A light installation in Dundas Square in Toronto, for the Luminato Festival. (Photo by wvs.)
- C-Mon is in a Grey Lady kinda way!! I got myself a prime, boozy assignment, writing about artist-designed wine labels for the nytimes.com blog The Moment. Sadly, they made me use my real name for the byline, which, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t have the same musicality as C-Monster.
- “Stop Covering Art Bitch!”
- A show devoted to “degenerate” art in Rostock, Germany.
- New book on Dalí reports that the artist allowed forgeries to finance his lifestyle and that, get this, his mustache was fake.
- The Ferus Gallery: the L.A. art outpost that launched the “Cool School.”
- Basel Round-Up: Brad Pitt bought some stuff, Ellsworth Kelly hung out and the Russians helped everyone pay the bills. More here.
- Record sale of Latin American art—including several important paintings by Rufino Tamayo—at Sotheby’s.
- Art to Go ponders what would drive a guard to key a work by Vija Celmins at Carnegie.
- A speculative story about who might be on the short list for the position of director at the Met.
- A salute to the Peabody Museum’s dinosaur mural, Age of Reptiles.
- Wonderful animated video about a tango dancer who can no longer dance. The music on this is just sensational. (Via NotCot.)
- The Day in Archeological “Discoveries”: Jordan, Egypt, Machu Picchu edition.
- Looted artifacts returned to Iraq. (Via A.J.)
- Architectural graffiti by Truth in Poland.
- Corporate vandals go scott free in NYC. Literally. (Via World’s Best.)
- Toyo’s design for the Berkeley Art Museum. Images here.
- The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock.
- Because the world really needs more retail: Historic Moderne theatre designed by William Pereira in 1938 is under threat from development.
- Effin’ rad Spike Jonze video for Pharcyde.
- Your moment of Pablo Picasso Was Never Called An Asshole.
Posted by C-Monster.
A whole lotta Hype. (Photos by C-M.)
Ad Deville and Ali Ha opened up their brand spankin’ new space in a former Brooklyn bodega last Friday with a packed opening night party. The gallery featured an installation of paintings and sculptures by Skewville that pay tribute to pop and urban culture. The works take their cues from the indoor space, in this case, a defunct grocery: there are crates of hype, a supermarket-cart-turned-lounge-chair and silkscreens of grocery circulars filled with bogus slogans and clever wordsmithing. The exhibit also includes elements of Skewville’s long-running themes: visual plays on urban architecture and industrial settings, plenty of slang, and various two-dimensional salutes to their wooden sneaker series. It’s a damn fine show from the shoemakers from Queens.
Stay tuned for more from Factory Fresh at the end of June, when the gallery unveils its first group show, Un Named Rottens, with Beau Velasco, Daniel St. George and Jeremiah Maddock.
We have a winner! Congrats to Bucky Turco, of NYC, who won a Skewville ‘Fresh’ crate, for writing, “I will honor it always (or until it skyrockets like a Banksy).” It was an answer worthy of Skewville.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: The Grand Opening of Skewville’s Factory Fresh in NYC.’
A hole in the floor leads to a dank basement. (Photos by C-M.)
I finally made it over to see Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson’s installation at Honey Space in NYC. The piece is a tribute to one of the hundreds of poor women that have been brutally murdered in the Mexican border town of Juárez—killings that have gone largely uninvestigated and unsolved. It’s the kind of piece that could have easily descended into the treacly, but it doesn’t. The main room is a simple, open space, with a small table shrine and a hole in the floor that leads to a small, dark basement, which viewers can reach by means of a wooden ladder.
The basement is dank, some corners are downright muddy. Construction detritus is strewn about. The only light is supplied by flickering candles, illuminating a stylized portrait of victim Silvia Elena Rivera by Swoon. As beautiful as the portrait is, the real power of the installation is the oppressive atmosphere of the basement. It’s not difficult to imagine that this is the sort of dark, filthy space in which countless young women have met their violent ends. Sit here for a moment, and it’s difficult not to feel suffocated.
