Art Fag City

Best Link Ever! Net Overload: 99 Links You Should’ve Seen Already!

2009-07-03T16:53:39Z

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY

Still from “Grape Stomp” video

How much link can you get? We have no idea who Greg Rutter is, but he put together a fantastic list of 99 links comprehensively scouring every meme on the Internet ever. Websites range from obvious classics Cute Overload and Dancing Baby to lesser known gems such as Reporter Gets Bug in His Mouf. Titled youshouldhaveseenthis.com, this week’s Best Link Ever comes with a major procrastination warning: Rutter’s site is a rabbit hole of laughter.

Best Link Ever is a weekly column posted on Fridays culling the best gems of the Internet, maintained by AFC Associate Editor Karen Archey.

Fresh Links!

2009-07-03T00:58:22Z

Revisiting Tarkovsky - Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Film Society at Lincoln Center screens ALL of Tarkovsky’s films, July 7th through July 14th. Also, don’t miss the US Premiere of “Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky.”

Magical Elves Casting Director Nick Gilhool Dishes On Bravo’s New Reality Show

2009-07-02T23:57:25Z

Nathan Coley, There Will Be No Miracles Here, 2006, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute

What will Bravo’s new reality show The Untitled Art Project look like? Not even the actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s Pretty Matches Productions and the Emmy-nominated Magical Elves know all the details yet, but the basics have been released. Thirteen aspiring artists will compete for a gallery exhibition, cash prize and a national tour. I spoke to the Director of Casting for Magical Elves Nick Gilhool yesterday in an attempt to get a better sense of who they’re looking to cast in the show. Sadly, no decisions about who would judge the competitions or information about specific marketing partnerships with galleries and museums were released. We did, however, discuss the goals of the production (most of which seem to lie in putting together a competition with integrity), and the characteristics he typically looks for when casting shows. Those finding the 22-page application form available on their website a little daunting may find this conversation a good primer.

Art Fag City: Can you talk about the criteria that will be used to evaluate the artists?

Nick Gilhool: Sure. One reason Project Runway was really successful was that the first contact people had with the production was an assessment of their design talent. That’s what we’re doing here. The first contact people will have is these open calls vetted by people who know better than we do what it is to be talented as an artist. There’s going to be art professionals and art luminaries who are acting as consultants and giving us a sense of who would be exciting to watch from the art world perspective. This is going to be a very exciting show, especially if it is something that people from the art world would love to tune in to see and be impressed by. So there has to be a backbone of legitimacy to the work and to what people are seeing. And then the rest of the audience kind of gets that sense too. [Interview continues after the jump]

AFC: Speaking to this, what is the national tour mentioned in the Bravo press release? I don’t understand what this will be.

NG: I can’t talk about that. That will be further defined as we have those details in place. But we want to make sure that there are elements of this that will make this a meaningful process for the artist who are part of the cast. So there’s something that they will get out of it that will nurture and further their career.

AFC: Many artists have expressed worry to me over the last 24 hours that the show may perpetuate negative stereotypes about the field. What is your response to these concerns?

NG: I can just tell you what I’m responsible for, which is finding people who are exciting talent. One of the things about these competition shows is that a lot of it is about the journey the artist or the subject takes in front of the audience’s eyes. So we’re looking for people who are really accomplished, or on the verge of being accomplished and that people would relate to whether they’re in the art world or not. I’m not sure that relates exactly to stereotypes of artists, but we’ll just have to see.

AFC: For much of the mainstream audience this show is likely to be their first introduction to the world of contemporary art. Is that something that’s a concern for your job or are you strictly looking for art world talent, whatever that may be.

NG: I think the nugget of your question is that we take into account the sense of fun that has to go into the fact that this is a television program, so how people talk about their process, what they’re working on, what they have worked on. Part of my job is to see how someone communicates and whether it’s through their work or through their words when they’re being interviewed on the show.

