Blog
John Divola, As Far As I Could Get (R02F06), 10 Seconds, 1996–7, Pigment Print
As Far As I Could Get is the first solo museum presentation of the work of John Divola. The exhibition is a collaborative project led by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, with different components shown simultaneously at SBMA, LACMA, and the Pomona College Museum of Art. LACMA’s presentation includes Polaroid images of sculpted objects, serial works comprised of appropriated continuity shots and stereographs, and conceptual landscapes in which the artist himself appears in a performative role.
Divola’s career spans four decades. After graduating from California State University, Northridge, he entered the MFA program at the University of California Los Angeles. There, under the tutelage of Robert Heineken, Divola began to develop his own unique photographic practice, one that merges photography, painting, and conceptual art. He also teaches contemporary art at the University of California, Riverside, and writes about photography.
This show is on view until July 6, 2014.
Nov 01, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture | Comments Off on John Divola, As Far As I Could Get (R02F06), 10 Seconds
Photo by: Denny Renshaw
When photographer Denny Renshaw decided to travel to Japan as a self-photo assignment, he knew he wanted to shoot street fashion with a focus on “fashion tribes” in Tokyo. Born and raised in Jackson, TN, the birthplace of Rockabilly, Renshaw was naturally attracted to the “Rockers” in Yoyogi park. “They are called many names: Rockers, Rockabillies, Roller-Zoku, Tokyo Rockabilly Club,” he explained. But the tribe was allusive. “I could not, find any formal contact info or links to any organizing entity or even knowledgeable source on the internet. All I could find was a generalized time and vague location. So without a solid plan in place, Renshaw built a set that could pack into his normal suitcase and made his way to Tokyo, where he spent time at record stores and other places trying to befriend someone who could put him in touch with the Rockers. After several attempts to make contact (including one where he was required to play a word game with a fixer) and several more times having his shoot shut down before he was even able to begin (once by “Big Boss” a surly, tattoo-covered member of the tribe), Renshaw was finally able to capture the portraits he’d flown halfway around the world to make. The results, shot in under an hour in the street, are a beautiful, energetic look into a Japanese sub-culture. ” I was stopped so many times trying to create these Rockers photos that it I couldn’t believe it when it happened and it came out my way,” Renshaw explained. The portfolio is proof of the power of persistence.
Denny Renshaw is a New York-based photographer. View his portfolio here.
Oct 30, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, Travel | Comments Off on TOKYO ROCKABILLY CLUB: A PROJECT BY PHOTOGRAPHER DENNY RENSHAW
Willis Elkins’ work reminded me of the many beach cleanups I’ve participated in at the Harmony Hotel where we go out to collect debris from Playa Guiones in the late afternoons. The Brooklyn-based artist took an inflatable raft (and later kayak) to travel NYC waterways where the rising and falling tide can both create a vibrant ecological zone for wildlife and provide sanctuary for various flotsam that is pushed ashore from the rough seas. On these trips, he collected lighters and made the work featured above. He says:
I began to notice beached items on the least accessible shorelines: tennis balls on uninhabited islands; pre-production plastic pellets (known as nurdles) on rocky shores; and a plethora of everyday objects (bottle caps, plastic bags and disposable lighters) in salt marshes where people rarely go. Most of the debris I encounter travels to its destination via estuary currents, harbor wind, and the city’s antiquated sanitation system, which lets sewage and street debris overflow into the waterways when it rains. This project, “The Lighter Log,” which grew out of my exploration, is not solely about disposable products or ocean pollution. Rather, it deals with the exploration of overlooked urban coastlines, and how these geographies can be used to study waste infrastructure, and consumer/disposal habits of the city’s residents.
Oct 24, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, Sustainability | Comments Off on Lighter Log
Launching this week, The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project is a series of artist-produced billboards that will unfold along the Interstate 10 Freeway from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This cross-country art project will map out the American fantasy of Westward expansionism by moving through and punctuating the narrative of the landscape itself.
Initiated by artist Zoe Crosher, the project will be an involved collaboration between LAND and Crosher and several artists, including Eve Fowler, Bobbi Woods, John Baldessari, Matthew Brannon and Mario Ybarra Jr.
