Monthly Archive for March, 2011

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My latest in ARTnews.

By c-monster on March 22, 2011 in Announcements, Art, Art for stoners, C-Monster and Video Games. 2 Comments

I’m suuuuper excited about the April issue of ARTnews, which not only features my article on video games and art, but provides me with a cover story that features Elvis. And as someone who got hitched at the Graceland Chapel in Vegas, all I gotta say to that is: HELL. YES.

Further afield:
If you want to see video of Brody Condon’s piece, which is featured on the cover, you can find that on his website right here. If you’re looking for some additional reading, may I highly recommend Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives, a breezily written and poignant introduction to games and game criticism. Online, for thoughtful takes on video games and game culture, definitely check out Ian Bogost’s blog as well as Kill Screen Magazine.

Thanks for reading! And, as always, the story looks even better in print (with lots of sexy graphics) — so buy the mag if you can.

xox,
C.

Tags: artnews magazine, brody condon, elvis karma physics, video games.

Calendar. 03.22.11.

By c-monster on March 22, 2011 in C-Monster, Galleries, Los Angeles and Painting. Closed

Panel Discussion, by Dan McCleary. Part of the artist’s solo exhibit at Craig Krull Gallery in Los Angeles — through April 2. (Image courtesy of Krull.)

Hey Folks: I was having a few problems with spam and I think I may have deleted a bunch of real comments. Sorry if I zapped your deep thoughts, but my WordPress is a little gummed up. Best, C.

NYC: After the Gold Rush, Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, at the Met, opens today.
NYC: Mike Stickrod and Pat Palermo, There’s a Place for Us, at Soloway in Brooklyn, opens Saturday at noon.
NYC: Tim Rollins and K.O.S. at Lehmann Maupin, in Chelsea, opens Thursday at 6pm.
NYC: Romare Bearden: Collage, at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, opens Saturday.
NYC: Dr. Lakra, at the Drawing Center, through April 24.
NYC: Thornton Dial at Andrew Edlin Gallery, through April 30.
NYC: The Days of This Society Are Numbers, at the Abrons Arts Center, through April 16.
Annandale-on-Hudson: CLAP, featuring works from the collection at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College (in addition to a new piece by Tony Oursler), opens this Sunday at 1pm. A “language activation” event led by Carolee Schneeman will take place at 3pm.
Minneapolis: The Spectacular of Vernacular, at the Walker Art Center, through May 8.
L.A.: Chris Doyle, Waste_Generation, at Sam Lee Gallery, through April 9.
L.A.: William Leavitt: Theater Objects, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through July 3.
San Diego: Streetwise: Masters of ‘60s Photography at the Museum of Photographic Arts, through May 15.
Paris: Van Dongen: Fauve, Anarchiste et Mondain, at the Musée d’Art Moderne, opens Friday.

Tags: craig krull gallery, dan mccleary, panel discussion.

At Gallerina.

By c-monster on March 17, 2011 in Announcements and C-Monster. 2 Comments

Where my weekly Datebook is up — including coverage of the new Japan Society show, Bye Bye Kitty!!! (Shown above: a detail of The Nine Aspects, by Yamaguchi Akira. Photo by C-M.)

Tags: bye bye kitty, japan, japan society, yamaguchi akira.

Why Andy Warhol’s ‘Empire’ looks janky.

By c-monster on March 16, 2011 in C-Monster, Film, Museums, New York and Video. 1 Comment

Last month, when Liz Arnold (the damsel behind @WNYCculture) and I spent the day live Tweeting all eight hours of Andy Warhol’s static shot of the Empire State Building at the Museum of Modern Art, a number of folks brought up the issue of the film’s quality. Though originally shot on 16mm film, Empire was being shown as a digital transfer (as was the rest of the Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures exhibit — except for a single screen test, featuring Ethel Scull). Now, I’m no film geek (I know more about rainforest ecosystems than I do about film), but the picture did look pretty darn blurry in a non-16mm kind of way, and if you sat in the front rows, you could literally see the pixels.

Which is why I read Amy Taubin’s review of the exhibit in the March issue of Artforum with great interest. (Yes, I was reading Artforum. It was a moment of weakness.) In it, she addresses the poor quality of the transfers and asks the very good question, “What, in fact, is being shown?” After poking around, this is what she came up with:

MoMA then referred me to the source of those transfers, the Warhol Museum, and I discovered that the latter had relied on one-inch and Betacam SP tape ‘masters’ made from the 16mm films. These crude, outdated analog video formats were used as the intermediates for the digital files…

In other words, what we were gazing on at MoMA wasn’t just a copy — but a copy of a copy. (Crazy!) Or as Taubin puts it: “garbage in, garbage out.” For the record: I verified this directly with a spokesperson from the Warhol Museum — who also told me that the 16mm-to-Beta transfer took place back in the ’90s. In other words, for eight hours, we stared at a copy of an old copy.

