kids are swingin' from the power lines

Rubik's Cubes will always hold a very special place in my heart, somewhere between the spots reserved for Pogs and Mr. Bucket ("The first to get their balls in Mr. Bucket wins!").

I remember the first time I solved my own cube. I was 12 years old, not very coordinated, and believed that the toy truly measured my own intelligence. After three months of hard work, I sleighed the beast that is Rubik's. This started me off down a slippery slope of obsessive puzzle solving. The regular 3x3 Rubik's Cube was not enough; I needed more; a real challenge. (I was, like, so intelligent.) Hello, 4x4, gordian knot, snake cube, Gameboy tetris.

This went on for a while. Needless to say, I gained a strong appreciation for bright colors and pixelated patterns. That's probably why I'm so drawn to the giant images made by Cube Works Studio.

The artists at Cube Works make giant pixelated representations of famous images using nothing but Rubik's Cubes. These famous pictures include Da Vinci's The Last Supper, Michelangelo's Creation of Man, and portraits of superstars like Marilyn Monroe and George Harrison. The pieces are large in scale and weight, and you can imagine why: The Creation of Man required an astonishing 250,798 cubes. The Cube Works Studio is certainly not the first group to use Rubik's Cubes for art (it's been noted as its own sub-genre of folk art), but this team of assemblers takes the method to a new extreme via scale.

The idea is to reinvent works that are easily recognized and relevant to the public. The combination of such imagery with the once-beloved toy acts as both a source of nostalgia and comic relief. Let us make light of Jesus's last meal, shall we?
I admire the way that the guys at Cube Works combine consumerism into their art. Rubik's Cubes are a perfect object to use to comment on the relationship between materialism and pop culture. They are utterly useless and worthless in any physical or practical sense, but they are still the cat's meow. According to Wikipedia, within 7 years of the toy's worldwide release, sales surpassed thirty million units, becoming "the world's most asked-for plaything." Using such hyper-iconic images with hyper-monumental toys yields hyper-awesome results, more appealing, applicable, and, dare I say, smile inducing than ever before.

And it's always nice to see something nice come out of our recycled toys. Sure beats this guy:


Photo Credit:
top: Ryan Kinnen
Right: making The Creation of Man, Cube Works Studio, taken from Loyal K.N.G.
Left: Cube Works Studio, Barcroft Media, taken from zimbio
Bottom: Rubik's Cube in popular culture

leave them stones alone, little darling

Okay. Have you ever wanting to paint the edges of an Alexander Calder mobile and then spin it around at, say, 20 mph just to see the design it makes? Me too.

---->






Fantasize no more; this pipe dream, I imagine, has been made real by Julie Mehretu.

Mehretu makes large-scale abstract paintings that are just oozing with movement. The paintings' strength are in their layering: each work has a thick build up of layers of acrylic, pencil, pen, and ink. The works speak to architecture and city life, specifically referencing the congestion and noise associated with the latter. She uses the general set ups of real gridded cities and overlays them in such a way that creates new abstract cities; in this process, the constant movement of the city is slowed and flattened, its many dimensions reduced to a single, visible map.

The clear sense of motion in Mehretu's work clearly elicit that of both the abstract expressionists before her and similar performance artists who make time-based art. The paintings act as a simplified compression of time while serving as documentation of her own time and movements. Two narratives are thus created through the pieces, one telling a story of flux and evanescence in a bigger, empty space and a second chronicling Mehretu's singular movements into a permanent fixture. In a sense, this makes the paintings incredibly personal.

Notions of intimacy come up over and over in the work, perhaps due to the nature of the artist's subject matters. In these landscapes, Mehretu creates busy cities, which are already notorious for being cold and impersonal, and puts her viewers right in the midst of their chaos. The imagery could be described as reductive and even confusing, representing specific places and people as dots or triangles or lines. In this way, the city is made more impersonal and abstract. But there is warmth to the pieces as well. Everything feels terribly in place, even the areas where the ink smudges, and it's easy to accept one's place amongst the chaos.

