Wednesday May 14, 2008
May gallery walk
You missed Christina Lei Rodriguez’s show at Perrotin, right? Shame, because it’s gorgeous. By dropping the overt references to natural forms, the new work achieves a sort of post-apocalyptic disco grandeur.
Detail.
Take an exterior wall, paint it flat black, and write something on it in block letters. It’s pretty hard to miss, as Locust has been demonstrating for the last few months.
Amber Hawk Swanson’s sex-doll twin shows off her business end. As you lean in to look, a camera’s watching you, with a live feed showing on a screen on the other side of the wall.
Photos of the doll making friends accompany the installation. These leave something to be desired, actually.
Map Magazine’s coffee lounge. Cold espresso in little cans distributed.
In a trailer at the back of the lounge, Snitzer’s trailer hold’s COOPER’s latest work, ass-kicking as usual.
Gavin Perry demonstrates what happens to artists when their work appears on the cover of a book: you’re issued dress shirts and cigars, and required to sport them when in public.
Robin Griffiths’ sculpture at Dorsch, replete with WWII-era shaving kit and multiple whiskey bottles.
Spinning lanterns by N. Sean Glover at Diet.
At Castillo, Frances Trombly’s latest work, including woven cardboard boxes with embroidered labels.
Meanwhile, palmetto bugs the size of a child’s hand prowled the streets, attacking stray cats and the occasional art collector. Must be summer kicking in.
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Tuesday May 13, 2008
The Bas Fisher Invitational just had its last show ever and is closed.
Saturday May 10, 2008
Gallery walk tonight
- Frances Trombly at Castillo.
- At Locust, Chicago artist Amber Hawk Swanson and a life-sized silicone sex doll she commissioned in her own likeness.
- Dorsch: big group show with a few of the regulars, a few new names, and Hugo.
- Jay Hines at Twenty Twenty.
- MoCA warehouse has a show of work from their collection up, from last month. Excellent time to check it out, I’d think.
Also up from last month: Gavin’s show at Snitzer .Actually it’s not. Snitzer needs to get on the ball updating that flash thing he calls a website.- Hardcore. Say what you will, but I’ve never stopped by without seeing a few things that rocked.
- Gye-Hoon Park and Jill Hotchkiss at Lowenstein.
- David Shaw at Bruk.
- Cristina Lei Rodriguez at Perrotin
- Kalup Linzy opening at Moore.
- Grab a coffee at Wynwood Art Lounge next to Snitzer. Something Map Magazine is puting together. Live music.
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Monday April 14, 2008
Lichtenstein at Fairchild
My third trip to Fairchild was the most interesting yet, thanks in part to unwillingly (and groaningly) submitting to the tram tour. The garden has over 500 volunteers, and among other things they lead all these tours, which are — surprise — extremely interesting and helpful in making sense of what might otherwise seems a somewhat sprawling estate. Fairchild has four distinct plant habitats and … well, I’m not going to regurgitate everything, but trust me, it’s worth it.
The public attraction aspect is almost secondary to Fairchild’s scientific function. A premiere collection of tropical wildlife, every plant on the property is a scientific specimen, and many are tagged for reference. Botanists come from all over the world to study this stuff.
In the arid area, almost every different plant is a different species. Set atop a small hill, the area was excavated and filled with fast-draining sandy soil to simulate a desert environment.
So, I guess we should talk about the Lichtenstein. There are only about 10 sculptures, but they’re pretty hard to miss of course. At their best (for example, this lamp light sculpture) they’re pretty darned good.
Also the house sculpture, charming enough in a photo, but employing a perspective gimmick that makes it look like it’s moving as you walk past it. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of tired “brushstroke” pieces to be had, but the best of it was pretty good.
Also, remnants of Chihuly abound. Here a lizard has gotten pretty comfortable with the red tubes. I sort of wish they’d get rid of the glass, because it’s pretty distracting. In the tropical rainforest all people were photographing were the sodding glass balls in the stream. (Tour tidbit: since Miami doesn’t get nearly as much rain as a rainforest needs, the area has a treetop-level sprinkler system — every layer of the rainforest needs water, not just the ground.)
Orchid fever in the enclosed conservatory building. I took the orchid pictures, but Susan took most of the rest of them, because like a knucklehead I left my camera battery at home. More orchid pictures at flickr: 1, 2, 3. Oh, one last thing. Fairchild has a butterfly garden now. Did you know that if you plant the right plants, butterflies will just start hanging out? Well, they planted lots and lots of them in one little area and viola — a year-round swarm of butterflies. Good stuff.
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Wednesday April 9, 2008
A few recent articles on Miami artists: Brett Sokol on William Cordova, Adler Guerrier, and Bert Rodriguez, who are currently in the Whitney Biennial, a report on Bert’s piece, in-gallery therapy sessions, by our pal C-Monster, Victor Barrenechea on Scott Murray of Twenty Twenty, and … grr — the maroons at the Herald have yanked down the Wendy Wischer profile, though the slideshow of her work remains. (via)
Tuesday April 1, 2008
FIU MFA show
An MFA in art is serious business. Not only does it mean you’re serious about this stuff and you intend to spend your life making art (75% of fine art BFAs make no attempt to have a career as an artist*), but you should have your act together, and be making serious work that can be judged at the highest levels. Right? So. Here’s the latest crop out of FIU, one of Miami’s better art programs.
