Friday Eye Candy: Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka: "Lady in Lace / Madame Allan Bott"

Ta-Blow

I love a good exploited taboo, and I also love Bret Easton Ellis novels, so today's post will feature two works that use cocaine as a medium.

To the left I have included a terribly small photo of the first work, Exhaled Cocaine by Cornelia Parker. Her piece is on the pedestal toward the back of the room. I couldn't find a better photo than this, but I will soon upload a close-up of it taken from one of my Matthew Collings books, where I first saw the piece.

From strengthweekly.com:
"For ‘Exhaled Cocaine’ Parker persuaded Customs & Excise to give her the ashes of seized, incinerated cocaine, presented by the artist as an end product ‘breathed out’ by a crucial process in its history."


Of course, you can't really "exhale" the substance, but you can burn it, which destroys and purifies, but also recalls the process in which it was made- using flammable materials like kerosene on coca leaves. So, the work acts as a cyclical tableau.

The second work (shown above) is Cocaine Buffet by Rob Pruitt, which consists of a pile and long line of cocaine offered up on mirrors lining the floor of an artist studio like a two-dimensional Rube Goldberg device. Participants were invited to "engage" with the work, which they eagerly did. Lygia Clark, eat your heart out.

Where art thou, Sean Landers?

I found a nice series of Sean Landers work on this site: http://www.escapeintolife.com/artist-watch/sean-landers/.

There were several on the Andrea Rosen Gallery website, but now only three remain, which makes me sad. I'm not sure who is representing Landers right now, there isn't a ton of info on him and he no longer has a page on Saatchi Online. He has a website with a ton of images on it, but be advised, it does take several minutes to load. I almost thought he was pulling one over on curious fans. ;-)

If you like humorous art, it's worth checking him out. I've written about his work briefly on this blog before. I think he's among the most clever American artists I've encountered as of yet, I love his irreverence.

Richard Prince Joke

Richard Prince, sue him a millions times.. his jokes and style is still killer.

I'll write on the copyright issue soon. Spoiler alert: The judge is a fool.

Sol LeWitt Numbers His Process

"What you see is what you get."

Sol LeWitt "Sentences on Conceptual Art" (1968)

This is from UbuWeb, a great resource on the avant-garde, I really can't recommend it enough.

In the above link, the father of conceptual art lays out the guidelines for his oeuvre.

Here's a great snippet, #8:

"When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations."

Bruce Nauman Takes it Back

Of all the wordplay art I've seen, this one (Bruce Nauman, "Eating My Words" (1967)) is by far the sweetest. Check out the attempts at a post-painterlyesque color harmony with the white shortbread cookies beside a tall glass of white milk, matching plaid tablecloth and shirt, plus red jam (a nod to "Household" from 1964 by Allan Kaprow, perhaps?) Delish.

What a Rusch...ay?

Is this plagiarism or does LeKay just have it in for Hirst?

I was checking out John LeKay's wikipage and I found this 1990-1991 work

Ring a Ring of Roses

Which made me think of this Jake and Dinos Chapman work from 2003,

Death

What do you guys think? Is it plagiarism? I don't recall LeKay launching complaints against the Chapman brothers, though he did launch them against Damien Hirst (see here for more background on this.) Why would he do that? Surely he would know about the Chapman brothers piece if he knew about Hirst, they're both Saatchi favorites, and Death exhibited at the 2003 Turner Prize show.

For the record, I don't think this is plagiarism. In fact, I think I would be incredibly hard pressed to call plagiarism in any work of art (here I mean sculpture, performance, painting, installation, video, not indie films or mainstream films, but art films.)

What do you call it when a Mondrian pattern makes it on a designer dress, appropriation or plagiarism? If it's the former, then the plagiarism accusation has very little weight.

I'll be writing some more about plagiarism and intellectual property in art. Stay tuned!

621 Gallery Group Art Show review

(Originally published in the FSView on Jan. 17)

The 621 Gallery at Railroad Square recently hosted a Florida State University Adjunct Faculty Group Art Show, featuring 23 artists. The opening reception was held on Friday, Jan. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m.

