Richard Prince
Spiritual America
Guggenheim Museum
9/28/07 - 1/9/08

If you head up to New York anytime soon, be sure to check out the Richard Prince retrospective at the Guggenheim. Just when I thought I was tired of pop art (i.e. Koons, Murakami) Richard Prince brought me right back. The show, which covers the last 30 years of Prince's career, was a breath of fresh air in comparison to the heavy Kara Walker retrospective at the Whitney. Prince 'pilfers freely from the vast image bank of popular culture to create works that simultaneously embrace and critique a quintessentially American sensibility'*. find out more at guggenheim.org and be sure to make the trip up there to see it.

*taken from guggenheim.org

Screening: Zizek!

On Monday the 15th at 7:00pm, I'll be showing this film along with snacks and light refreshment in the grad studios.

Zizek!
Riding the coattails of one man's eccentric personality, filmmaker Astra Taylor paints a dizzying portrait of renowned Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who embodies his reputation as "the wild man of theory." Frantically trailing Zizek on his travels around the world -- from New York and Buenos Aires to his hometown of Ljubljana -- Taylor captures his analysis of everything in his path, including the innovative thinker's take on himself.

*From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Slavoj Žižek (pronounced: [slaˈvɔj ʒiˈʒɛk]) (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher, and cultural critic. He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on countless topics including fundamentalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist".[1]

area 405

we work hard, we play hard.

DISGUST IS THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO MOST SITUATIONS

Finally a reason to look at Twitter: Jenny Holzer.

Automatic Update @ MOMA

Hey Guys. Here is an obvious candidate for our first colloquium trip to New York.




http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/automatic_update/index.html

http://del.icio.us/Automatic_Update?networkadd=Automatic_Update;key=4db1e78250e2755ba3ae6e44b62400cc

The momentum of the dot-com era infused media art with a heady energy, artists, many switching from analog to digital equipment, tried their hands at a range of newly invented art forms. They built interactive installations, electronic publishing networks, and art for the Internet. Technology evolved so fast that in some cases an art form may have disappeared while an artist’s work was still in the making.

By the year 2000, this quasi-revolutionary aura had dissipated and media art had settled into the mainstream. Automatic Update features several installations from this later period. They are mature works that ease the somber mood of the times with entertaining presentations. Nevertheless, their humor does not soften their biting commentary on our social milieu. What at one time was Pop art has now become pop life.

The exhibition is organized by Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Media.

A related series of films and videos is screened in the Titus Theaters from July 7 to September 2.

The Yes Men on Bill Moyers

New Blog on the Block

Rex Weil, this fall's colloquium professor, has started a new and very cool blog. Read it here:
http://centralintelligenceart.blogspot.com/

this is the end

heres what i think.

Visiting Artist Recap

So, now that our semester is drawing to an end, I was wondering what you all thought of our visiting artists? Laurie Anderson was great, and I enjoyed seeing Lorna Simpson's new film work. What did you guys think?

news from around the world

Hey everyone

Soooo since the last time we talked, there have been many many new things happening. I live in my studio now, which is good and bad, good for work, bad for soaking in the culture. None the less, I have managed to make it out to do some good old art watching. First on the list, I recently saw a show of chinese artists, mostly video. Highlights for me were Yu Xudong pill and candy. here is a link with a few stills from the piece. Also there was Cao Fei with is piece Cos Players. All in all an interesting show, the work, i think, (at least to the best of my translation from estonian) was about celebrating life and taking a step back from the seriousness of it all. Very cool. And if you know me, you kow that it takes a lot for video work to impress me...

so next, in helsinki, at the Finnish contemproary arts museum Kiasma a show on the role of landscape in contemporary art. A great show if i may say so. There was your conventional Long, Morris, and Oppenheim that you might expect in this kind of show, but also A few Finnish artists that really stole the show for me. One, Tuula Närhinen and her piece wind tracers. She noticed that the wind, while playing a vital part in the experience of the land, disapears in almost all forms of landscape. so she puts bright lights on tree branches and photographs them with long exposure time so that the wind moving the branch traces a light path on the film. Very cool. Also, in sculpture department Lauri Astala Songlines. This peice was my favorite. play the audio at this link to get a better feel for things.

