Friday, September 29, 2006
I began earlier this month introducing some of the artists who show at leo Koenig gallery,
Lets continue with:A looK at Torben Giehler.
The latest Giehler paintings I've seen are gorgeous techno landscapes, they're huge and overwhelm the senses. Rendered on a computer and painted with acrylic, they are dazzling when viewed from about 10 feet back however it is important to look at them carefully up close. He tapes off the edges and smooths the paint on with a knife, shapes slightly overlap, squares of color act like hundreds of tiny tectonic plates that cause miniscule ridges of paint to rise up when they bump up next to eachother. The picture of the mountain becomes the flatlands from which they rise.
Toben is a serious Biker. He entered a 5 day race through the Alps this past summer. Looking at the snapshots of the race from his flicker page, it strikes me that these paintings are informed not only by the by dramatic Swiss landscape but also the brightly colored spectacle that is a bike race. His latest work Gotthard Pass (pictured above right), describes what might be a route from this race. The paintings are hard edge and look like a virtual reality field that grew out of Tron but they are also very personal paintings that reflect a place and an activity close to the artists heart.
Rock on Torben.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Answer dept:Egg Wins!!!
The first bird that evolved into a modern chicken had to have been a chicken embryo first. The philosopher said people were mistaken to think the ‘parents’ of the first chicken egg had to be a genetically bona-fide chicken in order to lay a chicken egg. A genetic mutation inside the egg would have created a chicken before a chicken had laid the chicken egg.
-News reports by Sue Roberts John Ruddy for Philosophy Now magazine
Monday, September 25, 2006
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Happy New Year, well not for that sick woman in the bed, but for everyone else...
On this day long ago, God created the world and so we celebrate the anniversary of this important event. Mrs.Cub and I had apples with honey, matzoh balls, brisket and kugal at Mama and Pappa Corn's house in the burbs last night. Some regret was expressed for not raising my brothers and I to be more Jewish but besides that emotional crampon it was a wonderful dinner.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Exciting news flash! It seems scientists have discovered what the purpose of art is!
to enhance, transcend, or indeed even to distort reality. … not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it’. More pithily: ‘all art is caricature’.[8] And the mechanism which explains the biological function of art is peak shift. In this way, Ramachandran explains a profound and pervasive part of human life in terms of a simple physiological mechanism, which can be demonstrated in the laboratory with a rat, square, a rectangle and some cheese. Read all about it..ABCN is going to be off the ether for a little bit. Getting the whatchmacallit, apparatus up and running at the refinery after a long summer haitus is proving to be a bigger problem then expected and will take whatever small shreds of focus I can muster to become the provocater of your peak shifts. Meanwhile there's always something worth reading at Art and Letters Daily not to mention BoadweeBlogs insightful post about the insanity of The Pope.
Friday, September 15, 2006
I've found
the perfect typeset
for the novelization of my life, a 7oo page epic tone poem,
working title:
Why are you Looking at Me Like That?: Portrait of an Exhausting Life in 782 Parts, Each Part A little Browner Then the Part Before
Maybe some people don't think it's so great to use the same word 3 times in the title of a book, and maybe some editors at certain New York publishing houses can't "roll" with my use of words as a chisle with which I am carving meaning out of nothingness, because (and I know I don't HAVE TO explain this to you, my gentle and comprehending readers) what IS life if not the epitome of repetitiveness and maybe my manuscript has been wrongfully discarded before it's even been looked at, obviously certain simpeltons don't comprehend this calibur of wordsmanship, but i'm saying NO thank you to your literary regulations, I do not write with a straight-jacket on!
working title:
Why are you Looking at Me Like That?: Portrait of an Exhausting Life in 782 Parts, Each Part A little Browner Then the Part Before
Maybe some people don't think it's so great to use the same word 3 times in the title of a book, and maybe some editors at certain New York publishing houses can't "roll" with my use of words as a chisle with which I am carving meaning out of nothingness, because (and I know I don't HAVE TO explain this to you, my gentle and comprehending readers) what IS life if not the epitome of repetitiveness and maybe my manuscript has been wrongfully discarded before it's even been looked at, obviously certain simpeltons don't comprehend this calibur of wordsmanship, but i'm saying NO thank you to your literary regulations, I do not write with a straight-jacket on!
