From the makers of Internet-famous snow-globe sculptures “Travelers”, comes a C-print series of miniature adventures starring unattended children, captured priests, and a giant mystical dog, all covered in night, all tiny, tiny tiny tiny. “Dystopian Kinderland” is one of P.P.O.W. Gallery’s locutions. Catchy, huh? If you like miniatures a lot, so much that you don’t even need ‘em to be strung up erotically Japanese rope bondage-style, come see these wintry forestscapes with a slightly surrealist twist (and yes, they will have those snow-globes too) at “Night Falls,” Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, Feb 9 – Mar 10, P.P.O.W. Gallery, NYC.
“Occupying” the Museum of Sex, 20 artists “who have pushed notions of propriety into provocation on the street” — or, their stuff has lots of tits, many dicks — have brought their work inside, most notably the William Thomas Porter and Andrew H. Shirley “Fuck Bike #001.” It’s been to Basel. It’s been in a lot of places. It’s a sculptural, bike-hybrid system of pedals, chains, tires and a prosthetic phallus that does what you think it does. Watch the NSFW video. Read more »
Did you feel the crash? Artist Luke Jerram has made this duo of sculptures that turn the data graphs of the New York Stock Exchange (Composite 2004-2012) and the Dow Jones (Industrial Average 1980-2012) into tactile visualizations in carved wood. Nifty, just like his sculptures of the earthquake in Japan and the N1H1 virus. Looking at these conical, oblong art-works, your very professional art blogger, in all her professionalism, is professionally abstaining from butt plug metaphors, even though that dangerous looking ridge circa 2009 really was a pain, wasn’t it? Professionalism! Read more »
Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena works in the haphazardly built, poorly planned suburban communities near Monterrey, Mexico where sullen teens roam cramped housing clusters and the drought-ridden landscape. This latest series — Car Poolers — is a bird’s eye view of men in trucks, just riding prostrate, looking skyward, some spotting the photographer, some of them asleep. There’s something decidedly eerie about them being slumped alongside barrels and buckets of bolts, like so much work equipment. One of these photos is currently shortlisted for Sony World Photo Awards.
I’ll say it again, Kris Kuksi’s sculptures need to be seen in person. See all the obsessive sculptural nuances by the modern Rococo master up close. Don’t just squint at the .jpgs but come and walk up to these floating islands, dripping in details, blooming with guns barrels, anachronistic soldiers, machines in decay. What is it about growing up lonely in rural Kansas in a broken home that makes one make stuff like this? Beats us. See the freshest, like the mythical-themed first three above at: Kris Kuksi, “Triumph,” Mar 8 – Apr 7, Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC
David LaChapelle’s “Earth Laughs in Flowers” series takes from the Dutch Masters’ still life and its opulent piles of fruit, only, his throws in some signifiers of the modern age that “explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity.” It’s all vapid hues of pink and yellow, plasticine sheen and nothing subtle: Silicone assholes, Vienna sausages, blooming, flowers, wet fruit, a praying mantis, blood-splattered wine-glasses, more flowers, more fruit, clouds of cigarette ash, Cheetos, junk, a toy airplane, a burning American flag. See them for the first time on US soil at “David LaChapelle: Earth Laughs in Flowers,” Feb 23 – Mar 24, Fred Torres Collaborations, NYC
A one-man trailer park, old hippies in the desert, a monk in a ghost town — Alec Soth traveled 20,000 miles tracking these modern-day hermits for the mysterious, unsettling series Broken Manual. These men trust Soth. They leave their caves and cabins and pose for portraits. They show off their make-shift huts, home-made shivs and lonely rubber fuck holes. They just want to be left alone. Gawk at them with this highly anticipated New York show at the Sean Kelly Gallery. The accompanying road trip documentary Somewhere to Disappear plays hourly. “Broken Manual,” Alec Soth, Feb 3 – Mar 11, Sean Kelly Gallery, NYC
Throughout the 1950′s, Greenpoint-born bank-industry dude Frank Oscar Larson was handy with the Rolleiflex, capturing “the life of the streets” and “candid portraits of working stiffs” on his weekends. Culled from a recently uncovered hoard of thousands of unseen negatives, the Queens Museum of Art’s exhibition features shots from Chinatown to the Hell’s Kitchen to Times Square to Central Park, with ladies with gams and street urchins without teeth and Brando still in theaters. Don’t even try to feign nostalgia on this one. You’re not that old. “Frank Oscar Larson: 1950s New York Street Stories,” Feb 5 – May 20, Queens Museum of Art, Queens
Oh, how we revel in our minimalist poster addiction — from minimalist’ed dancing to disasters to films to philosophy. Here’s the latest fix: London-based designer Stefan Van Zoggel’s Meme Movie Posters, a re-imagining the most potent viral videos as films, and then, as minimalist film posters. From Epic Beard Man to the Man With the Golden Voice to my personal favorite, the Russian animatron-esque singer of Trololo — here are your new favorite film meme minimalisms. Filmemes. Filminimemelist filminimemes! Oh, yes. Good stuff.
This latest minimalist thing is nifty, nifty. Niege Borges Alves’ The Dancing Plague of 1518 series — named after the Dancing Plague of 1518 — neatly explains some of pop culture’s notable dance routines, from Little Miss Sunshine to Pulp Picture to the pelvic thru-ust, that really drives you insa-ane-ane-ane-ane-ane-ane. Fantastic, but their Elaine’s dance poster is condescending because a lot of people dance like this, shut up. Read more »
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