Here.

Shall we start with Pavement? Yes, let's.


And then. Oh, my. Kate Gilmore's installation and video at The Whitney Biennial. So fucking good. And I LOVE that the partially unseen scene of the crime is in the room with the video. It's been a blast to see Gilmore move some of her work out of the studio and into the sites. It adds a dimension of physical tension to watching the videos. There she is. There she was. Here you are. Bring your body.

To Be Real.

Good from the gitgo, Robert Grosvenor's sculpture got better and better every time I walked by. Libby said she wanted to touch it. I couldn't agree more. Perceived weight + real weight + texture - space = desire.

Why Noise Is More Fun Than Art.

Here's a head cleaner. Pyrrhic Thanatology Monger's exceptionally and appropriately messy release Free Health Care on the Fusty Cunt label.


And why is Noise more fun than art? Midwest kid garbed in at least five directions of Heavy Metal walks up to a Noise maven and shows him his tape inspired by the healthcare debate. Tape makes it to the shelves of Hospital in a week. And the sounds are mighty and mightily fucked. As a bonus, the packaging reminds one of a rectal exam. Totally appropriate.

Go Ask Alice.

Salvador Dalí, First Cylindric Crono-Hologram. Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain, 1973

Catching up with myself now . . . As part of their FLASH POINTS series, Must art be ethical?, the art21 blog has posted my piece "Art is Murder." I dive into the gray with Richter, Dalí, Banks Violette, Alice Cooper and all things Black Metal. Ethics in art? I'm against it! Except when I'm for it (Which isn't very often.).

The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh.

Tony Oursler, Vampiric Battle, 2009, @ The Mattress Factory

I wrote a two-parter for Hyperallergic a couple weeks ago about the wonders (and mysteries) of Pittsburgh. A highlight of my art viewing every year, it was nice to get to work it all out long-form stylee. Big ups to Hrag who is, like, the coolest and bestest editor in the world. Here's Part 1. And here's Part 2.

And Sidney Crosby wept.

Community.

Oh, hello very wonderful PLG Community Mural Project in Prospect Lefferts Gardens! Got a nice little tour of the project yesterday and in the process completely fell in love with this neighborhood.

To You.

Snowgasm.

In celebration of today's weather I give you one of our faves here at HAA, Andrea Champlin's Snowgasm. White is the new white. At least today it is.

Click on the image to make it blow up. Srsly.

Staring At The Sun.

Well, to quote Tonio K, better late than never. Last month I had a couple of my ideas for Jeffrey Deitch's upcoming star turn included over at Fast Company Any opportunity to use the words "exhumed body of "exhumed skull of John Fante" and "Eli Broad" in the same sentence I'm gonna take it. Ethics aside (which I'm always more than happy to do here at HAA), I can't wait to see what the Michael Kinsley of the art world does in the City of the Angels.

Bending, Breaking Through.

Chris Forsyth, Dreams

Chris Forsyth drove right into it last night at Issue Project Room. By "it", I mean everything. The night, the cold, our bodies. I saw him do the same thing this summer at Shea Stadium in Bushwick, only in that case he was cutting through the sweltering heat and too much beer. Without frippery, he drops his audience right down into a deep pit of harmonics, twisted melody, and rhythm. Like Baby Jessica, shit gets dark and weird but the ride back up is a blast. I haven't been this surprised by a guitarist since I saw Roy Buchanan on Austin City Limits when I was a kid. Don't get me wrong, revolutionaries like John Fahey and Loren Mazzacane Connors are LOVED here at Heart As Arena, but that doesn't mean they ever surprised me. Like Buchanan, there's something decidedly off and unpredictable in Forsyth's songs and performances. Will the song end or are we only in the middle? Will a melody dominate or will it be a wall of dissonance; or, will both share the stage? Will he roll or shred? Doesn't matter, as long as you're there. And with Forsyth's music, you will be.

Meg Baird played after Forsyth. I have to admit, I was skeptical, but Baird took care of that right quick. Her rolling and bending guitar lines pulled me in, and her voice kept me there. Forsyth joined her near the end for some scary beautiful and sometimes just downright scary lead runs. Things got especially transcendent when the duo covered the Crazy Horse song I Don't Want To Talk About It. (BONUS: Rod Stewart version.) By the end of the song, the audience knew they had seen something special. And they were right.

Score!

Taj Forer, To live with you alone, Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, archival pigment print

Totally scored at Art21's wildly fun trivia fest, Culture Wars, last night. My team--the very awesome Glenn Lowry's Apartment--came in 2nd place, being bested with more than a little irony by the crew from MoMA. No complaints here though. We walked away with prints and gift certificates from the much-loved and ever excellent 20X200. I took home Taj Forer's To live with you alone, Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee. A thousand times YAAAAAAAAAY!

And yes, Ms. Jen Bekman called it. HeartAsArena was drunk. But mostly on the goodness of a fine evening.

Oh, and . . . XANADU!!!

Free Time.

James Franco

It's great that James Franco is doing performance art and that so many people are discussing it, but shouldn't we first pause to appreciate what he's already added to the world of painting?

Thrust.

When I saw Jim Marshall's iconic photo of Johnny Cash thrusting The Finger at the camera, I realized it was the second time I had seen it in the Brooklyn Museum. The first time, however, wasn't in a photograph. It was in Mark Dean Veca's wonderfully trippy Good Bye Nail Fungus that had been in the museum's Open House: Working in Brooklyn show back in 2004. Nothing's lost in the translation.

Rock 'N' Roll Suicide.

I saw the excellent Who Shot Rock & Roll at the Brooklyn Museum over the weekend. The set of Richard Kern's photos of Sonic Youth made it hard not to think of the infamous suicide picture of Mayhem's Dead taken by his bandmate Euronymous. There are a couple hundred reasons it might not have been included in the exhibit, ranging from the ethics of its provenance to scaring children. The music geek and Black Metal fiend in me needs to fill the empty space on that wall though, so here's the missing piece of the puzzle. To quote Dead, "Excuse all the blood."

Over.

Performance, Prurient. Video, Pendu.

2009 Top Ten.

1-10. The Mattress Factory's reinstall of Greer Lankton's It's all about ME, Not You (1996).

Quite simply, nothing else even came close.

Everything I want from art is in this room in a room. I viewed the piece through tears, brought on by equal parts heartbreak and beauty. Nothing else came closer.



Lankton doing the original installation.

Lankton at the 1995 Whitney Biennial.


Pics: 1 & 4, HAA. 2 & 3, Mattress Factory.

Prominent Fairey: Sidestreets and Alleys.

Shepard Fairey in Pittsburgh. The first, across the street from The Warhol. Great hydrant-matching abilities in full effect. The second, making it obvious who Fairey's favorite Jackson brother is.

Happy Holidays.

Locked In.

RRR-1000 lock groove LPs (120) from Keith Fullerton Whitman on Vimeo.

I repeat myself when under stress. I repeat myself when under stress. RRR-1000 Lock Grooves. 20 artists. 50 grooves each. 1 LP. Each cover unique. Record of the year?

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.