Ryuichi Sakamoto - World Citizen (I Won't Be Disapointed)

vocals: David Sylvian

Maureen Cavanaugh

The Past is Present
May 16 - June 8, 2008
Jackson Artworks
1108 Jackson Street
Omaha, NE 68102

Maureen will be there for the artist's reception: Thursday, May 29th at 8:00 p.m

image: Machaela and Nick, 2006, 40x50, acrylic on canvas

Lykke Li

I'm Good, I'm Gone


Little Bit

A peek into the artist's studio

Here's a glimpse of more work from Fanny Bostrom's show when it was still in her studio.

Coming up this week!

FANNY BOSTROM
“picnic”
May 29 - June 28, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday May 29, 7-9pm
at 31GRAND, 143 Ludlow St. New York, NY 10002

Ant Invasion: Fanny Bostrom’s Land of Do-It-Yourself

For her first solo exhibition with 31GRAND, Swedish-born Artist Fanny Bostrom has selected the succinct, if not facile, title – Picnic. Upon entering the transformed gallery space one cannot help but feel as though they’ve crossed a threshold into Ms. Bostrom’s cosmology that is comprised of paintings, drawings, cut-paper silhouettes, sculptures and a mixed media installation. Instead of recreation, respite and rural pace, we’re surrounded by a frenzy of activity – both in terms of the multiple art forms she has employed as well as the multiple renderings of mad productivity that figure heavily in her work.

It would seem that Ms. Bostrom is playing the term ‘picnic’ in two directions. At first glance, her own prolific preparations seems to invoke the old adage - life’s no picnic – and implies that leisure is a luxury; yet her images simultaneously foreground bustling scenes within naturalized landscapes that are made inhabitable, even cozy, through the activities that take place therein.
In her paintings of multi-level landscapes we find, what appear to handmade homes, forts and cabins replete with oddly shaped windows and porches. Lilliputian figures, each preoccupied with their own mission, are scattered across these structures that are set upon cleaved hills and divided by deep ravines. These nascent figures seem to possess neither the time nor interest in facing one another, their only concern is the task at hand, which may include: smoking a pipe, climbing a ladder, burrowing into a hill, climbing a tree. They ceaselessly fish and forage – in search of what exactly, we cannot easily deduce.

The few figures that are strung together by telephone yarn appear more distanced than connected and like worker ants, they belong more to a colony than a community. If there is a queen, it is not one single being, but perhaps the supernatural cross-eyed owl, a symbol of nature and wisdom, which hovers above.

While her paintings and silhouettes are colorful, there is a flatness that pervades Fanny Bostrom’s work. Despite the painstaking detail of texture provided in her drawings, each scene is drained of color and contorted in scale. Mythical pathologies shift as the frantic do-it-yourself Lilliputians turn into cannibalistic Amazonians roasting sausages on open fires. Amidst the kitschy domesticity of cabin life and the wide-eyed cartoon animals lurks a sinister undertone that we more commonly associate with outsider art. Like many outsider artists, Bostrom is self-taught and her own urgent faith in activity is made manifest by her ambition to set herself to task. Like the people that populate her images Ms. Bostrom is working in every direction possible with extreme focus. Again, in search of exactly what, we cannot easily deduce, but it will be interesting to see what she does next.

- J. Malac, 2008

Tonight

Really looking forward to seeing this show tonight. Last night I was given a little preview via Eugenio's camera and loved it! I've been following his work for quite a while, and he's really developed into quite a prolific artist. His work keeps evolving and growing in new and beautiful ways.


Eugenio Percossi, Black and White (2008), Mixed media, Dimensions variable

In RARE PLUS, Eugenio Percossi presents an installation entitled Black and White as an entry ticket to a world where reality fades into illusion and truth into imagination. The black and white room, with an atmosphere and scenery reminiscent of the 1930s, is so authentic that one has the impression it has always been there.  Everything from the furniture, wall decoration, and bed to the accessories and flowers is executed in grisaille, as if old, frozen, and forgotten.  Percossi's room is empty, but full and furnished in every detail, with unreality and illusion blending with nostalgia and memories.

Eugenio Percossi - Black and White
at RARE 521 W 26th St, NYC 10001
May 22 - June 21, 2008
Opening Night Reception: Thursday, May 22, 6pm - 8pm

Bryan Ferry - Make You Feel My Love

Pet Shop Boys - Home and Dry
Directed by Wolfgang TIllmans
for Jack and Adam

I know I have been bad about posting lately. This blog started out as a curatorial outlet for me, so I could combine art and music. Only recently have I let my personal life enter this space, and today I will again. Today my dear Jack, who's only 9 years old, was told he would only have 3 to 6 months to live due to mast cell tumors in his intestine. It's extremely aggressive and in order to improve his quality of life (and hopefully keep him around longer), he started his first chemo today. All prayers are welcome. I can't imagine my life without him.

Michael Somoroff - The Red Sea

images: rendering and detail of the sculpture in progress
May 27 to– June 15 at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter
Opening: Sunday, May 25. 2008

4.30 pm: lecture of Michael Somoroff
’The Red Sea/Revelations, Transformations’
English with german translation

6.00 pm: Holy Mass with sermon on the subject of Exodus 14:
Passage of Israel throughout the Red Sea.

Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11.00 am – 5.00 pm
Sunday 1.00 – 5.00 pm
Monday closed

KUNST-STATION SANKT PETER KÖLN
Leonhard-Tietz-Straße 6, 50676 Köln
Telefon +49.221.921 30 30

Slim Cessna's Auto Club - Hold On
These guys are playing soon! I'm at least making one of the shows.
May 30 at Europa in Greenpoint Brooklyn
June 1 at the Mercury Lounge

Gustave Courbet

La Femme au perroquet, 1866
Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 195.6 cm

Not much time left to catch this show, but if you can before it closes on the 18th, I highly recommend it. It was a wonderful way to spend last Friday evening.

metmuseum.org

The passing of one of my heroes

Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg
October 22, 1925 - May 13, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg’s untitled ‘combine’, 1963.
Oil, silkscreened ink, metal, and plastic on canvas, 82 x 48 in.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

His existence was one of the influences on who I am today and the world will greatly miss him.

Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien

Music: Debussy
Ballet created by Robert Wilson (co-choregraphied with Susushi Hanayaghi)

Jack

My whole life could change as of tomorrow. Jack is heading in for some major surgery/biopsy. Any prayers are welcome.

Marianne Faithfull-There is a Ghost
Directed by Robert Wilson

Willem Drost
Bathsheba, 1654
Oil on canvas, 103 cm x 87 cm

Trentemoller - Evil Dub-Moan
live and featuring Ane Trolle

Jan Dunning
Untitled (Pleasure), 2004
Colour pinhole photograph, 50 x 50 cm

So Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tickets go on sale tomorrow. I have a feeling though that this will be as close as I get to seeing him live this year. Saw him back in 2001, and have to say it was a night I will never forget.

Amanda Ghost - "Filthy Mind

Anthony Pontius
"severely stumped and stoophead"
24x24 inches, oil and ink on panel, 2007
currently at 31GRAND