Having doubled in floorspace since last year, Material Art Fair feels like a totally different beast. The fair has moved to two lower floors of Expo Reforma, with larger booths arranged around “courtyards” for conversation and concessions. There are plenty of new exhibitors, and much of the work looks far more market-friendly than the wares last year.
Opinions remain divided over whether or not these changes are a good thing…
For his new show at Sean Kelly Gallery, Luis Casebere built scale models of Luis Barragán houses and photographed them, creating an optical illusion of the architect’s idealized spaces. I want to live in one of these. [Dezeen]
Walead Beshty’s FedEx Works are the stuff of art handlers’ nightmares. [This is Colossal]
Anyone looking for a job in Kansas? The Wichita Art Museum is seeking a new curator. [The Wichita Eagle]
Baltimore’s new Mayor Catherine Pugh has created a Safe Arts Space Task Force following the eviction of the DIY space The Bell Foundry and Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. We’re happy to see names such as Lu Zhang, Dan Deacon, and Stewart Watson on task force, but this thing kinda seems like a mess in general. Tracey Knuckles, “a consultant on Bloomberg Associates’ Cultural Assets Management team” (what is that?!?) cited “successful” policies in New York and London that Baltimore can learn from to preserve affordable live/work housing… because if any two cities in the English-speaking world have been successful at preserving affordable artist live/work housing, it’s those two? [City Paper]
Here’s some uncharacteristically good news from the real estate sector: now is the time to negotiate with your Brooklyn or Manhattan landlord. Apparently the rental market is starting to correct, and is experiencing some “stess.” [Curbed]
Hate read alert: Ivanka Trump may or may not own a Richard Prince artwork that appears to be a screenshot of her own Instagram account, and Richard Prince may-or-may-not have disavowed it (or it might be “fake” in the first place?). All of this potential drama is of course playing out on social media. [artnet News]
Here’s a list of museums participating in next week’s art strike on inauguration day. Prepare to be depressed. They’re all staying open except for the ones that had planned to be closed for other reasons. [ARTnews]
The gallery strike participation list is a lot less depressing. [Hyperallergic]
Artist and Standing Rock resident Cannupa Hanska Luger talks to Carolina Miranda about the protests. “We’re not just in protest of a pipeline. What we are trying to do is maintain a cultural practice.” [Culture: High & Low]
Looking for ways to get out of this political mess we’re in? The kids have some ideas. Flippable gives people on their mailing list daily tasks in preparation for the upcoming fight for seats in 2018. [Flippable]
Spoiler Alert: Rupaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars has a whole new elimination process. It’s pretty complicated, and definitely engineered for maximum over-the-top drama. [A.V. Club]
Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter, a.k.a. “Honey and Bunny,” are architects-turned-performance artists who aim to disrupt notions of polite, wasteful dining. This involves wrapping themselves in saran wrap and cutting cake with a chainsaw. [The New Yorker]
Tamiko Thiel’s augmented reality piece “Gardens of the Anthropocene” allows viewers to wander post-apocalyptic Seattle and witness what alien flora might take over due to climate change. [Seattle Times]
A Chinese man has been arrested after he vandalized several fiber optics boxes. Apparently he was upset that he had been photographed square-dancing, and wanted to destroy the internet so people couldn’t make fun of him online. [Kotaku]
A really smart interview with Nicole Caruth, the curator of The Grace Jones Project and Emily Kuhlmann, Director of Exhibitions as the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. The show is currently on view at MoAD. Caruth observes that Jones is often seen through the lens of her white male collaborators and that exhibition texts often would have you believe she is merely a muse. Not so. [Hyperallergic]
“Under US copyright law, the use of copyrighted material in a work of art is considered fair use if it comments on the original source material; Prince is leaving literal comments beneath the Instagram photos he reproduces.” Surprise! Richard Prince is getting sued again. [The Art Newspaper]
The New York York Times would have you believe that its latest art feature is breathtaking work of reportage. “We tried to find out what goes on in the mind of the modern museumgoer, unscientifically, by staking out the Met Breuer and interviewing nearly 50 art gazers over the course of two months, their pensive moments pierced by our questions as they peered at works.” What follows are side by side pictures of viewers and the painting they looked at, (the layout is confusing—why do we need to see portraits of the viewers?) and one line reflections on what they saw. Nobody has anything interesting to say. [The New York Times]
Residents of Bristol are unhappy that sculptor Frank Benson’s statue of “castaway” Alexander Selkirk is going to be installed in a cemetery—largely because it’s “terrifying.’ [ART news]
I guess you really can rap about anything. Welcome Fart Touch by BIG STOOPID. Choice lines include, “My fart went BOOM!” and “Get your gas masks if you can’t take the smell” Not for the squeamish, but unexpectedly funny. [YouTube via metafilter]
Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture is totally dreamy. [Dezeen]
“You can’t beat homelessness with economic growth”, writes Evan Horowitz. Why? Because the cost of housing is more expensive in areas with high density populations and wealth, thus pushing those on the brink of homelessness out of their homes. According to this report, Massachusetts has been setting a good example on the policy front. [The Boston Globe]
“Dinild Trimp” is a mysterious social media figure assembled from photoshopped parts of Donald Trump. It’s gross. [The Creators Project]
Long before Richard Prince was screencapping Instagram, he rode an appropriated image of a cowboy to fame. At The Armory Show, it seems other artists are attempting the same. Cowboys are everywhere. We picked out some noteworthy examples, after the jump.