AFC: So would you say in this case, it’s definitely beneficial if you’re the kind of artist who can speak articulately about the kind of work that you make?

NG: It’s weird – that’s why I say communicate about it because it’s not necessarily how the sentence construction you put together and whether you’re really articulate. It is about whether you have a really strong perspective and if you communicate what that perspective is – that could be through their work, or through their words, or through interactions with other people. And I think a lot of artists have a strong take on the world and they want to express it. So I’m excited about meeting these people.

AFC: On the flip side one could be critical of the singular perspective that that brings.

NG: You mean, like pigeonholing the whole industry through one individual?

AFC: That’s one way of looking at it. You know, it’s great to have a strong perspective, and that’s the kind of thing that often leads to great art making. But what one might be critical of is that that strong perspective might also be monotone–a single note or a one liner.

NG: Right. Where these shows typically start off is a group of people and as you whittle down the audience gets to know the individuals better … and what their perspective is. And so there is a multiplicity of voices in the beginning that gives you a sense of the community. I think audiences, and especially the kind of audiences that watch Bravo, are pretty sophisticated when it comes to what they take away about a given setting. There’s a complexity to the art world, that there may not be to the fashion industry in certain ways – just from a casting perspective. This is just the first season. I don’t know everything about the art world, I’m just sort of a student of it at this point, so I’m really looking to see what there is out there.

AFC: Is there anything particularly important about the casting process you’d like to convey to people? Obviously, I’m not there for it, so I don’t know the ins and outs of what your job is about and how that really shapes the show.

NG: Yeah, I think what I’d love to get out there is that our range of what we think would work for this is really wide open and it could be anywhere from artists who are just beginning their career to artists that are kind of emerging and semi-established.

AFC: So for example, could mid-career artists apply and not think they would be rejected?

NG: Yeah. I mean, especially early on in the first season – this needs to mean something to the people who are involved … In terms of what we’re hoping to see, it’s just sort of like we’ll know it when we see it and we’re really excited to meet lots of people so nobody should assume we want one thing or another. We want a really interesting cross section of people in the art world who are engaging in their own expression to figure out how to make their way in it.

AFC: And is the casting call fine art specific – in other words, how interested are you in people who are cross-overs – Rev. Jen for example crosses a lot of different disciplines?

NG: Yeah, that’s something we’d be very interested in. There’s insider and outsider art and people going to art school or not … but we’re geared towards the fine art world that you might see in a more traditional gallery, which ranges a lot. But that’s the scope that we’re thinking.

AFC: Anything else people should know?

NG: Casting calls might take a long time depending on how many people show up. Put your best foot forward because there might be some good people there to impress. And we would like them to be impressed so we can have a really top-notch group of people.

AFC: And how much filming will take place in New York?

NG: Is that something we can answer? [Nick asks Bravo’s publicist] No.

Do Canaries Have Accents? Notes From Berlin: Rebecca Morris

2009-07-02T13:40:53Z

POST BY: KAREN ARCHEY

Rebecca Morris installation at Galerie Barbara Weiss. Photo Karen Archey

AFC Associate Editor Karen Archey was fortunate enough to spend some time in Berlin during our recent European art tour. This series of reviews reflects a handful of galleries we visited throughout May and June.

Galerie Barbara Weiss
Zimmerstrasse 88-91
10117 Berlin
Rebecca Morris

Is Rebecca Morris a well informed master painter or a trite new age hippy? It’s hard to tell. Her solo effort, Shards and Skywindows, reeks of early Nickelodeon-era craft projects (think fimo beads, puff paint, gak, and hemp necklaces), but this bizarre aesthetic may offer a fresh take on historical abstraction. Riffed with protozoa-like shapes and metallic enamel, Morris’ new body of work evokes an unlikely combination of Elizabeth Murray’s feminine polygon canvases and Jackson Pollock’s energetic Ab-ex drips. Pollock-esque metallic circles paired with feminine bleeds antagonize each other formally while other paintings play with positive and negative space. Morris’ exhibition may provoke the same out-of-fashion-anxiety that a Murray would today, yet the younger 90’s era tongue-in-cheekness takes it out of clich. The paintings lay metallic enamel pools over looser underpaintings, echoing the exhibition’s title. Complicated by their loose rendition and earthy color palate, her spacey structures mesh the pop cultural with the art historical.

