I've got a thing about rotten teeth (not in my mouth). They make me wonder about the life of the person who lost them. As if you can somehow know the history of the person by looking at the decay.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Other people's teeth
I've got a thing about rotten teeth (not in my mouth). They make me wonder about the life of the person who lost them. As if you can somehow know the history of the person by looking at the decay.
My mouth (top set)
So, there's something about facing up to dental work that makes me very aware of ageing. Nice teeth and thick long hair seem to be the current indicators of youth and beauty for women. Also, plumpness of hydrated skin but absolutely not fat.
If we don't fit? Where do we go?
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
ArtandCulture Artist: Luce Irigaray
ArtandCulture Artist: Luce Irigaray
"I search for myself, as if I had been assimilated into maleness. I ought to reconstitute myself on the basis of a dissimilation...Rise again from the traces of a culture, of works already produced by the other. Searching through what is in them - for what is not there. What allowed them to be, for what is not there. Their conditions of possibility, for what is not there.
Woman ought to be able to find herself, among other things, through the images of herself already deposited in history and the conditions of production of the work of man, and not on the basis of his work, his genealogy." (Irigaray 1984: 17; 1993c:9-10)
I am reading Reading Art, Reading Irigaray the politics of art by women, and I wanted to find out a wee bit more about Luce Irigaray...This project has taken me down a well trodden road...but I'm not too sure where I'm going with it. Or maybe I mean, how comfortable I am with it.
"I search for myself, as if I had been assimilated into maleness. I ought to reconstitute myself on the basis of a dissimilation...Rise again from the traces of a culture, of works already produced by the other. Searching through what is in them - for what is not there. What allowed them to be, for what is not there. Their conditions of possibility, for what is not there.
Woman ought to be able to find herself, among other things, through the images of herself already deposited in history and the conditions of production of the work of man, and not on the basis of his work, his genealogy." (Irigaray 1984: 17; 1993c:9-10)
I am reading Reading Art, Reading Irigaray the politics of art by women, and I wanted to find out a wee bit more about Luce Irigaray...This project has taken me down a well trodden road...but I'm not too sure where I'm going with it. Or maybe I mean, how comfortable I am with it.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Yoko Ono Film
YouTube - Yoko Ono - Cut Piece 1965 - Music: Yoko Ono "Darkness" Georgia Stone
I had trouble finding a good clip. This is ok if you turn the volume down.
I had trouble finding a good clip. This is ok if you turn the volume down.
Yoko Ono - Cut Piece
Ono’s work related destruction to interpersonal, often intimate, human relations. This element was particularly thought-provoking in ‹Cut Piece›, one of many actions she did as DIAS [Destruction in Art Symposium]. Ono had first done the performance in 1964, in Japan, and again at Carnegie Hall, in New York, in 1965. Ono sat motionless on the stage after inviting the audience to come up and cut away her clothing, covering her breasts at the moemnt of unbosoming. ‹Cut Piece› entailed a disrobing, a denouement of the reciprocity between exhibitionism and scopic desires, between victim and assailant, between sadist and masochist: and, as a heterosexual herselft, Ono unveiled the gendered relationship of male and female subjects as objects for each other.
(source: Kristine Stiles,«Uncorrupted Joy: International Art Actions,» in: Out of Actions: between performance and the object, 1949–1979, Paul Schimmel (ed.), MoCA Los Angeles, New York/London, 1998, p. 278.)
Friday, 20 February 2009
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Dentists
I have been to the dentist a lot lately. Don't like it. Don't know anyone who does (apart from one friend who finds it quite relaxing and actually used the words 'me time' to describe visits !!!?) Anyway, I think one of the main things about it, apart from the smell, noise and fear, is that it makes me feel really OLD. My teeth are crumbling like the bad dream you have when all your teeth fall out...It was a premonition.... Actually, has anyone else ever had that dream, or was it just me?
Leah Chishugi is very brave
The Peacekeeper...Congole'se Pacifier, Linda Hubbard, 2009.
Painted dummy. "Making a big difference for little people".
I'm not sure about this work..doesn't really hit the spot for me in relation to the subject. I am interested in the dichotomy though.
Everything is a Benefit
Heartbreaking
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Cary S. Leibowitz, 2009
Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates
A few years back the artist, Patrick Cunningham, handed me a photo album he'd found lying curbside somewhere in the Lower East Side. He knew I had a soft spot for "found photography" and figured I'd appreciate the anonymous trove.
I went home that day and spent a considerable amount of time poring over the album. From what I can tell, it is the chronicle of a gay couple's relationship through a good number of years in the 90s. The pictures are intimate, personal, and, as one might expect, range from silly to sober. Haircuts evolve, fashions change, weight is gained and lost. A collection of tiny moments memorialized but nothing special, really, aside from the fact that this carefully constructed record of a relationship was left on a curb in the Lower East Side.
Revisiting the album after some time, I noticed something unique about it: The two men never appear in the same picture. They never sit next to nor hold one another. They never ask friends, relatives, or strangers to take a snapshot o f them together. Each man simply poses for the other, the camera lens always uniting them. These pictures tell a story of isolated admiration/adoration made manifest only through the achitecture of the album itself.
I often wonder if the couple is still together. I hope to meet them one day and, as difficult as it would be for me to part with it, return the album to one or both of them.
Here at Cuchifritos, the album is on display, encircled by works that reference its surrounding themes such as duality, isolation, love, longing and desire.
The show includes works in all media, some made specifically for the exhibition.
Bill Previdi
A Relationship Left For Dead on the Lower East Side
Artists include: Sandra Bermudez, Geoffrey Chadsey, Patrick Cunningham, Taylor Davis, Linda Hesh, Ashley Holmes, Coke Wisdom O'Neal, Katherine Streeter, Jordan Tinker
Until 21 February
Cuchifritos
The Essex Market
120 Essex Street (between Rivington and Delancy)
Lower East Side
New York
Kader Attia
Ghost
2007Aluminium foil
Dimensions variable
In Ghost, a large installation of a group of Muslim women in prayer, Attia renders their bodies as vacant shells, empty hoods devoid of personhood or spirit. Made from tin foil - a domestic, throw away material - Attia’s figures become alien and futuristic, synthesising the abject and divine. Bowing in shimmering meditation, their ritual is equally seductive and hollow, questioning modern ideologies - from religion to nationalism and consumerism - in relation to individual identity, social perception, devotion and exclusion. Attia’s Ghost evokes contemplation of the human condition as vulnerable and mortal; his impoverished materials suggest alternative histories or understandings of the world, manifest in individual and temporal experience.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Monday, 2 February 2009
Emotional Reactions to Complexity, Confusion and Chaos
Emotional Reactions to Complexity, Confusion and Chaos
The work began as a physical manifestation of perceived collective insecurity. However, as the project has gone on, it has become a new thing.
The work began as a physical manifestation of perceived collective insecurity. However, as the project has gone on, it has become a new thing.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Claire Morgan
Tracing Time, 2007
Dandelion seeds, nylon threads, a taxidermied wren, dead leaves, lead
30 x 60 x 400 cm to top of cuboid
A taxidermied wren appears to plunge through precise geometric layers of dandelion seeds towards a bed of dead leaves below.
Pio Abad
Installation View: Tightlacer, The World Turned Upside Down, Solar Anus, Fraulein, The Debutante, 2008
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