Oil Magic
Obsessed with Allison Schulnik’s oil paintings right now. Messy, melty, mesmerizing. So sick! Planning to check out her show here in NYC as soon as possible.
Song of the Day: Veronica Falls – “Bad Feeling”
It’s sweater weather! Put on a cardigan and listen to this band. Do it.
Between Sleeping and Waking
I visited MoMa’s annual New Photography update last week and was a bit mesmerized by the latest work from Netherlands-based artist Viviane Sassen.
Born in Amsterdam, Sassen spent part of her formative childhood years in Kenya. As an adult she returned to Africa to try and recapture the dreamy, surreal impressions of her youthful days on the continent. The resulting series is called Parasomnia and it’s filled with bold spots of color, sharp angles and dramatic, shadowy lines. Anonymous places and mostly faceless subjects give the work a hypnotic blend of both mystery and intimacy.
On Madness…
My mom used to sing a disturbing song called “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” to my three sisters and I when we were younger and probably threatening her sanity on a daily basis. It popped into my head recently and, thanks to the wondrous interwebs, I tracked down this trippy/Norman-Bates-themed music video for the tune made by some random Dutch guys. Oh, and a puppet cover.
The original 1966 novelty record was performed by Napoleon XIV, known in regular life as songwriter/record producer Jerry Samuels. The tune quickly climbed the charts and inspired a mental-illness-themed LP with song titles like ”Marching Off To Bedlam,” ”I Live In A Split Level Head” and ”Let’s Cuddle Up In My Security Blanket.” It also quickly bombed back down the charts when DJs began banning it from airplay, afraid that listeners would think it an affront to the mentally unstable. A perfect track for parenting!
My Guardian
I was flipping through the latest issue of Juxtapoz and nearly laughed out loud when I came to their coverage of For the Kids, a recent Salon 94 exhibition of the infamous late-1980s sports posters of brothers John and Tock Costacos. To refresh your memory, the posters took various basketball, baseball and football stars of the day, dressed them up as street toughs, security guards, urban cowboys and superheroes and placed them against dramatic yet slightly low budget ‘sets.’ The images played off existing personas, like the classic version of Karl “The Mailman” Malone dressed up like a mailman, somewhat violently stuffing a basketball into a mailbox labeled The Boston’s. Others spun off the decades’s greatest pop culture hits – films like The Terminator and Mad Max…TV shows like LA Law and Miami Vice. They were kitschy, but they were unique. And they sold like hotcakes.
As a young girl I was obsessed with basketball and the New York Knicks. At age 10 I purchased and hung this poster directly over my headboard in the bedroom I shared with my sister.
My mom complained about having to stare down a 7-foot stranger as she bent in for a goodnight kiss. My sister rolled her eyes and hung a Degas print, or something equally sophisticated, over on her side of the room. But I was unfazed. Patrick Ewing was my guardian.
As an adult I can laugh and appreciate the campy ridiculousness of these posters, but as a tiny-limbed, extremely passionate Knicks fan, I thought mine was the coolest, most badass image ever created.
The Costacos retrospective closed on August 7th – SO bummed I missed a chance to see Patrick framed and hung in a place of honor again. Full-circle life moment, missed. Oh well.
For a great look at all the posters, Lob Shots posted up an amazing collection.
Below are another few personal favorites, most of which have been chosen for the ‘best use of most silly prop.’
John Elway as “The Rifleman.” The football holster! Amazing.
Eric Davis as “Magnum.” Giant gun with baseballs in the chamber instead of bullets? Check. Plus this one is pretty much the visual equivalent of a local network tv infomercial. So good.
I have no idea who these guys are but the shorts and the tagline are winners.
James Worthy in LA LAW. So serious, yet so silly. Love his ‘sexy assistant’ and the office mini hoop.
The Future and The Hallway
Gearing up to see Miranda July’s latest film, The Future by poking around on her super entertaining personal site, which is filled with psychic interviews, random musings & jet-lagged video testimonials from her latest publicity tour…plus links, pictures and cool bits of info from some of her older art projects.
This 2008 piece called “The Hallway” was commissioned by the Yokohama Triennial. It made me laugh a lot.
Here’s the exhibition’s blurb:
A 125 foot hallway lined with fifty wooden signs, hand-painted with text. As the viewer/participant walks down the seemingly endless hall, weaving between the signs, the text acts as an internal voice, “It’s too late to go back now, but the end seems far away…” The “you” in text realizes that you’ll be walking down this hallway for the rest of your life. And like life, the hall is filled with indecision, disappointment, boredom and joy – and it does end.
The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.
Hail Ye Travelers
RWFA Gallery has an excellent exhibition up called Hail Traveler! The Photographer as Tourist, and the Tourist as Subject.
Inspired by the writings of J. B. Jackson, the show’s photos look to expose the curious, visionary tourist that resides in every photographer traveling in search of a subject.
One of Jackson’s influencing beliefs was that tourism is largely the desire to know more about the world in order to know more about ourselves. As RWFA points out, “his ideology parallels the careers of many photographers, and the concept of finding one’s vision through the exploration of the unfamiliar.”
Beautiful works by Jehsong Baak, Sharon Harper and John Goodman stood out for me. There’s also a striking Avedon portrait that no ‘image insert’ could do justice – go see it in person!
TABLOID
Sexual obsession, brainwashing, Mormon rituals, pitbull cloning, Indian disguises, prostitution, general madness…all are on display in Errol Morris’ latest feature TABLOID. The film recounts the freaky life and times of former-beauty-queen-turned-kinky-kidnapper, Joyce McKinney. With interviews from various UK journalists (where the story reached manic-levels), an ex-Mormon missionary (to dish some religious-insider dirt) and McKinney herself, the story goes from weird to weirder to utterly jaw-dropping. Fascinating stuff.
The Motion of the Ocean
Paul Bobko’s beautiful wave photos perfectly capture the energy, shape and dynamic qualities of that magical moment when water and shore collide.
Shot from the beaches of New York and California, the results are on display at the Alan Kotz Gallery through August 19th. Going to check it out today. Here are some of Bobko’s words about the project:
As the wave moves towards the shore, the energy that propels it’s motion gives way to the ocean floor. The forward movement is slowed while forces push the wave higher and higher until a point where the wave seems to hesitate before the ocean’s energy is released and the wave breaks. As this energy changes shape, the formal structure of the landscape breaks down and the seeming passive forms become active. This series attempts to capture this moment and attempts to create a shared experience between the photographer and the viewer.
