Christian Marclay by Brad Lay

Hello Everyone,

Found an article in Frieze, Sept 2003 on Christian Marclay, an artist who does some pretty cool things by using sound and music references in his art. He's known for both destroying musical objects such as records, in various over-the-top ways, and re-assembling them to form sculptures, plus he's collaborated with sound artists like Sonic Youth and John Zorn (both heroes of mine). The image below is a bit small but it gives you an idea of the more humorous side of what he does. It's called "If you can't lick." They're all record covers by the way. He has a whole series of these weirdities.

Another sculpture that has just been waiting to be done is this thing called "Altered Accordion". Kind of cartoon like. I reckon its beautiful.

There's a more disturbing side to what he does too, but I reckon it's this stuff that is his most powerful work (for me at least and given the little I've seen). "Guitar drag" is a video installation that features a fender stratocaster (guitar), being tied by the neck to the back of a pickup truck and dragged around at high speed. The guitar is amplified so that the soundtrack consists of the drones and feedback produced by the guitar as it is destroyed. If you like experimental noise then this is good in itself, and Neon records has released the soundtrack on 12" record which I intend to track down if possible.

It gets pretty disturbing though when he explains what this video is actually about. On the surface it appears to be referencing rock acts of instrument destruction. This is only part of it though, as he explains that it's also a reference to the lynching of James Byrd Jr, who was dragged to his death behind a pick-up truck. He states that "the piece ends up being seductive and repulsive at the same time", and I reckon that seeing it with the artists intention in mind would be a full on experience.

Cheerio

Brad

A late addition to this one - If you're interested in hearing what a guitar being dragged behind a truck sounds like, go to this site. Great stuff. You might think it's not, but I think it is. So there.

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=22959

http://www.neongallery.nu/records/neon002marclay/christianmarclay.htm

http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/museum/marclay/images/marclay.jpg

Brad on the Wrong Gallery

I found a small article in Flash Art, Jan/Feb 2003, on a small gallery, called the "Wrong Gallery". I reckon this is an excellent example of taking the idea of what constitutes an exhibition/gallery space to an extreme end, and in doing so, providing unique restrictions on the scale of the art that can be displayed there.

It was initially opened in 2002 in New Yawke as an artist run space (Maurizio Cattelan, Ali Subtonic and Massimiliano Gioni), with about one square metre of exhibition space. The building containing the doorway that it was originally located in was sold in 2005, and it has since been relocated to the Tate Modern in London.

Artists that have exhibited there include Paul McCarthy, Lawrence Weiner and Elizabeth Peyton.

In addition to all this, a group called Cerealart has produced limited edition 1:6 scale models of the exhibition space, which are designed to be installed on your wall or on a table, complete with lighting. They also plan to replicate some of the original exhibitions also at 1:6 scale, as well as original works to be displayed in the 1:6 scale models. As Cattelan says "Now everyone can be a dealer."

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/robinson/robinson10-22-13.asp

Opens up heaps of possibilities eh. Pretty much anything can be used as an exhibition space, and I reckon the weirder, the better.

Another quote: "The Wrong Gallery is the back door to contemporary art, and it is always locked."

Cheerio

Brad.

Other info:

http://chelseaartgalleries.com/The+Wrong+Gallery.html
http://209.204.203.248/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=WG&Category_Code=WG

A Lens on Diversity

Vol 23 #4
Artlink 2003
Pg 50-62

alix: Whenever I look for an article I look for an image thats going to jump out at me and make me think 'yep. thats the article I'm going to use' and alot of the time I only want to know more about a certain image rather than about a 12 page article (my short attention span gets me everytime). The article itself is about contemporary art in China and its reflections on social life. But the image that really grabbed me was one by Zhao Bandi. The piece 'Zhao Bandi and the Panda' (2000) combines performance and photography. The series shows Bandi forming a bond with the panda through quirky speech bubbles. In one Bandi asks the panda 'Would you mind my smoking?' in which the Panda replies with 'Would you mind my extinction?' I find both these questions to be quite strong as these are two issues that are quite trivial. There are constant campaigns urging people to quit and constant campaigns to help save the Panda from extinction. Both Panda and Bandi asking these questions puts forth the need for awareness in an 'innocent conversation' sort of manner. I would love to see the full sized version of this photograph and the series one day to see what other trivial conversations the two share.


