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I’m in the middle of finals at school. I’m busy. But there’s stuff going on, cause the world doesn’t stop for me.

Saturday, May 31

We Want a New Object @ Chinatown. CalArts MFA students have taken over various Chinatown galleries, for an off-site MFA exhibition. Most of the artist featured in the Center’s current show, Salty Dog Bites the Hand, will be participating. Good stuff coming out of CalArts these days, definitely worth checking out. This project was curated by Christine Y. Kim and Malik Gaines.

Participating artists include: Ian Arenas. Allie Bogle, Michael Buitron, Mike Chang, Louisa Conrad, Mariechen Danz, Diana-Sofia Estrada, Bart Folkerts, Lindsay Foster, Nate Garcia, Liz Glynn, Sayre Gomez, Quinn Gomez-Heitzeberg, Nicholas Grider, Betsy Hunt, Kichul Kim, Sidonie Loiseleux, Justin Long, Suzanne Mejean, Alex Olson, Stephanie Owens, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Nate Page, Daniel Pineda, Nikki Pressley, Chris Revelle, Guan Rong, Alejandro Sanchez, Megan Sant, Astri Swendsrud, Kara Tanaka, Miller Updegraff, Carlin Wing, and Aaron Wrinkle.

Participating galleries include: Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Black Dragon Society, David Salow Gallery, Fifth Floor Gallery, Kontainer , Peres Projects and Telic Arts Exchange. It’s 7-10 PM. There’s also a closing party on the 7th, from 8pm - 2am.

Jennifer Steinkamp, It’s a Nice Day For a White Wedding @ ACME. Jennifer beat out my candidate, Joe Sola, for US representation at the upcoming Cairo Biennal, but being beaten by one of your artistic idols ain’t bad, any day of the week, especially since I love her work so damn much. Every time I encounter her work, whether it’s at a major solo show at the San Jose Art Museum or her tiny, attentively installed piece for the California Video exhibition, I am moved, calmed and fully engaged. Reception is 6-8 PM.

ARTWALK Culver City. If you love Culver City, and you love it’s crop of galleries, then this is your happy day. 12 - 6 PM.

Sunday, June 1

Venture Brothers Season 3 Premiere (promo video at top!) @ Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. Yes, Venture Brothers is so good that you should stay inside all day like I will and watch all of the first two seasons. When Klaus Nomi and Iggy Pop were henchmen for the Phantom during his coup attempt during the Monarch’s wedding and they were stopped by David Bowie, I officially became Jackson Publick and Doc Hammers’ bitch. Check your local listing, etc…

Technorati Tags: Venture Brothers, Jennifer Steinkamp, Culver City, ACME, LA art, art, openings, Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Black Dragon Society, David Salow Gallery, Fifth Floor Gallery, Kontainer , Peres Projects, Telic Arts Exchange, Ian Arenas. Allie Bogle, Michael Buitron, Mike Chang, Louisa Conrad, Mariechen Danz, Diana-Sofia Estrada, Bart Folkerts, Lindsay Foster, Nate Garcia, Liz Glynn, Sayre Gomez, Quinn Gomez-Heitzeberg, Nicholas Grider, Betsy Hunt, Kichul Kim, Sidonie Loiseleux, Justin Long, Suzanne Mejean, Alex Olson, Stephanie Owens, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Nate Page, Daniel Pineda, Nikki Pressley, Chris Revelle, Guan Rong, Alejandro Sanchez, Megan Sant, Astri Swendsrud, Kara Tanaka, Miller Updegraff, Carlin Wing, Aaron Wrinkle

It’s official, Idiocracy (in its way, possibly the most important movie ever made, I shit you not) is on it’s way. I have a lot of lefty friends who are all up on the fascist aspects of our current government and political system. But they’re way, way off. We’ve headed down a darker road, where the president is a frat boy whose idea of conduct at the Air Force Academy graduation is to engage in chest bumps with his fellow bros. A government for idiots, and by idiots.

Technorati Tags: bros, President Bush, Chest Bump, Idiocracy, Your Moment of Apocalypse, Apocalypse, dudes

I’m working on a brief presentation on postwar Japanese performance art and I was looking for Mariko Mori (in the context of the use of costume by post-performance artists) and I found the above fan art by Ashley, a.k.a. Ashli-chan, in a Google image search. Why is it that I’m always running into furry/cosplay oriented websites from the early days of the Internet (the above image is hosted on Angelfire and has been hanging around since the barely silicon-age of 2002) when I go looking for things? Is it a sign? I don’t know. Anyways the above image is based upon the image below, Birth of a Star (1995).

Oh, and in a way that makes just totally perfect sense, there’s a collectible doll/multiple sculpture/marketing opportunity of the above image, Star Doll (1998), seen below.

