Category: Graffiti

Calendar. 12.11.13.

Sound-Manifest-Horizon-No.-1 by Augustine Kofie as part of Graffuturism at White Walls in SF
Sound Manifest Horizon No. 1, by Augustine Kofie. Part of the group show L’Avenir, a Graffuturism Group Show, organized by Poesia, at White Walls Gallery. Opens Saturday in San Francisco. (Image courtesy of the artist and White Walls.)

  • Orange County, Calif.: California Landscape Into Abstraction: Works from the Orange County Museum of Art, at OCMA. Opens Sunday, in Newport Beach.
  • L.A.: John Kilduff, FastFood Paintings, at Blackstone Gallery. This Thursday, from noon to 9pm, in downtown.
  • NYC: Emoji Art and Design Show, at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. Opens Thursday, in Chelsea. On Saturday, there will be a panel, “I Have No Words: Emoji and the New Visual Vernacular, at 3pm, also at Eyebeam.
  • NYC: Robert Mapplethorpe, Saints and Sinners, at Sean Kelly. Opens Saturday, in Chelsea.
  • NYC: Danny Fitgerald and Les Demi Dieux: Brooklyn Boys, at Steven Kasher Gallery. Opens today at 6pm, in Chelsea.
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Miscellany. 12.19.12.


Eko. (Image courtesy of the artist.)

  • I could watch this all day: The Craigslist Assisted Readymade, by Adriana Ramic, showing three free Craiglist items every eight seconds. (@kyle_petreycik.)
  • Damien Hirst has left the building. The Gagosian building, that is.
  • Last month, Jonathan Jones wrote a cranky screed in the Guardian criticizing MoMA’s decision to acquire 14 video games. It was titled, “Sorry MoMA, video games are not art.” It’s an all kinds of ranty thing in which he goes on about why video games can’t possibly be art. (Neglecting to mention that the games were acquired for the museum’s design collection.)
  • Interestingly, in this CBC debate with John Maeda, Jones admits that the last video game he likely experienced was Pong. Glad to see his opinions come from a deep well of considered experience.
  • Not really related, but interesting nonetheless: the Syrian rebel tank that employs a PlayStation controller.
  • Carol Diehl gives Marth Rosler’s MoMA garage sale an atomic knee drop. Worth reading.
  • Nice piece in ARTnews on the ways some arts institutions are engaging military veterans — as both viewers and subject. Makes me wish I coulda seen Krzystztof Wodiczko’s Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, in Union Square. Looked incredibly moving…
  • Like the use of the word ‘gina in this review of Huma Bhabha’s work at PS1.
  • Some interesting thoughts from the Getty’s James Cuno on how art historians and curators are not quite taking full advantage of the power of the Web.
  • Which brings me to the Closer to Van Eyck project which he describes in his essay. It looks super cool — and I love it when institutions make stuff like this publicly available — but it’d truly be harnessing the power of the web if there were a version that would allow tagging (in the same way Flickr photos or Soundcloud files can be tagged by the public).
  • The NYT runs a vomitous piece on why rich people think the art market is great great great, letting the idea that Art Basel has turned Miami around socially and economically go totally unchallenged. (I guess the reporter missed the Census stats about declining median income in Miami-Dade and the city’s 18% poverty rate.)
  • Speaking of which, a nice response to the rich people mumbo jumbo from Art Fag City…
  • Attention New Yorkers: MoMA is screening Christian Marclay’s The Clock starting this weekend.
  • The Walker has posted its first commissioned video, a piece by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It’ll be online just through December 20, so check it.
  • A history of border walls.
  • Like some bizarre Waterworld nightmare: A story about Hashima, the abandoned island in the latest Bond flick. Watch the embedded video. The footage is worth it.
  • The Day in Art Merch: The Olsen Twins/Damien Hirst handbag, only 35K.
  • And because I’m crafty like that: How to save $34,460 by making your own Olsen/Hirst backpack with a quick and easy visit to Staples and Wal-Mart.
  • Plus: Jeff Koons wine labels. An artful way to drink yourself to death.
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Calendar. 08.01.12.


A street work by Os Gemeos in Grottaglie, Italy. The Brazilian street art duo are opening a solo exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston today. (Image courtesy of Luna Park.)

  • Santa Fe: Art in the Age of Truthiness, at SITE Santa Fe. Through January 6.
  • Santa Fe: Munson Hunt, Sculpted, at David Richard Contemporary. Through August 25.
  • Austin: Hybrid Forms, a group show featuring artists working at the intersection of digital technology, sound and light, at the Jones Center. Opens Saturday.
  • Nashville: Bread Box, a pop-up gallery by ZieherSmith. Opens Saturday, in the Gulch.
  • Durham, N.C.: Olafur Eliasson: The Uncertain Museum, at the Nasher Museum of Art. Through September 30.
  • Northampton, Mass.: Outside the Box: Boxes as Cross Cultural Art and Object, at the Smith College Museum of Art. Through September 30.
  • NYC: HI JACK!, a group show with Emily Jacir, Chris Mottalini, Malick Sidibé and many others, at Jack Shainman Gallery. Opens Thursday.
  • NYC: The Hullaballoo Collective, Joie de Vivre, at PSPS. Opens Thursday at 6pm, in Chelsea.
  • NYC: Rico Gatson, Grounded, at Airplane. Opens Saturday at 6pm, in Bushwick.
  • NYC: Carousel, a cartoon slideshow, at Soloway. This Friday at 8pm, in Williamsburg.
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Miscellany. 06.24.12.