Last week, I visited Mexico City’s Zona MACO (México Arte Contemporaneo), Latin America’s largest art fair. This was on the heels of our visit to Material, a satellite fair that impressed Paddy and me beyond our expectations. Walking into MACO felt just like visiting the most art fair-y of art fairs by comparison—which is to say, the immediate experience was predictable. There were long convention center lines, groups of “fresas” queuing up to take selfies in reflective sculptures, and familiar overexposed blue-chip names such as Alex Katz and Richard Prince. (“Fresas” is Mexican slang for “yuppies”, literally translating to “strawberries”.) MACO devoted a good chunk of floor space to design wares—from furniture to high-end sunglasses. I wasn’t immediately inspired to lend the event much thought beyond snapping some photos. With a few days of reflection, I realize Zona MACO is noteworthy for its extremes. And that’s not just the quality or quantity of blatantly commercial crap. For all the lackluster blue chip staples on the floor, I also saw an impressive amount of well-curated project booths that smartly positioned emerging artists and galleries in dialogue with the establishment. These two poles served a useful purpose: they lay bare how contemporary art fairs function. Zona MACO is the best model I can think of to demonstrate how for-profit fairs must work to remain both commercially viable and discursively relevant. For better or for worse, MACO excels at both.
What is the world coming to? The pizza rat may be a hoax! [Gothamist]
Cait Monro questions whether Saatchi’s all-female show “Champagne Life” is really a step in the right direction. An all female show isn’t a very sophisticated theme for a show, and there is a dirth of female solo shows. (No new ideas here, but I guess it still has be said.) [artnet News]
French artist Orlan has spent decades getting implants on her face for a project she calls “Carnal art”. Now she’s suing Lady Gaga for 31.7 million because she believes Gaga’s video “Born that Way”, steals from her art work. Gaga appears to be wearing facial implants. What a stupid lawsuit. It’s not like the idea of getting a face implant is so unique to Orlan that she deserves a payout. [Page Six]
Speaking of lawsuits, will the Richard Prince lawsuits never end? This week, he’s being sued by Donald Graham, for having appropriated one of his Instagram images and enlarged it. [Hyperallergic]
Marc Spiegler, the director of the Art Basel fairs, thinks galleries need to be more transparent about their pricing—like auction houses. His arguments make sense. Amongst the more compelling, he says that today’s “super-elite art buyers are people who work for their money and are no longer part of a “leisure class” with time to devote to visiting commercial galleries “in Chelsea [New York] or Mayfair” every week.” [The Art Newspaper]
Of the 200 units in downtown Brooklyn’s massive City Point development are 50 market-rate, rent stabilized units. One-bedrooms start at $2,750 and the two-bedrooms start at $4,500. So glad to see the upper middle class won’t be squeezed out of the city. [Curbed]
Ladies and gentleman, the world’s first passenger drone. [Dezeen]
With the current “Making Africa” Guggenheim Bilbao exhibition and the continent being the subject of Armory Show’s Focus programme this year, there’s finally a swell of market and institutional interest in contemporary African art. But Eva Langret, head of exhibitions for London’s Tiwani Contemporary, argues that we’re in the middle of art world hype, and the pressing need for “more international exhibitions including artists from Africa without necessarily having to be about Africa or African art.” [studio international]
Dr. Jonathan Zizmor, the famed New York dermatologist who has carpeted subways with his ads since the early eighties, has retired. [Daily News]
In honor of his retirement, let’s watch artist Ben Coonley’s ad for the New York Underground film festival featuring Dr. Zizmor. [YouTube]
One of Paris’s few private museums, Pinacothèque de Paris, has gone into receivership. Despite a series of popular exhibitions soon after its 2007 opening, the institution has seen its visitor numbers drop 25% in the past two years—and the recent Paris terrorist attacks has made the situation worse. [The Art Newspaper]
Tom Morton, a contributing editor at Frieze Magazine, has created a sly New Years quiz on 2015 art world cliches. (“4) 2015’s hottest ticket was: d) An invitation to be a ‘digital artist in residence’ on an impoverished kunsthalle’s Twitter feed.”) [Frieze Magazine]
