Dark side of the Wizard at Copy for the New Year

Tricia Avey and I have decided to host a chill screening of The Wizard of Oz with the Dark Side of the Moon at Copy (319 N. 11th St. 3rd flr) this evening. If you are a friend and are in the area please stop by. The flick will start at around 10 so we can be back in Kansas by midnight. If the vibe is good we might stay at the space, if not we will move on to other parties.

BYO: pillow, bottle, snacks and etc.



Cheers!

-Annette

TONIGHT: FREE DRINKS AND ELECTRICITY AT VOX

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21 FROM 7PM TO 9PM:

MAXIMILLIAN LAWRENCE OFFERS HIS EXHIBITION/WORK-IN-PROGRESS, THE DARLINGTON PAIR, FOR PUBLIC EXPERIMENTATION.

(IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ON THE 21ST, STOP BY THE GALLERY DURING REGULAR HOURS AND CHANCE THAT YOU WILL CATCH HIM BUILDING, REPAIRING AND RECORDING HIS EXPERIMENTATIONS)

"The Darlington Pair Maximillian Lawrence will be creating a device he refers to as a “relationship amplifier”, based on the electronic principle of a Darlington Pair. (A Darlington pair is a set of two transistors that amplify weak signals into stronger and sharper signals for both audio and microprocessing) In the best case, the gallery space will amplify the relationships between the people interacting with the musical instruments, culminating into a spectacularly blinding light and resonant bowel moving sound show, ending with a profound spiritual experience. In its worst case, it will flash LED’s and make fart noises."

At Vox

nuts and berries: objects and not

Little Berlin 1801 N. Howard St., Philadelphia.
Friday, December 14th- ?


A wall of found and manipulated objects, priced from low to "priceless"

nuts and berries: objects and not bills itself as a "visual agreement between daniel petraitis and martha savery" and each would-be capital letter was printed lower case as it is reproduced here. I can only assume the use of lower case implies that the artists (or the space) are extremely modest about their craft and its place in society. I think an adept parallel would be when a band chooses to play on the floor, becoming a part of the audience, rather then performing on an elevated stage. If anyone has ever produced or come across an in-depth study of the use of lower cases in text, especially when the capital "I" is replaced with the lower case "i" I would be happy to hear a discussion of it.


One of the objects on display at Little Berlin.

The "visual agreement" between the two artists in question is in actuality a nice way of saying a two-person show with a few collaborative pieces. However, I think the use of the term is especially apt in nuts and berries as the works of Daniel and Martha compliment each other in a seamless way. It would be possible to imagine the exhibition as a one-person show. As the title of the exhibition implies, the artists have gathered objects natural to their urban environment. The phrase "nuts and berries" becomes a metaphor for discarded objects; telephone books, pieces of pallets, old furniture, plastic trash and anything else that one might find abandoned to the sidewalks of the city. After gathering the "fruits" of the metropolis each artist transforms the trash into an arresting visual object or installation. In one collaborative work, the transformation is as simple as hanging the objects on a wall, numbering them, and giving them each a sale price.


A man sits on a piece of telephone pole beside Martha Savery's stack of yellow pages.


Daniel Petraitis' stack of pallets.

For me, the "tour de force" of the show was in a slightly separated room housing a mountain of artfully stacked telephone books (by Martha Savery) and pieces of old pallets (by Daniel Petraitis). The pallet ends had been painted bright colors by Mr. Petraitis in a move that immediately called to mind Jessica Stockholder, branded onto the ends of each wooden slat, however, were the initials "dp". The branding mirrors the industrial process, pulling this stack of wood into a highly Duchampian context, while turning each piece in the stack into a highly individualized artwork produced in multiple.

nuts and berries: objects and not , was a treat to visit, it's simple modesty and use of recycled materials was a breath of fresh air in today's decadent climate.

Also posted to artblog

Scenes from the Flux Space and a studio visit with Joe DiGuiseppe

Joe DiGuiseppe's back. As I take more pictures I get increasingly shy of asking people to let me take their picture. Therefore, expect many images like this in the future.


I visited Joe at the Flux Space on Wednesday, December 12th, three days before their major Oliver Herring opening (which I could not attend due to a very important poker tournament), to gain some further knowledge of his own work and ask him to be a part of a show I'm curating for the Esther M. Klein Gallery in March of next year.

The show is going to be about open source technology, and how it or it's concept can be applied towards the creation of art, and will be titled Given Enough Eyeballs in reference to Eric S. Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar (abbreviated CatB). The full quote it's taken from being "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"--my simple summary of the concept being that if all of us have the access to information and the ability to process it then we'll be able to work out any problem we come across. In defense of this thesis I'm going to point to Wikipedia.