image from: http://www.galerieloft.com/shop/images/ZHAO-BANDI.jpg

ray checks out Francesco Vezolli and Caligula

cinematic.com


these two
artnet.com




Hello all,
Flash Art may/june 2006 Bob Colcello,Caligula and the politics of fame.
I saw this article and was interesteed because i saw the trailer for the re-make of Caligula at the festival earlier thes year and it was great,lots of kitch,sex,smut,big hollywood names,voice overs etc.Did you guys see it?
Anyway I didn't really get this article though becase it was written by Francesco Vezzoli who made the remake and the other art featured in the article but it was an interview with Bob Colacello who i must admit i don't know who that it.It seems he knew the producer of the original Caligula and worked at Andy Warhols Factory for twelve years and is a filmmaker but the article is not very clear,it has pics of the trailer but does not speak of it at all only the original among other things.I find Flash a bit of a hard one to get into really.
Ahhh Bob is a renown writter and journalist.He has some intresting things to say like Elizabeth Taylor gossip and how the academy awards are too jazzed up,and sadam hussien could be the Caligula of today among others but the article was somewhat missleading as i thought it would be about the Caligula re-make trailer i saw which was great.
I personally would rather read about the art that some writters opinions of various things interesting as they may be.
well thats my two cents worth rounded up to 5.......

age and gravity

jess hancock: i looked at an article on Ella Dreyfus and the differentr work she does and it was the images that really drew my attention to this article. My first reaction was that of disgust at the excess skin and sagginess. ew! Another reason i freaked out was because i realised this is going to happen to me and all oof the people i know and a new generation of young people would see my body how i looked at these. Then i read what it was about and it made me look at it in a more sympathetic light. In this piece called age and consent 1996-1999 Dreyfus is trying to show the taboos of aging and the body. Although we are surrounded by sex and stuff everyday it is only young sex and older people are invisable. That made me realise that if i saw images like this of a younger person i probably wouldn't think much of it and it is only because she is old, not in her prime and because im not used to seeing images like this that i was shocked. Dreyfus described how even the people taking part thought what was happening to their bodies was disgusting. artlink vol22, no1, pg57

Maurizio Cattlelan Frieze??

Jock Walker

i read a few journals this week i sat in the high demmand section and managed to choose the probably the five most boring journal magazines ever, Artlink, art and Australia, asia pacific, art in america (the most interesting). i managed to fall asleep and dribble on myself alittle embarassing with about ten people around me. I have seen cool stuff in some of these journals before but i just picked some badies.

Any way when i was doin some artist research i came across a Frieze article on Maurizio Cattelan i couldnt find the magazine no. etc so im just gonna put alink in to the page Which is......http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=1078

This article was extremely long it mentions about fifteen of Maurizio's amazin works, Talks about him 'making darkly comic work that holds a mirror up to our pomposities, foibles and fears' I really like his stuff we have alll seen it in class. The article also talks about the wrong gallery that Maurizio was apart of interesting stuff a non-profit gallerys mocking a upper market gallery next door. It gos on a bit about Cattelan playing the court jester role of the artworld but tryin to escape with reference to works he has done with tunnels under the floor and tied bed sheets hangin out the window ( i think sometimes these people talk crap just to make there articles look longer). He has done oddles of crazy works love em all
.