Bare, Naked, Nude: A Story of Modernization in Turkish Painting at the Pera Museum in Istanbul traces the history of human representation in Turkish art as a parallel to the country’s move toward a secular state at the end of the Ottoman era. The NYT sees this exhibition as a possibly subversive stand against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Party. [The New York Times]
Filmmaker Xavier Dolan has taken Netflix UK to task in an open letter for changing the aspect-ratio of his film, Mommy: “You can crop and tweak your own shows if you want, but don’t touch me film.” [omg blog]
Richard Prince has been sued again for copyright infringement. [The Guardian]
Oh god, really? Facebook has been accused of censoring a photo of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue. [Artforum]
You can now nap anywhere thanks to the invention of an inflatable sleep hoodie. [Bored Panda]
The Monopoly Star Wars: The Force Awakens tie-in does not feature female lead Rey as a character token one can play because, you know, “spoiler alert”. (Para-phrasing the hapless Hasbro spokeswoman here.) [Boing Boing]
Foxy Production is moving to Chinatown. I guess that’s the end of the Waterfront New York Tunnel galleries. [ARTnews]
Print this fun 2015 icon chart out so you can study it for hours. The graphic organizes the year by month, and categories such as “it” “newish”, “moment”, “fear”, “want”, “champion”, and “things to do”. [The Boston Globe, complete graphic Phillip Niemeyer]
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science will now allow visitors with concealed weapons to enter their museum. Artnews has published a list of museums that allow concealed weapons in their galleries. Why is this not an outrage? This blog, as of today, happily boycotts all museums with this policy. [ARTnews]
Creative Capital’s Star Wars themed fundraiser video couldn’t be better timed—the newest Star Wars will screen worldwide next Monday (and this one George Lucas hasn’t been involved with, so it’s supposed be a lot better!). We recommend donating to Creative Capital—they fund the best artists, many of whom make work that is too great a challenge for the commercial gallery system—and seeing Star Wars. We want to discuss the new movie here on the blog! [Creative Capital]
In 2005, 24 paintings and 70 pieces of silver from the Dutch Golden Age were stolen from Holland’s Westfries Museum. Years later, the collection turned up in the villa of deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Now, a nationalist militia is holding the paintings and demanding a “finders fee” for their return. No one seems to be able to agree on how much the artwork is worth. [The New York Times]
The group Historic England is calling on the British public to help locate and preserve the country’s postwar public art. It has become not-uncommon for modernist sculptures to be stolen and sold for scrap metal. [BBC News]
Woodland, North Carolina needs to invest in education. The town council just voted to reject a rezoning application that would allow a solar farm to be built by Strata Solar Company and put a moratorium on all solar development. One resident, Bobby Mann, expressed fears that the panels would “suck up all the energy up from the sun.” Retired science teacher, Jann Mann, was concerned that the panels would prevent photosynthesis from occurring. [Mashable]
London-based art critic Adrian Searle offers his top ten exhibition list. Number one on that list is the Whitney’s reopening. Woot! Number six is Juan Muñoz, whose figurative sculptures have always been a bit of a head scratcher for me. Why are a bunch of laughing footless figures in a room supposed to be beguiling? [The Guardian]
Franklin Sirmans is settling into his new role as director of the Perez Art Museum Miami. The problem? Miamians apparently don’t like giving donations—especially to an institution that was renamed in honor of another private donor. [The New York Times]
An oddly gripping stream-of-consciousness reflection on Christopher Wool by Richard Prince. [Wool735.com via @gregorg]
Jeff Koons is being sued by photographer Mitchel Gray for copyright infringement. The case stems from Koons’ 1986 painting “I Could Go For Something Gordon’s” which recreated a scene from an ad Gray shot for Gordon’s Gin earlier that year. [The Telegraph]
Huh. Upper West Siders who oppose the Museum of Natural History’s expansion plans are planning to protest the opening of Tina Fey’s new film Sisters. Apparently Fey is on the museum’s Board of Trustees and voted in favor of the expansion. [artnet News]
In part one, art writers discuss discrepancies between the number of women in staff writer positions in contrast to editorial ones. Part two goes in-depth into what makes up everyday sexism, from female-specific reporting topics to out-and-out harassment, and concludes with suggestions for achieving some semblance of equity in the field of art writing.