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Does anyone else feel nostolgic for the days when people believed baby Suri was a cyclops?
Thankfully there is a new rumor to keep us thinking; that Suri is wearing a wig in the Vanity Fair photo shoot. As a master of disguises specializing in wigs I'm inclined to agree with this hypothesis
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Two LA highlights:1. The Getty Villa located in Malibu verges on the surreal. Imagine a senior care/retirement facility in a fake Roman villa stuffed full of Greek and Etruscan art. Most entertaining is the way they labled the painted Greek black and terra cotta pottery, for instance, picture two guys fucking and the lable reading "elder statesman trips on boy", or a vase depicting a man fingering a womans Clown Pocket, label reads, "man gives woman flower". Yeah, right, nice flower. It's an impressive collection of antiquities but taken as a whole it's a bit tacky, begging the question, where are the slot machines?
2. We visited the Ovitz family collection. Hiding in an inoccuous gray building in Santa Monica exists a fantastic collection of German painting. It's not all Mike Ovitz collects, but recently German painting has become the thrust of the collection. We were blown away by Kippenburger, Rausch, two enormous and beautiful Doigs, infinitely more beautiful then the Doigs we saw at the Whitney this year which were livin' in Dullsville... The collection is the vision of Andrea Feldman Falcione (we went to high school together) who does all Ovitz's buying. Her taste is impecable with the heavy bent towards painterly painting. We were also turned onto a Leipzig painter we hadn' t seen before, Christoph Ruckhaberle, similar to Matthias Weischer but with Baulthas like figures hanging about doing stuff.
Monday, September 11, 2006
We went to some openings Saturday night, including my new favorite artist Sterling Ruby (the guy who made the "garden painting" I posted a few weeks back), Hernan Bas at Sandroni Rey (ruh-row) and excelent shows at Blum & Poe, Kim Light's new space as well as Susanne Vielmetter Projects.
I'm whipped from traveling and need to prep for my monsters tomorrow so will be back to discuss LA on Wednesday.Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Aiight, we be big pimpin in Hell-A for a few. Checking out some openings, cold chill'n with our homies and representin' for the Norfuckeneasters.
Peace out kiddies.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
My class will be small but extremly advanced this semester. We will look at posture and hygiene of the artist at work and investigate painting as pleasure via tickeling and stroking mostly.
Should be rewarding for all.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Thanks KeithBoadweeOfThebloodArm for turning us on to The Feeling . Most of this CD is brilliant, at least 4 songs are crappitycrap. Whats up with that? Why not just release a shorter CD? As an import, it wasn't inexpensive and for only 7 good songs I'm not sure it's worth the 25 bucks, but you can download songs from their website and their MySpace page. It's not for everyone but if you like Robbie Williams, or Jellyfish, you'll like The Feeling. Boadwee blog also compairs them to 10cc, Queen and Supertramp.
Listen to Sewn and Fill My Little World
on MySpace. Sewn is a GREAT song.
Friday, September 01, 2006
It's time ABCN introduces to you some of the playas at Leo Koenig inc. For starters there is Eric Parker, great painter, great wife, great hair.Eric and Brooke got drunk with us and Artist Michel Carluccio and her guy John Benson last night, it was good to hang out with them and discuss this whole crazy how to deal with having a kid thing. They are all roll models for us and we discussed parenting issues like making out with your kids and weather or not it would be ok to post pictures of the kids genitals, is it ok to name a girl Hamlet? etc.
Thanks guys that was fun, ya'll rule.