Fresh Links!

2009-07-01T16:45:40Z

Readers’ Photos: What’s in Your Phone?

The NYTimes’ LensBlog is asking readers to submit their most interesting cell phone photos. Winners will be posted in a gallery on the blog. Current competition? Sumptuous peacock feathers and a wall full of deer heads taken with an iPhone at a taxidermy sale in Texas.

Fresh Links!

2009-07-01T15:52:43Z

Cremaster Fanatic: Matthew Barney Meets the Smurfs?

Cremaster Fanatic points out some interesting omissions in AFC’s post comparing Cremaster with a recent Smurf convention.

Do Canaries Have Accents? Notes From Berlin: Kaye Donachie

2009-07-01T14:54:31Z

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY

Kaye Donachie, Serenely let us move to distant places, 2008.

Peres Projects
Schlesische Str. 26
10997 Berlin Germany
Kaye Donachie, Walpurgis Night

Best viewed by those who have a penchant for encyclopedic content, Kaye Donachie preoccupies herself with esoteric characters such as actor-cum-cult member Mark Frechette. In a recent painting, Donachie details Frechette’s bizarre death from asphyxiation after dropping a set of barbell weights on his throat while in jail. The artist avoids heavy-handedness by hazily rendering figures that bleed into their grounds, approaching and denying focal and narrative resolution. Donachie’s work brings to mind a less gay and more feminine Hernan Bas—perhaps the East Coast’s current “it” painter—by sharing moments of romanticism recalling misspent youth and angsty teenage poetry à la Sylvia Plath. Similar to Bas, Donachie interrupts her often-stormy landscapes with slight geometric elements adding a pedagogical touch. A wondrously mixed bag, the artist’s work reminds me of the drop-out grunge dude from high school who rarely showered but you kind of want to have sex with: not exactly an idyllic experience, but not one to be missed.

RELATED: Tokion ’s Saheer Umar interviews Kaye Donachie

Do Canaries Have Accents? Notes From Berlin: Carsten Höller

2009-07-01T14:54:52Z

POST BY: KAREN ARCHEY

Installation detail of Carsten Höller’s “Vogel Pilz Mathematik” at Esther Schipper. Image via Contemporary Art Daily.

Esther Schipper
Linienstrasse 85,
D-10119 Berlin
Carsten Höller, Vogel Pilz Mathematik

I wasn’t sure if I was in a zoo, the Ikea kid’s section, or a contemporary art space entering Carsten Höller’s exhibition, Vogel Pilz Mathematik, at Esther Schipper. Painted mint green and magenta, two of the three galleries paired obnoxious colors with a Doug Aitken-inspired outdoors-meets-design sensibility. As if the 80’s-prom-dress-pink paint wasn’t enough, Höller festooned the main gallery with a gigantic mobile holding seven round cages, each encasing a canary. Three yellow, black, and white Mondrian-esque paintings hang on an anterior wall of the main gallery while the other two smaller galleries showcase cast toadstool-mushroom hybrids in vitrines and large prints of birds. Although the exhibition impressed more as a high-budget, in-vogue exercise in industrial design, the concept of the show (titled Bird Mushroom Mathematics in English), seems to be the relationship among mathematics, communication, nature and perception. Hung in Höller’s version of a Fibonacci sequence, the seven cages spiral out from the mobile’s center while the three canvases depict this source formula. Although I’ve never met a canary with an accent, according to the press release the birds confront the viewer with their “varying dialects,” exploring modes of communication.