Harumi Abe is a friend of mine, but I don’t think I’m being unfair to say that she stole the show. Her paintings popped off the wall, and they’re both hyper-real and completely mundane. You know that line Franklin used to kick around his footer, the one about the painting of a carrot starting a revolution? We’re getting close here.
So, I’m given to understand that there’s some technical difference in Fred Karrensberg’s work that makes it incorrect to say that he’s the obvious protege of Bill Burke, but you could do worse then to be just that. These pieces are mysterious and rich, and one even managed to combine cast glass and video without being laughable. (But I wouldn’t recommend trying that again.)
Dan Mintz has been working on this body of work, photos of his son, for years, and it’s come together spectacularly. Cheers, Dan (although might I suggest a middle initial or something, because there may be a google problem lurking). Photography always suffers in hastily-re-photographed reproduction, but I’ve managed to mangle this piece more then usual. Apologies; I assure you the original was crisp and masterfully printed.
Angelica Clyman. Here’s where we start to get into trouble. I understand about the carrot and everything, and Clyman obviously has the light thing figured out, but her attempts to convey spirituality and deepness through images of a couple hanging out outdoors
I also wasn’t completely convinced by the work of Chaitra Garrick. Based on stories told to her by her grandmother, they’re charmingly crude mixed-media drawings of people and animals in peculiar situations. The best of them exude a sort of iconic charm, and maybe Garrick will find a way to harness more of that in future work.
A video by Maria Lino was also in the show. The exhibition is up through April 12th, and I’d recommend making the trip to check it out. The university also published a very nice catalog.
I made this number up. But I’d batcha it’s close.
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Monday March 24, 2008
A nice article in the New York Times on Bonnie Clearwater and MoCA, which is about to build that big new building. (via)
Monday March 17, 2008
A new design for Museum Park has been released. Basically, they cut about $10 million out of the grove area, the southern part of the park (where a lot of the interesting stuff was, it should be noted). Current projected price: $49-54 million. All together now: yeah, right!
Wednesday March 12, 2008
First Chihuly. Now Botero and Lichtenstein. I hope Fairchild gets the obvious stuff out of it’s system asap and gets down to some interesting and non-obvious artists.
Tuesday February 19, 2008
Photos from the Coconut Grove Arts Festival: 1, 2. About what you’d expect.
Tuesday February 12, 2008
February Artwalk
Blackbooks’ spectacular show at Spinello — no stencils, all wood cuts. With the help of a computer and laser, images are precision-cut out of the top layer of a piece of painted wood. The results tend to speak for themselves, and note that this technique gets extended into sculpture and other media with, presumably, the use of a jigsaw.
Swarm the freshly-scrubbed art collectors!
Charley Friedman’s show at Gallery Diet was a bit unfocused, but there’s no arguing with larger-then-life nipple photos and Q-tip sculptures.
Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros’ sound installation at Dorsch. This reminds me of the story where the Velvet Underground wanted to record a 24-hour piece of music, and then have their engineer do custom mixes of it for each listener, based on their personality… But seriously, it’s interesting how easily people seemed to take to the idea that the way sound activates a space is very similar to the way that paintings on a wall do. 24 channels, and you walk around to experience each one, but what you’re really doing is absorbing the whole thing as a continuous experience.
An uneven portrait show at Hardcore Art Space, but with some real standouts.
For example, Jordi Bernardo’s Tenerife. I don’t know if you can see the person standing off on the right side of the frame?
We close, as always, with Twenty Twenty (because the beer there never ever runs out). Amazing laser piece by Matthew Schriber.
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Monday February 4, 2008
As they do every so often, New York Times surveys the Miami scene. An eclectic collection of galleries, clubs, and other odds and ends (e.g. Lost and Found Saloon, of which a review is forthcoming right here, and the recently mentioned Aventura Mall art collection). (via NefariousGirl)
Museum members month
Here’s a good idea, well executed: for all of February, membership at any of nineteen museums gets you free into any of the others.* Simple enough, although they’re also packing the month with special events, parties and the like. I’d say this is a no-brainer, and if you’ve been thinking about joining any of these institutions (the MAM is a particular bargain, having recently raised regular admission rates but not membership rates), well you know what to do. My only gripe is that the Metrozoo isn’t participating.
The oddest aspect, though is the t-shirts: fifteen local artists were commissioned to create a shirt for each participating museum, and the commissions must have been pretty open-ended, because the results range from the literal to the, well, not so literal. The shirts are $25 each, on sale only at a couple of special events throughout the month, so if you want one, you’d better do some planning.
* Actually, a couple of the museums have no admission, some don’t have memberships, and some aren’t really museums, but let’s not quibble.
