announcement

we're aiming for a modern-day adaptation of:

Thing and Building

super tuesday

prediction:









America at the Obama rally the night before:

luscious orange and the fack-builder

a short advertisement about art in general (I think),
and applying to an MFA program in particular.
This is according to the Swedes.

Troy Hagenbart

If there's anyone that can can get a painter (re-)excited about
painting, it's Troy Hagenbart. This fist solo of his in Boston
includes work that explores the idea of staging- up, down, and
center...these near-stick figures appear in incomplete landscapes,
asking the question: "how much information is needed to
convey something?"



this etching is a view of the backside of Boston's own Museum
of Fine Arts, complete with graffiti..."BONNETS' it says belows
the columns (hard to see but it's there)



in this larger work, figures seem to be waving at
each other from across dimensions: one in the
space of the fiction, one in the reality...


the story continues on the edges...



Troy Hagenbart @
MPG Gallery
450 Harrison Ave.
Boston

through March. 1

google-drawing

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"and please do not, even as a joke, try this at home"

Ondrej Brody

I don't know much about this person, but he is the only Czech artist-
in residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam for the 07-08 season.
Video-performance, nods to many other artists and ultimately
nods back to himself...ie this work of his called Artstar.
The main issue here, to take it seriously, is the fear and transparency
of the artist- which Brody emphasizes by his being ridiculed by
the jury- which is itself ridiculed (the hyphenated Japanese name of the
lady art historian trying to quit smoking, the performer from Ostrava
who is offended, the ensuing acrimony...) This is where I think,
"I wish everyone spoke Czech": a few bad translations kill the
nuances, but overall it's pretty hilarious- although the laugh ends in a
head-shaking kind of sadness. And I dare say, a quintessentially
Eastern European species of fatalism.

Also noteworthy are these equally saddening dog-carpets that
comprise the "news" tab of his website. Between Duchamp and
Hirst, and entailing a similar amount of reflection.

Al Held sighting

Even though I find a lot of his work somehow unapproachable on a
human level, encountering this Al Held mosaic was a pretty stunning
event...it kind of challenged my notion of complexity within the world
of mosaics. There could very well be about a million little tiles that
make up this piece. (51st- 53rd st. subway, NY)

Turns out there's a database for all NYC subway art, with 211 artists
represented...bringing to mind the Tokyo subway, where travelers
can collect commemorative stamps at some stations (just bring
a notebook, and stamp it with the custom-carved woodblock stamp
located at the end of the platform).

Perhaps this idea of take-it-home-with-you art could migrate
to US subways? It's got to be free, of course (like all the rest of it here...).

announcement

My father is having a show that opens this week.

Milan Klic @
Reeves Contemporary
535 W 24th Street
2ND Floor
New York, NY 10011

Jan. 10- Feb. 9
opening reception Jan. 10 6-8pm

www.reevescontemporary.com

2 00 8

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world - piece - resting - in

untitled pictures, 2007

(click to enlarge)

D o' D

Drawing of the day. Future icicle travel.

Snowden dusk

Shiva Linga paintings coming to Boston

A few months back, Feature Inc had a show of these magnificent
tantric paintings- which I didn't chance to attend, but did once come
across an exhibition catalogue in Paris detailing work of similar
origins- a little volume which pretty much changed my life. It turns
out that Feature's show was a smaller version of this Paris show,
the show is a traveling one and will be coming to Boston, to a
yet-undisclosed location.

An excerpt from the exhibition text, by Franck André Jamme:

"Even if Indian aesthetes have always collected them, as beautiful
as they appear to them, the sole purpose of these paintings is actually
meditation, hence their entire vocabulary. They are also used for
visualization. For example, you get up in the morning. Then, almost
immediately: face-to-face with the thing, for several minutes. Until
it has filled your mind, right to the top, until it has slowly eliminated
everything else. Then you come back to the world, attend to your
daily affairs. With the difference that, when you want to, you can
instantly recall the image in your mind, and what’s more, you
can re-create the entire world of this image, namely the image
itself enriched by its constellation, in short all that it first precisely
signified augmented by what it has produced, given rise to,
released in us, as crystalline and operative as in the morning."

Something to look forward to...will keep this post updated.

*thanks Shelley for the tip!