Lissa, Dan and I hung out at the Hammer this week, taking in a video installation by an LA collective called My Barbarian. My favorite part is actually the in-between shot of all three actors dancing in masks, as the theme to “Night Episode” plays, but I can’t find it anywhere! Sometimes life is so hard.
A long standing project by Dina Sherman, The IMA Gallery showcases a variety of artists and writers, all while being attached to Dina’s body. The gallery’s taking submissions/proposals, so apply if you want to do a reading or make mini-versions of art.
Most of these are from a collaboration with “Romance was born”. The rest are Kate’s. See more here.
(The answer is: vagina.)
Let’s take a second to concentrate on what’s really important. Veronica Mars! How many things can go wrong in Neptune? I mean, just when you relax from the school mascot being returned (spoiler), someone totally has to die! It’s not fair, and it’s going to give Veronica premature wrinkles. Also, Beaver’s stepmom is maybe two years older than Logan in real life. Okay, I only just started the second season. Don’t ruin anything for me.
Tonight’s episode of Work of Art was a study in patience, skill, and affability. It was also about the budding relationship between BillBobBrianStevePowers and Ryan McGinness (or as Jerry Saltz calls him, Ryan McGinley. Plato=Socrates)
I’m not the only one that noticed, right? The glimmer in BillBobBrianStevePowers’ eyes? The trembling smiles? The quiet whisper in Ryan’s ear, “My white banana hammock from Filene’s will glow like an angel’s platinum tendrils in your blacklight heaven.” The subtle references to getting order for the chaos in his pants, the not-so-subtle picking off a crumb from the corner of Ryan’s mouth. BillBobBrianStevePowers has his own views of heaven and hell, and tonight they were all on display. (Oh, hello, Cynthia Rowley! You came to the opening! Thanks for bringing along Terrence Koh’s sunglasses! They looked great.)
The artists were tasked with creating a piece based on a vague, gigantic idea. No big deal! Just do something about, um, order. You have six hours. Have fun with it! You can buy two tubes of acrylic paint and an old Bazooka Joe comic.
Obviously the big deal was working in teams. Is there any possible way in reality tv hell Mark and Peregrine would NOT have chosen the same paint tube? It was bound to happen. Who killed Colonel Mustard in the slide room with the child-size sweater and 1940s style aviator sunglasses?
Miles is paired up with Jaclyn, and they receive the dubious honor of working with the “male/female” dichotomy. The TeeVee shows Miles whispering all the dirty, naughty things into Jackie’s ready-and-willing ear. Miles is the handsomest version of that Old Testament serpent, isn’t he? Abdi, you know what I’m talking about- the shitty snake that told Eve to chomp on the forbidden fruit from the tree located directly in the middle of her own house. The snake’s all, “What’s up, Eve. That fruit you were explicitly told NOT to eat? Bollocks. (The snake’s British). Go ahead, eat it. Come on. It’s free here. It costs like three quid for 100g at Tesco. Don’t be silly. You’ll be saving a fortune.” Anyway, Miles is a super adorable version of this snake, outfitted with puffy lips, puffy eyebags and future lady hips. It’s not just the pants. He’s going to have the loveliest lady-like hips and ass in the future. Such a midwestern babe, that Miles. Venus de Miles-o. I love him so much.
My entry for the best male/female artwork ever made. (Clear winner)
Nicole was paired with Abdi, which caused her to break out in hives (no, just kidding, it was the makeup and the constant need to make serious, smart work. You’re already French, Nicole. You’re French, tall, thin, with puffy lips and great taste in sweaters. You win the Bravo TV game of LIFE. Se calmer, mademoiselle.) She made some kinetic sculpture, which was probably totally awesome, but the producers hate her, so we barely ever saw her at all, except in beige Lanvin shadows in the corners of the screen. Poor Abdi, squeezed into the prison of the word “chaos,” unable to make sense of it all, forces himself to do a painting which would be praised at every major grad school in the country, and might even get a spot of honor at Daniel Reich. Oh, please, like you haven’t seen one of these at every MFA show in every city ever everywhere?