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Friday February 1, 2008
Miami Provocateur interviews Nina Arias, primarily on her latest project — an art studio for abandoned children in Bogotá. “Please note while working on this interview Nina called herself a ‘keyrat,’ perhaps one of the truest Miamisms.”
Wednesday January 30, 2008
It turns out that Aventura Mall has a collection of public art. A fairly impressive one, at that.
Wednesday January 16, 2008
January artwalk
Aramis Gutierrez’s sensational painting show at Castillo. Across the street at Gallery Diet, Richard Höglund’s installation had folks scratching their heads. Like a parody of contemporary art, it took a simple geometric shape and threw it at everything — small drawings, big drawings, installation, video, paper stacks — and nothing stuck.
Christina Pettersson’s eye-popping drawings of bricks stolen from writer’s homes. This one is Jack Kerouac. It’s unfortunate that these are only ever seen as details — the bricks are drawn life-sized, centered on massive pieces of otherwise-blank paper.
One of Steven Gagnon’s car projections in front of Locust, which includes the audio and video of a man describing his illegal entry into the US.
Bethany Pelle shows off one of her immaculate little kitchen sculptures. This one comes apart to function as a tea strainer.
Between two buildings on North Miami Avenue sit five of these huge aluminum 80s-looking palm tree sculptures. I mean, people are wasting their time making stuff like this? With world hunger, war, and disease, and you’re going to make huge palm tree sculptures and finish them off by drawing lines on them with a drill? Wow.
Kevin Medal’s at Twenty Twenty. A tour de force of a video created with thousands and thousands of drawings, stop-motion play-doh, and computers. Stunning, and . . .
. . . some of the cells are displayed in a tiny space adjacent to the projection room. Click the image above for full-size, and find the image from the still above.
Missed the Jordan Massengale show show at Tachmes, but luckily it will still be up in February.
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Tuesday January 8, 2008
You people had better watch out: Hugo has a blog.
Wednesday January 2, 2008
A modified version of the MIA Britto shirt has been approved and ordered, so get ready to puke at the airport.
Wednesday December 19, 2007
Anne Tschida asks the musical question, ‘Is Art Basel is, or is Art Basel ain’t Miami’s baby after 2010?’ Caution: this article is replete with words like “nascent.”
12 of Miami’s ‘future stars‘ in Ocean Drive, including Lolo, Colby Katz, ANR, and a number of “fashion and accessories designers.” (via whl)
Monday December 17, 2007
A few more noteworthy Art Basel reports: Rotund World, Art Fag City, NY Times on Concrete Waves, The Next Few Hours, Knoxville Art Blog. Also, some distant reflection from our man in California. (The “but is it art” thing was a joke, although I confess to enjoying the blurring of the line between art and prank, which probably makes me seem ever the less in possession of a clue re what the former is. So be it.)
Thursday December 13, 2007
What’s wrong with this picture? Northbound Biscayne Blvd. at 110th street. Thanks to Skip Van Cel, who says: “I do not believe there is a school nearby. It is either an official looking prank or maybe an art piece.”
Wednesday December 12, 2007
Miami Fever’s photos from Photo Miami. (I just got dizzy typing that sentence.) Also, did you know that MF has a video stream? Here is a nice one of a South Beach club line.
Monday December 10, 2007
Aqua, Wynwood, more Pulse, Geisai, Photo Miami, Aipad, Casa Lin, Art Miami
Shana Lutker’s Hear It Here, at Art Perform, was a bit of a dud, at least from the little bit I saw. Maybe it got cooking later, but for me it confirmed a long standing suspicion that performance art is much easier to pull off in a small enclosed space.
Wynwood: This piece is officially the best thing all week. A kid from Dash high school made it, and promised to send me his information, and of course didn’t hasn’t yet. But and so yes, they were offering to take people’s pictures, right there on the street. This skewers more things that deserve skewering in one stroke then most people manage in a career, and it brings to new heights to the “But is it art?” issue for dessert. Rock over London, rock over Miami, Mission Accomplished. Update: Ilan Wilson-Soler. Thanks to everyone who helped track him down, and thanks Ilan for the kick-ass piece. Let’s have more like this.
At Twenty Twenty, Jen Stark’s How to Become a Millionaire in 100 Days (answer: make 10,000 pieces of paper a day, which is exactly how this piece came about).
Did you hear of a fair called Fountain? Me neither, but I stumbled across it, and was pretty impressed. Here’s one of a few of David Opdyke’s great little sculptures.
William Lamson’s Vital Capacity. A guy is in a vertical chamber, encased in a box up to his neck, his face covered with up-facing spikes. Balloons get dropped on him, and he must keep them up as long as possible by blowing, because, imagine a constant barage of balloons popping right in front of your face. Great use of a vertical LCD.
Bob and Roberta Smith (what is up with those names?), 26.05.07 Never Trust an Hippie. I hope you can read this (and btw it’s over 100 inches wide).
It’s always a treat to see one of Robin Griffiths’ pieces.