Australian Artist August 2006

Australian Artist August 2006

By Lilianna

After my painting studio lesson today, as I was coming back home on the bus carrying all my stuff, when it dawned on me HOW MUCH stuff I was carrying! Upon starting the painting course I thought a set of acrylic paints and few brushes would be enough to keep me going... well not really. Today I felt more like a camel or a packhorse.... My bag was filled with huge bottles of acrylic paints (the usual size set would only last one lesson), cans of glaze, water containers, around one kilogram of brushes and not to mention a few paintings (it was assessment day). I thought it was about time I read up about different mediums and techniques.

I picked up the August issue of “Australian Artist” which contains a few interesting tutorials about painting techniques. Among these is painting with gouache...The article mentions that it is very suitable for traveling artists (such as myself - read above!) and as a medium is very forgiving. I have personally used it previously as a graphic artist, but I realised my knowledge of it was kind of limited. Artist Walter Magilton shares few upsides and downsides of gouche in his article:

The advantages are that you only need a very simple kit- brushes, paint, watercolour paper, water and sponge plus there are no smells, dirty rags and it is also easy to make changes.

The disadvantage of gouache is the very quick drying time – this could be the problem, not giving much time if blending is necessary... but this too can be an advantage.

I though this might interest people who plan to go out painting on the field (so to speak) during the school break.

Page 48

Do-Ho Suh

Jessie: Saw this image on an ad in Art Forum and it completely had me intrigued. What were all these little people doing? Were they supporting this person, or straining under his weight ? The ad was for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and not really that interesting, but the artist is. Do-Ho Suh is a Korean artist who exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2001. This image is part of a room sized installation with a glass floor, under which millions of tiny plastic figures held the floor up. Pretty freakin cool I thought. His work deals with and questions notions of identity and individuality, which probably comes from feeling a disorientation after moving from Korea to the US, as though his is "neither here nor there." In some of his work he has replicated the spaces that he has lived in out of semi transparent fabric, including 348 West 22nd St., Apt A, New York, NY 10011, a full size reproduction of his apartment in Chelsea, right down to the sockets, lightswitches and doorknobs. A bit like one of Oldenburgs soft sculptures?
He has also made a work called Some/One, a traditional Korean robe made from thousands of military dog tags, which you have probably all seen. Love his work.

Pictures from www.forbes.com www.brown.edu/Facilities/David_Winton_Bell_Gallery/suh

Isa Genzken

Gemma:
To be honest I really didn't feel like reading journals this week, due to headaches ETC. So after about a hour of flipping though them and not really liking anything much I was ready to go home. I had one last look around the shelves and one of Isa Genzken's sculptures caught my eye on the cover of ArtForum November 2005. I forgot to look up what it was called but it was fairly junky, basically just a pile of found objects. It took me a while to figure out why i liked it and i think it was because everything was really simply unified. The other works featured in the article had a similar appeal. All these objects which functionally seem totally unrelated come together and work together some how. Sometimes it's colour, transparency, size, shape, whatever. There is something quite delicate about it even though the final products are completely chaotic.

When i had a look at some more of her stuff on the internet i realised how eclectic her art actually is. I couldn't even find a good example of what i was talking about before. But i really like what she's done with most of her stuff. She has some really messy looking sculptures and then she does some really neat and contained stuff which is sometimes really abstract but sometimes more realistic like these ones i found.

also i really like this one

which is from a huge series she did called Empire Vampire which included the middle photo of the three above. I think it's an interesting example of how much her work varies in style even within the same series.

richard phillips in frieze

polly: richard philllips work in issue 95 of frieze, is unmistakable. his work is usually massive bright canvases that feature themes of prositution. the work that jumped out to me was this image (above, that i copied off the whitecude gallery site) 'threesome'. when i first saw this in frieze a while back i started crying, which is a strange response to have. yet considering that at the time i was paranoid that my ex was seeing someone else, perhaps you can let me off :P

i couldn't get the image out of my head though and i thought it would be cool to share it to see what your response is. i think looking back on it now, it's very clever how phillips has hidden the faces of the lovers so that their identities are anonymous. the realism is very effective in making the scene and themes associated to it realistic in todays society and yet still distant to us. one of the best things about this ad was that it lead me to further research the white cube gallery in london. well worth checking out; www.whitecube.com

Hey y'all

Benjamin:
This isn't my article, but it's awesome.
David Shrigley has a website and has like a million pictures on it.

i choose to show you this one.

