Reader Feb 28, 2010

– Matthew Barney’s commentary on Drawing Restraint. Hysterical. (via c-monster)

– I’ve missed William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton’s opening at Winkleman Galleryv and subsequent events thus far for their exhibition #class but there is a slew of events yet to come. The exhibition, in c-monster’s words, plans to “terrorize Chelsea for a month”, with art yoga, guerrilla gallery tours, ask-the-dealer session, chalkboard writing, balloon popping, and dear Amanda’s Battleship. It’s a riot and a half and will dedicate a couple hours this weekend and the rest of March to experience #class.

– Mr. Shut Up will look at your art.

– What does feminist art look like today, who is making it, and what does it entail? “many artists deploy body performance, craft process, gender masquerade, domestic aesthetics, historical revision, or center core imagery to make decidedly unfeminist work; however, the ways contemporary feminist artists adopt and transform these strategies is, in my opinion, more fascinating.  Feminist artists who adapt historical models and imbue them with contemporary content often fall short of making work that is sufficiently critical (“craftivism” comes to mind) or sufficiently, well, art.  It is not so much that good feminist art needs to balance critique and aesthetics; rather, it needs to prove that something is at stake within its critique by engaging its audience with something compelling, provocative, beautiful, or terrifying…Why would [insert normative white male artist’s name here] want to make work that is explicitly personal instead of making work that reveals the politics limiting access to culture production?  Facile as it seems to redirect this question towards white male artists, the simple rephrasing sheds light on the double-standard motivating my perplexed response to Imag(in)ed Malady.  While an artist who is a feminist might view art as a forum for political dialogue, it is more than her desire to engage in this dialogue that motivates her to make art.  And this is what is still at stake in feminist art: an adequate space for expressions of subjectivity that go beyond demands for subjectivity—art that’s not preoccupied with its plea for legitimacy.” (via c-monster)

– 112 minutes with Francesco Bonami. He is a pretty dull artist and from the reads of it, completely unaffected by criticism, which makes him awesome. “It’s a myth that curators change the career of an artist. The work of an artist changes the career of an artist.”

– Pure. Envy. The collection of James Wagner and Barry Hoggard. Here is the inventor of their collection. Sigh.

– When artists write art criticism: “There is the concern of whether an artist might be reluctant to criticize harshly an exhibition at a gallery with whom he or she might want to show in the future.  My solution is simple:  I don’t write about bad work.  This may sound at first like a bit of a cop-out, but I don’t think so…I think that the best response to bad work is to ignore it…I don’t think of myself as a critic; I go out, I look at art, and I report on what I see that I like.  My main motive is to make people aware of what’s out there, and to motivate them to get out there and see it; any actual criticism that occurs is incidental to this goal.”

– The Korean art scene in Chicago. I find this irrelevant.

– 110 Art Websites.

– c-monster on Collecting Biennials.

– Bereaving the lack of reviews on works by women artists. It’s a repetitive cycle. There aren’t enough reviews of works by women artists because there aren’t enough shows of works by women artists because perhaps, PERHAPS, there aren’t enough works by women. Someone might stone me for saying that but the main issue here that everyone should be working towards is getting more women artists into shows, of course considering the quality, context, form, aesthetic, and politics is aligned to proper good art etiquette. Plus, Anaba, my eyes are wrinkling and strained from your baby blue and orange font color atop a navy blue background, please make it easier for me to read.

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The Bug, The Spider, & The Butterfly at Roos Arts

I recently wrote an exhibition review/essay for my dear Heige’s gallery Roos Arts and the show wittily titled The Bug, The Spider, & The Butterfly: Gerben Mulder, Xavier Noiret-Thome, and Janaina Tschape. The exhibition started with a preview at Janaina’s studio in Brooklyn, then made it’s way up to the gallery in Rosendale, New York. Here’s my essay:

Painting embraces a multitudinous identity, allowing its history, process and value to be scrutinized and manipulated. It cannot be categorized, historicized or defined without neglecting an inherently elusive alternative.

Three artists in this exhibition explore this medium with both scrupulous and uninhibited intentions, accumulating and subtracting layers of it’s material and history, it’s conceptual and philosophical ruminations. Here, the distance between a painting and its maker is measured with varying perspective; calling upon Painting as an omnipotent, albeit vulnerable and impressionable, force to be reckoned with. While one artist builds a painting with layers of cultural and personal flair, another discovers a merging of self and nature within a canvas. The finished work is both a rhetoric and representation of itself, both commentary and living reflection of Painting and its surrounding audience.

Xavier Noiret-Thome utilizes an unhindered vocabulary to build paintings that are as much about Painting as they are about the world at large. This practice of metapainting opens more doors than can be entered at once, addressing the viewer with a cascade of references on a single painting: Ranging from his personal life, art history, pop culture, animation, and abstract geometric forms, each shape and layer are coalesced in fragmented and playful harmony.

Read the rest here and check out all the images!!