“

I had met Kelly previously while she was working on a piece. [The sculpture] is amazing; I really loved it.

— Cassandra Whitehead Art Education grad student at FSU

”

The exhibit showcased a variety of styles and media including painting, knitted crafts, soft sculpture and photography from artists including: Charles Badland, Ananda Balingit-Lefils, Kelly Boehmer, Jacquelin Boulanger, Dave Breault, Chuck Carbia, Po-Chi Chu, Michelle McKnight Davis, Ljiljana Obradovic-Edmiston, Amy Fleming, Phil Gleason, Laurie Godfrey, Matt Gordan, Linda Hall, Christian Harkness, DeDe Harter, Cynthia Hollis, Delaina LeBlanc, Leo McMillan, Jason Orman, Pamela Theis, Ed Toner and Jeff Whipple.

Po-Chi Chu's "White and Flawless Fortune Cookies" featured an intricately sculpted female face, similar to a porcelain geisha.

The sculpture literally spewed fortune-a long tape of attached Chinese cookie fortunes came out of the mouth of the figure, down the length of the canvas and wall beneath it, creating a flower shape on top of a black square covered with water on the ground.

The makeshift reflective pool and the flower, along with a scattering of long, pointed wooden sticks all created the appearance of a sand mandala, sans sand.

The sticks played along with the Chinese subject matter.

DeDe Harter's "Rec Room Diary" featured two drawn aerial blueprints of the inside of a house. Each portion of the home contained an annotation, designed as a biographical grid. A dog, kids playing with dolls and a mom donning an apron skirt, suggest a stereotypical nuclear family. The TV is drawn showcasing numerous commercial jingles along with the lyrics to show theme songs.

Ed Toner presented a more solemn subject matter with his "Blue Babies." A "blue baby" is the term given to a child born with cyanosis, a condition that makes skin appear bluish, due to the presence of deoxygenated hemoglobin near the skin surface. In Toner's piece, the blue babies, drawn alongside Manhattan cocktails, seem to suggest babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome. The contrast between the harshness and softness of the babies echo Marlene Duma's 'Die Baba' from 1985.

Linda Hall's "The Great Water Between Us" consists of two soft sculpture dolls with umbilical cords made of colorful cloth and yarn, hung facing each other on the walls.

"It's always interesting; I like the fabrication," Tallahassee resident Tom Jones said. "It forges ahead with our mythologies-the umbilical cords are left hanging, like baggage."

Located at the front and center of the gallery was a large sculpture featuring colored fabrics, small screens with videos of eyes, a wooden bridge leading up toward the large, dinosaur-like figures, and featuring a softly sung song, wind and ocean sounds, which could be heard by picking up headphones that were placed on a stand next to the figure.

"[The work] is a collaboration with Chuck Carbia," co-creator of "Crying Time," Kelly Boehmer said.

Carbia shared the story behind their piece.

"It's a self-portrait of us fighting each other," he said. "We're both artists, we've been in a relationship for a long time."

Boehmer and Carbia, who had previously engaged in country music performances, said the sculpture was definitely country-inspired. "Crying Time" is also the title of a 1964 Buck Owens song.

"We're trying to keep it hopeful, so we'll call it 'We're Gonna Hold On,'" Carbia said, referring to another country song by the same name, written by the country duet George Jones and Tammy Wynette, who were married at the time of the single's 1973 release.

The audio included along with "Crying Time" seemed to recall "Lowlands," the 2010 Turner Prize winning "sound sculpture" produced by Scottish artist Susan Phillipsz. The 16th century lament, "Lowlands Away," tells of a woman who dreamed of her dead lover, previously drowned at sea. It is the first sound installation to win the coveted [and notorious] Turner prize.

"I had met Kelly previously while she was working on a piece," art education grad student at FSU Cassandra Whitehead said. "[The sculpture] is amazing; I really loved it."

621 Gallery is not-for-profit contemporary art space featuring local and regional artists located at 621 Industrial Drive, at the Railroad Square Art Park.

For more information on this exhibition, call 224-6163.