After a spin around Esther Schipper—with its perfectly commodifiable, editioned bird prints—my favorite aspect of the exhibition became its off-putting, saccharinely magenta walls. While it may be the most annoying element of the exhibition, it importantly breaks Vogel Pilz Mathematik out of design magazine territory.

If Höller’s exhibition confronts modes of communication, why would he aestheticize it in such a vapidly clean, slick manner? Höller undoubtedly puts the “contemporary art cart” before the “concept horse”: the exhibition, resolved too well aesthetically, cannot support his weak mathematic-slash-conceptual structure. What results is in an overly clean exhibition that collapses under its theoretical weight. Given my past experience as a human, I would think these things are a little messy, but maybe it’s different for canaries and mushrooms.

Installation view at Esther Schipper. Image via Contemporary Art Daily.

Bravo Announces Casting Call For The Untitled Art Project

2009-06-30T19:22:51Z

White Columns Executive Director and artist Matthew Higgs.

More than a year after announcing the development of a new reality show for artists, Bravo finally announces nationwide casting calls. Developed by Sarah Jessica Parker’s Pretty Matches Productions and Emmy-nominated Magical Elves, Inc., the reality TV project pits thirteen aspiring artists against one another in competition for a gallery show, cash prize and a mysteriously undefined national tour. New York’s casting call takes place at White Columns on July 18th and 19th, which has us wondering: will their Executive Director Matthew Higgs be a judge? Complete press release and casting call details after the jump. Artists located in or around Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and New York will want to read through if interested in participating.

Nationwide Casting Calls Underway

NEW YORK – June 30, 2009 – Bravo’s latest stroke on the reality canvas brings Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner Sarah Jessica Parker and her production company, Pretty Matches, together with the Emmy-nominated Magical Elves (”Top Chef,” “Project Runway”) and Eli Holzman, to produce an hour long creative competition series among contemporary artists. The Untitled Art Project will bring together thirteen aspiring artists to compete for a gallery show, a cash prize and a sponsored national tour. Open calls for artists interested in competing in this highly anticipated new competition series will be held in cities across the country starting in July.

Casting Calls for The Untitled Art Project are as follows:

LOS ANGELES

Saturday, July 11 & Sunday, July 12, 10 AM – 2 PM

LA>

www.laxart.org

MIAMI

Tuesday, July 14, 10 AM – 2 PM

Fredric Snitzer Gallery

www.Snitzer.com

CHICAGO

Thursday, July 16, 10 AM – 2 PM

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Sullivan Galleries, 33 State Street
www.saic.edu

NEW YORK

Saturday, July 18 & Sunday, July 19, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

White Columns

www.whitecolumns.org

For additional information, go to www.BravoTV.com/casting.

In each episode of the series, contestants will create unique pieces highlighting art’s role in everyday life, while they compete and create in a range of disciplines including sculpture, painting, photography and industrial design (to name a few). In working beyond their preferred mediums, artists will have to adapt quickly in order to succeed. Completed works of art will be appraised by a panel of top art world figures including fellow artists, gallerists, collectors, curators and critics. The finalists’ work will be showcased in a nation-wide museum tour.

The Untitled Art Project is produced by Pretty Matches and Magical Elves for Bravo. Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alison Benson and Eli Holzman serve as executive producers.

Bravo is a program service of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment, a division of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Bravo has been an NBC Universal cable network since December 2002 and was the first television service dedicated to film and the performing arts when it launched in December 1980. For more information, visit www.BravoTV.com.

Fresh Links!

2009-06-30T19:58:56Z

New York Music - A Chat with Das Racist, the Geniuses Behind “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” - page 1

An amazing interview. “I think a lot of people dig ‘Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell’ in large part due to the fact that Yum! Brand combination franchises themselves are pretty ubiquitous but still absurd and almost terrifyingly prophetic—it’s like singing about trains back when they were some new shit.”