EARTH CHRONICLING FOR THE DOOMED


Adam Curtis has been art-canonized in the United S. of A. @ e-flux 311 E Broadway (NYC):
Curtis' films read like fun collusion. There is something about their slickness, their ease of 'use', credit the mined found footage, helvetica overlays, soothing matter of fact narration, and quirk pop soundtracks.


It is hard not to empathize, to want his work to mark and brand history, appropriately. Coolly and culturally sound.

From an interview with Hans Olrich Obrist, published in efflux issue #32:
"I have this theory that you can take very complicated ideas, which are at the root of our present world, simplify them, make them entertaining and funny, yet still keep the essence of what they’re saying. That’s the fundamental thing I believe in. And I loathe the opposite view that you can’t do this without being complicated and obscure and talking as though to only a small, elite group."
They do their best to cast pivotal politics into relatable shapes. They create a retroactive blueprint; diagrams to encourage new cognizance for humanity. They are dire PSAs to help us understand how feeble we (people) are. How dichotomous. How we love our autonomy and hate our loneliness. How we try to fix the world and further fuck it up. Finally, a keen means to stare down the shame of being human.

Go to eflux check that out. Stay there for hours, sit on a pillow. 'til April 14.

HOPE FOR MEN


Pissed Jeans is a 1/2 joke. In the middle of a melodyless genre where poeticism is out the window and lyrics are canned and grunted political rants (hardcore), they present "I've Still Got You (Ice Cream)".


Look up the wounded words and find the following:

I've still got you, ice cream
'Cause sometimes life is less than a dream
And all my other friends turn away
I need to be with something I can relate
Just a taste and all my troubles fall behind
Sweet bowl of sugar is there to ease my mind
I shouldn't need it
But sometimes I want it
I gotta have it
With cream on it
I've still got you ice cream
Belly getting bigger or so it would seem
Hand feels empty when it's not holding a spoon
Dessert for me can never come too soon
I shouldn't need it
Sometimes I want it
I gotta have it
With cookies on it
I've still got you ice cream
Cause sometimes my life is less than a dream
Just a taste and all my troubles fall behind
Sweet bowl of sugar, ease my mind
I've still got you
I've still got you
I've still got you
I've still got you, chocolate

Their front man commented about wanting to be the musical equivalent of "staring at your zits in the mirror for an hour straight while crying stone sober." There is something intriguing about this kind of cool. It is gag pathetic and self aware, perfectly tongue in cheek, a technique employed by smarter than thou male intellectuals like Duchamp and Kippenberger and Smith. The gesture in question of presenting some creatively refined gift to the world almost makes one want to do the opposite: either nothing, audaciously little, something conceptually elusive, obnoxious, or something like what the artist would be doing anyway.
DUCHAMP:
KIPPENBERGER:
SMITH:

And it is wedged nicely into a sect that prides itself on its seriousness, attention to causes and branding, emphasis on politics, etc. Ripe for parody and ripe for a more impotent anti-contender.
It shows at their shows. They blend in with most of the hardcore mainstays, nobody minds the schmaltz as long as the crowd responds by flailing around and punching each other. A worthy cause and a nice little comment and suddenly not a joke at all.

Find Hope for Men and / or King of Jeans and definitely look at these extremely not tough photos. I personally like to listen to music such as this w/ headphones in public real loud and with plucky expression on face.

New York Mid-Fall Preview: What's Potentially Good



We've compiled a list of museum shows and gallery exhibitions that we do not want to miss, nor do you.

1. Urs Fischer at Gavin Brown, 10/22/2011 - 11/12/2011
http://gavinbrown.biz/home/exhibitions/2011/UF-CM.html

We loved his solo show at New Museum (see post below), and we heard that
the spirit of this show is as generous as that of his 2007 outing at Brown, where he ripped out the floor of the shop, and invited you to walk around in that cavernous hole, like an adventurer, and called it You.

2. "Identity" at Artists Space, 10/30/2011 - 12/18/2011, Opening Reception: 10/29/2011
http://www.artistsspace.org/

Embroidered Caps
believes that people are catching on… The new exhibition opening at the Artists Space, “Identity”, organized by (genius collaborative team) Dexter Sinister with research assistance from Robert Snowden, is a natural continuation from our own discussion of graphic design, self-branding, and self-promotion. “Identity” departs from the individual and looks at the institutions involvement with this convoluted practice.


3. Maurizio Cattelan: All at Guggenheim, 11/4/2011 - 1/22/2012

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/upcoming/maurizio-cattelan-all

Maurizio Cattelan retrospective! More than 130 works since 1980! Okay, we get his jokes: meteors falling on popes, genuflecting Hitlers, sheet covered elephants, etc. But can we digest the vast number of punchlines Cattelan has to deliver during this retrospective? Especially, considering that all works will be suspended from the ceiling, leaving the gallery floor virtually empty. Or will we just get a bad case of vertigo and a neck ache. Rumor has it that this will be the great pranksters last hoorah.. que drum fill. Despite out qualms with Cattelan's practice, we really are excited about this show and deem it a compulsory visit.

4. Jason Loebs, "A Cigarette End" at ESSEX STREET, 10/30/2011 - 12/18/2011
http://essexstreet.biz/

ESSEX STREET is new to the block in the LES district of art galleries. We visited their (first) last show and were impressed with the conversation level this director, Maxwell Graham, could uphold. Tested positive for art interested informant.
So we are keeping this space on our radar.

