Category: Sublime ridiculosity

Donut luchador at KCRW’s Good Food.

El Asesino Geminis, Abel Nabor Campos. (Photo by Naomi Harris.)

Hey Folks:

I’m on KCRW’s Good Food talkin’ ’bout my Lucky Peach story on the donero luchador of East L.A., Abel Nabor Campos (a.k.a. El Asesino Geminis), with none other than Evan Kleiman. The segment contains audio of his cry, which is truly wondrous. Check it out here.

Special thanks to producer Gillian Ferguson for making me sound good while I was sick. And high five to photographer Naomi Harris for letting me nab the image above. (Follow her on Instagram for the further adventures of Maggs the Dog!)

xox,
C.

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Art Basel Exclusive Report: An Orthodontic Art Collection.

Cuban Orthodontist Art
Dolores, no pun intended, a painting by noted Brazilian artist Vania Mignone, looks over the tools used to correct dentofacial deformities. (All photos by Todd Kessler.)


The good doctor poses — with cigar — in front of Anima Sola, a canvas by Mexican-born Carlos de Villasante


The waiting area, where the exhibit changes quarterly. Currently on view: a selection of images from Stories, by Cuban-American writer and photographer Tony Mendoza.

We here at C-Mon HQ generally eschew art fair-related coverage in favor of more productive and enlightening activities (drunk texting and watching the Kimye video over and over again). But we’ve set aside our prejudices for this special report on Dr. Arturo Mosquera, a Miami-based orthodontist and contemporary art collector whose clinic, in the southwestern-most reaches of Miami-Dade County, has been a venue for rotating art exhibits since 2000.

Installed around dental chairs and goose neck task lights, the works extend Arturo and Liza Mosquera’s collection of mostly Latin American artists onto workplace walls more commonly adorned with posters of sunsets and the national parks. This year’s exhibit, provocatively titled From the Religious to Sacrilegious is designed, in Dr. Mosquera’s own words, “to start a dialog with kids and adults who wouldn’t otherwise see things like this.”

The bonus: unlike at Art Basel, you can get your teeth straightened while taking in the work.

Continue reading →

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Calendar. 04.17.13.


Only the best art video…ever. (Via Hyperallergic.)

  • L.A.: Crossfader: Listening like a Sonidero, with DJ Toy Selectah and Josh Kun, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. This Thursday at 7pm, in Santa Monica.
  • L.A.: Donuts and Clocks, a 24-hour performance installation with Dawn Kasper, held at ForYourArt, during the 24-hour screening of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, at LACMA (righ across the street.) This Saturday starting at noon, in Mid-Wilshire.
  • L.A.: William Powhida, Bill by Bill, at Charlie James Gallery. Opens this Saturday at 7pm, in Chinatown.
  • L.A.: David Korty, at Night Gallery. Opens this Saturday at 7pm, in downtown.
  • Chicago: Untitled Feminist Show, by the Young Jean Lee Theater Company, at MCA Chicago. Opens Thursday. Buy tickets in advance.
  • NYC: Sarah Halpern, Paper Plexus, at Microscope. Opens Saturday at 6pm, in Bushwick.
  • NYC: Artists-in-Residence Open Studios, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. This Sunday from 1-6pm.
  • Water Mill, N.Y.: Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories are Worth Repeating, at the Parrish Museum (in partnership with the Grey Art Gallery at NYU). Opens Sunday, in the Hamptons.
  • Plus: Kill Screen is organizing a conference related to video games in Brooklyn for May 11th. Get the deets here.
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Calendar. 03.13.13. (Sorta.)

King Kong GIF
I’ve got deadlines coming out of my ears, so listings are rilly thin. (Don’t have time to comb through all the press releases.) But you can entertain yourself by checking out my MOCA-LACMA explainer, as told in animated GIFs.

  • Paris: Chris Ware, at Galerie Martel. Opens Friday.
  • NYC: Alexandra Groczynski, Truisms, at Transfer Gallery. Opens Saturday at 7pm, in East Williamsburg. (It’s the debut show at this new tech-focused space.)
  • NYC: Blocked, a talk about writing by New York Times critic Holland Cotter, at the School of Visual Arts. Thursday at 7pm, at the SVA Theatre on West 23rd Street.
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Going Gangnam in Lima.

A follow-up to the post about Korean haircuts in Cuzco: Today, we went to Polvos Azules, a sprawling warehouse market in downtown Lima where you can buy everything from brass knuckles to porcelain elephants to fake Hollister T-shirts. We were there to pick up some bootleg cumbias and a Peru shirt that glows in blacklight. The digital section of the market (my favorite part) is a Blade Runner-esque array of large-screen TVs all blaring dubbed movies, ultraviolent video games and lots and lots of incredibly loud music. The most popular video? The K-pop ditty Gangnam Style, above.

Seriously, I would pay for cable TV if I knew that one of the channels was nothing but K-pop videos.

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Andean roads that look like a Brice Marden painting.

On the Chilean side of the border, near the crossing with Argentina at Los Libertadores. The best part is that the movie playing on the bus at this very moment was an end-of-the-world flick titled The Darkest Hour. Because there’s nothing like  contemplating the end of humanity while on a bus in the Andes making hairpin turns.

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Getting Cuzco schooled.

I’ve been spending plenty of time in Peru admiring works by the Cuzco School, the post-colonial painters that emerged from the Andes in the 17th and 18th century with all kinds of gold-dabbed archangels and virgins and whatnot. My favorite so far is this canvas I discovered near the bar at the Hotel Monasterio, with its magisterial pose, super fancy cape and abnormally twisted left hand. The only thing I can figure is that the painter’s hand model quit on him halfway through…

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