Babak Golkar’s Grounds for Standing and Understanding rethinks our everyday relationship to architecture.
At the end of the gallery sits an afghan rug; the patterns have been perfectly extruded to create a speculative cityscape.
To get to the rug you walk through a room full of sharply angled lines. If you’ve been to the gallery before, it feels all wrong: this wall wasn’t here before? Why has the window been blacked out?
And then when you see the rug and its surface, it sort of makes sense. We’re part of the exhibit and we’re looking at ourselves, hidden in the everyday.
Trapped?
It’s not clear, but the recursion gives you pause.
A weekend visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery has got me crushing on Jim Campbell and his LED art.
All of his works are a trompe l’oeil of sorts; he uses blinking LEDs to create the illusion of motion. If you stare at one LED it appears to blink chaotically; it’s only in the context of all the other LEDs that a pattern – and the art – emerges.
Take for instance, this piece:
You sit at the end of a long room and watch what appears to be a grainy, black and white movie projected on the wall.
Except that there’s no projector. You can stand right in front of the moving image and you won’t block it because it’s created by a mesh of LEDs hanging in front of the screen wall.
Moreover, in the first image it looks like there’s a grid hanging in front of the wall, but you’re only noticing that because this is a static photo. When seen as a video, the effect of motion created by the lights makes you ignore the grid.
It’s mesmerizing.
Here’s a video of another piece.
These are people walking through Grand Central Station. The glass contains one over-exposed image of people walking; an LED screen behind the glass projects the outlines of people. Occasionally the pictures and shadows line up, making you see the piece from a new perspective.
One of the stereotypes of the Japanese has been that they don’t so much as ‘create’ things as take an original idea from somewhere else and then continuously improve on it until it is perfected. Exhibits A, B & C: the car industry (American and German), consumer electronics (American) and ramen noodles (originally Chinese). Perhaps the ultimate example can be found in Toto’s magical toilets – one of which graces our hotel room.
As we explored the Tokyo National Museum it became evident that Japan is the ultimate remix culture. They’ve adopted ideas from other Asian nations and folded them into their own cultural identity. Buddhism came from the Korean peninsula in the sixth century or so. The Chinese gave Japan painting and calligraphy techniques. Heck, even ramen noodles are originally Chinese.
With that in mind, here are some photos of different sets of items from the museum. Have fun seeing if you can find other cultural references.
Japanese Painting & Drawing
The following are byobu folding screens that were set up temporarily as background decor, for privacy or to stop drafts. They’re a subset of what are called shoheki-ga paintings. The choice of subject was determined by the nature of the room (e.g., castle or temple), it’s function and the style of the times.
I also quite liked the detail in Ishibashi-Yama, Enoshima and Hakone by Kano Yosen-In (1753-1808):
This lovely lady is a ghost; the image is the backdrop of a Kabuki play:Kimonos
The museum has a beautiful selection of kimonos. Here are a series of close-ups:Samurai, Armour & Swords
The museum has an interesting description of how the Samurai’s traditions evolved:
The military elite held the political power in Japan for about 700 years spanning from the late 12th century until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Whilst taking the culture of the nobility, the former authority in power, as an example, they absorbed Buddhist- and common culture to create a pragmatic and powerful culture of their own.
The hitatare and kamishimo, originally commoner’s garments, evolved into the formal attire of the bafuku (military government) with time, the kosode kimono and dofuku short coat were also favored by the samurai.
The sword was the single most important equipment for a samurai, and was also appreciated as the best possible gift bestowed or presented to the shogun and the daimyos (feudal lords). Swords were usually worn in pairs of one long and one short type, such as a pair of a tachi with koshigatana, or a katana with wakizashi. Indoors, only the short sword was permitted. The style of sword mountings differed in accordance with the owner’s rank, or with the attire and fashion of the age. Sword mountings, armor, and saddlery were produced with the best available skills of the various genres of decorative arts, such as lacquerware and metalwork. In the Edo period (A.D. 1603 – 1868), military equipments were (sic) treasured and handed down over generations as symbols of social status and historical importance of the individual daimyo clan.
