Late (from me) news from Saint Etienne. Richard X has remixed/remade the entire “Foxbase Alpha” album (from the masters as I understand it) which will be released in a highly limited edition. And here’s the best part. It’s called “Foxbase Beta”
Yes it’s all very meta and no doubt pretty interesting. Sold out in the US (no surprise). You can probably find it in all the usual spots.
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I made my fist visit to Dia:Beacon on Sunday and I can tell you right now it won’t be my last. I have enough notes and thoughts to write about this trip for the next couple of weeks, but will constrain myself to just the next few days.
I want to talk a little bit about Imi Knoebel’s 24 Colors—for Blinky.
I’ve been interested in seeing this group of artworks since they were first installed in May of 2008.
24 Colors… as it is presented today is a new version from what was presented 30 years or so ago (not that I saw it then – this is the first time the work has been shown in the US). Knoebel’s work plays with the viewer and space in formal ways, surprising the viewer with unexpected juxtapositions as well as unexpected color choices. You can even “hear” Palermo’s voice in the work (although it is secondary – as the work is clearly that of Knoebel’s) These large and expansive artworks hold the viewer and with time the shapes extend themselves outward leading my mind to consider further possibilities that this work could continue to develop. I found the works full of this quality. This was impressive to me because they are all monochromatic (reductive) artworks.
There is a secondary subtext for this work – the loss of friendship between the two. Knoebel’s forms that make 24 Colors… are similar to a jigsaw puzzle that will never fit together and none of the artworks has a right angle – the works distill and speak of a messier thing than the formalities of either of the two’s work. The work speaks obliquely about friendship and loss.
Leave a CommentThis is from Artforum, I found it via C-Monster.
Come September 1, the European Union has banned the sale of incandescent lightbulbs. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Till Briegleb reports, the ban will have an impact on art, specifically works that use lightbulbs for either functional, aesthetic, or historical effects. A case in point is the work of the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, who often hangs a bare lightbulb in his installations as a melancholic homage to the Soviet-era ideal of electricity, which was not always available to the citizens.
“Unfortunately, there are no exceptions to [the law] 2005/32/EG” writes Briegleb. “And thus artists, restorers, and museum technicians find themselves faced with the bizarre necessity of small-time criminality.” Kabakov is not the only artist to use bulbs. There are 140 in László Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space-Modulator; the German post–Word War II “Zero” Group was fond of lightbulbs. There’s a host of contemporary artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Höller, Jorge Pardo, Valie Export, Stephan Huber, Isa Genzken, Mike Kelley, and Adrian Paci. Even artists who did not work explicitly with lightbulbs have used them: Rauschenberg, Kienholz, Tinguely, and Beuys.
As Briegleb notes, the illegal sale of lightbulbs—even to museums—comes with a hefty fine: $70,000. Even if the existing bulbs could be saved, it’s clear that the supply will eventually be exhausted. To keep a lightbulb work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres or Höller shining bright, museums and collectors will need more than one thousand bulbs, since the traditional ones tend to last on average sixty to eighty days under the kind of constant use that is typical for such installations.
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There are artists that you think of when you think of drawing, Pat Steir, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine (I’m still blown away by the “Tool” drawings of the seventies) Jack Kirby (for some) and I’ll throw in an extra one, Daniel Rebour.
Daniel Rebour was a French illustrator. He is best known for drawing bicycles and bike parts. His drawings were published in cycling magazines and catalogs, to my knowledge he never showed in a gallery
However his drawings are extraordinary. His line and detail are unmatched by anything I’ve ever seen – they are also iconic. Rebour’s drawings are the flashpoint of the image of the cycling boom of the early seventies and to this day, they evoke a memory of an earlier and to my eyes, a more human version of bicycle culture.
When I view Rebour’s work I equate the new technological present with a loss of humanity that the early days of cycling held and showed so well. The artist in me views Rebour’s work with envy of his amazing technical and natural skill as well as sadness knowing that artwork like this just isn’t made nor considered relevant anymore.
When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. – H.G. Wells
Leave a CommentThe Stone Roses are reforming for a summer tour. So far 21 UK dates are set – but sources say this could easily go higher. The band – famous for their war cry of Mad For It and anthemic hits I Am The Resurrection and She Bangs The Drums – are also in talks to play a US date, thought to be Coachella.
I always loved the first album cover with it’s references to the Paris riots of the sixties on it …
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