“the future is stupid” etc etc

jenny holzer is designing a line of sneakers for keds, to sponsor the whitney.

they’re very simple, subtler than most clothes with words on them, and at $70, not insanely overpriced either (kinda). this is what they look like:

 

 

sorta cute, right?

 

either way i really like jenny holzer, she’s that artist who projects words and snappy sayings on a variety of surfaces. seriously snappy.

 

(at moma)

 

 

(from artnet)

 

i can’t tell if she’s less angsty or maybe just more complacent about her angst, than barbara kruger. either way, reading her words always makes me say “hm” or “ph” or some other monosyllabic but pleasant thinking sort of noise. she’s in most every museum with a contemporary-type collection. recommend.

[ stefanie ]

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if you’re an unemployed liberal arts major feeling shitty,

here’s a nice article to make you feel intellectually superior to all the employed econ majors you know.

 

also let’s take a minute for louise bourgeois, who died last week after almost a century of creating art of all shapes and sizes, who was still creating oozing guttural imploring encompassing emotional sculptures and drawings well into her eighties, what a cool lady right?

 

(louise with her 1970 sculpture eye to eye, from le centre pompidou)

 

(legs, 1986, the hirshhorn)

 

(10am is when you come to me)

 

(donne ou prend, 2002, tate modern)

 

her art is about “consider[ing] the whole range of intimacy, desire, and the human need to connect or belong, to be part of the family”. she has a drawing from 2007 that reads,

 

it is not so much

where my motivation comes from

but rather

how it manages

to survive

 

it’s wild how much her childhood affected her; she had enough pent up emotion to fuel 70 or so years of prolific art making.

 

another melancholy but appealing line from a 1947 drawing, il disparut dans un silence total, that was hanging at her pompidou retrospective in 2008:

 

he was of a quiet nature and rather intelligent but he was not interested in being loved or protected because he was interested in something else

 

she was very special & let’s all love the pieces she’s left behind.

 

[ stefanie ]

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this will be my last marina abramovic post until i actually go and see the exhibit, i promise

this recording reviewed paper cone stories, an event i’ve never heard of but may or may not be hosted by a present-or-past girlfriend of a boy i used to know. anyway the synopses of readings seem both apt and witty and worth listening to. someone named akiva gottlieb was talking about the man who grabbed the backside of one of abramovic’s performers and this is what he said:

For certain liberal arts school graduates, the Abramovic retrospective is our Woodstock, the cultural happening that enables us to stare meaningfully into the eyes of strangers, brush against body parts, watch women run through a muddy field while stripping off layers of clothing, and generally revel in the various possibilities of naked flesh under the guise of an artistic experience. It’s a lot like ChatRoulette, actually, and it’s making New York very comfortable.

 

also while visiting the college graduation of some friends this past weekend i was lucky enough to meet a former housemate’s 16-year-old brother, a young man sporting an eyebrow ring and jeggings. he had recently seen the retrospective and an interesting conversation about nudity and voyeurism in art ensued until all of a sudden he remembered he was only 16 and was all “yeah dude it was so weird squeezing between naked people especially cuz one of them was a dude heh heh heh it was kinda hot though”. then i wondered if all of my cultural and sociological musings are for real or if i’m merely trying to prove to myself that i’m not, in fact, a 16-year-old boy laughing about naked people and covering up these oh-so-base instincts with lofty vocabulary and concepts borrowed from an art history textbook.

art is weird man especially when it has no clothes.

[ stefanie ]

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Droog Design

I’ll admit that I have yet spent the due amount of time pursuing the droog design website, but I must say I am very very curious. Droog, which means “dry” in Dutch, lends this brand the dada-esque opportunity to serve as a resource for both functional pieces and witty art gallery material. Their most recent showcase, from what I know (and I know little at this point) was at the Museum of Art & Design in New York. I came upon this curiosity while browsing the website of Artkrush, an email magazine that also posts their content on the web.

I’ll leave it up to you to investigate the excitement of art furniture and such, and hope that the following image of the piece Chest of Drawers, 1991 by Tejo Remy entices you into action.

[diane]

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Have you seen Buddha on the road?

Not much of my own words will be in this post, mainly because I live in VA and am physically unable to see this exhibition myself.  However, I found the subject fascinating and I wish to share this with those interested.  If you’re in CA I suggest taking the time to experience this art, and artist, for yourself.

This work Ronny Joe Grooms‘ MFA Thesis Show at John F Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, CA.  This particular campus houses their  school of Holistic Studies where they offer three degrees under their department, “Art and Consciousness.”   Each degree approaches the arts as firmly integrated with culture, spirituality and personal development.  I dig it.

Below I have pasted the excerpt for the  exhibition as listed on the university’s website.

The exhibition Killing Buddha, by artist Ronny Joe Grooms culminates his Master of Fine Art study at John F. Kennedy University Arts & Consciousness program. Grooms, son of a Vietnam veteran, and a former Army reservist who filed for Conscientious Objector status during the Gulf War, draws on those experiences and current events to explore the shadows of the warrior male. The Zen Koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” inspires the shows title. The koan has painful implications to Grooms as the invasion and occupation of Iraq takes on its 5th year and continues to escalate with no end in sight.

In this exhibition Grooms, a dharma practitioner and multimedia performance artist, presents an array of video imagery and sculptural environments set to dissolve the subject/object relationship. Illustrating movement and stillness as essential human languages, he presents “meditation-sculptures” that are both spiritual asanas and non-violent actions that merge the inner-work of deep personal contemplation as ritual with the outwardly expressive forms of activism and art. Evoking these personal/social processes, he has challenged his own arbitrary differentiations between meditation, art, and creativity as well as promoting meditation and radical transcendence as a public act thereby awakening creative spirit in all.

[diane]

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