My doppelganger Jo ann Kim

I officially have a doppelganger folks. Jo ann Kim (so bizarre to see my name spelled like that) sent me an email this morning to say she is “a mid-twenties, picses, korean artist who loves crafting, biking, blogging, tanning, cooking- esp. baking, and lived in California- specifically Los Angeles her entire life.” She ended the email with “are you my doppelganger from the east???”

YES! YES I AM!!

Her website Super Nova Warehouse shares her wonderment in the art and food realm, just like mine. There’s a deadpan humor in it, just like mine. I believe SNW is an art collective and they had a show in Pasadena. I’ll find out more.

I think I need to jump on a car and drive over to LA to meet this presumed twin sister from another azn mother.

Love it.

Justine Reyes

I recently spent a weekend upstate and whilst strolling about the main street in Woodstock strolled into Center of Photography and immediately fell in love with the photographs of Justine Reyes. She’s based in NY and I wrote this for Beautiful/Decay:

On a recent visit to The Center for Photography in Woodstock, New York I had the pleasure of viewing the works of Justine Reyes. A series entitled Vanitas included photographs reflecting old Dutch still lifes in a similar vain but with a most sharp and contemporary air that was both refreshing and humorous. Nothing was lost in translation, only visually and contemporaneously heightened, as Reyes transferred paintings of a historical past into photographs of a transient present. The usual suspects are depicted here: skeletons, peeled fruits with skins dangling off the edge of the table/picture plane, bouquets past their prime and on the brink of decay. Monochromatic shades, deep rich colors, ominous but peaceful environments, sharp spotlights, spacious foregrounds with deep recessions, all are clearly marked in each photograph as the artist masterfully reflects a movement and style of the past.

Read the rest here.
Also, check my flickr photos from my trip. Notice how I’m trying to be all “fine art photographer” noticing “exquisite details” within super close ups. Right. It was a great impromptu off-time with the usual kimchi omelette for breakfast, veggie curries for dinner, starring at the computer while starring at the trees, hiking and pond jumping, it was super relaxing.

Reader: Feb 24, 2010

– Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity: creative ventures and what it will do to our mental health, where the fear comes from? Not comfortable with the idea of art leading to anguish, suicide, torture, self-deprecating acts. How to cultivate positive creativity, distance art from anxiety to create. Starting with ancient Greece, divine attendant spirit that creativity was speaking wisdom to humans. Rome called them a genius, a magical divine entity that live in walls in the artist’s studio. Pressure of then BEING a genius has killed a few. Utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process, is often irrational, paranormal. Amen. But, internalized tormenting conversation with an external genius does not have to be. Ole to you nonetheless, keep showing up.

– Bourdain curing puppets

– OMG my astrology this week is priceless: AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “We cannot change anything until we accept it,” said psychologist Carl Jung. “Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” Make that your hypothesis, Aquarius, and then conduct the following experiment. First, choose some situation you would like to transform. Next, open your heart to it with all the love and compassion you can muster. Go beyond merely tolerating it with a resigned disappointment. Work your way into a frame of mind in which you completely understand and sympathize with why it is the way it is. Imagine a scenario in which you could live your life with equanimity if the situation in question never changed. Finally, awash in this grace, meditate on how you might be able to actually help it evolve into something new.

– Oly interviews photographer and creator of the HBO series The Black List Project, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. If I were to start taking portraits and interviewed powerful Asian Americans, I doubt it would be half as powerful or recognized. Asians tend to shy away from the lime-light and are just a little too difficult to differentiate one from the other. However, I have been thinking about creating a radio show similar to This American Life, called This Immigrant Life. You can only imagine what it’d be like.

– Just discovered Daytrotter, a website that uploads a recording session by traveling bands every single day accompanied by songs performed in the Daytrotter studio, illustration of the bands and thoughtful, personal, romantic descriptions of the music you will hear. This one with Balmorhea, a band I just discovered a couple months ago is pretty euphoric. Bon Iver is stupendous as well.

– How to reduce stress and restore energy. 70% of stress is nutritional.

– Bake Sales regulation OK vending machines and prohibit anything humanmade. “So, to review: Additive-filled, highly-processed vending machine effluence = good. Homemade, chemically-unadulterated zucchini bread = bad.”

– Adobe Photoshop Cook

– YAY! Laura and Ben open their ice cream shop in Greenpoint this Saturday.

– Website service for small farms.

– Meet Jim. He’s hosted dinner for 130,000 so far. When people consume After Eight there’s no telling when they will leave. Thank you sarah.

– On dating. “Maybe it’s that in our society, crazy has become sexy. In a weird way, I sort of liked the bitchy vixen I became when I let my emotions get the best of me.” Amen.

– Liza’s new episode on Food Curated: All about ducks with Savoy.

– Learn to be a local hunter Mar 13th with Jackson Landers, the urban deerslayer.

– Dear Lady Gaga: “look beyond the starfuckers in the crowd.”