Joe and I shared some internet site favorites, including his own website:

Put things in my pussy! by Joe

Joe's site

many ones dot com a site by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung that is truly a work of art.

You be the Man Now Dog. A site of strings of animated gifs and manipulated jpegs.

Also I enjoyed a video night and the Flux Space's scenery:


The Flux fridge


One of Joe's plans for a future art installation.


A very old dictionary that still believes computers are people who compute.


A scene from Joe's studio.


A scene from the FluxSpace.

Also in the open source exhibition so far are Yoshi Sodeoka (New York), and Ramsey Arnaoot (The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study). If you have any thoughts on open source/systems or how an exhibition about them should be run or, if you have a computer you could donate to the cause please leave your information.

VERY IMPORTANT.

1. ALEX DA CORTE TONIGHT IN NEW YORK at Stonefox Artspace.



2. A NEW MIX on Will Pym's site by Mr. Anthony Campuzano/tc/bubbles inc.



Spread the love,

Annette

P.S. I may have time for substance later on.

Drums Like Machine Guns

This was the last music show at Copy:

DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS!!!!!!!!






On first friday (this friday) there is a new one with Akasha Blade, Psychedelic Horseshit, Tickley Feather, Pink Reason, Kurt Vile, and others. BE THERE!

Hany Armanious Year of the Pig Sty

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on Earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this Earth.

-Jean Paul Sartre

Foxy Productions
Extended through Dec. 15th.



Hany Armanious, the egyptian artist who brings us Year of the Pig Sty(up through December 15th) has been making mysterious installation-thingies for sometime if I am to believe the two essays I picked up from the silent and comparatively sterile back room of Foxy Productions in Chelsea. I found that Sarte quote in my least favorite essay of the two, by Jason Markou, and it really helped me put Armanious's mess into perspective. You have to love writing, communication in general really, for speeding up what would no doubt be a long and arduous journey of becoming acquainted with Hany Armanious's oeuvre only to find that the real meat of the matter is that he's looking for an answer himself.

Looking hard from the look of it. The Year of the Pig Sty has brought so much mud into the gallery that you are able to imagine you are both inside and outside at once. The lighting is low (Literally. One light is actually hung only about a foot from the floor.), you get the immediate feeling you are witnessing a mess you should not witness. Perhaps you are in the lair of some super-demon, an artist who has gone completely mad, or a pig who has become obsessed with casting his own crocs, a shoe described admiringly by Mr Markou as "the lightweight one-piece foam shoe that replaced the Birkenstock as the last word in functional therapeutic footwear." The absence of any pig was felt more dearly then the absence of anything else. The mud had all dried out and I had to wonder if it was wet during the first week of the show.



I was in the mood to witness the display of Mr. Armanious's mess, so I won't blame you for turning up your nose and going on your own quest for more concrete answers. You won't find them in Year of the Pig Sty, but you will find chaos and confusion and someone who is searching, and you might find relief, as I did, that you are not the only one in the world leaving behind a mess of unanswerable questions.




Originally posted on artblog.

WELCOME TO MY BLOG.

WELCOME TO MY BLOG. PLEASE ENJOY THE POSTS. MAKE COMMENTS, AND IF YOU CAN PLEASE ATTEND MY GALLERY TALK AT VOX POPULI: TODAY! AT THREE PM. THERE WILL BE FOOD AND REFRESHMENT AND FUN! I WILL BE DISCUSSING THE FOLLOWING THREE EXHIBITIONS:

Amy Adams But Nature More

Vox Populi. ENDS TODAY.



Amy Adams has told me that she is interested in the chaos of everyday life, on how our focus becomes consumed in the details and we are never able to properly see the big picture. Stress, work, coffee, deadlines, these are the things that take up our days, these are the thoughts in our heads. With this in mind it is interesting to me that her last two installations at Vox Populi (Undead and But Nature More) have given the overall feeling of being a landscape we are able to see from a distance. She has given us a perspective she says we can't have, and isn't that one of the main arguments for the mainstay of artistic work? It provides us with the things that life cannot. . .

Her current exhibition at Vox Populi, But Nature More draws us even further from the chaos of work in the metropolis. We are shown a "diamond"-studded mountain-scape, in a cavern between mountains we are able to glance a projection of the sky, it's clouds moving at a rate that looks like a movie in fast-forward. It is a strange and surreal portal. It makes me think of the idea of time travel.

But Nature More draws an impossible line in the sand. We live in the city, we make our living from it , but if asked which we liked better, the man-made or the natural environment, without thought to how we would survive, which would we choose? Most of us might conclude that we like nature more, but in light of having to wake up and go to work in the morning, we might also conclude that liking nature more is a moot point.

Andrew Suggs Table Turning

Vox Populi. ENDS TODAY.