So, there you go, film nerds: question answered. And if you happen to be within reaching distance of the March Artforum, you’ll find Taubin’s worthwhile (if nuclear) review on p. 260.

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures is up at the Museum of Modern Art through Monday.

Tags: #empirefilm, amy taubin, andy warhol, empire, empire state building, film, video, warhol museum.

Calendar. 03.15.11.

By c-monster on March 15, 2011 in C-Monster, Calendar and Sculpture. Closed

Daily Time Slices for MF, 2010, by Laurie Frick. Part of the solo exhibit Sleep Patterns at Edward Cella Art + Architecture in Los Angeles. (Image courtesy of Edward Cella; via the Los Angeles Times.)

NYC: Rirkrit Tiravanija at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, through April 16.
Austin: The Dead Milkmen and many others, at MWTX Party at the East Side Drive In, this Saturday, starting at 11:30am.
L.A.: Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe in Culver City, opens Saturday.
L.A.: Ed Ruscha at Gagosian Gallery, through April 9.
L.A.: Some Assembly Required, at Jack Rutberg, through April 30.
London: Chantal Joffe at Victoria Miro, opens Saturday.
London: Skewville, Slow Your Roll, at High Roller Society, opens Friday.
London: Elbow Toe (Brian Adam Douglas), Due Date, at Black Rat Projects, through April 8.
Milan: William Kentridge, at Lia Rumma, opens Saturday.

Tags: daily time slices, edward cella art and architecture, laurie frick.

The Digest. 03.14.11.

By c-monster on March 14, 2011 in C-Monster, Painting and The Digest. 3 Comments

What My Mother Doesn’t Know, a painting by Hector Hernández, spotted at Curbs & Stoops in Brooklyn. (Photo by C-M.)

A map of science fiction. (Roger Ebert’s Journal.)
Sort of related: The 10 Most Awesomely Terrible Sci-Fi/Fantasy Paperback Covers. (Thank you, @mrjohnflowers.)
On the ethics of displaying the dead. Interesting piece, though I would have loved to have seen the issue of displaying Egyptian and Andean mummies addressed.
Somehow, this had eluded me all of this time: Hunter Thompson’s epic 1971 essay on the Chicano Moratorium and Ruben Salazar’s death at the wrong end of an LAPD tear-gas canister. Thompson spells vato wrong, but otherwise an excellent piece. Consider this required reading if you live in Southern California.
Censorship at Austin’s Arthouse?
Italian government not so keen on restitutions that might require a work to leave Italy.
Gago is getting sued.
Trafficking in Digital Art: How does one sell or buy a GIF? Hyperallergic and Tom Moody (in one and two parts) discuss. (Art Fag City.)
A digital “poem” with endless clicks.
Cease and Desist: That sublime point where the art industry and the legal industry intersect.
Copying in the World of Art: It ain’t new.
Glad This Has Been Cleared Up: Study reveals that it is possible for people to tell the difference between an abstract expressionist work produced by a monkey and one produced by a human. (@MrJohnFlowers)
Streisand doing the Philly Museum. Gotta move!
Make your own Dan Flavin light sculpture. (Sort of.)
Flashback: Patti Astor’s Fun Gallery from the ‘80s. All kinds of groovy psychedelic.
Shane McAdams picks apart street art and Exit Through the Gift Shop at the Brooklyn Rail. (Hyperallergic.)
5 Pointz, the graffiti hub in Long Island City, Queens, may be going condo.
Today’s Street Art is all about paper: Laguna in Spain.
JR’s Ted Project: To have the world put up JR posters. What a spectacularly weak concept (and one that is unavailable to the two thirds of the planet that doesn’t have access to the internet).
Nice piece on the fading tradition of Chilean sign painting. The video is in Spanish, but the visuals are universal. (Thanks to Paty for the link.)
Best Mars Images from Orbiter’s first five years. (It’s Okay to Be Smart.)
Back to the future, in photos.

Tags: curbs and stoops, hector hernandez.

Photo Diary: ¡No Habla Español! at Pandemic — an all around good time.

By c-monster on March 13, 2011 in C-Monster, El Celso, Galleries, New York, Peru, Photo Diary, Prints and Street Art. Closed

Celso’s wall of chicha, with C-Monstruo shout-out.

Internacional Privados: An original chicha poster from northern Peru.

A view of the mini chicha disco. Sensory overload in a mere 16 square feet.

Opening night for Celso’s ¡No Habla Español! at Pandemic was all kinds of fun. Thanks so much to everyone who came out. We danced, we drank, we danced some more — in a teeny weeny discoteca — into the night. The show is up through April 2nd, so you have plenty of time to shake some ass in the mini-disco. Plus, there’s always the closing party (April 2nd at 7pm). See you there!