– Baohaus sounds like a place I need to get to asap. More interestingly, the chef’s blog is a great read, a character he is. “New York Times writing about this blog undoubtedly obscures things because in the context of the dining section: my blog, my quotes, and myself get watered down. This is a very raw, unedited, personal blog. When you try to take it out of its context and put it in line with some other blogs/tweets to point out a cultural movement, its going to get modified to fit the article’s objective. And when you look at me through the lens you usually see “chefs” through, I’m going to disappoint you. My favorite chef is Raekwon. Please don’t try to put me in a box that you put other chefs in, I don’t fit. The titties are too big.”

– Everyone eats, but that doesn’t mean you’re a restaurant critic, douchebag.

Reader: Feb 22, 2010

– The best oatmeal in NY. I probably make the best oatmeal in the world and would avoid ordering it in restaurants. But some of these sound enticing and would definitely like to check out Locanda Verde.

– Aboriginal leaders are offended by an Olympics ice dance that involved pulling hair and tongues sticking out.

– I want to buy tickets to Village Voice’s third annual tasting event. 50 restaurants under one roof sounds amazing but $45 on any one thing is not in my budget at the moment. boohoo.

– I also wish I could go to The Future of Food with Y+30 event.

– BK Farmyards is starting a Youth Farm and they need to raiser about $3,000 more by this Friday to make this happen. Show your support!

– Jamie Oliver on TED Talks. It’s a bit funny how theatrical and zealous he is throughout the talk but I think it’s absolutely amazing what him and many others like BK Farmyards are doing in bringing good food to a family and educational level for the youth.

– Dori Greenspan is my hero and I’m sorry I missed her pop up cookie shop.

– Dear Megan shares her beekeeping story. “I was given an opportunity to focus on the betterment of my life in a small but essential way. My bees have been a lesson in patience and presence. It’s a hobby that requires you to slow down and simply look. Fine observation skills are required to assess what it is that the colony needs or doesn’t need. It is my responsibility to care for them to the fullest of my ability before all else, before taking a prize of honey from their home. In my mind, it’s the least I could do for them, the miraculous creatures who unknowingly save me from myself.”

– On the future of food writing. I guess I never thought food writing as to be that grim. It’s flourishing with thousands of food blogs all over the world. 80% is redundant and boring but there are some amazing writers out there that more or less do it as a hobby and I like it that way.

– Here’s a more indepth article about food writing’s future: “the encouraging fact remains that our gluttonous society is hungrier than ever for food news, recipes, information, inspiration, legislation… This is a thrilling time to read and write about food—and if you are interested in either activity, you’ve got plenty of company. What emerged from the panel for me is the sense that market forces will stabilize the field of food writing…eventually. Writers who have the backing—be that a trust fund, an employer, a wildly successful ad-supported blog or even just a day job and a lot of drive—will continue to create well-written, well-researched and well-tested or fact-checked food content, even without the benefit of extensive editorial and art departments. And the humbling gods of internet traffic will give and take away accordingly.”

– Jerry Saltz and facebook: “One of Mr. Saltz’s primary stated goals for the page—which he views as an experiment—is a desire to demystify the art critic in the eyes of readers and artists. To that end, he has gotten rather personal with his Facebook friends, telling stories about family tragedies, career bumps and his diet. A juice fast he took up back in January so alarmed some of his readers that he gave it up at their urging. “Look; you all scared me SO much about me being on what I thought was a good Juice Fast that I just ate a banana,” he wrote. “Hmmmmmm. Good.”

– 10 menu trends for 2010. Doesn’t sound to too convincing to me. I hate fried foods and sentimental sweets sounds offputting.

– On Cathy’s new book The Art of Eating In. I will not take the challenge as it’s a week of birthday dinners and events, but maybe another time. Meanwhile I love her blog and cannot wait to get my hands on her book.

– Social media and art includes dear Powhida and Dalton’s #class.

– Food and cycling.

– Liza interviewed “ I do have a bag of frozen tater tots in my freezer. Oh, and I am disgustingly addicted to Cheetos. It’s to my great disadvantage that they still produce those magical little cheese fingers.” haha

– Response to an article degrading the local food movement. ” We are not a bunch of yuppie foodies stuffing our craws with foie gras, as he and others might have their readers believe. The system we envision, as I said, is one that is: 1. Good – meaning that the food tastes good and is nutritious 2. Clean – meaning that producing the food has only beneficial and not negative effects on the environment in which it is produced, and that there is nothing in the food that isn’t food (and if it wasn’t food 100 years ago, it is not food now) 3. Fair – meaning that the people who produce the food should be justly compensated for their work.”

– Some good news in food and sustainability.

– I was actually slightly offended when Ben relayed this story to me in person. I honestly don’t think there is any correlation between being a foodie and a “small asian girl”. Yes asian food more often than not involves sharing, emphasizing family and togetherness, but it’s not what drives a hoard of asian girls to be obssessed about food. Most of the folks I know in the food realm are not asian whatsoever. I never grew up with cooking at home. My personal story about how I got involved with food has no consequence whatsoever with my being asian. So to this I shall respond: irrelevant.

