Susan T. Woolf. Rest in peace.

Quiet Piece 4; Pine needles, grass; Duration 1 week

This is what she did, and what she did was beautiful.

Quiet Piece 15, 2009; flower petals, leaves, concrete; Duration 1 day...



Quiet Piece 11, 2006; leaves, asphalt, office park; Duration 1 day...

Reflections Of Reflections.

Oliver Halsman Rosenberg's Beloved at Mary Smith & Friends in Greenpoint.


I loved Oliver Halsman Rosenberg's odd and wonderful show at Little Cakes a few years ago. The centerpiece of the show was an exercise bike rigged up to a big wheel that spun around so the viewer could see the paintings at whatever pace they cared to, slowly or with a blur.


His new show, Beloved, is up for just a week at Mary Smith & Friends in Greenpoint. It's mostly by appointment (nights and wknds are best), but there will be a closing party next Sunday, Dec. 20th. All the work is from Oliver's year in India where he spent about as much money per month on food, lodging, and travel as an artist living in NYC would spend on a small studio. He had an open studio, of sorts. Traveling and working he immersed himself in the color and spirit of the country, letting all his reflections pour out onto a shifting varieties of canvasses that he found along the way. I posted a number of the works over the summer when out of a very lovely nowhere a CD appeared in my mailbox. Highly recommended. Make the call or send the email or stop by next Sunday. Do what you need to do, but see this glowing wonder of a show.

Maybe I'm Amazed.

Clare Grill When You Get That Old, oil on linen on panel

Mixtape at Jen Bekman is my favorite show in town right now. Clare Grill's painting is one of the reasons. It threw me off and brought me in. This show represents everything that is right in the land of art. Everything. Starting with the unexpected and the beautiful, and ending wherever it wants to.

Other ways to sing together:

Track 1. (@ 2:47)

Track 2. (@1:05)

Track 3.

Track 4.

Track 5.

Track 6.

Track 7.

Track 8.

Track 9.

5.

Charles Demuth, The Figure 5 in Gold, 1928

I must be catching up with myself because I'm finally getting around to saying how awesome it is that ArtCat celebrated 5 years of goodness this month. I don't think it can be overstated what a game changer this site has been for artists, galleries, and writers. It was a wonderful and fresh thing when it started its "opinionated" path, and it remains so 5 years on. Belated--but HUGE--congrats to Barry, James and the entire ArtCat crew. Hugs. 5.

Rather Interesting.

Atom Heart, Dots

Half way through reorganizing my music. About 3500 CDs and around 2000 slabs of vinyl make this quite a chore. But it's a REALLY FUN chore, with lots of visits to old friends along the way. I'll be sporadically tweeting this post-Thanksgiving Day massacre as the day goes on, and some faves appear. Then next week I'll be consulting with my therapist about what was REALLY going on. That, I will not be tweeting. Time to check out the most realistic scene EVER in all of filmdom . . .

Let The Power Fall. The NuMuBrou In Song.

Robert Fripp: Let The Power Fall

Horace Andy: Money Money

Negative Plane: A Church In Ruin

For all those "dangerous" bloggers out there who started, y'know, like, asking questions and stuff . . .
First Choice: Armed and Extremely Dangerous.

Taylor Swift echoes Charlie Finch.

And finally, let's keep on looking for the light. For real.

Tweaking.

Total ACID.

I've been looking forward to the full show of Jenny Morgan and David Mramor collaborative paintings since the summer when they had a couple canvases in a group show at Like The Spice in Williamsburg.

Like I said. Total ACID. No, not the drug or the chemical. The techno sub-genre. Something about the way the pushing in these paintings tastes. The way they come close to an itch, but then break into beauty. No complete sentences here, just full thoughts. That, and some wonderful back-and-forth blossoming. Take one.


For Acid nostalgia, click on D.A.V.E. The Drummer

Every Word Means No.

No photos at DAC. If you want pictures you can buy the catalog. If you want information and links, you can use Google. You're on your own. You and the art.