SMELLS, CASH4. (Image courtesy of SMELLS.)

  • “Homes of the violent rich have excellent first-aid cabinets.” Jennifer Egan’s Twitter story is full of gems.
  • Interesting piece on Monterrey’s ‘cumbia rebajada’ — cumbia played at slowed down speeds — and the trippy-ass haircuts the style has generated, with pix by Stefan Ruiz. (For an example of what the music sounds like, click here. Ohhhhhh yeaaahhhhhh.)
  • Just in time for campaign season: A helpful piece from On the Media on how to spot bullshit political headlines in under 10 seconds.
  • “The United States lived seventy-five years with the one party system in Mexico—the PRI—without batting an eyelid, never demanding democracy of Mexico. Democracy came because Mexicans fought for democracy and made a democracy out of our history, our possibilities, our perspectives. Democracy is not something that can be exported like Coca-Cola.” From a recently-surfaced interview with Carlos Fuentes in Guernica.
  • Members of L.A.’s MTA crew (the ones behind the super-amazing, super-massive MTA roller in the L.A. River, since buffed) won’t have to pay for clean-up, but may be subject to injunctions generally reserved for gang members.
  • Read this now: The James Franco-ification of the art world.
  • Critic Jonathan Jones wants a break from Andy Warhol. (Hyperallergic.)
  • And because I can’t help myself: Marina Abramovic on her boob job and Glenn Lowry’s sexiness.
  • I can’t wait to see the insufferable art-heads that come out of this school. (AFC.)
  • In 1979, there were three art fairs. Now there are 189. And I refuse to go to them all. (@KnightLAT.)
  • A stunning piece on Radiolab about the origin of the pigment known as Gamboge. You’ll never look at yellow the same way again. (The segment begins at 16:40.)
  • Art as protest: Christian Viveros-Fauné on the New Realism, including the drug-violence art of Teresa Margolles and the anti-Putin pieces of Voina.
  • Nice essay by Ben Valentine of Hyperallergic on the phenomenon of Tumblr art.
  • LACMA’s Franklin Sirmans reviews Bridget Cooks’ book on the history of exhibiting African-American artists in the U.S.
  • Was cave art an early form of cinema?
  • Art scholars step back from authenticating works due to legal actions. More fun to live with the uncertainty.
  • Art + Market = Insanity. An opinion piece on the New York Times website about how the art world thrives on inequality. Thematically, it’s a retread of Andrea Fraser’s essay for the Whitney Biennial — which is more thorough — but worth it nonetheless. (To quote Fraser: “What has been good for the art world has been disastrous for the rest of the world.”
  • What I learned about Carolee Schneeman in the current issue of White Fungus: she’s a TOTAL cat lady.
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Photo Diary: Rammellzee at Suzanne Geiss Company, in SoHo.

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.

Continue reading →

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Calendar. 03.14.12.


It’s Pi day — perfect for a little Pi graffiti. (Image courtesy of funkandjazz.)

  • L.A.: Globalize This! International Graphics of Resistance, at Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis. Opens Saturday. A reception will be held on Thursday, March 29 at 5:30pm.
  • Berkeley: Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz are giving a talk at the U.C. Berkeley Department of Art Practice as part of the Visiting Artist Lecture Series, this Monday, March 19 at 7:30pm. These are some very good peeps (they run the Slanguage studio in Wilmington) If you’re in the area, this will definitely be worth checking out.
  • Miami: Natalya Laskis, Shortness of Breath, at Locust Projects. Through April 27, in Wynwood.
  • Plus: Find all my latest NYC recommends (including an artist-led figure painting class) over at Gallerina…
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Miscellany. 02.27.12.


He sure don’t: God Don’t Like Ugly, in New York. (Image by Becki Fuller.)

  • Alive in Baghdad, a photo essay.
  • Southern California has to stop it with the green lawns.
  • Today’s Must-Read: Martin Amis’s (disavowed) guide to video games. Sample text, on Pac-Man: “Do I take risks in order to gobble up the fruit symbol in the middle of the screen? I do not, and neither should you. Like the fat and harmless saucer in Missile Command (q.v.), the fruit symbol is there simply to tempt you into hubristic sorties. Bag it.” (Fank Yew @KristonCapps.)
  • Literary characters as rendered by law enforcement composite sketch software. (@giovanniGF.)
  • The Tate’s photographic archive rescued from the garbage. If they didn’t want it, they could have had the decency to put it on eBay. (@WayneFord.)
  • Randy Kennedy has a profile of Battle Station master Rammellzee. Highly fascinating.
  • Marina Abramovic + Rem Koolhaas = Mind. Boggled. (@ClaudiaLaRocco.)
  • Photo Essay: A little bit of Google Street View, as curated by Jon Rafman. I love the runaway moose.
  • Alissa Walker dissects the role of the critic: the food critic. Raises an interesting point about critics engaging the world beyond just what’s in front of them.
  • Graffiti planes. (@glasstire.)
  • And, yet another reason it pays to see art in person.
  • Cholafied: Best. Tumblr. Ever.
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