5. Matthew Brannon: Gentelman's Relish at Casey Kaplan Gallery, 10/27/2011 - 12/17/2011
http://www.caseykaplangallery.com/index.html

Matthew Brannon had us at our first peek of his "Misused Pronouns" series. Sleek, sophisticate, and slightly geeky; Brannon makes apt use of nostalgia and allegory in his graphic design posters and installations, appropriating
60's advertising, symbolic product aesthetics, and slogan-y phrases.

6. Jimmie Durham at The Artists Institute, 8/24/2011 - 1/15/2012
http://www.theartistsinstitute.org/main.html?id=21

Often times we visit an exhibition and leave without seeing or thinking about all the works included. Going and seeing is an overwhelming process that usual ends in compromising our perception of an artist and their work. The Artists Institute hopes to breech this problematic experience by giving 1 artwork the longevity of discourse it deserves throughout an entire season. Featured now is Jimmie Durham's, Stone Removed, a drawing from 2002. Talks, readings, and other related events are scheduled as needed, in an organic, associative procedure. To see the next event scheduled view the link above and be sure to download the pdf attached.

Today, we should be thinking about
the artist Jimmie Durham (b. 1940,
Washington, Arkansas).

7. Simon Denny at Friedrich Petzel, 11/10/2011 - 12/22/2011
http://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/2011-11-10_simon-denny/

We know and love Denny's work from our time spent working on his show, Cruise Line, at NAK. We're so excited to see what will come of this artist's New York debut.
http://neueraachenerkunstverein.de/projekte/2011/Simon%20Denny/index.php
Expect intelligent, commercial packaged, post-modern sculpture at it's best!

8.
Carsten Höller: Experience at the New Museum, through 12/15/2012

Giant mushrooms, super slides, anti-gravity floating pool, hallucinogenic light shows, this exhibition has been described by Roberta Smith of the NYTimes as:
relational aesthetics at its most aggressive and stuntlike — “Jackass” for the museum.


We recommend you read this first: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/arts/design/carsten-holler-experience-at-the-new-museum-review.html

That should be enough to consider through the month of November. Check back later for more on our What's Potentially Good list.

*and if you happen to have 75$ to donate (congratulations). Cory Arcangel, Jacob Ciocci, Shana Moulton, Conrad Ventur, green screens, hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and complimentary tote bags! all to help sustain the existence of Triple Canopy during this benefit event:
http://canopycanopycanopy.com/programs/46




EmbroideredCaps


For information regarding the ongoing exhibition, Embroidered Caps, visit this site ---> http://embroideredcaps.tumblr.com/

includes: contributing artist information, essays, charts, links to exhibition locations, and more+

Misinterpreting Robert Gober

















Robert Gober, 1989-90. Beeswax, cotton, wood, leather, and human hair,
11 3/8 x 7 3/4 x 20" (28.9 x 19.7 x 50.8 cm).
Gift of the Dannheisser Foundation. © 2011 Robert Gober

Fleshy waxen skin, hairy leg clothed in trouser, sock and oxford shoe. The sculpture rests on the floor, extended from the wall. This is the object we have to consider. It is disconcerting. Is this sculptural limb attached to a sculptural body on the other side of the wall? Has it been severed from the body? It is this the leg of a sculptural dead man? Did the wall itself bisect the limb, guillotine style? Etc.

I am reminded of the rat infestation that took place within a gallery I once worked. The disgusting creatures made their way from the restaurant next door to the bottom of my loft office space. The landlord invested in those inhumane snap traps. I would hear the traps alarm and the cringing murder that ensued. On one occasion, I was confronted by a trap that was activated with only a rodent leg captured. In an effort to free itself from the clutches, the creature gnawed off his own limb from the hip down. I am trying to draw a metaphor here regarding interpretation.

Harold Bloom said, “misinterpretation is the first step toward finding artistic freedom.” The most significant provocation of Gober’s iconic piece, Untitled [Leg], is it’s ability to suspend our readings of the work. As one in a long series of fabricated legs, it’s interesting to think about Gober’s attempts to maintain each as a liberated individual.

In Louise Lawler's photograph titled “Sentimental”, she reassociates the form and object nature of Gober’s leg. We are given a photographic image of the leg in an auction house, alongside a Damien Hirst painting and a Cindy Sherman photograph. Gober’s sculpture is no longer a conceptual metaphor. It regains its sculptural qualities as a marketable work of art on the chopping block*. It becomes especially lonely in this context. Excessively isolated. Understanding that the work is on view primarily to be carried off to a collectors house or more tragic, a collector’s storage unit. Besides eliciting sympathy, or sentimentality (as Lawler articulates), the leg once again becomes a single object through rendered alienation. The leg is free from the interpretive glue that is usually affixed by contextual readings. It is impossible to pare down the suggestive equations of A = death, or XY is really a penis. Again, the genius of Gober is the inexplicable identifications with the work. I only talk through the Lawler photograph to exhibit the transcendent nature of a clothed castrated leg.

My primary argument is to prove that Robert Gober severed the limb, like the rat in the trap, in a metaphorical attempt to resist interpretation or more precisely, detached himself from himself in a resistance to, as Focault puts it, “being governed…” or more specifically, trapped. The limb is a protest and an answer to Susan Sontag’s call for an “erotics of art instead of hermeneutics”. Gober’s leg can return to the uncanny encounter of a bloodless leg liberated from a body (standing upright somewhere else).

Joshua Erb's advertisement for Larrys #6

Larrys #6 to be launched at the Zürich Zine Sezession in Zürich, 10 December, 2010. If you happen to live in Zurich, you missed this yesterday: http://www.corner-college.com/Veranstaltungen/1292108400/312

"We expect it to be among the best ever produced, and it will likely be regarded as an 'instant classic.' " - the Larrys team, Larrys Canadian Fine Art