Brandon Opalka’s mural covers the entire side of Dorsch. (It’s going to have to be a “to-see,” because my photo here just really isn’t doing it any justice.) Do we have a candidate for Largest Artwork in Miami?
THIS IS AN EXCERPT — CLICK BELOW FOR THE REST!!
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Moore space, Design Miami, Scope, Pulse
Wow… lots and lots to get through here. And I’m leaving out lots more great stuff. Tonight is the party in the Design District/Wynwood, otherwise try to make it to the Positions party — I have photos from last night which I’ll post later, but it was wacked out. OK, here’s yesterday:
Moore Space: Claire Fontaine, Instructions for the Sharing of Private Property. An actual, unabashed, lockpicking how-to.
Loris Greaud, Illusion is a Revolutionary Weapon, M46 paint ball gun with IKB (International Klein Blue) paint balls. Can you imagine?
Design Miami: DM takes itself very very seriously, but that’s not to say there isn’t great stuff to see, both from a practical/beautiful and a spectacle perspective. Lodged firmly in the latter, Demisch Danant’s concrete chair.
“Designer of the Year” Tokujin Yoshioka’s Chair that disappears in the rain. Much more about Yoshioka’s gorgeous installation here.
Scope: As always, Scope rocked. To boot, at least 6 Miami Galleries (7?) have set up shop there. Here’s Shang Hui’s fiberglass Mermaid. She has a temple on her head.
Didn’t catch the artist or gallery (shame on me), but here’s a ~4 foot paper airplane carved from marble. Shocking craftsmanship.
Li Wei, Bright Apex.
IN THE INTEREST OF SPACE I’M HIDING THE REST OF THESE AFTER A BREAK.
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Wednesday December 5, 2007
Art Basel day 1
The gates open at noon sharp on Wednesday for the uber-elite guests. Here they are moments before, crowded into the convention center’s lobby. The regular-elite get in at 2 pm, the merely special go to the Vernissage at 5 pm, and the riff raff gets in starting Thursday.
I bring this one up because my man Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the big photographers at the fair. I saw Nice work by Candida Hoffer and Gursky as always, but Tillmans was all over the place. The far wall in this picture shows one of his quintessential photo arrangements, albeit all in frames. The still-lives absolutely slay. (neuger-riemschneider gallery)
The usual suspects at White Cube were rounded out by a huge nazi/horror movie diorama by Jake & Dinos Chapman.
Two magnetized cubes suspended in a corner. Jeppe Hein, 303 Gallery NY.
At von Senger, a concrete-drawing robot. Not a very smart roboy (they had to re-position him once in a while), but he makes up in art brawn what he lacks in brains, yes?
Lara Favaretto. Yes, she wrote that on a wall with a marker and called it art. What are you going to do about it? (“Dimensions variable,” of course.) This is at Galleria Franco Noero, where I also very highly recommend Simon Starling’s “Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty Five,” A projection of a film made by a motion-control camera panning around an exquisite chair, and accompanying diagram. Don’t take my word for that one — check it out.
Last one from Noero — Andrew Dadson’s flowers in black water. Do try this at home.
Arshile Gorky (from 1946) at Matthew Marks Gallery.
At De Carlo gallery, they are probably hating having installed this fake ATM with abandoned baby in silicone. Not to disapoint, attendees kept trying to use the ATM, and ignored the baby in a basket. Hey! How are you so sure that one’s real and that one’s fake!?
George Herold’s paining, Acrylic and bricks on canvas (with, I’m assuming, some sort of Herculean frame and substructure). Aizpuru, which also had more of that rockin’ Wolfgang Tillmans.
At maccarone, an installation dedicated to the Mass MoCA / Christoph Büchel fiasco, mostly framed court documents, e-mails, and a printout from NYTimes.com.
Also there: huge chocolate Santas with dildos butt plugs. also available in a convenient 1’ size. Yawn.
New this year: Art Supernova, a separate little section where each gallery’s art is separated from their storage and office areas, resulting in supposedly a more museum-like atmosphere. Well, slightly. Anyway, here’s a guy who’ll be performing hair sculptures all week. Stop by for a trim.
Nina Katchadourian’s Continuum of Cute. You’re not seeing the whole thing, but it goes from left to right and from top to bottom. Not sure if you can rearrange them to your liking.
A couple of Felipe Barbosa’s soccer ball sculptures. Too many people to get a good photo of his great wall-hanging.
ShanghART never disappoints. This year: Xu Zhen’s reconstruction of an Asian market. Far as I can tell, stocked with real groceries.
Update: Rather then do a new post, here are pictures from later in the day, NADA and the Stooges show:
Note: this is an animation! Three of these in a row, with discretely concealed projectors, at Vacio 9. Very nice.
This spaceman was part of an interesting installation at Ballroom Marfa.
Wilfredo Prieto’s El Tiempo es Oro/Time is God, at Martin Van Zomeren — this watch, suspended from the ceiling by a very long chain, in an otherwise empty and gray-painted booth. Appears to be accurate.
Gnarly balsa-wood sculptures at Roebling Hall. Yes, it’s about cutting wood, but it’s also about the 16 oz. beer can.
