The Philip Johnson Glass House will open to the public for the first timethis spring. This 47-acre site, with buildings designed in each decade of Philip Johnson's life, represents a survey of architecture and art. The 1949 house is among the symbols of modernist architecture.

The basic concept for Johnson's glass house was borrowed from Mies van der Rohe, who was designing the glass-and-steel Farnsworth House during the same period. Unlike the Farnsworth House, however, Johnson's home is symmetrical and sits solidly on the ground. The interior space is divided by low walnut cabinets and a brick cylinder which contains the bathroom. The cylinder and the brick floors are a polished purple hue; the steel is dark gray. Included in the landscape are sculptures and a guest house.

Springtime is considered "the preview months" (April, May, and June) these previews will precede the Inaugural Gala Picnic to be held on Saturday June 23, 2007. The Gala Picnic will feature the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Of Note: Metropolis Magazine has a great article "Extending the Legacy" on the Glass House as well as a great slide show. Above image is by Paul Warchol for Metropolis

Labels: Museums

Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" with live score
Current Space is showing BP with a live score by Graham Reynolds and the Golden Arm Trio, April 25 at 8pm. Graham Reynolds (of the Golden Arm Trio) composed the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Richard Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly". I do love me some Battleship Potemkin. (this is in Baltimore BTW)

The NHL Playoffs
Seriously, isn't this what we want to see all year? sometimes I wonder if we really need the regular season (I joke - everyone loves the regular season).

JT Kirkland overcomes mega adversity
"Supple" is JT's curatorial effort - it is back on - Supple @ Warehouse Gallery April 26 - May 12.

The ArtDC international art fair
This event runs from April 26-29. BTW this is probably my only posting about it, for some reason I'm just not so excited. I probably should be, but it seems like a me too type event - I've been wrong in the past and I'll probably go. So what do I know...

Labels: Fontana Mix

Recently I spent some time in a faraway land (it's called Reston) for a quick get away from the house and to have an indulgent type of weekend. Other than room service, decent restaurants, and sitting on my ass, for me that usually means buying a bunch of books or magazines, that weekend was no exception. So here is the beginning of the magazine roundup.

Cabinet. At fist I thought I had made a big mistake with this because it has a feel of "we are based in Williamsburg and we are trying real hard". Well the fact is, that they are trying real hard and succeeding on a number of levels.

Jocko Weyland's article; Square Watermelons and Leg Art, a story about the lost images of the Associated Press was worth the price of the magazine alone. However it is followed up with a small portfolio of Greg Jones recent photographs Make Model Mark, which although simple and banal are in fact supercharged images of automobiles that respond as artworks about class as well as using a quotation of minimalism to address and further its viewpoint. Top all this of with Trevor Paglen's great article about symbols and insignia of classified military units.

This magazine is almost like an onion, I keep reading from it and get more and more each time.

www.cabinetmagazine.org

JPG is a magazine with a huge web presence. It has a very egalitarian approach to curatorial decision - they are voted on by people who visit the site and sometimes it matter and sometimes it does not. This is good and bad. The magazine has great photos, but the problem for me is that there are too many single images from one photographer. It is a bit like going to a show where there are 47 works by 47 different artists - you see some great images but there is no depth - nothing that gives you enough to make a real decision about any of the artists.

I should note, JPG, is not trying to be the next Aperture so maybe this lack of curatorial / editing is more my problem than the typical reader. your milage may vary - still enjoyable though.

www.jpgmag.com

Labels: Magazines

Blue Monday (Factory Records catalog number - Fac 73) is a song by New Order. To say it is the most famous song they ever did would be an understatement, people claim it is almost single-handedly responsible for rave culture. That may or may not be true (and that may or may not be a good thing). That is not to say Blue Monday is almost near religion among it's fans.

Which brings me to www.bluemondayownersclub.com. I don't have anything to really say about it, because I'm not sure if I think it's the greatest thing in the world or the scariest, I'll let you decide. In a way it's kind of like a shy version of my space where no one has to say anything - because by showing up your already in the club.

Needless to say it shows that men are truly the obsessive collectors the media and women claim that they are. Trouble is I still have my copy of that record as well. So what to make of this? I'm not sure except that I know that most of the people who have Blue Monday are white, short haired ex-trainspotting record collector types (or are you always that way). So if I see you walking down the street with a stack of records - I'm really not stalking you - I'm looking for that special record you don't know I need.