Housebroken at Flux Factory

Housebroken, the inaugural show at Flux Factory’s new space in Long Island City, was a mind boggling feat that included well over 100 performances and installations embedded within and distributed throughout every nook and cranny inside the old two floored factory. I entered and left not as a viewer passively observing an artwork. I entered and left as a participator having experienced art and life as it happens, simultaneously, shared and performed by everyone. There was a relentless energy I felt reverberating throughout the space, a pride of having done-it-ourselves, a gratitude for sharing it with others, an excitement for just being there, present, reveling in the fact alone that it was happening. The seamless balance between the physical space and the artwork cast a loud but subversive foundation for us to view, admire, react, interact, play, experiment, participate, and revel in.

I arrived shortly after 8 when a line going around the block was yet to form. Upon entry I saw dear Lauren in a lab coat with the words Make it Happen spread on the back. She greeted me by the sign up sheet and had me answer the question “What do you want to make happen? I wrote, love. tonight. (yea…) I was swiftly directed to a gentleman sitting at a desk and for the next couple minutes we analyzed and questioned in the most benign therapy-session way about what and who and how I will “make it happen.” Do I have someone specific in mind to love? no. Do I want a sustainable romantic love or a one night love affair? either. Am I picky about who I want to engage love with? yes. Is there anyone in this room right now that I would make out with? Hell, no. Am I afraid to walk up to someone and shoot the shit while potentially increasing my chance to love and be loved? Hell, yes.

I was diagnosed and treated with a request to spend the evening to talk to at least one gentleman, a complete stranger, and potentially make out with that person that night. We shook hands and I was directed to Tracey sitting at another desk who filled out a prescription form, asked me to fill out my address to follow up with me, making sure I made it happen, tonight,  and photographed me with the form, holding me to the promise I made to cure myself of this wanting. The calendar board had post its with the “it” written down and marked on whatever day so and so wanted to make “it” happen. End of story, I didn’t make it happen, nowhere close. I don’t approach strangers and that’s that. Unless they are spectacularly good looking and there was no such thing there, so I failed. Sorry Lauren.

Heading to the second floor there was dear Ali’s work installed on the walls of the staircase, two guardian angel statues protecting the entrance of the dreamscape wonderland that is Flux Factory. I never can get enough of Ali’s work, the innocent and naive intermingled with a disturbed nostalgia and sadness, the figurative formed by accumulations of geometric shapes and patterns, telling sad untold stories with playful gestures.

In the kitchen and dining room there was a couple in silver glitter hats serving soup, plenty platters of campari drinks that grossed me out and two girls in Victorian wear performing modern dance with the dining table. I was most enraptured by this woman’s face expressions, her grimaces clashed with the graceful flips, her arms and legs folding in and around the table.

I’ve been told there were about 15 people living in this factory, with studios for them to work in as well. This led to finding spaces and rooms where items were installed with as much deliberate intention as an artwork. The wall paper, lamp, plant, suitcase table, were placed with an air of precision and warmth.

Down another staircase I went (there were many staircases) and was greeting by a guy with a blond wig and a white suit singing a song about self-help. His looks and voice were unsympathetic, impassioned and dry, matter-of-fact and hysterically monotone. The words self help donned the front and back covers of a book he was supposedly reading from. The piano/beats player glared out of space, robotic and void of emotions. It was one of my favorite performances of the evening.

Next to the performers was a concoction involving a production line treadmill thing covered in cotton, cocked at an angle with a camera, blue light, and a toy airplane hanging above. It set the image for the live video being streamed of an airplane in movement created by the treadmill cotton as background sky for the airplane flying during the day. Pretty straightforward.

Next door there was a guy who looked like a ghostbuster giving electric chaircuts to any adventurous volunteer in need of a trim. The participant was seated and promptly taped and wrapped, eyes and mouth covered, body constricted with little room to move. He was then subject to the hairstylist’s buzz and snaps, the tools of which are connected to pedals and amplifiers that react with a deafening echo, each snip and buzz. It was sadistic yet benevolent, creepy yet tempting. I would have jumped on the opportunity to be blindfolded and wrapped, silenced by the vibrating sounds of scissors and trimmers were I not deathly afraid of his chopping my hair off that took a decade to grow.

Across from him were two white paper coneheads droning in robot talk about sending postcards to your future self in the present moment. They asked for donations to pay for stamps.

On the other side of the room were two studios. Here, again, the space itself were carefully arranged and treated as much like artworks than the artworks themselves. Everything was so consciously placed, mindfully thought out, I took great care to observe each nook and cranny of the space. I don’t know this artist’s name but she came in with a platter of drinks and encouraged me to flip through the book of prints and take whatever I wanted. I took two images of messy abstract fields. I especially loved the small drawings above the flowers.