Yuken Teruya.
Blow de la Barra’s radiant booth.
Latest from Ian Burns. If you’re not familiar, it’s live video that’s generated by contraptions made from household objects. This one is a jet (Air Force One!) flying through a storm. It involves a tiny camera, live feed, a toy airplane, spinning background, haze effects (a spinning plastic cup between the camera and airplane, and several motors to make the whole thing shake and jostle for effect. Mesmerizing.
Graham Hudson’s Five Tools, which requires no explanation except that the tape measure at the bottom is about a quarter inch from the ground.
André Ethier, at Derek Eller Gallery.
I was required to post something from this gallery because it’s Czech: Jan Kotik, Coat of Arms of Le Sievr de la Mothe Cadillac (1658-1730), Hunt Kastner.
Yes, it’s the Stooges. They were really great, and it’s difficult to imagine Iggy ever in his life having less energy then he had last night. Another thing I learned — lots of kids are into the Stooges way more then I am. They were psyched.
Some well-orchestrated “mayhem.” Folks were invited onstage for one number, then invited back off before the show continued. Still not bad, and people were rowdy! I got hit in the head with a stray flying bottle, which some kid promptly dove for and threw back in the direction of the stage. Also: I think the Stooges played ‘I wanna be your dog’ like three times.
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Tuesday December 4, 2007
Art Basel the links
Installing something impressive in the Botanical Gardens across from the Convention Center.
OK folks, you know the drill. I’ll be delivering coverage from the show all week, more comprehensive information, and sometime Thursday or Friday, the “Art Basel guide for normal people.” For now, let’s get started with some links, of to which I will be adding later:
- The Herald’s disappointing special section, with a couple of semi-relevant articles, an impossible to use events database, a stupid “art quiz,” a prominent link to itself, and a semi-useful interactive map, which frankly just doesn’t do very much. A couple of interesting bits here, though.
- That’s right: 20 art fairs (plus a couple of things that don’t really count). Of note: Art Miami bit the bullet and changed its calendar to coincide with this week. Moved to a tent, too. High expectations for Scope, which rocked last year. Photo Miami moves to a tent (AIPAD moves into its old space).
- Miami Provocateur has links to all the big ones, and a few more notes.
- Plum TV, on the other hand, is running around getting good coverage. Overview, the elusive comprehensive list of Satellite Fairs (23 listed, not counting AB).
- NYTimes tribute to Sam Keller& (and click around — the whole weird little applet seems full of interesting stuff).
- Art Basel: the Superbowl of art, the Lollapalooza of international art fairs, an art Costco for billionaires
- The tribes of Art Basel Miami silliness.
- Art Basel the official site, which has a big events PDF for you to download.
- And note: (IGGY AND) THE STOOGES free concert on the beach (at Positions) TOMORROW 10 pm!!!!
Updates:
- An overview of Art Basel and the Miami art scene at Smithsonian.com.
- A collection of articles at Haute Living.
- Something comprehensive-looking at MA2Dweek, including, like, hotel availability ($6,000 per-night suite available at the Setai, if you’re wondering).
- Duran’s an idiot’s guide to Art Basel for locals looking for a good time.
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Monday November 26, 2007
Herzog & deMeuron’s plans for the new Miami Art Museum building will be revealed during Art Basel.
Monday November 19, 2007
Bigups to William Cordova, Bert Rodriguez, and Adler Guerrier aka Dig, who are to will be part of the Whitney Biennial next year. (And down with banal mockery.)
Tuesday November 13, 2007
November artwalk
Mural at Locust by Ed Young. (btw, I’m debating whether to do these this way, or in the slideshow. But for now, you can click them to see bigger.)
Inside, a rockin’ installation site-specific sculpture* by L/B.
Adorable mini-art-fair at Spinello. Just to the left of guy’s head is Jen Stark’s piece (because why miss an opportunity to mention Jen Stark?).
I’ll tell you what — word got out about the Diet Gallery. Or maybe it was the heavenly neon sign outside, but the place was packed. And the art, it was good. Welcome DG! Anyway, here’s Andrew Mowbray.
I was a little taken aback and forgot to get this artist’s name. Anyone?? Abby Manock, who’s website is worth a visit.
The consistently stunning María José Arjona. (Actually, a better picture here.)
How to impress people at your gallery opening or function: make delicious mojitos.
A few stills from Carlos Rigau aka Kenneth Cohen’s new video, which distills down all the man’s-head-on-boy’s-body stuff into a mind-bending 5 minutes. Nice work, sir! This is at the lovely show Erika curated at Tachmes, which consisted almost entirely of video and sculpture based on television sets (up through Basel).
And during which was produced this guitar cake.
* I give up: is it an installation or a sculpture? Is it site-specific?
