Saturday, July 10, 2010

Image of the Day

. One of eight pieces in a series by Tauba Auerbach at Western Bridge, Seattle. Emily and I had the great pleasure of seeing her work at Deitch Projects last year and I was glad to catch her contribution to Western Bridge's New Year series before it closed. Here's what she had to say about it:
I took a piece of paper and folded it into ninths, lit it from the side and took a photo. I printed that photo out in a monochromatic palette, and then folded the print in a different way than I had folded the first piece of paper. That created piece number one. Then I took a photo of piece number one and printed it in another monochromatic palette, and then folded that print differently yet again. This made piece number two. I did this eight times. As the series progresses, the grids of fold lines pile up, and make a complicated network of topologies that could not physically coexist. In each piece, there are real folds competing with “fake” printed ones.

For the last year or so I’ve been working on creating objects/paintings of ambiguous dimension. I suppose some of this is motivated by a far-fetched hope that if I can merge the states of 2D and 3D, or at least create a smooth transition between them, i.e. remove the boundary, that I will somehow be able to remove the boundary between this 3 (+ 1)D reality and other spacial dimensions. So far, this work has taken a 2D form, with a record of a past 3D state, or sometimes multiple past states contained within it. This is the first time I’m presenting something in service of this agenda that is not flat.

The set of real folds in the last piece is the same as the set of printed folds in the first piece, bending this linear sequence towards being a circle.

Next up (and last) in the New Year series at Western Bridge are Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon (July 15–24). Info at westernbridge.org.

[thanks to Jen Graves at SLOG for the recommendation]

Friday, July 9, 2010

Image of the Day

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Valie Export: Encirclement, 1976 – currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a great-looking new show with an exceedingly boring name: Between Here and There: Passages in Contemporary Photography. Themes of dislocation and displacement are explored.

Read Karen Rosenberg's review at nytimes.com and get more info at metmuseum.org.

In other news: I am becoming obsessed with Valie Export. The photo above is part of a larger "Body Configurations" series wherein the artist conforms her body to urban architectural elements. "This process deflates the body to the status of a spatial component, nothing more than an element in a lifeless sculpture, an element which, in Valie Export's words, 'hides its wound.'" (medienkunstnetz.de) Very very interesting.

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

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NO ONE FREAK OUT, we don't have any new photos of Littlejeans, on account of Emily starting a new job this week and me being in my studio constantly and unable to schedule shoots in off-hours with the Jeans. As a stand-in, here are photos of a very sweet semi-stray cat we met in Pacific Beach last weekend.

More pics of our trip to the coast, and more Littlejeans, coming soon.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Time For Some Action(!)

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Okay okay I've slipped just a wee bit on my poster of the week "series" but here's one for ya. I'm looking forward to seeing this show, opening tonight at Ghost Gallery on Capitol Hill (Seattle), with work by Tabor Robak & DUMB EYES, Izzie Klingels & Amanda Manitach, Frank Correa & Nick Bartoletti, and Joe Gray & Keith Tilford.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Image of the Day

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Front and back views of the Givenchy haute couture collection, shot by Willy Vanderperre.



[via On The Runway]

This Woman's Work

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The cover image from a new book by Arthur Danto on Iranian/American photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat, with a foreword by Marina Abramovic. Get more info on the book at Rizzoli, and read a recent interview with Neshat here. Shirin Neshat is represented by Gladstone Gallery.

In Seattle from July 9–15, the Henry is sponsoring a screening of Shirin Neshat's first full-length feature film, Women Without Men, at Northwest Film Forum: "Set in Iran during [the] infamous 1953 CIA-backed coup, the film follows four women from different social classes as they take refuge in a metaphorical orchard." Here's the trailer:

Go to nwfilmforum.org for info and tickets

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Looks Swell

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Installation view of Swell, the current show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York, which features surf-inspired work created between 1950 and 2010 by city dwellers including, among others, Vija Celmins, Edward Ruscha, and Seattle native Cameron Martin, who I remember seeing skate in the Kingdome long, long ago. More info here.

Image of the Day

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Erich Salomon Carnival Time in Cologne and Munich, 1929 (Printed c.1940s; 8 x 10 inches, Gelatin silver print).
From Bruce Silverstein Gallery's current exhibition
DISCOVERIES: A Special Selection of Extraordinary Photographs from the Gallery's Private Inventory. I always love it when galleries and museums pull from stuff in their own collections to put a show together – it's like looking at someone's bookshelf. Opening Thursday night / runs through August 6th. Click here for info.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy Independence Day

. Robert Mapplethorpe

Peter Beard

Lee Friedlander

Joel Meyerowitz

Diane Arbus

Fort McHenry flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner"

William Klein

Kate Moss by Craig McDean

Robert Frank

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cape Cod, 1947: "This woman explained to me that the flagpole over her door was broken, but 'on such a day as this, one keeps one’s flag on one’s heart.'"