Drool.
This month’s UK Vogue (March) is HOT. Spring fashion by Mario Sorrenti, Mario Testino, Alasdair McLellan and David Sims. Oh, and ‘Shop at Moschino’ if you can ladies, the ad has convinced me.
Feel free to leave him a message.
Jonathan Grossmalerman, Guy Richards Smit, This is Sexy, 2011
A superb painting. Found at Bad at Sports which is full of great podcasts. This podcast features an interview with the artist at his studio with the The Ladies Auxiliary.
More info on the artist and related media can be found over here at Artist-Talks.
So it turns out that Dara Birnbaum’s work, Arabesque (2011), was the perfect work to spend time with on Valentine’s day. A multi screen work with clips taken from YouTube of women and girls working the ivories, perfecting their rendition of Robert Shumann’s Arabesque Opus 18 (1883), alongside stills from the film Song of Love (1947). It works a classical, tragic and possibly banal effect by way of repetition, of women playing their fingers raw perfecting a practice. Romantic reality really.
The exhibition of the artist’s work is on over at the South London Gallery and closes on the 17 Feb, so hurry along now. More on the artist here
Alec Kronacker, Hotel Miasma, 2011
Bloomberg New Contemporaries Opens at the ICA on Wednesday, 23rd November 2011.
Last year the work that had me swooning and coming over all faint was Alec Kronacker's work. I love this one pictured and Not Ironing. But I think my favourite is Man Pacing Apartment (all 2011). They evoke for me an impersonal cultural nostalgia that you want to get personal with, like a wished for nostalgia, a shot at a subliminal memory of yourself in that scene. They make me yearn for the fresh, new modernist feeling of the 1950s, sitcoms and telephones, clunky analogue and Ektachrome colour. I really want one of these paintings.
George Condo, Couple on Blue Striped Chair, 2005
Mental States opened at the Hayward last night. Condo’s art is what I consider to be the Real Deal when it comes to fine art. A genius really. Painterly talent, painful ideas and a acidic humour that come together to create incredible effect. On till 8th January 2012, don’t miss it.
Goshka Macuga, Untitled, 2008
Frieze opened last night. Grayson said to me "visiting Frieze feels a bit like slowing down on the motorway as you pass a car crash." Ha! People who are too beautiful or too cool, or God help us a combination of the two can be just as fascinating and chilling for us regular folk as viewing a metallic and flesh bust up. For me then, the opening night of Frieze is a fantastic spectacle of people and their obsession with the Image, both their own and what they might then claim for themselves.
This season it’s Miu Miu. A girl sits very still and very quiet, her flesh breeds a sweet sweat that licks her dark candy curls. A snug pearl necklace pinches her pale throat increasing her heat. There’s little in her head but glittery fantasies, she knows what she wants and it’s pink, shiny and just a little bit putrid.
International Festival of Post-digital Culture: London 22-25 September 2011
Digital | Analogue that is the question. What do each offer the subject by what? What do new forms of communication say about the institution? Identity and democracy… All questions worth investigating in a post-digital environment.
The Alpha-Ville festival explores the intersection between art, technology and society with a symposium on Friday and events around town all week.