The lazy drama of the night landed in Mark’s spacious lap. As usual, heaven for Mark means a tight buttocks of a lovely lady (Mark love ladies. Ladies smell good. Ladies pretty). Peregrine quickly takes her Nanny McPhee clogs and stomps all over Mark’s ideas. Too bad Jackie was busy presenting herself as an anonymous self-pleasuring object to notice the real act of a female taking control on the show. Nice job, Peregrine! Not only did you completely take over the situation, but you forced Mark to see what it’s like to be photographed topless, breasts breezing in the wind. I don’t mean to make this seem like a small task. It was simply Mark’s time to get off the neverending rollercoaster of excitement. Goodbye, Mark. I wish you the best. (By wish you the best I mean I wish you would stop writing the same tweets every week. We get it, Jackie gets naked, Miles is overplayed, and you have a book for sale. I like you, I just need some variety in my sad little life).
Genuinely the most touching moment of the night was China Chow getting teary. I have two explanations for the moisture suddenly and surprisingly springing from her tear ducts. 1. She fell duct-tape-bound head over six-inch lucite heels in love with Mark during the course of the few weeks the show was taping, and, more likely, 2. Those goddamn triangle earrings, weighing a ton, were digging deep into her sensitive little earlobes.
Best of Lissa and Brian’s tweets:
☛Thank you for painting your hand on your cooter. – Ryan McGinness.
☛Take control of my hoo-ha…and stuff…it’s feminist. -Jaclyn
☛Coated tar pieces?? Never seen that before. YAWN! Tarrible.
☛Heaven is bound, hot, naked ladies in my studio. – Mark
☛10 bucks says when Simone de Pury shits, it smells like fresh baked, buttery croissants.
☛Dear, Abdi. Socrates may have been Plato’s sugar daddy, but he did not write The Republic. Love, Philosophy
☛New poll: what’s more interesting– #workofart or this cheesy chicken pot pie I’m about to devour???
Last night’s episode was a kind of release. Maybe I felt inspired by the challenge (my life is about making fun of childhood traumas- sometimes my own, mostly others’), or maybe I’ve grown to enjoy the silly little fights the workofarters throw around the set.
“Douchebag” is so quaint when ex-Jehovah’s Witness Ryan says it.
I knew several kids in high school who were JehWits. (They didn’t call themselves JehWits, I just made it up. They didn’t call themselves anything except “sad, bitter people who wish their parents didn’t push them into this crazy religion that doesn’t celebrate birthdays, excommunicates friends and family for breaking stupid rules, and forces everyone to wear suits on Saturday mornings and knock on strangers’ doors”.) They’ll be fine. Ryan will be fine, too. Eventually… after he drinks away all his feelings of abandonment and loneliness.
Anyway, let’s talk about Will Cotton. I’m a fan of Will Cotton’s sexier works (the paintings of just the sweets). I was simultaneously intrigued and repelled by Will Cotton, who looked like he was one of those serial killers who is extra kinky with his victims. However I felt about Will, his comments were clear and concise, and I really appreciated having him on the panel. In fact, the panel felt pretty good last night- even BillBobBrianStevePowers was charming (that’s how he got his seed inside Cynthia Rowley).
You know what else could have helped the panel? Less China Chow (all that MSG is pretty bad for you).
Last night’s assignment was to create a piece of work communicating the time they decided they were going to be an artist. Erik watched the challenge at home, quietly sobbing into a purple Ugly Doll his girlfriend gave him after his third head injury. The artists took the challenge in stride, and mostly did nothing to actually address it. Miles did a space invaders-like grid as a protest to the stupidity of challenges, rules, and authority in general. Then he called his father, the CEO of a mid-sized company, to ask for money for July’s rent and cell phone overuse fees.
Mark did a mystery book which no one was allowed to see because it featured lots of willing, headless feminists in bikinis, with their heads chopped off. Let’s focus on Mark for two seconds here. Mark- he’s pudgy! he works at a burger joint! he loves women very much and would never want to hurt them! because they’re beautiful! also, because they look really, really fucking good in tiny bathing suits, or naked, sprawled out on a bed, or in a pool, or tied up in a field, or in bondage wear on the couch, or giving beejays under a desk because their father was never around and their mom’s boyfriends touched them when they were twelve and threatened to kill their mom if they said anything. Ugh. Suicide Girls is so 2004.