Red Scare

According to Wikipedia Table Turning is an outdated and rather messy form of Ouija board "in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, and wait for rotations. . . the alphabet would be slowly called over and the table would tilt at the appropriate letter, thus spelling out words and sentences." Upon entering Mr. Suggs exhibition we are therefore predisposed to think about communing with spirits and all the eeriness that entails. Two pieces of art immediately fit our frame of mind; a large pool of wax (from candles?)entitled Red Scare and a Ouija Board entitled Yes, Yes. even though it is without the words "yes", "no" and "maybe" and is tilted up by an unplugged microphone on one side.


As Above, So Below (background). Yes, Yes (foreground)

There are also several references to music. In the piece As Above, So Below, a series of constellations Mr. Suggs has made up and named after various people whose last names begin with "m" we see the names Morrissey, McCartney, and even Manson (among an assortment of "m"s with other professions). There are two sets of earbuds on pedestals, equipped with ungodly amounts of wire and coated in rubber. One can guess by the title Unsung Sculpture, that this makes the buds worthless. The final piece is a video installation, comprised of three TVs positioned at varying heights behind two black curtains. The subject matter of the videos appears to be fans at a concert, only rendered slower and more red then they would be in life. The curtains impart the feeling of standing backstage while a rock group performs and looking out over the sea of fans. Not on stage yourself, but set apart from the rest of the spectators. This piece is entitled Incantations.

Whenever I am around the work of Mr. Suggs I cannot help but think of gothic or industrial music which doesn't fail to put me in mind of high school. My mind runs circles from there and I am always concerned that I haven't figured it all out.


Incantations


Unsung Sculpture

Jonathan Prull Providence #709

Vox Populi. ENDS TODAY.



I can only consider that Jonathan Prull's great cardboard characters are fighting some horrible and violent battle. Though one of them appears to be drunk, he doesn't seem to be having fun and may have just shot himself. There is a tank-like creation shooting an unsettled dog-like thing and in the back of it all there is a tall monstrous-looking squirrel or squirrel-like animal. It's all a very dark and nightmarish world these people/creatures live in and walking through the installation leaves one in fear of getting a paper cut.

He Yunchang The Rock Touring Around Great Britain

Chambers Fine Art, Chelsea, November 8th-December 22nd.



He Yunchang has done some really rotten things to himself over the years. Recently he has embedded himself in a concrete block for 24 hours, and stared into 10,000 watts of electric light for sixty minutes. Not so recently he has suspended himself upside-down over a river, "trying" to divide it with a knife. Once he "tried" to move a mountain by pulling on a string he had tied around it. So it was nice to see an exhibit from an artist who usually sets himself up for pain and failure doing something somewhat manageable.

The exhibit at Chambers Fine Art, The Rock Touring Around Great Britain, is surprisingly a series of oil paintings. Each painting depicts He Yunchang, rock in hand, as he walks, sometimes running, over the English countryside from September 23, 2006 to June 14th, 2007. The myth that I like to believe is that He Yunchang picked up his rock in Boulmer and then carried it counterclockwise until he was able to return the rock to the exact location he picked it up in.

The effect the oil paintings have on the viewer is pretty magical because they aren't anything special. These paintings, they could have been created by Bob Ross, but there is a life in them because they record an event. Perhaps somewhat dorkily I am reminded of the childlike empress in the movie The Neverending Story telling Atreyu that the child from the real world has traveled with him the whole time. In a similar way,so have I, travelled with He Yunchang, as he picked up a rock and felt the sun in his face, or the wind, or the rain, I was there.

Emilie Clark: The Weeklies

Morgan Lehman October 25-December 22, 2007



I have many things that aren't very nice to say about The Weeklies so I'll start with the one thing I really liked; The idea. I know you're snorting right now because there isn't anything all that original about the idea of creating one painting a week since 1995 and planning to continue making one painting a week for the rest of your life. Still, I like the thought of having a life-process and actually going through with the idea is something other then a late night at the bar.

The effect of all the paintings, hung in graph formation under a year's heading, all the same size, was a bit under-whelming. There was quantity certainly, but not quality in in quantity. Although I like the idea I began to wish that Emilie had edited her weeklies, as there were at least five really good ones. Many of the good ones were towards the end. (All the ones in the beginning resembled the types of screen-printed collages high-schoolers and indie-rockers are so fond of.) This is actually an excellent sign for Ms. Clark because she must be getting better. The good paintings all resemble blurry monster-like animals in "horrible" colors. I wished they were bigger. They look remarkably well reproduced on the internet.

Though I have said many things that aren't very nice about Emilie Clark and I take none of them back I am afraid that the exhibit leaves me with the feeling that I have read her diary and now I am in danger of having a little nerdy art crush on her. Perhaps this was her sinister scheme all along? I know her too well to really dislike her.