Man Bartlett‘s studio was minimal and on a table were drawings in process, obsessive fields of circles, tiny tiny tiny shapes repeated one after the other, laborious to no end, compulsive with an inability to grasp in its entirety. Think Daniel Zeller and Yayoi Kusama making love.

Stepping outside I saw standing inside a pigeon coop, with a lair beneath the stairs (more stairs) made of thick branches. There was a girl there speaking with much authority pointing to the grid of nests with prettiest of pigeons hopping around. Created by The Deterritorialized Church, the psycho-geographical social sculpture was a humbling co-existence exercise of humans nesting along pigeons, trapped inside a staircase prison.

Up another staircase I went and caught sight of a mini sculpture wedged between a table and the wall on the stairs. It was an architectural view of a mini world, with stairs. It was precious.

I got to spend a significant amount of time with this wig-infested duo, holding a small portable stereo, in the bathroom line. They were very involved with this wigged stereo, caressing it’s hair, fondling it’s antennae, listening fondly to the dj on the radio, taking turns lip syncing the conversation happening and bobbing their heads to its tunes. They seemed to also be quite drunk and couldn’t walk properly and spent a good 15 minutes in the bathroom doing god knows what. Bizarre.

The bathroom itself was quite fascinating; prints of colored silhouettes engaged in all sorts of sexual activity, voices of two people conversating about being pregnant and sitting on a toilet seat, the door installed with a grid of door lock hooks, a mirror with an image of a scruffy man peering from the side (also by Lauren). It was quite interactive and entertaining.

I left the opening when it started to become unbearably crowded and I finished checking out each corner and crevice of the factory. I asked my friends what they thought of the show and they didn’t seem as impressed as I was. For one reason or another I loved and appreciated the unbiased and balanced intermingling of space, artwork, artist and viewer, all spread along the same visual plane, giving the opportunity to interact and co-perform. Each moment and each spot was an artwork waiting to happen or already happening. Surely the show would look completely different in the daytime and when the performances weren’t all happening all at once. It was energy of the night, of the people, of the simultaneity of it all that was gratifying to me.

Reader: Feb 15, 2010

– The difference of gender when older, more powerful figures (usually of a political level) cheat for the younger and more vulnerable.

– I swear I will make a run around Chelsea tomorrow and come up with a similar article titled Bad Girls in Galleries.

– Treating sugared beverages like tobacco, banning and taxing our obesity away.

– Elizabeth Albert. via PS1’s studio visit. Just discovered this registry of local artists, via c-monster’s kinkade’s profile being hoax.

– Curious to know why this article didn’t mention Chanterelle’s artist made menu drawings being exhibited at Greenpoint’s own Kill Devil Hill. It was a killer show and I will digress further later.

– A 19th century recipe for chocolate caramel is transformed into a black sugar galzed Medjook dates with pecorino and walnuts. yum.

– Google Buzz apologizes over their invasion of privacy.

– How food shapes our cities. Remember, a western diet is an unsustainable diet. Great quote : “Food is a fundamental ordering principle of Utopia.” Hale semi-independent city states where farming is mad and folks grow their own vegetables. But as Utopia is no place, she coins Sitopia: Food place, a world shaped by food, used as a powerful tool, the center of life and society. Think ahead about food, networks and markets grown and exchanged locally. Sitopia already exists, just use food as a way of seeing. Cities can be symbiotically connected to nature, thinking as doing, creating a bonding relationship between the country and city. The world is what we eat. Use food to shape it better. Amen

– The lobster roll craze started with food, curated and ends with Ben toasting hot dog buns on the back of his scooter. Priceless.

– Roberta Smith complains there’s too much cold space in big museum shows, not enough oomph. “useum curators need to think less about an artist’s career, its breakthroughs and its place in the big picture and more in terms of an artist’s life’s work pursued over time with increasing concentration and singularity. They have a responsibility to their public and to history to be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field…Message to curators: Whatever you’re doing right now, do something else next.”

– John  Baldessari as packrat, recycling images. “I don’t think imagery should be owned. If it’s part of the world, it’s like words, how can you own words? It’s stuff to be used.”

– Celebrity musicians as art collectors.

– Ryan McGinley’s photos of the Olympics, shot with the same ethereal hippie touch. Was he commissioned to do this as an artist or as a photojournalist or a photographer or what?

– Museum toilets. via c-monster

– Scavenger art hunt using tweeted clues. An alternative attempt at getting your artwork out there. “A game that raises questions: Is it about art? Or self-promotion? The thrill of the hunt? Or a sly comment on art appreciation? Is it generous or, considering he’s unknown, desperate? Does it prove, as he believes, you don’t need “a gallery light shining on a work to show art; the city can be your gallery”? Or the opposite — that context matters, and, considering how many people walk past his art without pausing, real art is gallery art?”

– On “sentimentality and its conflicted relation to contemporary art“.

My diatribe of the Art Market as Unethical.