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Thursday November 1, 2007
At ArtsJournal, Glenn Weiss has an excellent report on Britto in Miami, including pictures of all the public art pieces, the perfume and liquor bottles, the cars, and the 2006 superbowl halftime pre-game show. Also lots of interesting insights, including the comparisons to Peter Max and Dale Chihuly, and this: “As Britto may have learned . . . printing art on anything – cups, T-shirts, fishing rods – has a positive effect on distribution of the imagery. The goal of the marketing is to familiarize a broad audience with the imagery and its appreciation by the rich and famous.”
Wednesday October 31, 2007
Two more roosters found!
Muchas gracias to Suzy of MB411 for sending these photos over. She says: “I found you some more cocks! These aren’t Cuban though…I found each of them outside of Nicaraguan establishments! The first one is on Flagler and NW 16th Ave and the second is on SW 2nd ST and 8th Ave.”
Perfect. I’d say that we now have enough material to get a tag up: cocks. And while careful examination of the shapes suggests that not all the photos are originate from the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust program, clearly there is a family resemblance. So . . . does anyone have any more cock pictures?
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Monday October 29, 2007
Found: another one of the cocks, at Miami’s famous Firehouse Four.
Thursday October 25, 2007
James Wilkins has a few pictures and some commentary on the new Hollywood ArtsPark (btw, I work across the street from this park).
Wednesday October 17, 2007
Miami Contemporary Artists the book! By Julie Davidow and Paul Clemence, with a forward by Elisa Turner. Over 100 artists, including Hernan Bas, Jose Bedia, Teresita Fernandez, Naomi Fisher, Luis Gispert, Daniel Arsham, Susan Lee Chun, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, and TM Sisters. Book launch events around Art Basel, but looks like you can get a copy now.
Britto-designed uniforms proposed for MIA
OK, so this design was pretty seriously proposed for all employees of Miami International Airport. The article doesn’t exactly say what the status is, but some of the Miami-Dade Commissioners didn’t like it much. Natacha Seijas actually said, “my maid wears better clothes than this t-shirt,” which really deserves it’s own article, but whatever. My impression is that they want the design changed, but are not averse to having Britto uniforms for the airport. Yes, the shirts are fugly. But there is a larger issue underlying, and we’re way overdue for a serious conversation about this, people.
Now look, I don’t have anything against Britto. A couple of months ago I was working on an overview of everything he’s got going in Miami, and it was going to have a pretty positive spin. He’s a great guy, he makes colorful decorative stuff that makes people smile, and he’s been very generous to lots of positive causes. But in terms of actual art, his stuff is bullshit. Even the people who like it admit that. They’ll say things like, “I know it’s not really good art, but I just like it.” And that’s great — there’s certainly room in the world for a little inane eye candy ((of which talking, you may to enjoy theze superdope screen savers)).
I’m just concerned that it’s getting a little out of hand here. I now pass at least three different Britto sculptures on my commute to work, at least two of which are on public property. Now look here: public art is serious business. It’s based on tax money (which, as P.J. O’Rourke jokes, we’ll kill your grandmother if she doesn’t pay it), and it’s meant to enrich our lives. And trust me, Britto’s stuff may make you smile, but it is not enriching jack shit. We have an Art in Public Places program, and we should not be circumventing that process for public art selection. (The catastrophe of maintaining that art is a somewhat separate issue, btw.)
Fine, public money to my knowledge hasn’t directly funded any of the pieces in question, they’re either on private land or were donated. Private citizens can buy whatever they want. But private citizens should put the breaks on. We don’t let pop stars rewrite the national anthem,* and we shouldn’t let Britto’s formulaic pop-art rehashing become a de-facto flag for the city of Miami just because it’s loud, colorful, and mindless vocabulary ties in with the most easily marketable aspects of our city. Sooner or later, everyone’s going to wake up and recognize this stuff for the bubblegum twaddle it is, and it’ll be too late — the whole city’s going to be covered in it.
* This point is somewhat undermined by this, but still.
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Tuesday October 16, 2007
October gallery hop
Click for slideshow. October second Saturday at Emmanuel Perrotin, the Bakehouse Art Complex, Snitzer, and Dorsch, and more. And can I say: less then two months till Basel. Of course I can.
Update: More pictures of art at dig.
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Friday October 12, 2007
KH has a perception of Miami’s art scene which is at odds with the conventional wisdom. “Miami has a heavier core than people often give it credit for . . . I find that as a community of art makers and an art audience, we have an interest in something darker and deeper than festive hedonism–things swampy, earthly, deadpan, furious, benighted and spiritual.”
Tuesday October 9, 2007
One more photo, by Luciano Bove, from the Spencer Tunick shoot. Sorry, I can’t resist the pink.
Monday October 8, 2007
Early photos from the Spencer Tunick photo shoot at the Sagamore. Photos: John Vanbeekum, Miami Herald. Update: Channel 10 has more photos in a slideshow, and some video.
Monday October 1, 2007
“[Carlos] Suarez de Jesus may admire Kilimnik’s show, but that admiration seems intimately entwined with an attitude which diminishes and belittles women.”
The Little Havana roosters
One of the more colorful bits to come out of the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust situation is the case of these fiberglass roosters. Eight of these were ordered by the trust five years ago (total cost: $26,000) to give some pizazz to Little Havana. They quickly became the subject ridicule, then of vandalism.