A quick note about the reach that Blue Monday had. Kraftwerk immediately booked that same studio New Order used for part of their next record - both bands will admit that its almost laughable how low tech that studio was, especially considering the futuristic sounds that ended up coming from it.

Labels: music

April 14th in Richmond:the Grand Re-Opening of Twelve by Twelve: A Record Bin Art Show, at Chop Suey Books, 1317 W. Cary Street from 6-8pm (full disclosure: I have some work in this)

April 20th in Baltimore: Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith will participate in a rare signing hosted by Atomic Books on 36th Street, from 6-7PM.

April 13th in DC (ok, Crystal City, VA): Artomatic opens. 2121 Crystal Drive, from 6-7PM. (full disclosure: I have some work in this also)

Labels: Baltimore, Galleries, Richmond, Washington DC

I paused before I wrote anything about Sol Lewitt recently because to me he was truly an influential artist in helping develop my approach to image-making, in particular image-thinking.

My first intentional encounter with his work came when I was working for Nancy Drysdale in the early eighties. She was selling some of his wall drawings and asked Chris Bailey and myself (we both worked for Nancy at the time) to produce the work in accordance to the directions of the drawing. At first I thought it was quite a cop out - how could an artist not do his own drawings (I was young and more than a bit naive). The one thing it made me do, was to start thinking and looking at how these works could vary just by the installer. Later as the wall drawings became more colorful, I thought they were becoming more about the implementation of the work than the concept of the work.

What I came to realize was that the implementation is/was the concept. I still think that is pretty interesting.

His approach became infinitely scalable. Here is an example of the directions of a drawing. This one is from the NGA's Vogel collection:

Wall Drawing #65 / Lines not short, not straight, crossing and touching, drawn at random using four colors, uniformly dispersed with maximum density, covering the entire surface of the wall.

The interpretation is wide open, yet at the same time it is defined within structural limits. It is open and closed at the same time.

Every once in a while I'll talk to someone about my work and I will talk about how I'm interested in a "non-specific exactness", this approach comes directly from thinking about these early wall drawings.

Labels: conceptual art, Death, Drawings

Staying up to date on the Artomatic thing. This weekend saw a bevy of activity from me. I painted the walls (above) and hung the show (below) and frankly I'm pretty happy with it overall. I also walked the show a bit and saw a few things I thought were pretty good.

I have no idea about these artists at all, however I thought the work looked good and I responded to it. Enormous credit to Susana Raab for being able to photograph the elusive Harlan Sanders.

Also big thanks to Sheri Evanoff for letting me borrow a big vehicle to transport my work.



Damien Gill


Susana Raab


Robin Walker

Labels: Galleries, Washington DC

I've decided that I'm going to participate this year. In the past Artomatic has kind of been the Art critics punching bag. (I don't expect that to change) However the thing that I've really started to notice that even with the lows (and there are) the highs seem pretty high. I'm going to have small articles for the next month or so - today's is more of a photo diary.



The space I'll be showing in (top), registration (above), the open area for installations (bottom). I will say the space for this is pretty great - the installation area has a great view of the potomac/airport. I should note that Artomatic is kind of split into two kinds of spaces, the 6th floor is mostly if not all older offices - so literally you will be able to duck your head in and out of a few hundred rooms, while the 8th floor is wide open with very few walls - just columns.

Labels: Galleries, Washington DC

I love it when the world is thinking about the same thing avery once in a while. Yesterday, I posted the Nate Harrison thing while over at Pretty Goes With Pretty, A whole rash of turntable type stuff was posted. Also a decent post on "Mingering Mike" who is a DC "Legend" for his imaginary recording career.

For your pleasure today I have a few Christian Marclay posts from YouTube, after that I will stop putting the needle on the record for a bit.

Christian Marclay
For those of you new to the party, CM is a visual artist and musical composer who is exploring the pattern languages connecting sound, photography, video, and film.

CM uses records and turntables in musical performances, and was one of the earliest and one of the most notable musicians to do so outside a hip hop context. Marclay sometimes manipulates or damages records to produce continuous loops and skips as well as using the album - both art work and object to make other art objects.

Mini Ducumentary / 5.5, from Trio

Live Performance / 9.9, From Roulette TV

Video Quartet Excerpt #1/ 2:49

Video Quartet Excerpt #2/ 0:53

Labels: conceptual art, music

Nate Harrison's "Amen Break" / 18:08 mins.

This amazing 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample has been used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

I'm sure you know it and think it's a James Brown beat. Well worth your time.

Labels: music