Artists & Art
bioephemera | October 22, 2008Treehugger (detail)
Alex Pardee
They're partying it up in SF tonight to celebrate the release of Alex Pardee's new "cinematic clothing" line, Night of the Treeple. Check out the preview gallery of sinister forest brethren at Juxtapoz.
Note: the mythology Pardee created for this line is yet another typical scenario involving faceless government scientists (in this case, "Project Armadillo") and their vats of inconvenient toxic waste. Come on! I mean, unscrupulous government researchers can hardly be to blame for EVERY fictitious race of carnivorous angiosperms. Cut 'em some slack, and blame…
bioephemera | October 22, 2008Lady of the Dawn (detail)
Chris Berens
"I'm not a real painter or an artist. I don't consider myself that. There are some images - a lot of images - I want to show. And for now painting is the way to do that." - Chris Berens
Perfectly timed to follow my post about Chris Berens' dreamy ink paintings, Kirsten Anderson of Roq la Rue interviews the artist at his Amsterdam studio (below the fold).
His patience is amazing. I just wish the video were higher-res!
Related: No, it's not digital. Really.
bioephemera | October 22, 2008
"Migration"
Doug Aitken
Last year, on a brisk, cool day much like today, I was jogging near the National Zoo when I noticed a good-sized young deer ambling out of the Zoo, toward a busy road only a few carlengths away. Two passersby were frozen on the path; they could clearly foresee the pending disaster, but had no idea what to do about it.
I jogged right up to the buck, yelled at him, and made as if to slap him on the rump. He looked at me dumbfounded, as did the walkers. Then he ambled back into the bushes. Easy enough. But I think the concerned walkers expected the buck to gore me, or…
bioephemera | October 19, 2008
BeastChris Berens, 2007
Via the excellent art blog Erratic Phenomena, I discovered the work of Dutch painter Chris Berens. Actually, "discovered" is the wrong word; I'd glimpsed his work before, but never had a chance to discover the artist behind these warped-yet-graceful paintings, which appear so deceptively close to digital art - but aren't digital at all.
Heaven on Their Minds
Chris Berens, 2007
I find it hard to wrap my head around this without seeing his work in person (Roq la Rue, here I come!) but Berens doesn't work digitally. He uses layers of ink, bistre and varnish to create a…
bioephemera | October 8, 2008Fixed (fawn)Lisa Black
Lisa Black's hybrid clockwork animals are heartbreaking - especially the fawn and duckling. The title of her series, "Fixed," strikes just the right note of ambiguity. Is the fawn's state a travesty, or better than the alternative? Who did the fixing, and why?
Via Brass Goggles
PS - speaking of Goggles, have you seen Google's new Mail Goggles? It's an add-on for Gmail which is supposed to prevent you from sending drunk email messages late at night, by requiring you to do math before allowing you to send. The only problem is, the math looks too easy - I'm terrible at…
bioephemera | October 7, 2008Dymaxion SkeletonMatthew Day Jackson, 2008
I had a pleasant surprise at our Apple blogging panel last week, when my friend Christopher Reiger of Hungry Hyaena dropped by. He's posted a thoughtful response to some issues we touched on very lightly in the panel.
Like Brian and I, Christopher was a little disappointed that the panel didn't delve into the philosophy of science blogging, or examine whether blogging helps us interlink magisteria that are normally discrete. (I happen to think it does, which is why I blog). Of course if we had gone there, it probably would have been a much longer,…
bioephemera | September 28, 2008
The Way Things Go
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987
Hirshhorn Museum
I went by the Hirshhorn a few weeks ago, and this was my favorite piece: a film depicting a slow-moving, low-budget Rube Goldberg apparatus built by artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss out of tires, candles, fuses, ramps, ladders, and random objects. I mean, what's not to like about a flaming tetherball?
The purpose of the apparatus? Nothing, really, except to spin itself out. It's pointlessly meditative. And I liked that - you could start watching the film at any point and stop at any point, as if you were watching…
bioephemera | September 23, 2008Darwin's Ghosts (older than dirt)Dan Kennedy, 2008
Artist Dan Kennedy's new show, "Darwin's Ghosts," is opening next weekend at the Shooting Gallery Gallery Three in San Francisco. Kennedy's work is like spun candy: colorful cartoon figures; Seuss-like, rainbow-tufted plants; floating phrases; ribbons and fireworks. A smattering of vintage fonts give the pieces the flavor of Americana. Phrases seem torn from circus posters, movie marquees, or old ads - strange company indeed for Darwin's famous "from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful. . . " quote.
Darwin, here represented…
bioephemera | September 22, 2008
When was the last time you coveted something, but let prudence prevent self-indulgence - to your later regret? This summer I was gallery-hopping on Martha's Vineyard when I saw these wonderful stone neckpieces by artist Andrea Williams.
I really, really wanted the round Kyuma Pendant, a smooth black tumbled stone cut in half and then made whole once more with a magnetic clasp. The stone can be closed in either an aligned (round) or misaligned (asymmetric) manner; in the aligned state the magnet looks like a decorative silver band, but in the misaligned state, the method of construction…
bioephemera | September 11, 2008
Madonna and HorseflyJohn Brophy, 2008
Pam over at Phantasmaphile never fails to discover wonderful, quirky new art. Her latest find: John Brophy. His "Madonna and Horsefly" kind of freaks me out, not in a bad way, but because I've been planning some paintings along this exact theme! But Brophy's are better than mine would have been, so it's just as well. (But darn it all anyway! This is why I need to paint ideas, and not just sit on them indefinitely.)
