Silk

BATS

I drew some bats:

Malick Sidibe

I just recently discovered this Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, and am particularly inspired by his photographs of people and their bikes. I thought some of his work looked familiar and I realized that he recently did this photoshoot for the New York Times. I adore the styling in the shoot. You can see more of his work here.

Icecream

James Turrell at PS1

James Turrell at PS1 from Elizabeth Fodde on Vimeo.

Every single time that I have been to PS1 I either go too early or too late to see the Turrell room. Last month I was finally fortunate to be there at the right time and the right season to view the room. I realize that art historians are not supposed to talk about how the art makes them feel, instead we talk about metaphors, analysis, contextualization, formalism, theories. Even when art historians try to talk about emotions, it's hidden behind theories of the sublime. We're supposed to remain objective so that you can take what we say with seriousness. Well you know what? I'm not an art historian with a PhD, so I'm just going to come out and say it: The Turrell room moved me.

The work consists of a square room with benches around the perimeter, and a square opening in the ceiling. The light that day made the work feel at once two dimensional and also very real. The video that I took does not really capture it very well. His works have to do with illusionism, light, and opticality. It is simultaneously about the beauty of nature and controlling and manipulating nature. The installations make you aware of the act of looking, and aware of spatial manipulation. People around me were chatting, but at one point things became subdued and hushed.

If you are interested, read this interview with Turrell, where he talks about his views on light, art, and also, his way of life.

David Bowie Mugshot

Not sure if this is a true story or not but this was taken in Rochester, New York 1976 after an arrest for possession of marijuana. I think he was arrested with Iggy Pop too. Love that photo.

Hole-On Ex Pin Hole Camera Review

My sister got me this pin hole camera kit as a belated birthday gift because she knows how much I love putting things together. Plus it looks cute! It's a pinhole shaped like a camera! It came in all these separate parts and you had to glue it together. The instructions said it would take two hours to put it together--it took me four. The instructions sucked so I had to use common sense to fit it together. In fact, they were so bad that one piece was not even in the instructions! WHERE DOES IT GO? I don't know so I left it out.



Aside from the missing piece, there was one fatal flaw to this product. Pinholes don't have mechanical shutters that open and close, hence the need for a cap to control the exposure time. There was no cap. No cap at all. What the hell!!!!! So I made one, ghetto style.



The final thing that happened is that the "lens" popped off when I put it into my bag, and so did the viewfinder, primarily because the paper they used is not glue friendly because it has a slick surface. So, I made it even MORE ghetto by making a cardboard cap/flap thing. I had no clue how much to wind the film because they don't tell you. Nor did they devise a way to rewind the film so I ended up doing it by hand in the closet. Overall, there were many many problems with this product which could have been simply fixed if they had actually tested the thing before sending it out in the world.

I'll get the film developed and see if anything even came out.

Underwater

images via ffffound.com

As I was looking through my image folder, I noticed that I saved many photographs shot underwater. Whenever I swim I always love to dive deep underwater and look up at the light coming through the water. This reminded me of the piece "Swimming Pool" by Leandro Erlich, currently on view at PS1. If you check out his site you can see his other works. I particularly like "Batiment" and "The Staircase." To me, the work is in this class of art that I like to call "cool" art--art that plays with optical illusions or technological feats, works that are enjoyable and yet, are missing a certain depth of meaning. There is definitely nothing wrong with art of this caliber, but I personally feel as though it is lacking something.





images from ps1.org and my own photo.

Vik Muniz's Rebus at Moma

In the exhibition “Artist’s Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus,” Muniz scoured the vast collections of the MoMa to bring together diverse media into a visual thesis that activates the viewer. The show actually felt like it had a point of view, a strong point of view, unlike some other shows that the MoMa puts together that feel extremely corporate and sanitized. The premise of the show is a rebus, which playfully uses images to represent words. This acts as an interesting parallel to the way that we decipher art images—by translating them into corresponding representational words in our minds. However, Muniz constantly brings us precariously close to words, and then pulls us back into the purely visual.

The show begins with a video of an interconnected series of chain reactions by Peter Fischli and David Weiss called “The Way Things Go” (1987). This prepares the viewer to the possibility that there are physical connections between objects, and that all of the arts feeds off each other to the extent that boundaries no longer exist. That is exactly one of the points of Muniz’s show, for he combines mechanically produced design objects with artistic objects of a similar aesthetic (A very interesting parallel is Duchamp’s In Advance of the Broken Arm and Gino Colombini’s design for a pail). The absence of wall labels helps the visitor concentrate on visual and theoretical connections as it becomes confusing as to which objects are Art and which are mass produced objects. On a basic level the show asks the question what is art, and answers it by interspersing manufactured objects such as post-its, pencils, scissors, buckets, and other utilitarian objects within the dialogue of the show. Muniz connects visual culture with the common culture, as art is inspired by the everyday and visa versa.

While this may seem to be an obvious, even rudimentary thesis for a show, I found the exhibition to be a huge breath of fresh air. It actually activated the viewer to think of his or her own connections instead of handing things over to you prepackaged and predetermined institutionalized art. And it was a great way to see things from the museum’s collection that normally never surface. Go see it for yourself and make your own visual connections. More of this please!

images from nytimes.com

Bruce Lee

Two things occurred that finally made me watch Enter the Dragon (1973):

1. I watched Ong-Bak The Thai Warrior, which rekindled my interest in kung fu/muay thai that sort of thing.
2. I've finally been listening to the Wu Tang Clan.

And what can I say but wow. He has muscles I didn't even know existed.

Reading his "physical feats" in wikipedia made me even more impressed. Case in point:
Lee's combat movements were at times too fast to be captured on film at 24 frames per second, so many scenes were shot in 32fps to put Lee in slow motion. Normally martial arts films are sped up

In a speed demonstration, Lee could snatch a dime off a person's open palm before they could close it, and leave a penny behind.

Lee would hold an elevated v-sit position for 30 minutes or longer.

Lee could throw grains of rice up into the air and then catch them in mid-flight using chopsticks.

The movie itself was riddled with stereotypes but seemed to be aware of it--in one line Williams tells the bad guy, "You're like a cartoon character!" Indeed Williams, indeed.

Regardless of the campy nature of the film, I took some screenshots because Lee's facial expressions were just amazing. You must imagine him making YIIIIIAAAAAA sounds!
This is his face right after he kills the man who killed his sister.




This is the scene where he is fighting body guards, look at the reaction of that guy!!





And this is my favorite part of all.

Lacroix Skeleton

I still really, really love this. Christian Lacroix, 2009.