Megawords magazine is produced by Anthony Smyrski and Dan Murphy.  An attractive little mag with more photos than words.  The opening party gave me another excuse to visit Printed Matter.   Here are the boys, and apparently they all grew up in Philly together.  Check out the zine at megawordsmagazine.com

Just a quick post on Scope Art Fair.  Didn’t join Morgan on his tours, but did get a chance to see some art on opening night. Bumped into some friends and familiar faces.  It’s the first day, so everyone is still looking good and fresh!

(image courtesy Anonymous Gallery)

(image courtesy Anonymous Gallery)

image: courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art

If you’ve never seen Pae White’s work, this would be a good excuse to go see the 2010 Whitney Biennial.  Being an admirer of Ms. White’s work, which has narrative qualities combined with designer’s aesthetics, I was not disappointed at her chosen piece for the Biennial.

When the elevator doors opened to a huge Pae White tapestry on the third floor of the Whitney I was mesmerized. This is my first Whitney Biennial experience, I have to admit, even though I’ve been in New York most of my life. But 2010 is starting out good, as the optimistic buzz has been going around in the art world.

The huge tapestry shows a cloud of smoke, in its pure form, blown up to a dramatic proportion, revealing subtle changes in light, shadow, form containing air, and all the connotations behind it. I give respect to the curators who decided to put this piece as a greeting to an amazing show. If time allows, I’d write a broader description about the entire Biennial but I’d rather focus on one good piece: Pae White’s Smoke Knows. At first glance, you might think that it’s a painting, but stepping closer, or for those who knows Ms. White’s work, you’ll know that it’s a more complicated process.  As a huge hanging tapestry, it’s quite complicated to produce. Is there another artist out there that uses this traditional method of tapestry professionally in their work? I can only think of the stuff hanging in the Met or the Cloisters dating back to the Medieval days.

The photographic image of smoke can suggest many things, but to the modern eye it becomes an illusion, both sexy and dreamy. White describes it as the “‘dream of becoming something other than itself’ by contrasting an image of something immaterial with the physicality of fabric”.  Isn’t that the goal of being an artist?  To become something other than themselves…  As I walk past White’s smoky image into the other works, I instantly have to shift into numerous other little worlds. Although I have to say, the third floor is my favorite, I didn’t find any other pieces as strong as Pae White’s. She is brilliant in her choice of method, subject, simplicity, and finally in scale.

The Whitney Biennial runs from Feb. 25 to May 30.

(above: courtesy ICP)

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the ICP, but what attracted me to visit was this camera made completely out of cardboard and held together with household items. It is the work of the Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý in his debut show in America.  Although I was not familiar with his name, his body of work – mostly black and white silver gelatin prints – filled up the entire ground floor of the museum. Where did this artist just pop up from?  It almost seemed like someone had dug it up from somewhere.  Most of the prints are in poor condition, over or under-exposed, and spotty. As I went deeper into the exhibition I’m starting to understand the artist more. He obsessively photographs women, usually of their behinds, while probably following his subjects from what the viewer can see. But what amazed me is that the cameras he used were all self-made, because he was poor and for aesthetics reasons.

Nowadays all our devices are tuned to be crisp and seamless without room for mistakes. After seeing the non-chalance in Tichy’s work, so intimate and personal, I start to appreciate all the uncalculated mistakes. They become almost poetic and dreamlike.  Behind the glass showcases you can see the evidence of all the gadgets of his time that suggests his experimentations. This is where you can get lots of ideas for homemade image-capturing devices. I wonder if he took it to the next level and made moving images out of a cardboard box.

“Since 2003, Unsound Festival, Poland’s most adventurous music festival, has brought a bold and uniquely modern program of music to Kraków. Now, with seven festivals in their native city under their belt (and outpost events further east in cities like Minsk), Unsound is coming west to New York for their first ever North American edition. Unsound Festival New York’s mission is to forge new links between music genres, between generations and even between artistic practices. The driving force in the assembling of the New York program has been Unsound Festival’s commitment to forms of music and sound art that involve experimentation and risk. Unsound Festival has made a worldwide reputation by breaking new ground while dealing with vibrant electronic, experimental, independent, post-classical and club music scenes from around the world.”

Thursday February 4th opens an exciting series of sound, visual art and music events that has never happened in the East Coast of the States. If you follow any sort of experimental electronic music or video art, chances are you heard the waves coming. As an electronic beats enthusiast, I was extremely excited that the Unsound Festival is actually taking place in New York City. I’ve always been disappointed that the experimental electronic scene isn’t happening much here in my hometown compared to Berlin or London, but when I saw the lineup to Unsound I was more than impressed. The program boasts a nice mix of multidisciplinary art forms including electronic/post-rock/classical/neo-jazz music, sound art, experimental visuals… That is the best I can do to categorize — a lot of the work doesn’t cleanly fit into any one categorical box.

The first show begins appropriately at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium with an improvisational performance by Berlin video artist Lillevan (who’s also working on the Warhol Screen Tests) and Finland’s Vladislav Delay, followed by the avante-garde group Solid State Transmitters. This show was also part of the Thursday free Target shows, so the queue of people went around the block. Half of the people didn’t even get to step inside. I decidedly gave up, saving my energy for Saturday’s 8-hour long set of experimental improvised soundscapes from Group Show (Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler).

The line-up looks like this:

A few weeks ago, when I got an invite from Lucien Zayan, owner of the gallery The Invisible Dog to see an exhibition of a giant ant, I choked. Then I watched a short animation of the giant ant housed inside the space and thought it was some sort of an advanced technology art project created by Europeans, because it’s so out-of-the-box. I didn’t bother read more about the show, prefering to keep it ambiguous, and persuaded a few friends to come along for a surprise at the opening on Saturday.

Outside the Invisible Dog it seemed like any normal quiet night, but stepping inside the huge space the atmosphere shifted. In front of me was a looming white ball with raw steel sticking out from all sides. I was totally amazed at how bare they kept the gallery space to accomodate this giant. It seemed almost sad, but after reading the touching story behind it, I can see how it fits in to the theme. The ant was created to symbolize the trains transporting Jews and other nazi victims to concentration camps, and was inspired by the poet Robert Desnos. I didn’t get to meet the artist Xavier Roux, who conceptualized the project, but ran into Lucien with congratulating words.

I liked the ant. I’m sure the children running around it enjoyed it even more. And the hat was a nice touch. My only wish is that they set the ant free when it gets warmer outside.

the ant head

the sculpture is at least 60 feet long

Helen Wu with the owner/gallery director Lucien Zayan