Artists without MFAs may be making a better living, but who can tell? Data for this survey was sourced by Jane Chafin, Director of Offramp Gallery, Pasadena, from a pool of 267 artists.
If there was any doubt about the MFA degree being a total scam, check out this pie chart on e-flux comparing those whose careers have been helped by their MFA versus those that have not. The study group size is small, but telling regardless. A discussion between Julieta Aranda & Brian Kuan Wood follows. [e-flux Super Community]
Andy Warhol was born this day in 1928. To celebrate his birthday, artnet has a look at Warhol’s Polaroid selfies taken after recovering from surgery necessitated by Valerie Solanis’s attempt on his life. [artnet News]
Architectural renderings are usually populated by hypothetical figures known as “entourage”. Ever noticed how every public space proposal seems to feature “Kid with Balloon” and “African American Woman with Briefcase”? Austrian architecture studio Madame Mohr avoid the cliches and acknowledge the artifice of the medium in their proposal for a new subway line in Vienna. Their renderings are populated by the likes of Super Mario and Jesus from The Big Lebowski. [Dezeen]
Last week, we covered Self-Organized — Aesthetics Politics of the Artist Run, a collaborative exhibition organized by Brooklyn’s Transmitter gallery and Baltimore’s Guest Spot. Critic Rebekah Kirkman also reviewed the show—and touched on all the pieces we missed. [City Paper]
Ryan Steadman on What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present at Matthew Marks Gallery: “a show that is a noble attempt at defining the lineage of the ‘misfit’ American artist, a strain that is often overshadowed by the linear narrative of post-conceptual careerism.” [Observer]
Banks and other corporate entities, increasingly major art collectors, prefer making purchases in the primary market—that is, from galleries, art fairs, and dealers directly. Secondary markets such as auctions are typically shunned out of concern that artwork acquired there is perceived by shareholders as speculative investments. [Art Market Monitor]
Artist Molly Crabapple explains that she cannot work with Lena Dunham on any projects unless she rescinds her support of a petition condemning Amnesty International’s decriminalization of sex work. [Demographic of One]
Magda Sawon of Postmasters reports that she’s already refused two Suicide Girls prints from the Richard Prince dust up in May. “Investors” already want a return on their 90 bucks. [@magdasawon]
The “Football Vine” has become an increasing presence at the last couple of English Premiere seasons: fans shooting live, typically from a TV screen, games on their mobile phone, and re-editing and posting on Vine the unofficial clips of goals or saves. This season, the National Football Museum will be archiving the Vines using WebRecorder Beta in an effort to collect this contemporary form of fan-made memorabilia, despite the ongoing issue regarding copyright infringement. [Rhizome]
“What’s not so visible to fans outside Toronto is that Fucked Up are not simply a band—they’re more like a community cooperative, events-production team, charity organization, and mentorship program all rolled into one.” A brief history of Long Winter, the annual indie-centric, all ages winter concert series organized by members of the Canadian hardcore punk band that has brought together the city’s seemingly disparate yet cross-pollinating music and art scenes. [Pitchfork]
Nicolas Sassoon is interviewed regarding the presence of internet art in Vancouver, in light of two exhibitions he’s been involved with this year: curating the Witchcraft group show at Initially Gallery, and through his WALLPAPERS collective, Emily Carr-inspired projections currently showing as part of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Dialogue with Carr exhibition series. [Decoy Magazine]
Whitney Kimball interviews Auntie Angel, a fellatio coach who came to sex education, in part, through managing her own trauma. When Kimball asks what typical hang ups for women look like, she responds, “A lot of women do not like a lot of saliva because you were raised as a lady, and ladies don’t spit. I tell women, ‘You have to learn how to get your ho up.’” [Hopes and Fears]
Super Mario Brothers Luigi, meet your new brother, Ennuigi. Ennuigi stars in a video game which allows players to move him left to right, smoke, and read his innermost thoughts. “Who fixed these blocks to the sky?” wonders Ennuigi as he looks to the sky, “What being? What being could so casually defy gravity?” There’s plenty more where that came from. [Pico-8 via Metafilter]
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