An addendum: Public Radio International’s show Afropop has an excellent show on the history of cumbias. They have a whole section devoted to Peruvian chicha cumbias, describing their origins and their use of those super duper psychedelic surf guitars. If you want to get a sense of what these Peruvian chicha posters are all about, give this program a listen. Also, here’s a photo essay devoted to Elliot Túpac Urcuhuaranga, of the family behind Publicidad Viusa — makers of chicha posters.

Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: ¡No Habla Español! at Pandemic — an all around good time.’

Tags: afiches chicha, celso, chicha posters, el celso, no habla espanol, pandemic gallery.

Over at Gallerina…

By c-monster on March 10, 2011 in Announcements, C-Monster and Painting. Closed

…where I’m writing about Andean tunics, quirky illustrations and Glen Ligon’s incredible solo at the Whitney (the painting above is his). Check it all right here.

Tags: america, glenn ligon, i am a man, whitney museum.

This Friday: ¡No Habla Español! at Pandemic in Williamsburg.

By c-monster on March 9, 2011 in Announcements, C-Monster, El Celso, Galleries, New York, Peru and Video. 2 Comments

Celso y C-Monstruo: Amores Perros. A Peruvian chicha poster — imported to Brooklyn. (Photo by C-M.)

One of my ongoing fascinations with Lima (which I’ve touched on in the past) is the soup of fog that covers the city about six months out of the year. It’s a phenomenon that seems to soak up all brightness and makes the desert ecosystem (already harsh) look even more apocalyptically inhospitable. It’s alluded to in countless works of Peruvian fiction (from novels by Mario Vargas Llosa to Daniel Alarcón), and is even discussed in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick — in the chapter on whiteness. (It is “the strangest, saddest city, thou cans’t see,” he wrote. “For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe.”)

Which brings to me to my ongoing interest in Peruvian chicha posters — the cheaply-printed band posters produced in an array of neon-colored inks. As Celso pointed out to me during our last trip around Peru, it’s almost as if they produce their own light. Perhaps a requirement in a place where sharp edges are often dulled by the perpetual mist.

This Friday, Celso is going to be showing a collection of these — along with collages and a mini chicha/cumbia disco installation that accommodates two people for dancing (I helped with the soundtrack!!) — at Pandemic Gallery in Williamsburg. But we wanted folks to see what the posters look like installed around the foggy Peruvian capital, so we made a short video about it (see below). It includes a bit of footage from our trip to meet Fortunato Urcuhuaranga at Publicidad Viusa, the family-run studio that originated this look in the ’80s. (It is now widely copied all over the country.) And features some spectacular audio of me mumbling. If you want to learn more, Creative Review also has a great video on these wonderful folks.

Anyhow, please come to the opening this Friday to check out the show! It should be a ton of fun.

El Celso
¡No Habla Español!
Pandemic Gallery
37 Broadway (btw. Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Friday, March 11, 2011
7-11pm

For more info, click here.

Tags: afiches chicha, amores perros, c-monstruo, celso, el celso, no habla espanol, pandemic gallery, publicidad viusa.

Calendar. 03.08.11.

By c-monster on March 8, 2011 in C-Monster, Calendar, Sculpture and Sound. Closed

SoundSuit in Motion, by Nick Cave. Part of the exhibit Nick Cave: Meet Me At the Center of the Earth, at the Seattle Art Museum, which opens on Thursday. (Image courtesy of SAM.)

First, A Little Self-Promotion: I’m speaking on a panel about the changing media landscape this Wednesday, March 9 at 6pm at the UJA in New York City, as part of an event organized by Smith College. The line-up includes lady journos from the New York Times, ABC, CNN and the AP. Admission is $30 ($20 if you’re a member of the Smith College Club of New York). If you’re into all things media, please come!

Portland, Ore.: Alex Felton, Kevin Abell and Israel Lund, Yucks, at Ditch Projects, opens Saturday at 7pm.
S.F.: Pablo Guardiola, Jet Travel, at Romer Young Gallery, opens Saturday.
S.F.: Game Over: Video Game-Inspired Art at Giant Robot SF, through March 30.
S.F.: Ben Eine at White Walls Gallery, opens Saturday.
Oakland: Splendors of Faith/Scars of Conquest, at the Oakland Museum of California, through May 29. While you’re there, check out the companion show, Contemporary Coda.
L.A.: Jesse Reding Fleming, Desert, at The Company, in Chinatown, opens Saturday.
L.A.: Retratos Pintados, hand-painted vernacular portraits from Brazil, at RoseGallery in Santa Monica, opens Saturday.
L.A.: Clare Rojas, Inside Bleak, at Prism in West Hollywood, through April 2.
Chicago: The Age of Aquarius, at the Reniassance Society, opens Sunday.
Miami: Hernan Bas at Fredric Snitzer Gallery, opens Saturday at 7:30pm.
NYC: Maya Bloch at Thierry Goldberg Projects, through April 3.
NYC: Gary Baseman, Walking Through Walls, at Jonathan Levine Gallery, through April 2.

Tags: nick cave, seattle art museum, soundsuits.