My brain is fully flustered after having spent the last hour and a half watching and listening to an actual debate about the following motion: THE ART MARKET IS LESS ETHICAL THAN THE STOCK MARKET. Three masterdebators (a name I called my first boyfriend who was in the debate team and manipulatively managed to win any argument we had) FOR the motion included gallerists Robert Feigen and Michael Hue-Williams and collector/author Adam Lindemann. Three masterdebators AGAINST the motion included art critic/hero Jerry Saltz, artist Chuck Close and Christie’s head/loser Amy Cappellazo. Each person had six minutes to defend their stand and I must say, those FOR the motion clearly won this race. Let me be the one to say business and money minded people are far more clear-headed, practical and defensive of their cause than the idealistic and self-conscious (artists and critics are naturally self-absorbed and closeted extroverts). I fully support the gallerist’s argument that the art market is in essence UNETHICAL because, unlike the stock market and any other market trading any material, FUNCTIONAL goods is highly regulated by law. Regulations for buying, trading, selling, and determining monetary value are for the most part clearly stated within an articulate system of guidelines. When speaking of cars, clothes, houses, and diamonds monetary value can be clearly determined by a set of definitions that includes its history, usage, mode and location of production, etc. ART, on the other hand, is a non-functional object, which makes it non-commodifiable in its purest form. It serves no practical or tangible purpose other than to maybe decorate the wall above your couch. Even then, it is not something short-handedly USED to DO something with. The art MARKET has been in existence (as Saltz explains) since the Renaissance. But only in the last decade has the MARKET experienced an uncontrollable and  vastly expanding bubble that everyone predicted and FEARED its popping; its demise, its inevitable approach to disappointment, and failure. The bubble blew up precisely because, as Feigen, Hue-Williams, and Lindemann argues, there was no regulation. Chandelier bidding (a non-existent bidder bidding on something just to get competition going and in essence, deceive the fuck out of a collector), misguided and secret price determinations between any three participants : collector, dealer, auctioneer, lack of transparency, and the hush hush inside trading all make for a viable argument that the MARKET is unethical. You also have to consider that when it comes to defining a price for an artwork, it’s monetary value is COMPLETELY ARBITRARY. There are no strict guidelines or standards that determine one work’s being worth 2 million and another 2 hundred. Two artists both in their 40’s who grew up in the 70’s going to calarts studying with the same teachers can have vastly separate careers. They make similar work but one sells for 2mil the other can barely survive on his artwork. Why? it’s the unregulated art market with its dealers and collectors combined with press that DECIDE arbitrarily that yea I think this artist is worth it, while this one is not. SAD, UNETHICAL, and TRUE. During the debate Chuck Close and Jerry Saltz argued that art market is NOT unethical, that value is not determined by money, ethics is irrelevant, art making is not a business, and art is a meritocracy. Saltz argues that art is not optional, it was here from the beginning and will never go away, it is a necessity that changes the world incrementally via osmosis. He would never want the art WORLD to be regulated, that the market expresses junkie like behaviors and that the art WORLD is not an industry. Art, he argues is not about ethics but Aesthetics. He would like us to sit back and let the art world be as it is, what it is, how it is and not mess around trying to determine whether or not it needs to be regulated or instilled with ethics. OK, all Close and Saltz is saying in TRUE. BUT, what they don’t see the difference is that this debate is about the art MARKET, not the art WORLD. The market is but one of various aspects and elements that comprise the art world. The MARKET does not include artist production, cultural, aesthetic or historical value. The market over the last decade HAS become an industry, an industry rotting with corruption, arbitrary value-making, conniving secret deceitful dealings, all as a result of unregulation. The market includes anything money related, an exchange for work for money between dealers, artists, collectors and auctioneers. There has been no regulation because a raging market as the art market has been is SO NEW and in such great proportions that has never been faced before and folks in the art world run around all neurotic in havoc not knowing what the fuck to do with themselves and in the end they just make up shit as they go along and DECIDE with no credentials or history what makes art SELLABLE, not VALUABLE or AESTHETICAL, but SELLABLE. The trend and movement in the last decade did not focus on some formal, aesthetic element. The trend in the last decade was MONEY. And a debate like this is where people from different levels are grappling and trying to find the significance and impact of MONEY in the art world. Now that the economic crisis hit and the art market has been blown to smithereens folks are still in shock treatment trying to figure out and go back to the way it was before the whole bubble thing happened. I’m trying to decide how this impacts me specifically. I am in a way looking in from the outside. I’ve never sold an art work, never worked as a dealer, never received a commission for selling a 2mil artwork. I am an arts administrator whose worked in multiple galleries doing things like spackling walls, bubble wrapping paintings and at this point, making sure exhibitions happen from start to finish. No significant individual in the art world knows who I am, nor do they give a shit. I am also an art blogger. I go to galleries that I can enter for free and I look at art and don’t think about its prices, which gives me unmediated access to the artwork itself, art for art sake. In the last year I’ve organized various food and art related events, such as Greenpoint Open Studios. It was a response to a movement emerged from the crisis where artists learn to and function within their own ecosystem that more often than not does not involve money. Art is anarchy in the sense that, as Saltz affirms, only 1% of 1% of 1% of artists actually get paid for making their art, and this was still true during the market’s boom. This does not mean art is not made. There are gazillions of ARTISTS who make ART without MONEY. But after the economic crisis I experienced a rise in COLLABORATION and COMMUNITY where artists came together in a very self-sufficient and DIY manner to create their work, exhibit it, and find others doing the same thing. Yea money might not be involved and they’ll have to go to their day jobs in the morning but this is how it’s always been. There are SOOOOOOOO many people out there in BOTH the art and food world that are finding MYRIAD ways to build a sustainable system focused on community, cultural exchange, and non-monetary modes of production. It is such a relief, such a warm and welcoming feeling, being able to participate and be part of this system. The gallery world, during it’s market boom was very cold and unwelcoming, secretive and unnecessarily competitive. Galleries and its dealers forgot the reasons why they entered the art world in the first place, not because they can make shitloads of money off selling an artist’s career, but because they believes in, and have great passion for, art, its producers, and its value within a personal and public level. The art MARKET as it stands is UNETHICAL and will continue to be so because an artwork is not something that can be compared to anything else in this world in general that is a material for use or commodity. This debate did not answer any questions for me, only affirmed the failure of approaching art as a business, that people in this art world are crazies, neurotic because it’s impossible to wrap your head around art and its potentials. Art gives and takes in accordance with your give and take. Try to own it as a commodity and it will spit in your face. It has the qualities of a domesticated cat that is wild enough to never listen to your commands. It will not adhere to your world. Let it be.