In other news, I have been set up with a few exhibitions, a solo show at the sculpture Gallery, as well as the Erasmus show in the old town. Also In a group show with some students from the Finnish art academy on the Paldiski penninsula. here.

no real other news, other than busting ass and finally making some reasonable art. I found a bag of old soviet gasmasks.... hmmm what to do with those?
also rusting stuff and puting it on things, hanging stuff.

I have also started doing drawings of trucks and tools with cosmetics on glass. they are fun, but not really that interesting. Well whatever. hope all is well there, I probably should spell check this but i am not going to. too bad i guess. maybe pictures soon.

Who says the Undergrads are unmotivated?

Kick ass! Who's sculpture is that? It's fucking incredible!

Art Fair

Hey dudes.

I attended the Stockholm art fair this week. Sounds cool right? Not so much though. The sculpture that I helped build was one of only a few examples of contemporary sculpture at the fair. There seemed to be a sort of generation gap there. things were either craft, or contemporary, or classical. Not much to get fussed about. Villu Jaanisoo, the artist I am working with, was kind of the surprise hit of the show, (partly because his sculpture was so damn loud) (this was where i would like to embed a video of the piece but the connection will not allow it.)

The coolest thing that went on was across town at an opening I kind of gatecrashed, at Magasin 3 , a sort of Swedish WPA/c. The art was great, but unfortunately as things go, the better the art the weirder the crowd. Pipilotti Rist gave a quick blurb about her work and a thanks for coming, but the work pretty much spoke for itself. There was also a series of prints from the Chapman brothers on display, pity they weren't there though, I hear that they are wild guys.

in closing, i really need someone to pick up a sculpture at the WPAC office, because it was apparently too heavy for their auction and balancing it made it inappropriate for their needs. If anyone can do this for me, or is going to be in DC sometime soon, please let me know.

Thanks, and I hope things are good in ol' CP. Say hey next time you drop by the S&J for me.

P.S. you can also keep up with my less than scholarly activities at my other blog,
you and your beer and how great you are.

My first blog - holy cow! Haha. Hey Meg, great job on the open studio - thanks (once again) for all your effort.
Some of us are interested in making the lounge area a bit more pleasant or presentable esp. since this semester we are expecting plenty of visitors. Let's make a date for a few of us to do some of the work - it would not take long with 3 or 4 of us. How do you feel about that? Doable?

Workload

So whats up dudes

I have seen the facilities and have my work cut out for me, literally.
I am currently working on refurbishing a room that i will get to live in rent free which is awesome. Next week, we start with the studio, my assistantship here involves rebuilding a foundry, including ceramic shell and resin bonded sand, bronze, aluminum, iron, copper, and glass. and when I say rebuild i mean basically mean build. there are remnants of a foundry here, but the sculpture department has big plans.
Oh, and as an extra challenge, the whole thing has to be wired with 220, and it has to run on oil. two things which i know very little (nothing) about.

But we have an experienced staff and enthusiastic students, so it seems very possible.
Now if i can just squeeze time to make art into this, things would be all set.

I hope the studio tour goes well, just remember that all my sales go through Pete. Pete I can trust you with all the money I'll make right? Meg you are in charge of keeping tabs on how many people ask if my studio is a storage space.

Eesti

dudes.

It is cold in estonia. There is snow everywhere. I met the other students and had a tour of the facilities. things look great, there is glass working here, and i am eager to get into that. The school seems to have its base in clasical styles, with newwer staff adding a more contemporary point of view. Here is a link to the schools website Kunstiakadeemia. The language is tough, it is humbling, to be able to talk, literally only when spoken to. most people here speak english, but not primarily, and everyone seems to speak more than one language.

Before I left, I had a dream that was in Spanish, or spanish gibberish, except i could understand everything that was said. I dont speak Spanish, not well enough to dream in it anyway. I think i had gotten druk before i went to sleep that night. Maybe that was it.

Either way, I am hoping that i can use some of the snow that is around tomorrow, and hopefully by then i will have pictures to post.

see yas

Yarns from the Material World