Today Wen and I went to Governors Island (yes, that’s no apostrophe). It’s a unique place: picture a combination of old Coast Guard base, now abandoned; an ancient fort, fantastic views of the city and lots of art.
Much has been made about Google Buzz and it’s privacy issues. However, for me, it’s totally paid off for me. Last week an old friend posted some pictures of the cherry blossoms in DC; I commented and he invited us down for the weekend. How could we say no (especially since Wen had never been).
Here are some photos; you can easily guess what we did. We started off on the Mall:
Here are some shots of the different memorials that dot the Mall. Jefferson:
Lincoln. Very popular photo spot:
The Vietnam War Memorial:
After that it was off to the White House:
Check out the beautiful walkway between Treasury and the White House. Alas, government staffers only:
Day two was spent in Georgetown (after a night that saw a delicious dinner at Oyamel and drinks at Bourbon). I didn’t realize that The Exorcist was shot there (and written by a Georgetown grad); here are the classic stairs:
Here are some shots of buildings in the neighbourhood:
This is where Kennedy lived when he was a senator:
And finally, a last short of Healy Hall at Georgetown. Apparently there’s a periodic tradition where the students try to steal the hands of the clock (they’re each about six feet tall) and then mail them to the Pope. Happens every few years-but not while we were there.
A few weeks back, Wen and I went to see Richard Mosse‘s The Fall at the Jack Shainman gallery (more Mosse photos). Mosse is a great photographer who travels to the edges of the world to capture images of catastrophe and then prints them on a massive scale. I highly recommend reading his recent interview over at BLDGBLOG (then read the older one). This paragraph captures the spirit of his work:
So how is the catastrophe popularly represented? Through terrorism. Terrorism is a gesture of advertising; it’s a literary act, a form of representation, before all else. Its aim is not primarily to kill, but to capture the popular imagination through killing. It’s for this reason that I’m drawn to the air disaster: there is no finer, more succinct, more international, and more culturally loaded expression of the catastrophe than a plane crash. An airliner in vertical descent is a spectacle of modernity’s complete failure.
Here are some shots of his work from the exhibit; I’m aware you’re not supposed to take photos in art galleries, but his works are magnetic and I couldn’t help myself:
I ended up having Friday afternoon free (thank you Easter!) so I decided to walk home and stop off at a couple of art galleries in Chelsea. As I walked down 19th and passed the David Zwirner gallery, I was stopped in my tracks by this:
It literally looked like somebody had turned a small flock of planes into worms and parked them inside a gallery. Here’s what it looks like from another perspective:
This is not the sort of thing that one sees every day and I was impressed that anyone would come up with this concept, let alone sucessfully execute it (I mean, really, who is going to buy this art? This is a gallery-only piece. There really aren’t too many folks who have space for a 100′ by 30′ by 20′ sculpture in their living room).
I had to learn more about this artist, Adel Abdessemed, so I went into the adjoining gallery. And that’s where my admiration quickly turned to revulsion.
Why?
Well, he’d taken a huge white room and projected a massive video on the wall. The video consisted of a small concrete pit where he had thrown in dozens of iguanas, giant frogs, pythons, dogs, scorpions, tarantulas and roosters. What happens? They all start killing one another. Last I checked, dog fighting was considered savage and illegal (see: Michael Vick), so I don’t know what inspired him to try to play god with his little cast of creatures.
Also, it turns out that Adel derives true pleasure from killing animals and photographing them. His 2008 exhibit in San Francisco consisted of him quickly killing six animals and was cancelled due to complaints.
Here’s hoping that this exhibit gets cancelled too. Never before have I gone from admiring to despising someone so quickly.