Oh and I didn’t mention anything about Amy Cappellazo because I think she is stupid and never has anything good to say.

Dos and Discoveries

– My dearests Ali & Lauren are two of over 70 artists participating in the inaugural show at Flux Factory’s new space in Long Island City. Workshops, kitchens, bathrooms, nooks & crannies are all considered as artists take over the space and utilize every inch with full intention and careful havoc. Opening is Feb 19th and will run on weekends thru Mar 21st. Be there!

– OK, Chocolate Bobka makes these bobkasts. They are mixes with amazing titles. One song seamlessly leads onto the next. So far I love bobkast #14 titled Crazy Train, Sexy Train, Get On the Disco Train. I’m working on downloading them all right now. I suggest you do as well. The guy is also just a super duper knowledgeable expert when it comes to music and a smart dude with the eloquence of a journalist (I think he is a journalist, we’ve met from a freelance stint on a local newspaper). Check this article on blog rock and the assumed indifference of politics in music today. “If an artist, any artist, wants to make a statement, be it political, or just to start a dance party, the democratization of the tools needed to create allows them to do just that…Why rage against the machine, when you can organically build a “new world” within America outside the status quo? A social revolution unconcerned with Abbie Hoffman/Black Panther antics and more concerned with treating people well would be incredibly more effective than barging the New York Stock Exchange or Congress, or a bunch of privileged NYU students taking over the library. It’s cliche, but the treat your neighbor like you’d want to be treated analogy is apt. And in this day and age, treating people with respect and dignity is about the most political thing you can do.” Love.

– Google Buzz and how it can contribute to the social web. I am yet to get my head wrapped around the thing.

– Recipes for Romance and On Aphrodisiacs. Did you know cherries decrease sexual arousal in women? Who woulda thought! “chocolate’s reputation as an aphrodisiac is highly exaggerated…male sexual response was heightened by the scent of doughnuts only if it was combined with licorice, not exactly a standard pairing…the most important sex organ lies between the ears…Garlic contains an amino acid that enhances blood flow and could augment erections…Asians consider the smell of cheese to be hideous, yet westerners regard it as anything from comfort food to sumptuous indulgence (hahahahahahaha. it’s true!)…body odor plays a powerful role in human attraction…The nostalgic recall triggered by odors, known as the Proustian Effect, has been embraced by some chefs who believe that eating should be a full-sensory experience, involving taste, smell and even sound.”

– I discovered a new food blogsite. Immaculate Infatuation is a collection of restaurant reviews written by two cute guys in the music industry. They are indepth, personal, informative, and recommended. There’s a Perfect For category list to nitpick for the right vibe for your mood. Unfortunately, the restaurants are mostly based in Manhattan and don’t indulge in food porn images, but serves as a resourceful guide when you want to venture out to the overwhelming slew of choices made available in the city.

– Food, Curated is at it again, this time highlighting Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, located inside Chelsea Market. Collaborating with small, sustainable, local farms Jake Dickson maintains a relationship with all his animal providers and can tell a story or two behind each piece of meat displayed at the shop. In the video he recommends eating less meat and experimenting with cuts you are unfamiliar with and to not be such a recipe nazi and taste the wonders of veggie fed meat. There is also a post on Jake’s recommendations on how to explore the whole animal with helpful substitutions such as trying shoulder tender instead of hangar steak, spare ribs for baby back, and chicken steak for filet minion. The butcher in the video is cute too.