This project will allow each of the artists to explore their shared investigations into the development of society and cities, specifically the westward manifestation that has built Los Angeles into the cultural epicenter that it claims today.
Oct 22, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, Travel | Comments Off on Road Tripping
Takashi Homma
If you are in NYC this week, stop by Longhouse Projects to see the Takashi Homma show. It has been extended through October 31st. The exhibit, called New Waves 2000-2013, is a study of (and meditation on) waves from around the world. If you aren’t in New York, you can purchase the catalog here. The catalog includes an opening essay by David LaRocca called Cresting.
About the photographer: Takashi Homma (Japanese, b. 1962) lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Homma received the 24th Kimura Ihei Commemorative Photography Award for the photo book, Tokyo Suburbia. Homma has had solo exhibitions at Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa, Japan; Kanazawa 21th Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. Homma’s catalogues have been published by Aperture Foundation, New York; Nieves, Zurich; Fantombooks/Boiler Corporation, Milan; Hassla Books, New York. His work is in the public collections of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and 21st Century of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.
Longhouse Projects
285 Spring Street
New York, NY 10013
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
Oct 21, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Comments Off on TAKASHI HOMMA: NEW WAVES
Anne Truitt, Remembered Sea, 1974, acrylic on wood, 8 1/4 x 144 x 9 1/2".
Here’s a favorite work from an excellent show of Anne Truitt’s sculptures, paintings, and drawings from the 1970s, many of which are exhibited for the first time in nearly forty years. The show is on view at Matthew Marks until October 26, 2013.
From the gallery:
Six wood sculptures covered in bands of rich color are on view. In addition to Truitt’s signature totemic columns, two horizontal works are included. Truitt’s sculptures were created with a labor-intensive process involving many layers of hand-applied paint, each sanded to a fine finish. Anne M. Wagner writes of the exhibition’s four white-on-white paintings from the Arundel series, “the elusive delicacy of their execution somehow creates the impression of a spatial expanse.” In the other paintings, Truitt used wide brushes to sweep paint over large areas, sometimes in one long unbroken stroke. Drawing was a daily ritual for Truitt, and a selection of works on paper are being exhibited for the first time.
Oct 15, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Comments Off on Anne Truitt, Remembered Sea
Photo: Pari Dukovic
From NY Magazine’s Intel blog:
It’s been almost exactly a year since Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey, leaving its path scarred. In the days that followed — as the long, still-unfinished rebuilding process began — this magazine worked tirelessly to document both the devastation and the communities that instantly sprung up to provide hope and assistance.
On the ground was photographer Pari Dukovic, whose images of the flooded city are now on display at Brooklyn’s Kings County Distillery.
Curated by New York deputy editor David Haskell and photography director Jody Quon, the exhibition is free and open to the public every Friday and Saturday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., through November 2. (There is also alcohol.)
Dukovic’s work is on sale, and proceeds will benefit the Brooklyn Recovery Fund. For more info, click here. See more photos here.
Pari Dukovic
Oct 14, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Comments Off on PARI DUKOVIC: IMAGES FROM SANDY
An excellent article on the competitive sport that travel has become made me long for the simple pleasures of a trip to the Harmony.
“We now live in a world of capitalized extremities: the Ultimate Experience now poses a threat to the kind of small revelations that can make us happy. Travelers, by which I mean people who want simply to find a lovely part of the world and dwell in it for a week or two, first have to work out how to avoid all the hype about Experience. And here’s my message. You don’t have to plunge Starship Enterprise-like toward the inner environs of Pluto or scrape the ocean floor to encounter a revelation: you can get one if you stand on your own two feet at Basilica di San Marco in Venice and look up at the cathedral’s stonework, noticing how the carving seems to fizz and “foam,” as Ruskin said. It’s a small, private delight to see that for yourself.”—Andrew O’Hagan, T Magazine
Or you can head to the Harmony where there are no televisions, radios or alarm clocks…but nice waves and dreamy Guiones sunsets like the one above.
Oct 09, 2013 | Categories: Costa Rica, Travel | 1 Comment »
