Monday, May 24, 2010

Grandpa used to wash my hands with gasoline


Clint Neufeld
2010

The exhibition that just ended at Parisian Laundry in Montréal featured the work of Saskatoon artist Clint Neufeld. The gallery's announcement said it best:


Nostalgia and memory play a key roll and act as the contextual impetus behind these aesthetic objects, rendering them useless of their design. They present a dichotomy of a romantic tension of memory and masculine and feminine clichés – delicate motif and car envy. Starting from the personal, Neufeld minds his regional prairie past and relationships with male figures in his life. Men who were not necessarily there emotionally but who, in their ways and language connected the artist to time and observing the extraordinary in the everyday.


The parts I like best are italicized. Thank you.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Wonderland


Yeondoo Jung
2005

In Yeondoo Jung's Wonderland series, the artist recreates children's drawings. Preserving their keen observations, fashion, and titles, Jung at once validates children's imaginations and filters them for adult eyes via c-print. "He didn't sleep for three days" is pictured above. Other favorites are "Modern Wedding" and "The Magician Turned the Wale into a Flower."

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Up There


Malcolm Murray/Sky High Murals/Colossal Media Group

The guys, the city, the painting... the attention to detail, the doing things the hard way... the watching them paint... The only thing bigger than the turn on is the actual wall.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Rainy Day Posters


Jasmine Raznahan
circa 2008

A clear screen print on stainless steel needs rain to make its message clearer. The effect that Raznahan's poster has on passersby is not lost when advancing the image on her website.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Stitched Table


Uhuru
year unknown, also made to order

Butterfly joints are made, like sutures, to prevent a split in wood from breaking further apart. Using wood scrapped because of their splits, I used butterfly joints in such a way that their sentiment outweighed their function. Here, Brooklyn-based design and furniture company Uhuru operates on the same split-joint shtick. Although their material and design compete with the sentiment behind my pieces, their table still makes me warm and fuzzy.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Be Kind Rewind


Michel Gondry
2008

Mos Def and Jack Black play childhood friends who must recreate popular films after accidentally erasing the VHS copies belonging to a video store. Using found objects and everyday materials, Ghost Busters, Driving Miss Daisy, and Rush Hour are given new life as live-action dioramas. Think Wes Anderson meets Ed Wood. Above, Mos Def's character provides sound effects for a martial arts fight scene*. The play mat beside him is used in a scene to appear suspended from a tall building.

Director Michele Gondry is behind repurposing the turntable, play mat and, if you'll forgive my last spoiler, tinsel. The brilliance of tinsel is no longer attributed to foil.

In Be Kind Rewind, the exhibition at Deitch Projects in NYC**, Gondry reinstalled the video store from the film in the gallery, along with other sets. Inviting visitors to re/create their own movies, Gondry's message in the film -- to participate freely and actively in one's own entertainment -- echoed into the present; this, perhaps, is a nod to relational and performance art and participatory exhibitions. More importantly, the familiarity of the sets built in the gallery (café, office, waiting room, junkyard, etc.) were further encouragement for visitors to examine their everyday scenery and objects as materials.


*This reminds me of Oliver Laric's Kung Fu Percussion, which I love, but can't find on the artist's website anymore.

**Deitch Projects will close permanently this summer. The current exhibition by Shepard Fairey, which is the gallery's last, closes at the end of this month.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Paired Gold Mats, for Ross and Felix


Roni Horn
1994-95

The gallery text accompanying this piece at the ICA Boston reads, "The space between the gold sheets glows with an energy that would never exist without their delicate pairing."

Remove the gold, and you've got something remarkable.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Untitled


Plastic Pollution Coalition and Rethink
2010

The two porpoises in this Vancouver public sculpture are found caught in a large six-pack ring. Through their intervention, the Plastic Pollution Coalition and advertising firm Rethink draws awareness to the impact of pollution on wildlife, meanwhile pulling off a pretty ballsy PSA.

I just want to know where they got their cohones...