Technorati Tags: Mariko Mori, fan art, doll, collectible, Birth of A Star, Star Doll, art, Japanese Art, toy

This post was just supposed to be about the $600,000 sale of the above Gundam based painting (which I found out about via Kotaku), RX-78-2 Kabuki-mono 2005 version, surely an art milestone of one sort or another, but it’s really about the work of artist Tenmyouya Hisashi in general. Sometimes Google is kind and leads you to an easy revelation of sorts, in this case driving me right to Temyouya’s website, something that doesn’t always happen with unknown foreign artists.

Browsing through the site, I was expecting to find something absurdly commercial and kitschy, another post-culture, Murakami-esqe rehash of familiar and sales-friendly icons. But what I found was more deeply moving, as if Tenmyouya has collaged together some kind of secret code, a bursting cloud of reference, filled with potential. His work seems to nearly drown in kitschy reference - corny Bodhisattvas, an obvious and almost absurd God of Gamblers (which you should watch, immediately, BTW) re-hash, the legs of Armoured Core’s quadruped mecha, a recurring documentary clip of a cycling Sumo…, but it also seems to demand deep intellectual questioning from the viewer. In the work, I also feel a sense of quiet anger, of dissatisfaction, of emotional and societal detachment, the origin of which evades me.

Click the image to visit his site, and here’s a direct link to a awesomely thorough chronological breakdown of Tenmyouya’s work.

Technorati Tags: Gundam, Tenmyouya Hisashi, art, Japanese art, painting, art market, God of Gamblers, mecha

I posted the images from last week’s kernel-making session at Eric’s studio days ago, but I hadn’t yet found time to write about the session, and I had better hop to it, as I’m probably going to be back in the saddle tomorrow spinning kernels and pouring resin. Last week was a big pour, with us running both the 12 kernel gimbal and the earlier 5 kernel gimbal at once. Special guest Homeira Goldstein and her pals from Arts Manhattan were in the house to make kernels on the 12 unit gimbal, while us working fools got to play around on the 5 kernel gimbal.

There was a lot of running around to keep them both running at once, but at the end of the day we only need to make about 100 more kernels to be finished, about 8-9 days of casting. Then everything needs to be cleaned and prepped and the supporting structure that will make all the kernels come together into an ear of corn needs to get built. I’ve asked Eric about that structure and he says with frightful confidence “I’ve got it all worked out in my head.” From anyone else but Eric, that would scare the crap out of me, but I’ve come to understand that the inside of Eric’s mind is as ordered as the spheres of the heavens. On to the pics. As usual, all Maize related pictures are available for your perusal in their Flickr set.

Above - Just some of the hundreds of kernels now wandering around Eric’s studio. If Eric’s studio wasn’t massive, nearly every horizontal surface would have a row of these stored on it.

Above - Chris Williamson turning the 5 kernel gimbal, with clear resin inside. This is the first gimbal that Eric built for the project and because of the way that it’s balanced, it doesn’t like to keep spinning when you apply force to it. The 12 kernel gimbal is actually much easier to turn and keep an eye on.

Above - Eric with Homeira Goldstein.

Above - Some of the kernels by the Arts Manhattan guests in rotation. Love those clear colours.

Above - Eric and his daughter Nicole.

Above - Eric pours birdseed into one of the Arts Manhattan kernels.

Above - clear pink resin pouring over the birdseed layer. When the resin is flowing like this, it’s all about keeping everything in rotation to get even coverage.

Above - The finished birdseed kernel.

Above - probably the best kernel made on Saturday, that black spot near the seam at bottom is a pebble that was dropped in. Up close it’s like magic.

Above - Mixing colours.

Above - So I made a bit of a mess of a kernel on Saturday. This kernel got alternately called the “blood clot”, “diseased liver” and a host of other disease related names. What you’re looking at there is clear resin infused with the tint Molten Orange Candy and Cress Gold powder. I let the resin set up after being catalyzed until it was kind of goopy, and then we poured it in. It quickly became a floppy, gummy mess that splattered across one side of the kernel and then set up there.

Above - At the end of the day, the completed “blood clot”. After the first gloopy layer, I poured in a pair of opaque pink resins, infusing the first pink layer with more cress gold. The whole thing is filled with air bubbles and odd bits, gold streaks and weird spots where the different colors interact. I was really happy. I also broke the nozzle taking it out of the mold.

Above - Closeup of the broken nozzle. The reason it broke is because the opaque resins don’t harden in the same way as the non-opaque resins. They’re kind of chalky and you can pick at them, as they never get as hard. The nozzle would probably have survived had I put a clear resin layer either at the end or between the two opaque pink coats. Regardless, all the pieces get their nozzles sawn off as part of the cleanup process, so this one was just getting a head start.

Technorati Tags: Eric Johnson, Homeira Goldstein, Chris Williamson, art, LA art, resin, polyester resin, kernels, corn, Maize, in the studio, artmaking, casting, sculpture,