Like I said, Every word means No.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities @ HYPERALLERGIC.

Hey! Totally psyched about my first post on HYPERALLERGIC! It's about the Bruce High Quality Foundation and the dumb art world I love. It starts with Napalm Death and ends with Taylor Swift, but not before making side trips to A Course In Miracles, American Psycho, Larry Gagosian, a naked Jerry Saltz dream, and Delmore Schwartz.

And Steelerbaby Wept.

Shepard Fairey @ The Warhol Saturday night.

I guess The Warhol Museum couldn't have timed their Shephard Fairey opening any better than this. Can't wait to see the show in December.

"I'm very disappointed with myself over this," [Fairey] said during an hour-long question-and-answer session about his career and influences.

While he said he couldn't comment much on the case, he described the issue as a mistake.

"There are some things being portrayed as if I was premeditative and sinister about which photo I used," he said. "That's not the case."

Most importantly, here's what a Steelerbaby supporter thinks about all this.

Empty.

Speaking of empty real estate housing art, I've been curious about this place between Court and Smith since it first went up. It's such an odd space I assumed that it was being built for something specific. Then, when it finally opened it was just a big empty cube that gave great shadow, but there was art leaning up against the walls. I happened to catch it at a good time on Friday and snapped some pics. Then, some dudes walked by with a canoe.

Fall.

Time to get out my second favorite sweatshirt. Hope I don't run into MB or Bjork in Brooklyn Heights though. That would just be embarrassing for everybody. (Art deal of the decade, by the way. Bought it for 1/2 price [$30] on the last weekend of his show at the Gugg.)

Gordon Gekko Book Signing.

The Street was littered with self-important PAs today, lemme tell ya. In a stroke of real-life irony they were using Trump's forever-empty Pine Street space for Holding. Heh.

Maria Bartiromo

Everything Means Less Than Zero.

Wherein we understand the how the latest art market crash happened.

Patrick Bateman (in voiceover): But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing...

Show Us Your Tits!

Oh, right. You don't have any. Nevermind.

You know the drill. Art. Sexism. Stupidity.

J. Crew

R. Pruitt


[UPDATE: OK. It's not really clear if the catalogue cover is the general JCrew cover or just for the Men's publication. I'll say this. If you go to the corresponding Women's section on the website, it just shows another one of their fake blueblood throat-pokers. Which then leads to the question, "Why wouldn't they have done a matching photo shoot with female artists?"]

BONUS WARNING: The Acconci pages are totally stuck together.

Hat tips to Art Fag City and Roberta Smith for pointing out the numbers, or the lack thereof.

Thunderpollen, Motherfuckers!!!

Hyperallergic. Storming your heart, head, and lungs soon. Actually, it kind of already is. Go and be good. Your immune system mediators will never be the same.

TOTAL BONUS POINTS if you caught the reference to MOTT THE HOOPLE's back up singers.

I have to go away for a bit, so behave yourselves while I'm out of class. Seriously. This is gonna be good.

Lost.

Christopher Saunders, Whitenoise 3

I'm always getting lost in Chinatown. And I mean, like, ALWAYS. The nice thing is that somehow I (usually) eventually (somehow) find my way to the East Broadway F station which is right across the street from LaViolaBank Gallery. I always stop in. I consistently like at least 60% (sometimes more, never less) of what I see on the walls there, which, let's face it, is a pretty good average. Much better than most. The group show that's up now, Outside In, mos def hits a higher than usual. Christopher Saunders' exquisite paintings were one of the things that helped the average this time 'round. Also killin' it was Mira O'Brien's gorgeous and broken Glass Platform. Leighton Pierce's Tree videos in the basement reminded me a lot of the video that I saw Wolfgang Voigt use up at Columbia earlier in the summer. Trust me. This is a good thing. These are all good things. I should get lost more often.

Pre.

Before there were signs there were pictures. From the flickr photostream of the legend that is Newsgrist.

70/30. 100%!!!

