGMT: Pinch-to-Zoom

by Jeremy Bailey on May 24, 2016

Really when you think about it, artists like me are a lot like inventors; we bring new ideas to life that change the world. But world-changing inventors, both good and evil, are currently at war. Big mean tech companies like Google, Apple and Samsung are being granted hundreds of patents that encroach upon the free spirit of the altruistic artist. At risk: the future of self expression. Now more than ever, the world needs us all to be inventors.

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Childhood Conditioning Crisis: Liz Magic Laser at Mercer Union

by Rea McNamara on December 17, 2015

I’ve always been wary of blonde children. Maybe this stems from having grown up in a mostly white Canadian small town, where civic pride swelled for the farmer boys with hair the yellow of corn who became NHL players, or the figure skating girls able to lutz and flip jump in their sparkling spandex.

In Liz Magic Laser’s Kiss and Cry at Mercer Union, the chilling universalism of the sacred, blonde prodigy is affirmed. Commissioned by the artist-run center, the video follows figure skating coach Marie Jonsson MacKenzie conditioning her blonde blue-eyed children, seven year old Anna and eleven year old Axel, from training practice to spot-lit performance. It’s a straight-forward and minimal video work install: a blacked-out gallery, a large-scale projection, and not much else. Their dialogue with each other is stiff and unsettling—at one point after a performance in a darkened, empty North Toronto arena, young Axel says in a robotic-sounding voice-over “fuck the child … fuck the future”.

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