I love David Shrigley

oh right, the website www.davidshrigley.com

Four refugee artists from Afghanistan

Danielle Fattori

Exhibition: Afghanistan Unveiled

The article and artists that I have chosen to review were from the Artlink Mag (vol 23#1 Page 51). WhenI was browsing through the mag these particular images caught my eye. I love images that reflect a scence with plenty of detail and look really realistic. I also loved these paintings because of the incredible stories that they were influenced by.

In the article written by Angelika Tyronne & Helena Stewart they reviewed the exhibition 'Afghanistan Unveiled' in which four artists Shafiq Monis, Sayed Monsoor, Ali Reza Ramzi and Ghulam Sakhi Hazara had works in. The exhibition was part of Refugee Week which in my opinion would have helped make the public more aware of current issues sourrounding the refugee crisis. All four of the artist have been in detention centres (one is still in there) and there work often reflects the struggles in fleeing to Australia & refugee camps. There is one image that kinda haunts me called "comfort from out side". It's of a boy sitting down behind a fence patting two dogs on the other side of the fence (very depressing).

Another painting which I thought was interesting and depicted the the lifestyle of one of the artist whilst in Afghanistan was by Ali Reza Ramzi. The painting was reproduced in Australia and shows a man being threatened by the Taliban because he's put a painting on his pharmacy wall which reflects human drama. The man (Ramzi) was warned that he would be killed and was thrown into jail. However Ramzi escaped and new the only way for him to survive was to flee Afghanistan and migrate to Australia. I think sometimes we really don't know how lucky we are.

MAYA LIN: SYSTEMATIC LANDSCAPES

Josie: (let me just say the computer is being a bitch and won't let me put the pictures where I want them....am very angry...I wanted them swapped over so you see the landscape one first!!!GRRRRRR!!!!!)...
Hello again for another week darlings!! How good was the weather at the end of the week??!! Its almost summer which makes lil Josie here oh so very excited!! I have so much to say to you all...but....there is one tiny problem- i am sitting at home at my old, slow computer, so therefore I cannot tell you all the goss......ha-ha! Oh-well!!...
NEWAY- so I was looking through Art In America journal this week, July/August edition..no.6, page 100 i think (dont quote me tho)....( I thought that i would stray away from my usual being Sculpture mag......as good as it it, Art in America has its perks too!!)....and I came across a page on this artist called Maya Lin, who is having an exhibition called SYSTEMATIC LANDSCAPES in Seattle. ... (road trip anyone?)....I admit- I isn't an actual article as such, but it had the website (www.henryart.org)- which I took a look at and found out some stuff about this Maya chick. The thing that caught my eye was the photo which im posting as well....called Landscape....of all the little wooden pieces making the landsacpe....oh my god....doesnt it look siiik??? Well i think so anyway, even if some (which I know) will think its crap....I like it:)
The whole exhibition is of notions of landscape and geometric phenomena. Yeah- sounds strage- I knnow- this sorta thing doesn't usually tickle my fancy, but I guess its the presentation that really makes the particular artwork complelty amazing!! Maya uses satelitte imagery over a long period of time to come up with these contemporary installations. Tres tres cool!!

So then I was looking at some of her other stuff, and stumbled upon one called Waterline, using aluminium tubing and paint. It is fantastical!! I just looked and thought- oooh wow, how very weird, but cool. You all being artists and all, like you can just look at something and know straight away whether you like it or not.....I just fully click with the art that Maya Lin is making!! Do all check it out, or at least check out the website and read up on it for yourselves. Yes....I do hear a constant moan because I know we're all so very busy these few weeks, but just do it!!! hehehe...
Love you all, have a siik week and take care ....don't get in ttoo much trouble;) ha
love josie xox