Most of them have been mercifully removed, one still stands, hopefully to remind our esteemed leaders to relax and keep their notions of “art” to themselves. For crying out loud — Bacardi logos? What on earth were they thinking?! I photographed these in 2003; Veronica mentioned one in her piece on Little Havana in 2005.
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Monday September 24, 2007
Francisco Goya’s etchings, on view at the Freedom Tower (!) through November 9th (12 – 7 pm every day except Sunday and Monday). I saw these the last time I was in Prague; they’re exquisite.
Thursday September 20, 2007
Karen Kilimnik at MoCA
Before you go any further, grab a phone and call 786.735.1945. Ignore the nice recording, and punch in 1-1-#, and you’ll hear what at least one person thought of this piece. I love this because it makes the painting immediate, and it dispels the notion that lay-people often have of contemporary art, which is that you either “get it” or you don’t. (If you’re feeling adventurous, and you haven’t seen the show yet, try also 1-#, curator Ingrid Schaffner’s introduction to the show’s opening gambit, the “red room” installation.)
Karen Kilimnik’s show at MoCA demands unhurried exploration. Strains of meaning and beauty undulate around her paintings, installations, drawings, photos, sculptures, and videos, and they reveal themselves to the patient viewer. Kilimnik is known for her “scatter art” installations, but honestly, those were some of the less interesting pieces in the show. Picture a couple of piles of cartoonishly large yellow and blue pills, a mirror with a white powder, a razor blade, and a syringe. Or picture the most predictable tableau possible based on the Boomtown Rat’s I Don’t Like Mondays (chicken wire, gun-range targets, and a recording of the aforementioned tune on headphones).
It’s all uphill from there, though. Kilimnik’s paintings are genuinely great — she has a feel for gesture, for color, for context, and especially for narrative. They also tell a story. There’s the story of the fenced Stonehenge (above), and there’s the red room installation that front-loads the show with a bombastic show of pure power. A free-standing little room in a large and otherwise-empty gallery contains a circular couch, red wallpaper, and 50 paintings, hung salon-style on all the walls. There is appropriation and anachronism in these paintings (and at least one is left intentionally incomplete), but what drives them is her technique — bold and loose, but extremely lucid. I suspect they would be judged excellent by any painting snob, yet they work extremely well subsumed into this rather playful larger project.
The heart of the exhibition, however, are Kilimnik’s drawings. Employing a single-panel cartoon strategy without any of that format’s smugness or ease, they showcase her love/hate relationship with drawing, and play around with meaning, often leaving it just out of reach. Even after including text (both in the drawing and in the title) and overlapping symbolic references, we are usually left with an intriguing juxtaposition, not an overt statement. They make no attempt to delight the eye the way the paintings do, and often include elements drawn with deliberate clumsiness, stray marks, and a general approach to the surface that recalls the Basquiat school
There is a real magic to most of the pieces in the show. They are beautiful to behold, but their allure goes beyond their visual draw. They are loaded with meaning that walks just the right line of ambiguity — always hinting at a larger truth, but never allowing that truth to be captured and contained (clear-cut meaning is the short road to irrelevance in art).
One installation piece in the show consists of a splatter of red paint low down on a wall, accompanied by four fingerprint-like marks and a hand-drawn “S” in the same paint, all accompanied by a rectangle of pink synthetic fur on the ground and odd playing-card symbols attached to the wall. A nearby (but separate) piece consists of a silk sheet among straw with a black candle and more playing card symbols. What are we to make of this? Did a once-rich person, reduced by some sinister illness (one of the titles makes reference to smallpox), crawl from one space to the other to die, first issuing a vague message to the future? Again, no literal explanation will account for every element, and so the piece(s) play around with meaning without dashing towards it.
The show is rounded out with a couple of large installations, including a large room filled with aquatic objects which is somewhat less satisfying then the rest of the show. The back room collects several pieces that are again quite different from the rest of Kilimnik’s work. A dark photograph of a solitary figure, accompanied by two glittered twigs (arranged somewhat like antlers around the framed print) is especially evocative. Possibly the least interesting element in the show are the five video pieces, which seem to be mostly based on appropriated video. Haphazardly spliced together, they seem like transcriptions of someone experimenting with a collection of tapes and a television remote control, and with the exception of one that features footage from a fashion documentary (which is interesting more for the source material then the treatment), they leave one wondering whether the “meaning” is worth perusing.
The exhibition as a whole is more powerful then the sum of its parts because, while the techniques and media are all over the place, there is a profound and mysterious sensibility that pervades almost every piece in it. It isn’t anything as neatly tied up as “feminism” (though certainly feminist concerns are raised more then once), but rather an approach to the world which is way too subtle to be contrived, but way too distinct and present to be missed.
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Monday September 17, 2007
Dear Miami galleries, thanks for keeping those sites updated, now can we talk about the Flash?
