JACK WHITE – FREEDOM AT 21
2012-07-23Music video for Jack White’s “Freedom at 21” directed by Hype Williams. From Jack White ‘s debut Album Blunderbuss.
TweetDAN DEACON – TRUE THRUSH
2012-07-23The video co-directed by Ben O’Brien and Dan Deacon is based on a drawing game popular in the Baltimore art collective Wham City, which is in turn based on the game “telephone.”
For the video, Dan and Ben filmed a simple 13-second scene. That scene was then shown to the next team. After seeing the video that team had 1 hour to recreate it – characters, props, set, costumes, and actions – as close to exactly as possible from only their memory.
TweetBEFORE WATCHMEN
2012-07-23Before Watchmen is a series of comic books to be published by DC Comics. Acting as a prequel to the 1986 12-issue Watchmen limited series by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, the project will consist of seven limited series, Rorschach, Minutemen, Dr. Manhattan, Comedian, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, and Ozymandias. As well as an epilogue one-shot.
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ANTONY GORMLEY – STILL STANDING
2012-07-16In the ground floor gallery, Gormley has created an installation of 17 body forms, orthogonally arranged within the architecture of the gallery space. Each sculpture has been built up from a series of small, rectangular iron blocks; modular architectonic forms that diagrammatically map the body’s internal volume, radically departing from anatomy.The works evoke imbalance and even entropy since key blocks in their visible support system have been removed and subtle displacements of weight mean that they are shifted from their own centre of gravity. Gormley has described these works as ’a kind of weaving of mass with void; a push and pull between blocks that are present and blocks that are absent‘. Poised in a suspended state, the works could be seen to investigate the verticality of the body, both in spatial terms but also in relation to the evolutionary trajectory of humans, progressing from an animal on all fours to an upright, cognitive being.
In the upstairs gallery, Gormley will present a single new sculpture from the ’Propper‘ series which further experiments with blocks as the fundamental basis for building or sculpture and uses the tectonics of post and lintel architecture – in the form of vertical and horizontal blocks – to translate body mass into the equivalent of a high-rise tower. Although these works appear like carefully constructed body-forms, their formation is actually more playful and free, reflecting the childhood game of placing blocks one on top of another, each time attempting to reach new levels of height and width before collapse and drawing attention to the eccentric loan paths of the build.
Exhibition runs through to September 15th, 2012
White Cube
48 Hoxton Square
London
N1 6PB
PATRICK LUNDEEN – GOOD FOR YOU SON
2012-07-16Lundeen brings together seemingly disparate objects-from flags to rugs to posters to keyboards to grocery store dailies and magazine pages-into cohesive works resembling anthropomorphic masks. Neon-colored, kaleidoscopic patterns embellish six-foot tall cut out canvas masks, speaking to the artist’s fascination with the exaggerated theatricality of Coney Island type characters, the Contemporary Macabre, and Outsider Art motifs. Borrowing from pop culture imagery and the neo-impressionists, the works hover between the humorous and sinister and the naïve and sardonic. Accompanying the exhibition is a 7″ vinyl record by the artist’s experimental three man rock band, The Oblique Mystique.
While Lundeen’s musical influences range from the lo-fi genre, and improvisational acts like Hound Dog Taylor to the schizophrenic sounds of Daniel Johnston-it’s a naggingly familiar tune by 80’s crooner Rick Astley that drones from an old Casio keyboard in the piece, Together Forever. In the lo-fi, lo-brow Genie Amp, a vintage Fender Silverface amplifier functions as both pedestal and audio source for a booming silver-faced genie trapped in a T.V. declaring, “Behold, I am Silver Face!” The nostalgic nod is twofold. Despite the purposely brazen use of intentionally awkward elements, the work maintains a sense of authenticity and serves as homage to earlier American culture from before the artist’s time.
Exhibition runs through to July 28th, 2012
Mike Weiss Gallery
520 West 24th Street
New York
NY
10011
BOYD & EVANS – VIEWS
2012-07-16In the first decade of their partnership, Boyd & Evans made paintings from photographs in their own archive, spraying acrylic paint through stencils to create an even, thinly painted surface. Assembling disparate elements from different photographs allowed them to create new, mysterious compositions. Their paintings, while highly realistic, have a scale, composition and use of perspective that edges closely to surrealism; in these dreamlike pictures the air feels thin and time suspended.
Vision itself has been a longstanding concern for Boyd & Evans, with many works suggesting the conditions of seeing or being seen. Views 1 and 2 (1973) show in the first canvas a girl with her back to the viewer, looking out toward a group of people and some cars parked incongruously in the distance. In the second painting she turns, as in a photographic snapshot, and smiles directly at the viewer.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Boyd & Evans abandoned the spray gun in favour of brushes, but continued to be inspired by photographic imagery, with an emphasis on landscape. In a number of works lone figures are set within sweeping, panoramic vistas traversed by railroad tracks and asphalt roads, ubiquitous traces of human industry and travel. Increasingly Boyd & Evans have also shown an interest in pure landscape, devoid of human presence, a concern which developed while they were in Indonesia and the American Southwest.
Exhibition runs through to September 2nd, 2012
Ikon Gallery
1 Oozells Square
Brindleyplace
Birmingham
B1 2HS