Plus, I like all the little explanations I can make for the different parts. See that one red dot? That's me. And you're the line of green dots on the right -- it's not that you're fat; you're just moving a lot. Cheers.

photo credit:
Top left: Alexander Calder, Sumac II, 1952, Collection of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Middle right: Julie Mehretu, Stadia I, 2003, ink and acrylic on canvas, 108" x 144"
Bottom left: Julie Mehretu, Congress, 2003, ink and acrylic on canvas, 72" x 96"

like, 'where you been, my brotha?'

Mark Dean Veca loves intestines.




Amongst other things, he makes giant paintings and large-scale installations often painted directly onto the wall. These paintings are filled with organic, grotesque, lumpy forms and intricate interlocking patterns, eliciting clear references to organs, carnality, and the overall form of the internal body. Veca is known for creating cartoons, psychedelic landscapes, and iconographic imagery while incorporating long-established (and sometimes sickening) decorative motifs.

The works are extremely illustrative, which makes them a little funny. Veca attempts to create two dimensional representations of internal and external bodily figures and tensions as he experiences them, resulting in bright, towering, writhing structures. The pieces are neurotic, repetitive, and obsessive, amplified by their complexity and scale. (Even his small works are incredibly intricate and packed with detail.) Woven into the visceral bits are popular and/or historical iconic figures. So he makes work about the body, its functioning as a gross unit, and its similarities with pop culture.

I think I could hang with MDV. It seems that we're compatibly neurotic and fascinated with the same obsessive imagery and processes. Most of my work focuses on similar themes and generally incorporates repetitive, taxing tasks resembling Veca's.

It's too bad LNS doesn't look anything like MTV. Or anything cool. Except this:

Thanks, LANLord Networking Systems. Double angel status!

photo credit:
top: "Phantasmagoria," Mark Dean Veca, site specific installation, 2008
right: Mark Dean Veca's Retrospective at the University Art Gallery at UCSD, 2009
left: Mark Dean Veca logo, 2009, acrylic on tyvek
bottom: LANLord Networking Systems Inc.

tears rise in the stands like water in a glass

"The music sounds like helicopters taking off in a kitchen on Mars, where the plants on the windowsill have dog heads and howl for a midday water drip, and the toaster spits cookies from its mouth at will. Beautiful and bizarre, narcotizing, sending visitors to a little place inside their heads generally reserved for hallucinatory effects and self-realization."
- losanjealous.com


Gang Gang Dance encompass music, noise, dance, performance art, theater, DJing, film, and visual art into one curious, visceral amalgam. They're a band who is just as likely to play in a museum or gallery as they are a nightclub (such as Rochester's Bug Jar in August of '09). The key is their unique style of music, incorporating beats and melodies from every continent played through a series of synthesizers and computers, looped into entrancing, intricately layered rhythms. On top, several drums and guitars are played and vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos echoes (sings, chants, screams, howls, whatever you'd like) her dreamy poetry:

Prisms have kissed my lids //// Sea salt has rubbed on my hips

In 2007, the band released a 30 minute sound and video collaboration titled Rettina Riddim, which documented their history and career. The film pieces live recordings, field recordings, and practice tapes alongside shots of friends, fans, and found footage, creating a work that is smooth and mystic while building into a "pleasant state of sensory overload" (Georg Gatsas, via Whitney Museum of American Art). Above all, the film is raw and demanding, stressing the band's main (and apparent) position on music: it is both its own form of art and an integral part of other mediums.

In 2008, Gang Gang Dance played at the Whitney Museum's Biennial as part of a performance/installation piece. The band built a wall of mirrors facing the audience, behind which they filmed themselves playing. The film was then projected as a live feed onto the mirror wall but did not immediately show up (because that's what happens when one projects onto mirrors). Band members dressed up in elaborate masks and costumes drawn from the eclectic cultures that their music references. Throughout the set, one band member painted white paint along the mirror so that the feed slowly began to show, literally painting the band into sight.

You can watch some of the Whitney performance and the band's thoughts about the piece below.

photo & video credit:
quote and photo courtesy losanjealous.com, http://www.losanjealous.com/2009/02/09/gang-gang-dance-and-ariel-pinks-haunted-graffiti-the-smell-february-2-2009/
Live performance video courtesy of youtube, taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sam1Ybm-cRE
Whitney video courtesy of artreview.com, taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dJd55sJgWg&feature=related

feel the way I feel

Tattoos are interesting.