The best time to see the installation is on weekdays (the space is open Tues-Sat), when it is possible to admire it in some degree of solitude. The exhibit is up through July 5th.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson at Honey Space in NYC.’
A young tyke gets jiggy on Byrne’s musical architecture. (Photos by C-M.)
So David Byrne’s installation for Creative Time in NYC—a building converted into an organ—isn’t the best instrument on which to attempt to play Chopsticks. All I got was some pipe clanging and a few breathy booms, which brought back all sorts of memories of the prehistoric radiator system in a crappy Brooklyn apartment I once lived in. Even so, the installation, called Playing the Building, is damn cool. The space is gorgeous in a decayed Victorian society kinda way and the notion that you can get pipes to bang on command is, well, pretty awesome—if not terribly tuneful. The sounds have a Koyaanisqatsi feel about them, which, while interesting, don’t exactly make for easy listening. The best part of the show? I now get to tell everybody I played with David Byrne’s organ.
See a video here. The installation is up through Aug. 10.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: David Byrne’s ‘Playing the Building’ in NYC.’
Tribute to the Best Mom in the World, 2008, by Andrew Sexton at Oliver Kamm, in NYC. Opening night featured an ice cream boar’s head that was quite delicious. Hopefully I won’t find out later that it contained the artist’s spit. The exhibit runs until June 21st. (Photo by C-M.)
- Jerry Saltz writes an elegy to the East Village’s Tower of Toys: “It wasn’t beautiful, but it was beautifully eccentric, part of a folk-art tradition put together from the detritus and wreckage of once-raggedy neighborhoods by individuals working on the edge of society.”
- Jake and Dinos Chapman are making a movie and it’s rumored to be about the art world.
- From the Department of No Duh: Coochie-covered chairs designed for a London park by painter Jonathan Yeo are rejected for being too pornographic.
- The Day in Art Merch: Alex Katz beach towels and Glass House Moleskine notebooks.
- Photos and Video: Josiah McElheny talks about Conceptual Drawings for a Chandelier.
- Art Basel shifts schedule to accommodate soccer tourney in Switzerland. Also part of the story: Gallerists beseeching various supernatural forces that collectors will still be dropping big bucks on contemporary art when the fair opens next week.
- Photo essay: Sony’s photographic archive, including pics of Dylan, Sly Stone, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.
- The urban architecture of the upcoming Frank Miller flick, The Spirit.
- Video of Andy Warhol’s photos at Cal State Fullerton.
- Graff of the Day: Sums in Bristol.
- Photos from the Electric Windows show in Beacon, N.Y.
- CNN covers the story of KRink. (Via Supertouch.)
- Photo Essay: The Architecture of Authority.
- RIBA names the best buildings in Britain. The list includes buildings by Richard Rogers, David Adjaye, Norman Foster and David Chipperfield.
- It’s What’s For Breakfast: Renderings of the Egg Building in Mumbai.
- Richard Meier talks green. (Via Unbeige.)
- A lecture by Juan Freire at the Medialab Prado on the issue of managing public space. (Set aside some time for this one. It’s long, but worth it.)
- A giant wooden cactus. (If you live in L.A., you can see this on Friday: Info here.)
- Your moment of Fresh Prince, in Italian.
Posted by C-Monster.
Skewville Fresh.
To celebrate the upcoming debut of Skewville’s Brooklyn Gallery, Factory Fresh, proprietor Ad Deville has kindly donated an item for the first ever C-Monster giveaway.
Drop us a line in the comments section below telling us why you need a little freshness in your life (an incomplete sentence will do), and this Skewville crate could be yours. The piece comes complete with a layer of New York City grime, as it was recently rescued from the exterior of a condemned building where it had been installed.
Nicknames are fine (we’ll keep your identity private, if you want), just use a working e-mail address (so we can contact you) and be sure to tell us what city you’re based in. The winner will be announced the week of June 9th.
Offer not valid if you’re a cop.
Posted by C-Monster.