Princess Minky MomoJohn Brophy, 2007
Like Madeline von Foerster and Cristina Vergano, Brophy is clearly influenced by the old Dutch masters…
bioephemera | August 25, 2008
The Cure of Folly (The Extraction of the Stone of Madness)
oil on board
attributed to Hieronymous Bosch*, c. 1475-1490
Museo del Prado, Madrid
At one point or another, Hieronymous Bosch must have turned his paintbrush to every bizarre practice known to the fifteenth century Dutch mind, and this early piece is no exception. The composition is relatively simple: a surgeon is performing trepanation (craniotomy) on a restrained subject, while two onlookers watch. But looking closely, one can see that all is not right in Bosch's peculiar countryside: the surgeon is wearing a funnel as a hat, and…
bioephemera | August 19, 2008Very Slow, Very TiredMachine-Animals
Nicholas Lampert, 2006
I promised last week to review the MoMA exhibition "Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities." Since making that promise, I've heard from several more friends that they've been to see it - so perhaps this review is preaching to the choir! I was extremely impressed with the breadth and curation of this show, and would go again, if I were in NYC.
Wunderkammern, or cabinets of curiosities, arose in mid-sixteenth-century Europe as repositories for all manner of wondrous and exotic objects. In essence these collections--combining specimens…
bioephemera | August 18, 2008Third EyeWayne Martin Belger
This is one of the most strangely compelling artworks I've encountered recently: a pinhole camera made from a 150-year-old skull.
Wayne Martin Belger's Third Eye is a human skull with a tiny hole drilled in the traditional location of the mystical "third eye." The pinhole allows light to enter the cranium and expose photographic film.
The cranium is opened and the film accessed through an elaborate, gothic set of findings crafted from jewelled aluminum, titanium, brass and silver. The effect is steampunky, but also reminiscent of the decorative metalwork used in…
bioephemera | August 13, 2008Le Corbeau Volant, 1875
Edouard Manet
While in NYC last weekend, I squeezed in an hour at the MoMA to see their exhibition Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities (July 30-Nov 10, 2008). It's really phenomenal. The main criticism I heard as I wandered the gallery was that the collection was perhaps a bit incoherent and scattered, and that may be true, but order barely imposed on a chaotic diversity of specimens is the essence of a wonder cabinet - isn't it?
This was one of the specimens that caught my eye: a simple, fluid lithograph of a flying raven by Edouard Manet. It's from the…
bioephemera | August 10, 2008
From Canadian artist Francis Koch at Uberbrain, art that mixes Art Nouveau design, steampunk elements and a post-industrial grit. It's like Alphonse Mucha with sinister animals instead of languid nymphs.
bioephemera | August 7, 2008
Apparently artist Jan Vormann has been going around villages near Rome and patching ancient masonry with Lego. I'm not really sure what more to say about this, except that it seems perfectly reasonable to me.
bioephemera | August 4, 2008
Hans Baldung Grien, Death and the Maiden, 1518-20
Via Morbid Anatomy, I discovered that artist Saul Chernock has written an interesting mini-essay on historical portrayals of "the Undead, images of beings that hover between the realms of life and death."
Daniel Hopfer, Death and the Devil Surprising Two Women, circa 1500-10
Many of the woodcuts, engravings, and paintings he collected for this post juxtapose death and sex in ways that, according to Chernock, "provide an interesting counterpoint to the contemporary Zombie whose appetites have essentially been neutered. I suppose we should…
bioephemera | July 30, 2008Between meaning and material (h.H.R.)
Watercolor, gouache, graphite and marker on Arches paper
32 x 32 inches
Christopher Reiger, 2007
My friend Christopher Reiger is appearing in several group shows this summer, so I thought it was a good time to spotlight his work. Above is one of my favorite pieces, between meaning and material (h.H.R.).
I actually got to know Christopher online through his writing - he maintains a blog, Hungry Hyaena. He's written a number of provocative essays on the changing relationship between humans and nature, drawing on his extensive personal experience as an…
bioephemera | July 25, 2008
Silent Dredge, 2008
Tiffany Bozic
Currently showing at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery: "A Complicated Dominion: Nature and New Political Narratives," featuring the work of Tiffany Bozic, among others:
Our dominion is complicated and comes with profound responsibility. Humankind has become adept at leveraging natural resources and scientific advances to not only ensure our survival, but also to support and spread various political agendas. Along the road we have developed life-enhancing technologies and become more widely informed about the necessity of our participation in…
bioephemera | July 21, 2008
Vintage public health posters like this one are remarkable not only for their skilled design, but also for the varied ways they remain remarkably timely or seem bizarrely dated.
For example, compare the playful-yet-kinda-creepy "keep your teeth clean" poster above, as opposed to the very different meaning of "clean" in the anti-VD poster below. I think alarmist STD posters like this one and its contemporaries would have some difficulty getting approved today.
The National Library of Medicine has many more vintage posters here - or visit this Newsweek gallery for a quick tour.