Try this experiment: Google a few of the artists that David Castillo represents, and note where the gallery’s page for that artist falls in the search results (#1 for Pepe Mar, a little way down on the first screen for Andrew Guenther, and on the second screen for Wendy Wischer). Repeat for Fred Snitzer (oops, it’s not possible to link directly to his artist list). Nope. Nada. Nothing (note: not even when you add the name of the gallery to the request). Hernan Bas is there right now, but with a broken link and slipping fast.
That, my friends, is why you don’t want a Flash website.
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Monday September 10, 2007
The state of the Art in Public Places program in Miami is a complete disaster. Many works have been lost, stolen, damaged, or destroyed. This makes me want to cry, and I want whoever is responsible to be brought up on charges of criminal negligence. It’s time for us to stop putting up with all this neglect and corruption in our government.
Rotund World visits Miami, and gives it the skeptical eye of a former resident (with photos!): part 1, part 2. “Seen a certain way, at just the right distance, the Miami of today is a teeming, sky-high toy metropolis, as appealing as a dream. It looks like a sleek urban pleasure craft for the twenty-first century’s captains of industry, or whatever they are these days: real estate moguls, no doubt, on-the-lam financiers from Venezuela, summering drug lords, homegrown art collector-pashas. But the newness quickly curdles.”
Thursday September 6, 2007
Miami Beach 'CANDO' arts neighborhood
The CANDO arts neighborhood got a preliminary vote of approval by the Miami Beach city commission yesterday. It establishes a neighborhood (see map, above) in the northern part of South Beach where the city intends to help the arts flourish by . . . well, allowing developers to build condos with smaller units. Specifically: buildings on the Beach normally must have units that are 400 sq. feet minimum and 550 average. In the district, the latter requirement would be waived, allowing buildings of all-400 sq. foot units, for developments where 25% of the units are set aside for artists and those who work for non-profit arts organizations. Qualifying residents would have to make 50% to 80% of the county’s median income (which is $39,100 for one person, $44,700 for a household of two, and $55,900 for a family of four).
The linked article above, and the longer piece in the Sunday Herald, report that it’s 80% to 120% of median income. My information comes from the city’s planning board documents [pdf], which I take to be correcter. Much of the complaining seems to revolve around the fact that the 80-120% is too high, so I wonder where this’ll go.
It’s a common refrain that artists increase land values with their presence and price themselves out over time. And while the specifics of this plan open it to criticism, I think it will actually have a positive effect over time. The map shows that their is a substantial arts presence in the neighborhood already, and indeed rental rates on the beach are sometimes pretty reasonable.
Anyone making 50 to 80% of median income deserves some help with their housing. The argument for giving this help to those in the arts is that they specifically and tangibly enrich a neighborhood. But what will be more interesting to me is whether this really becomes a cohesive neighborhood as a result of this program; that would be a true measure of its success. (thanks to a commenter for suggesting this)
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Wednesday September 5, 2007
Ah! TM Sisters on the cover of ARTnews (actually, just Monica). And it’s the “25 Trendsetters” issue. Unfortunately, the article is not available on line. Update: At Awesome-ish, theyz ave yr skanz.
Tuesday August 21, 2007
One more art thing: you can volunteer to get naked for Spencer Tunick’s project at the Sagamore hotel in October. (via, and more at, Wormhole)
Advertise! (on the walls of Fredric Snitzer Gallery)
Our pal Bert Rodriguez is having his solo show at Snitzer in October, and he’s decided to sell the wall space for advertising. Behold the lavish PDF spec sheet Package.pdf (and really do try to download and check it out — it’s a pretty central component of the project). Now, art has drawn on the world of advertising for decades. What’s interesting about this project is that it takes the idea to a it’s logical extreme.
This is spelled out most clearly in the pricing structure: it’s not cheap. Anyone buying ads in the show will have to mean it, because they’re spending real money on a real ad. It’ll be real interesting to see what ends up in the show — more art-leaning interests? Liquor? Clothing? Obviously Snitzer is a very prestigious location, and I have no doubt of their 5,700 visitors/month (plus media exposure) claims, but this is a highly unusual proposition, and most advertisers like to play it safe most of the time. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
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Monday August 20, 2007
Looks like the website of Fredric Snitzer Gallery is being redesigned in Flash. Please please say it ain’t so!
Tuesday August 14, 2007
August gallery hop
Mike Taylor Animal Science. This thing spins, and has multiple images painted on several panels, all in a space separated from the gallery with old sheets. It won me over. The rest of the show? Not so much.
Next door at the Buena Vista Building, Skip Van Cel’s installation (69 mattresses acquired from a closing hotel), Now lie in it. No thanks, but impressive anyway.
Downstairs, some sort of cute interactive activity involving painting and photography.
Jetting to Wynwood. Target left, empty condos right (um, audience-right, not stage-right).
Tom Scicluna’s Mast at Twenty Twenty Projects. A sailboat mast traversing the gallery. You were expecting something more?
Check out the shoes on John Hancock’s keyboardist. John realized he couldn’t compete and kicked off his Reeboks.
I liked this piece from Ralph Provisero’s show at Dorsch.
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