MICHEL GONDRY AT DEITCH PROJECTS

BE KIND REWIND
Deitch Projects February 16, 2008-March 22, 2008.

Michel Gondry has the sort of not-easily defined and boundary-stepping career that many people seem to have these days. No longer can film-makers stay film-makers, or music-video-makers stay music-video-makers, or artists stay artists, or commercial-makers stay commercial-makers. No. You have to be all of thee above. I wonder how the kids are going to turn out without any of these distinctions?

I missed Gondry's first foray into installation art, for The Science of Sleep, at Deitch Projects on Grand. In fact, it didn't even cross my radar so I was surprised (and a little bit giddy) to find an installation about a movie I had seen advertised on TV at Deitch Projects on Wooster. I think I said "I saw this on TV!!!"



As I stare at my powerbook today I wonder why I was so excited and I blame it on working for too long at cross-marketing things (I am, after-all, a blogger). My first thought is to think that Gondry's installation at Deitch is great promotion for his movie and vice versa. My second thought doesn't even go that far and I simply try to figure out if I had a good time at the exhibition.

What Gondry's done is to set up a maze-like world of movie sets. The "opening set" is the video store from Be Kind Rewind the movie (which I have not seen yet), which you pass through to journey a labyrinth of fake trains, cars that look as though they are moving due to video screens behind them, bedrooms whose windows change from day scene to night scene, little cafes, doctor's offices, escalators and etc. You can sign up to make a movie while you're there and Deitch provides the camera, you can leave the movie you made in the video store and people can watch it there. All of this is very cool and you know how much I love to take a good picture. The area was ripe with the means to take a good picture.




Here, provided, is the means to make yourself a local celebrity (A local NYC celebrity!). You could film a bad-ass zombie movie with a group of friends after you all went out for a sushi dinner. People could watch it. People could bootleg it and you-tube it. Part of me would really like to do this, while another, bigger part of me, grows more apathetic by the minute. That part almost wishes for the "good old days" when you could be a faceless entity, entertained, but not expected to do any of the entertaining.

B+

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:

SUNDAY DECEMBER 2ND EQUALS OFFICIAL LAUNCH

YO! I AM NOT READY FOR VISITORS YET! JUST GOT OUT OF THE GODDAMN SHOWER!

So Philebrity blew the whistle on my new blog before I was ready to tell anyone about it. The official launch date will be the date of my gallery talk at Vox Populi: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2ND AT 3 PM. There will be foodstuffs and etc. per usual.

I am 27. I make art.

For all of those who haven't followed me from blog to blog a little art introduction; I just had a little art show at Padlock Gallery in Philadelphia. It was called "27" in honor of the fact that I turned 27 the day before the show. Lately I have been drawing large groups of people composed of people I know and people I find on the internet or in glossy mags, these drawings don't photograph well for me. I also produce "floral arrangements", copy essays, and draw (mostly flowers) on sheets. This show was accompanied by a little zine called "Ordinary People Can Typically Gain Power by Acting Collectively."

I dedicate my most recent work to Edward Gorey, Philip K. Dick, and Susan Sontag, but a big inspiration for my recent thought processes has been the books Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut and The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari.

Basically my thesis is art takes time and you judge an artist on a life's work, this is a problem if you want to live and eat on a daily basis so you have to find a way to do that:



You'll have to excuse my love of pictures with lots of flash--this is what you'd see when you walked into the gallery, a mirror's eye-view of "Portal of History" which is a beaded curtain made out of tapes of my recorded voice reading The Lives of the Artists.



Outside of the mirror, you cannot read Giorgio Vasari.



A detail.



The right side of the gallery.



"Decorative Element", a drawing on a sheet.



"Flower Arrangement 12"



"Yellow Sign Menu"



Detail.



"Spiderman" I was planning on naming this piece Black Flag but Jasper Johns might already have one like it, plus I already reference Raymond Pettibone--I'm punk rock at heart but this piece is about claiming responsibility for the place you live in and the mess you have allowed that place to make. Think of the ending scene in the first Spiderman movie.

Now some bad flicks of my drawings:



"Dial 481" everyone's favorite, it refers to a mood you can dial in Philp K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The mood is about coming out of despair and seeing endless possibilities for the future.



Detail.



"Really Full Subway Car" This flick is so terrible you can't see anything, basically many people are in the subway car, which floats in a sea of thoughts.



Detail. There was also one other drawing that I didn't even attempt to photograph.

Special thanks to Fabric Horse for writing my show up!

That's me, now let's talk about the rest of the world.