Yesteday Wen and I saw an exhibit at STUX Gallery featuring the work of the Dutch artist Ruud van Empel. van Empel has a unique technique: he take dozens or hundreds of digital photographs, superimposes them into one impossible photo and then supersaturates the image so that it appears to jump off the page. Here’s a copy of the flyer:
The exhibit was something of a tryptych:
Souvenir took us through a series of photographs of his childhood home, showing the origins of his creativity
Dawn was a series of young children in a fairy tale land of giant, digital manipulated plants (that’s the flyer above)
Moon/World was an earlier work that also focused on young children, except it emphasize their gaze, not their surroundings
We also saw an exhibit at the Bruce Silverstein gallery featuring the work of Shinichi Maruyama. The exhibit is called KUSHO – Japanese for “writing in the sky”. It features 10 large scale works where Maruyama has taken incredibly high resolution photos of black ink thrown together with water. The resulting photos feel like they should be in National Geographic:
Just down the street from us is Madison Square Park. It’s a lovely little park that is surrounded by heritage buildings (Flatiron, Met Life, New York Life) and is home to the Shake Shack. It’s also notable as one of the few sites in the city that promote public art. In 2007, they featured sculptures by Roxy Paine. I quite liked this one (Conjoined):
Right now they’re featuring the work “Untitled (Tree House)” by Tadashi Kawamata. Here’s a shot:
Since I’ve recently been writing about apophenia (our tendency to see patterns everywhere), I thought I’d explore our tendency to see conspiracy theories everywhere. This art consists of tree house by an artist who likes to wrap things in pieces of wood (check out the link above). But why tree houses? And what if they weren’t really tree houses, but meant to be duck blinds? After all, this is a park and it’s got pigeons and they’re the rats of the sky and nobody likes them…
So now we’ve got a park full of duck blinds. But who’s going to go hunting? Well, the timing of this installation just happens to overlap the inauguration of Barack Obama – and the end of the Dick Cheney era. And everyone knows that Dick Cheney is a great hunter, so maybe the park is celebrating that Cheney’s out of office by creating this installation. So now the trust running this park hates all Republicans and is a tool of the Democratic party.
Now of course all of this is crap. It’s just a piece of work by an artist in the park. But I’d like to think that this is how conspiracy theories begin…
If you know me, you know that I love taking photos. Since I’ve wasted a lot of people’s time by making them pause to take photos, I thought I’d share some of my best shots from 2008. Here they are in roughly chronological order. Note that WordPress seems to be doing some sort of horizontal compression, so you my have to click through to each photo for the full effect.
This one is the only ‘best’ photo to come from my iPhone. I’m hoping that in 2009 there will be more great iPhone pics:
The following image was taken at Fort Tryon, at the cafe in the park. It’s a beautiful place for brunch and they get great light:
One of my favourite New York activities is walking around the town. If you make it down to Red Hook, there’s a scrapyard just between the BQE and the Gowanus Canal. The five year old boy in me could spend hours there just watching:
This is Tom Savage ripping it up at Whistler. It’s hard to tell, but he’s wearing a beautiful negligee as it was his stag:
While walking around the Robert Fulton houses near our apartment, I happened to catch someone feeding the rats of the sky:
If you visit New York (as you can tell, it’s kind of my muse), you should head over to Long Island City and take a look back at the city:
Last year I went to Dublin to see my bro graduate from medical school and was mesmerized by the city at sunset:
One of the artistic highlights of last year was seeing the Olafur Eliasson exhibit at the MOMA’s PS1. He had erected a giant rotating mirror in one room; this kind of captures the effect:
Right around the corner from there you find the graffiti haven of 5 Ptz:
On the Fourth of July I snapped this pic while watching the fireworks. It was raining, so take a close look at the tops of each of the buildings – everyone is holding an umbrella:
I’m trying to get better at macro photography. Here’s a shot of a lily:
I tried to take an HDR shot of some flowers I had, but it didn’t turn out. However, one of the shots was following:
While visiting the New Museum I leaned over the railing and noticed this little scene below on one of the adjacent tenement rooftops:
One day Wen & I set out to walk the entire length of Broadway (we started at the Bronx and made it to 85th). In Washington Heights we went past the High Bridge water tower, and it just happened to be open to a few photographers that morning. We tagged along and I got this photo of the Heights and the GWB:
And finally, one last photo. The Guggenheim reopened this year and here’s a shot of their entrance way:
Finally saw EyesWideShut only 12+ years after it's release. My confusion over its meaning led me to this awesome screed http://t.co/xF0e9u0r42 years ago
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This lovely lady is a ghost; the image is the backdrop of a Kabuki play:
Art
Check out the beautiful walkway between Treasury and the White House. Alas, government staffers only:
This is where Kennedy lived when he was a senator:
And finally, a last short of 
We also made it to 
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