Bob Schatz

Go Olympia! Look y'all. Any project that includes both Robert Schatz AND Alison Blickle is more than alright by me. It's fucking fabulous. One day of ass-kicking only, so get yourself out to Ditmas Park, like, now and stuff. Another way to find you.


Alison Blickle

T Pain.

Yeah. I give up. I'm tweetling. Seems like a pain. Expansion or contraction? Only one way to find out. There will be many music references and much swearing. And I'm betting some art will show up as well.

Pink.

Great to see Kate Gilmore's new video inthe group show at The Kitchen, but it was especially good to see the installation that went with it. The color of the paint somehow exploits the viewer's depth perception, and looks like it's floating just above the surface of the wood or the floor. It's like a blowout version of other shades of pink that have appeared in earlier videos. Plus, it totally matches the rubber on a Grolsch bottle.

Maria Bartiromo

Don't Be A Brent. Go To These Openings Tonight.

Jack Whitten

It's killin' me that I'm not going to be able to make it to two openings tonight. I'll have to catch the shows later, but without a doubt you should be going to Jack Whitten at Alexander Gray in Chelsea, and Franklin Evans on the LES. A late comer to Whitten's work, every painting is a revelation for me. I'm not being all HeartAsArena-y when I say that either. I mean it. Evans provided me with the liveliest (Or more accurately, "liviest") studio experience in recent memory with his year-long studio-as-art journey during his Marie Walsh Sharpe residency last year. I can't wait to see the endless results.

Here's a primer on my great affection for both artists' work: First Jack Whitten, and then Franklin Evans.


Franklin Evans

Laughing At The Deaf.

On Jerry Saltz's offer to Glenn Beck, I quote Luna: "You can never give/The finger to the blind". Then I go back to something that I care about.

Is It My Body?

What have I got
That makes you
Want to love me?
--Alice Cooper


Genesis P-Orridge, Untitled (Mail art to Robert Delford Brown), Mixed media

The academy and not the academy. Both should be loved. Both should be feared. Everybody kicks ass in their own special way. Otherwise they wouldn't be here. Go ask Alice if you don't believe me.

Two shows open Wednesday night. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's 30 Years of Being Cut Up at Invisible Exports, and Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820–2009 @ The National Academy of Art (including HAA fave, Jenny Dubnau).


Jenny Dubnau, Self-portrait with Striped Shirt, oil on canvas

Round And Round.

In the most recent issue of Interview "sometimes-we'll-mail-it-to-you-sometimes-we'll-not" Magazine there's a turntable art feature with one glaring omission: the amazing Angela White. Although, she's not a dude, so I guess she didn't qualify for this particular line-up. Which is a shame, because--both sonically and visually--what she's been doing with turntables is a lot more interesting than anybody listed in the article. Her work was one of the highlights in the Christian Marclay-curated Ensemble at the ICA in 2007, and the first time I saw one of her sculptures in Chelsea I was so thrilled I actually thanked the rain.

Here's some video from her 2007 solo show at Shoshana Wayne in LA.

She Stepped Into . . . She Stepped Into . . .

Sharon Butler ON the Square.

Sharon Butler on the Square.

. . . another world.

Off The Wall.

More Is More.

Watching a head-on single shot video of an ensemble can be pretty boring unless it's a head-on single shot video of Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto with the Ensemble Modern backed by Carsten's images. Then it can be pretty damn fabulous. The DVD is included in a beautifully designed package with the CD UTP. If I was filthy rich, the first thing I would do would be to commission Nicolai to make a room for me: walls, floor, ceiling, air. Done.

As I've said before, Sakamoto works best in collaboration, and his work with Nicolai is some of the best music either one of them have ever made. The wider canvas provided by the ensemble could have led to disaster, but it doesn't. The music moves from less to more with aplomb, the musicians pushing the composers into Krautrock at one point and not-so-simply changing the shape of their studio sound in others. Augment. Restructure. Move forward. You know, the usual with these two.

Bring The Big Fork.

Generous servings of Clare Grill's Cake are now available at Jen Bekman's wondrous 20X200 series. Try some. Eat one.