Am late on sooooo many things right now — this is one of them. I managed to catch the exhibit of Rammellzee’s so-called ‘Letter Racers’ at Suzanne Geiss before it closed late last month. And all I gotta say is: daaaaaaaaang. The man knew his way around his materials. Those high-tech looking toys you see flying in formation are actually beautifully assembled bits of junk: umbrella handles, cheap plastic watch bands, broken milk crates, Bic pens and bottle caps. (And lots of dust.)

For a good backgrounder on where these pieces emerged from, check out this NYT piece. And if you get a chance to see his work in person (no matter how small the show), do not miss it.

Yes, I’m asking for money.

This summer, I’m going to be working as studio assistant/translator/chasqui for my partner-in-crime Celso on a series of installations that will go up at the Qorikancha  the old Inca sun temple in Cusco, Peru. For the project — which is titled La Luz — he’ll be building a series of architectural installations around the ruins grounds (and the attached Dominican monastery) using several hundred bottles of Inca Kola, the nuclear yellow Peruvian soda (see images above and below). It will be a pop paean to the gold that once covered the site. The piece will be pulled apart and re-installed in a new location every three days. At the end of each installation, the public will be allowed to take the Inca Kola home.

The museum that manages the site, the Museo Qorikancha y Convento de Santo Domingo, has commissioned the piece. But as with most arts institutions in Peru, the budgets are tiny. Which is why we’re asking for your help. This is going to be a beautiful project — unlike anything the museum has ever done. So pleasepleaseplease help us get to Peru! Any donation, no matter how small, makes a difference.

Please click through to Celso’s Kickstarter to send us your pennies. We have all kinds of goodies for rewards. And we promise that your donations will be wisely and prudently spent (on lots of Inca Kola). If you’re a regular reader, please think of this as a way to help me keep doing what I love to do — namely, writing about great-weird art I find wherever I happen to be.

Thanks so much! And thanks for reading C-Mon!!!

xox,
C.

A sculpture by Paul Housley at ZieherSmith in New York. The rubber bands make it. <3<3<3 On view through April 21. (Photos by C-M.)

• L.A.: Daniel Joseph Martinez, I want to go to Detroit; Cheerleaders CHEER, at LaxArt. Through March 3.
• Detroit: Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Opens Friday.
• Miami: Mary Ellen Mark: An American Odyssey, 1963-1999, at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. Through April 28, in the Wynwood District.
• Savannah: Leo Villareal, at the Jepson Center, one of the Telfair Museums. Through June 3.
• NY: We Are Cinema: 50 Years of the Filmmakers Co-op, at Microscope. Starts this Saturday at 5pm, in Bushwick.
• NY: Martin Bromirski, Rachel LaBine and Elizabeth Riley, at Storefront Bushwick. Opens Friday at 6pm.
• NYC: F*ck Art, street art meets sex, at the Museum of Sex. Opens today, in Manhattan.
• Plus: see my latest New York recommends over at Gallerina…

I know these are porcelain and that they’re hand-painted and that there’s four million of them (more on that here), but this install bears an uncanny resemblance to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s silver-candy piece, Untitled (Placebo), from 1991 — which is currently on view at MoMA. And which can be touched and eaten.