– An interactive map of Flushing, Queens focusing on Chinese cuisine. Is there one for Korean food? Represent Queens she was raised out in Flushing.

– Nate Duval is a graphic designer and artist that’s made all the posters for Brooklyn Lyceum‘s craft markets. I’ve loved every single design he’s made so far for them, collecting every single one so far tacked to my fridge. Subtle colors, shapes and lines that simultaneously pack a dose of packed imagery, vintage vibes with stained paper effects, washed paint, rigid portraiture depicting surreal dreamed up characters, I would love to get my hands on some prints.

Looks like he’s done many concert posters from bands ranging from Vivian Girls to Wilco. Although I love the psychedelic tone of some images, layering shape atop figure atop shape, I especially love the jittered lines used to create patterns of abstraction, geometric shapes taking on a breathing life squeezed onto a single picture plane. He also keeps a blog. Did I mention my bday is coming up? wink hint wink hint.

– Did you know today is Inventor’s Day? In honor of Thomas Edison and the likes, L Mag features 12 phenomenal fictional inventors. Sweet.

– Food, Sex and Giving as basic pleasures towards happiness: “one thing that can make a lasting difference to your contentment is to work with others on a cause larger than yourself…busy but reluctantly undertook some good cause because (sigh!) it was the right thing to do. Then they found that this “sacrifice” became a huge source of fulfillment and satisfaction…altruism carries its own rewards…” Eating and Sex is a selfish pleasure. “The implication is that we are hard-wired to be altruistic. To put it another way, it’s difficult for humans to be truly selfless, for generosity feels so good.”

– Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique is a collection of essays exploring institutional critique as practiced in the 60’s and 70’s and how it affects current practice. You can download it, for like, free.

– Future Farmers is an art, design and food collective based in CA focusing on projects that encourage and instigate social, political, and economically sustainable systems of production and consumption, visual or material, conceptual or edible. They have a residency program bringing in artists developing projects that support environmental research and exploration. The folks behind Future Farmers range from designers to pollinators, activists and positive change makers. I want to be their best friend. I also love their cute website.

– The Groundswell Collective is “dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism”. Utilizing social organization as a means to create art work, solo and collaborative, I am especially loving their informative blog covering all aspects of political and activist induced art that is never offputting, one sided or unproductive. Asking themselves “How can we weld visual communication to social justice?” the collective participates in creating a myriad of works “done in pursuit of a more humane and libertarian world, and which claims that notions of freedom and ethical conduct are most poignant when communicated visually.” I love their manifestoesque approach, the last sentence reads: “We are creating this world and dismantling an old one, for what better way to build a new world than in our hearts!” Amen.

– The Journal of Aesthetics and Research is an ad-hoc collection of activist-savvy articles covering food justice, notes on art and class, protests, art and anarchism (very related in my world), gleaning, and an organic food movement in Madrid. It’s in-depth, informative, a bit all over the place but a great learning experience. About Coop 57: ” The impetus to start Coop 57 was to create a financial instrument that would help cooperatives and social movements to self-finance without the need to turn to traditional banks, with the main principle that money should simply be a tool to realize activities (whether these are productive or not) and not an end goal…We want to recover the culture of the farmer as the base of the ecology; to maintain and improve the Earth’s wealth, to live with little consumption, to conserve old methods without resigning to modern techniques and to maintain the Earth and our work as a school for life…Within the project people start to think that it is possible to undertake projects outside the market.” About Food Justice: “A de-emphasis on buying food through standard consumer channels is revaluing urban agriculture, local food and the social act of cooking and eating. Whatever their long term impacts, these local/ slow/ sustainable food efforts bring a welcome thoughtfulness to the relationship between cities and food , reversing an amnesia brought on by industrial food systems…The food justice movement provides a useful correlary to middle/upper-class local/ slow/ shared/ sustainable food efforts. They have similar goals – better food – but food justice has a more explicit focus on distributional equity, ensuring that people without much power can access and afford good, healthy food…Efforts to improve access to healthy food underway in L.A. include: attracting new food markets and converting corner stores to offer more healthy food ; banning new fast food restaurants in south L.A; reforming school food and creating a food policy council for the City; thinking about illegal but ubiquitous street food vending as a source for produce; linking transportation, land use, and food access policies ; creating edible landscaping at affordable housing, schools and other public spaces …

– I’ve already mentioned trade school before, put together by our goods, hosted by grand opening. Trade School is a series of classes everyday thru Mar 1st that allows you to learn anything from composting to discussing art and labor, learning about Baudrillard to business class for artists. Payment is via bartering only, which can range from bringing chocolate for the class or teaching the teacher a skill he/she may request. I love their colorful easy to read website palate, the concept of artist run DIY approach to production, support, consumption and sustainability. Artist anarchism all the way.