If you are in Soho tonight please stop by Eric Elms’s new installation for Nike Sportswear. Its gonna be sick. I’ll be there, so it must be cool. Right? RYAN DYE
Two things have been pissing me off lately. The first is where the fuck are my socks? Honestly. Where are they? But we’ll talk about that another day. The second is it seems like every time I pick something up to wear it (off the floor) some member of my team of art supplies has found its way over to the cloths section of my floor and stained my new Muji T. I had decided that this was objectively bad and made my life sadder and less fulfilling. I was wrong. I just got served by Fernando Brizio. These little dresses are kinda mod and dare I say, chic. Plus, the owner can even clean the dress and then change the colors the next time they wear it! Form and function. holler. K$
Photos © designboom
Filed under: ART, CULTURE | Tags: ART, CULTURE, fine art, john currin, kehinde wiley, painting, portraiture, studio museum, yale, yale school of art
Some of you may think it priggish, but I love portraiture. And I also love pretty much every painter to come out of Yale in the last 15 years. I don’t know what they’re feeding these people–probably carrots–but damn. Kehinde Wiley, whose “World Stage” series is being exhibited in a solo show at the Studio Museum in Harlem right now, does incredible nouveau-18th and 19th century Realist portraiture of young black men set against ornate baroque and Art and Crafts-era backdrops.
Let’s be honest, the subject matter is pretty damn political, but I’m interested in the way artists, like Wiley or John Currin, use this hyper-technical, finesse-y mode to take their shit to that meta level, where you start thinking about the classicism of the form as being a statement in itself. Because if it doesn’t blow your mind on multiple levels of consciousness, then it’s not even worth looking at. DUH! HALEY
Faile. Currently made up of Patrick McNeil (a dirty Canadian) and Patrick Miller (a brave American citizen), there’s hardly a New Yorker below 14th street who hasn’t seen one of their works. They’ve travel to Tokyo, Copenhagen, Berlin, London, Zurich, and Amsterdam with their graphic, pop wheat pastes. You can get your very own piece of Faile in the form of a book, t-shirt, or little trinket, available via theironline store. K$
In one piece of art Darcel was able to capture a day in the life of almost every New Yorker. Brilliant. RYAN DYE
Filed under: ART | Tags: ART, BLU graffitti murals, bologna, drawing, graffiti, italy, street art
Blu is from Bologna, Italy. Blu is also just awesome. Give his web site a look next time your boss is in a meeting or whatever because it’s well of amazing art. Be warned, however, there is a lot of stuff thematized by violent eye-gouging angst over the state of the modern world (see Haley’s post about gladiator sandals). His sketches are narrative and evocative, but his outdoor wall work is simply astonishing. I respect not only his skill as a painter but his logistical prowess–he works on a much grander scale than most street artists at the moment. He is also the most aloof of the 6, so don’t expect to find his picture anywhere. K$
Filed under: ART, FASHION, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tags: agency, ART, FASHION, models, PHOTOGRAPHY, publication, stylist
House of Orange is a hot little agency in the Netherlands. They represent the usual suspects; hair people, stylists, photographers, and models. The thing I found special about them is that they just put out there first publication, HOUSE OF ORANGE ISSUE 1. Its a genious idea, put out a magazine featuring all of your own clients and get advertising at the same time, duh. RYAN DYE
Filed under: ART, CULTURE | Tags: ART, art museum, graffiti, museum, street art, tate modern
Ok everyone, it looks like it’s finally safe to stop talking about about how graffiti should be called street art and how there’s totally a Banksy in the West Village and no one’s should be covering it up. It’s officially art, so says the Tate Modern. They’ve even created a game for kids on their web site, which is nifty and provides a little giggle for those of us who are already familiar with the medium. I won’t presume to discuss the political implications of each piece because you people are smart enough to figure it out for yourselves.
The Tate has sacrificed its enormous front walls to six hot names in street art: Blu, Faile, JR, Nunca, Os Gêmeos, and Sixeart. So hot right now. Don’t worry kids, artist profiles to come, so stay tuned to Spiral (bitch). K$
Filed under: ART, FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tags: ART, drawing, FILM, installation, Installation art, PHOTOGRAPHY, sculpture
I am all about Olaf Breuning. He’s a happy ray of sunshine warming the faces of the art world. The Swiss multi-media artist has a studio in Soho that used to be a Chinese massage parlor. He doesn’t find inspiration is the dark and the tragic but rather in the things that make him smile. He made himself an adorable army of robots for the last Whitney Biennial and takes pictures of his wife with breakfast food on her face. Olaf is just trying to make our world a better place, and I think we can all get behind that. K$
Filed under: ART | Tags: collage, Dixie Rose Fernandez on Jody Morlock, Jody Morlock, painting
I found these archived ancestral photos Morlock dissected quite arresting, because of the schizophrenic impulse she had in rearranging what her eyes saw. She contradicted, cut into the contrasting seriousness of these solemn, somewhat bittersweet looking, black and white ghostlike-faces. They’ve been transformed to quintessential caricatures, the celestial family tree. Behold.
If for every time I’ve pulled out dead relative pictures, they looked half as hysterical and ironic as these, I would have a “Dead Ancestral Photo Viewing Party,” over at my crib on a Sunday night, throw in some dry martinis and some smokes for a good time. I hope these obviously deceased folks aren’t rolling in their graves.
Her works were exhibited this month of July, 2008, at the Dam, Stuhltrager art gallery, 38 Marcy Ave.
“The narrator of my work will say how much I love the irony and wit conveyed in the fashionable New York subculture. That my paintings are a playful schizophrenic blend of contrasting ideas and artistic styles, relating a story composed of poured colors, geometric curvaceous shapes, large brush strokes and Freudian, dream-like sketches. But to me, they are much more. They are my children, they are my soul, they are my urban hieroglyphics. Art is my narcotic of choice.” -Jody Morlock
DIXIE ROSE FERNANDEZ