Abdi made a grid of drawings he would have made as a young adult- superhero stuff and sports logos. I’ve seen all three Mighty Ducks movies. Instead of the logo, I think Abdi should have used all those technical drawing skills he’s accumulated through years of exhaustive, enlightening classes with Julie Saecker Schneider to represent Wolf “The Dentist” Stansson’s head on a stick. Nicole made a lineup of styrofoam trays filled with things she tried to homicidally stick into her twin’s ear when she was a kid. Jackie was born a smaller eyeshadowed version of exactly the way she looks today, so she asked Seeeeemoahn for ideas. He grew up climbing trees and knitting, so she made a sculpture of his childhood. It didn’t fly with the judges, who are used to seeing her expose herself to subvert the male gaze (just like I eat brownies to subvert my hips). I don’t understand why they weren’t into it. It had a giant yonic hole in the middle (and lots of little holes made from orange pipe cleaners). I’d be damned if that wasn’t a giant vagina in the middle of the gallery (this week’s art pussy).
Peregrine won the fight with her brightly colored kid versions of adult things, like cigarettes, sexxxy unicorns, quaaludes, and AIDS. BillBobBrianStevePowers was scared of this piece, but he should be more scared that I almost bought a horrific bedazzled polyester top by Cynthia Rowley that I found at TJ Maxx.
The true winner, of course, was Will Cotton. He’s got the perfect mix of young gay republican and quiet laboratory tech, tightly wound PhD candidate studying Italian turn-of-the-century doorknobs and S&M dungeon owning cheesecake pose painter. I hope I meet him someday… and that he doesn’t read blogs.
Jamillah just posted these amazing pics from the latest Patrick Mohr show, and I was immediately smitten. Gross facial hair and bald heads on the runway? Brilliant! Hilarious! Irreverent! Ridiculous! I found some older shows, too, that were just as awesome. Stick a fork in me.
This place has the craziest cafe! It’s all split up into various places where Native Americans live, and the food at each station is local to the place. My favorite was the “middle plains” (or something like that), which featured burgers and fries. Well, it is local. Aside from providing sustenance, the Museum is an amazing place (except for the 1st floor bathroom). There are thousands of artifacts, displays, feathers, beads, and moccasins. I loved it and would totally recommend you go. Thanks for showing me the way, Jaime!
I saw Brian Jungen’s awesome show at the Museum of the American Indian in DC (more on that in a bit). The show was great: surprising, funny, quietly tragic, and impeccable. Good for you, Brian! I guess I’ve seen his work online before but just assumed it was a clever joke without much backstory. However, walking through the Museum (and watching the strange but touching “Indians-they’re just like us” video), there was so much tense history behind the work. Creating a mask out of Air Jordans or a totem pole out of duffel bags is great, but it’s also dark and sardonic. The big skeleton is made out of plastic patio chairs, the warrior out of baseball gloves, and the animals are made from suitcase parts. It’s up until August 8th, and it’s FREE.
(Note: I took most of these pictures. The rest are from Google’s image search. Um… the sharp, clean ones.) Also, if you eat at their crazy elaborate cafe, go for the 1/2 chicken and the asparagus salad, and finish with a tres leches (this is good for 2 people, but you’ll still spend plenty of cash money for it).
Some of my friends are now famous and are now running some kind of artist residency / art space called “Boffo” in luxurious Brooklyn, and even Lance Bass shows up to the opening (I didn’t see him, though. I was looking around, but how tall is he? Might have been below my periphery). Anyway, they had a huge glamorous art show called “Objective Affection” and the red cup dress from Project Runway was there. It was a busybusybusy time, and there were a hundred artists/designers in the show, and it was so ambitious and grand. There were also some hilarious pieces in the show. I don’t know who the artists are, but hopefully they’ll find themselves or otherwise get tagged.
Speaking of, who made those wonderfully atrocious ceramic concoctions? I couldn’t help loving them.
ps. OH! I forgot. Some of these are not for small (or large) children.