They've certainly come a long way in terms of social acceptance, significance, reputation, etc.

I think that the option of choosing clothing and one's look is both amazing and fascinating. It allows individuals to use their bodies as canvases every day. We are all given this clean, soft, fleshy material with which we can do virtually what ever we want. (Let's ignore implications of social control and stigmas for a moment.) Wanna wear blue eyeshadow? Do it. Wanna wear a tutu? Sure. Sparkly shoes? 10 clashing patterns? A chicken suit? Go ahead. Clothes rock! I digress.

Tattooing takes this idea one step further, adding permanent elements to the body. Entrusting somebody to make a permanent design on your body takes a lot of trust. Even when planned out well, the artist is given a huge degree of free range and control over the tattoo. Given the right canvas, the artist can create any eternal painting. That's why I like Amanda Wachob.

Wachob is both a painter and a tattoo artist, a background that clearly influences her works. She doesn't follow the typical flash art tattoo motif; there will be no tigers popping out of a skull's eye underneath a bleeding heart impaled by diamonds. Instead, she makes abstract tattoos that resemble individual brush strokes.

As a painter, I'm used to having strokes of paint on my body, but they always make me feel like I need a good shower. Traces of paint on my arms and legs seem anything but permanent, more a testament to my own artistry and laziness. Still, I love the idea of letting an artist design her own work and let her make an honest mark -- not a picture -- on the body. It challenges the conventional norms associated with the body as an image and as a living entity.



afterword by tupac:

I been handlin' stress in this shit for years
blazed out sheddin' tattooed tears


photo credit:
top: "bad tattoos," http://popnewsday.wordpress.com/
both Wachob photos courtesy of the artist's website
bottom: tatu, http://vu.morrissey-solo.com/sleeper/stretch/log.htm

thank you for mending me babies

FPRYEFX
.... that's what she said?



Each of Bratsa Bonifacho's paintings is composed in a very similar and specific way: every individual work is split up into a grid of equally portioned boxes, filled with different colored symbols (either letters, numbers, or pictures). They are large in scale, alarmingly colorful, and a little overwhelming.

I was initially interested in Bonifacho's work because it seems to reference a number of Jasper John's paintings (via Numbers In Color, for example). I'm attracted to both artists' paintings for similar reasons, but they represent different things to me. Both artists use arbitrary but iconic symbols (numbers, letters, simple silhouettes) to celebrate color and form while demanding specific reactions and associations: that is, it is impossible to look at works like Bonifacho's Decoder What!! and not recognize the letters and punctuation marks as part of our own coveted language.

In his latest series Human Farm, Bonifacho takes these ideas a step further, this time specifically focusing on the scripting of computer viruses. In these pieces, he imitates the effects of said viruses by scrambling the letters int he pictures in the paintings, allowing them to flow out of their clean boxes and distort one another. (Hello Jasper Johns 2.0.) This is indicative of the many layers of confusion and chaos that result from such sicknesses. The swirling forms begin to make their own organic forms, precarious and destructive.

To me, the paintings signify something well beyond the tension between elegance and resulting catastrophe of computer bugs. I understand Bonifacho's pieces as representations of the fragility of humanity, both culturally and physically. By knocking the letters of their clean-cut boxes, Bonifacho creates a violent atmosphere out of something we are so comfortable with and jaded by that it creates the ultimate benign atmosphere. (Words should be soothing, right?)

Indeed, the effects of computer viruses are easily comparable with that of human diseases, a topic that I explore in much of my own work. When the sickness strikes, all of the essential pieces are still there, the letters, numbers, pictures, but their infrastructure slowly begins to collapse, forming something beautiful but utterly crushing and painfully differently. The landslide of symbols create the illusion of toppling downward upon a slippery slope that they have no chance of climbing up again.

pictured above:

top: detail shot, De Viribus Quantitatus, 48" x 48," oil on canvas
top right: Decoder What!!, 48" x 48," oil on canvas
left: Tarabuste, 54" x 67," oil on canvas
bottom right: Sekretum Sekretorum, 52" x 58," oil on canvas
all courtesy of the artist's website