Photo by Danielle Rubi courtesy, Tiny Vices. Music by Eric Satie. Wishing everyone everywhere peaceful times. 9/11 + 10

I’ve never thought much of religion which seems to manipulate by fear as much as by love. Fear, really, should have no position in faith, love must always take its place, as Cassavetes said “Fear is the basis for everything terrible. Fear is what causes all the horror in the world. No man achieves anything through fear.”

I have often wondered how Muslims dealt with men committing such crimes in their shared name. Abbas, spent seven years exploring the aftermath of 9/11 in the Islamic world, his pictures certainly tell a story.

Rebecca Baumann, Improvised Smoke Device, 2010

Possibly, finally, a reason to go to Australia?

Primavera 2 at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (September 8 – November 13). Love the piece shown here by Rebecca Baumann. A little explosion followed by plumes of pretty coloured smoke. Joyful, transient and for some reason makes me think of the decadence of Louis XIV…

Thinking about philosophy early this morning as unable to sleep, and I was reminded of this from Werner Herzog which seems as good a philosophy to me as any other I’ve come across. Courtesy of Paul Cronin’s book, Herzog on Herzog 

Rene Magritte, The Listening Room (La Chambre d'Écoute), 1952

I really, really, really want to get into that room. Crawl around the other side of the apple, lean up against its voluptuous, yet solid form and be quiet. I want to press my ear against it and hear its matter, feel its smooth cool flesh against my skin. It is not going anywhere is it, it wouldn’t rush you in any way and it wouldn’t ask anything of you. I could stay there all day hidden behind that apple listening to it and having it listen to me. A lost day with René Magritte’s apple is what I want today. Magritte at the Tate Liverpool till 16 October 2011.

Loving the app Instagram. Keeps your eyes open and perception sharp. I simple walk to the shops can uncover little threats on the street such as this.

Jake or Dinos Chapman are now my favourite. Last month it was Tracey’s paintings at the Hayward so I am having a bit of an YBA moment.

The private views for the brothers, who worked separately for this show, were held at both White Cube Hoxton and Mason’s yard. Black Mercs shuttled the art elite and a few celebs back and forth, I noted Jay’s date in Prada and had an envious, spring / summer 2011, banana moment.

But it was the work I coveted the most. Seriously fucked up, excellently executed and crawled right under my skin. The paintings, grant me just one please. That slightly insidious dirty palate I love, mushrooms, pigs in shit, discarded kids shoes, outlines of noses, of ears, hints of an underworld of half child / half pixie; something about them tossed me into the compost heap at the bottom of Grandpa’s garden where imaginations run wild and nature and plastic uncover themselves before virginal eyes.

Upstairs Catholic paintings and statues where flesh had been placed under duress cornered me. The paintings presented something of an illness of skin, whilst the statues were rather more vicious with flesh peeled away from the eyes and from the mouth revealing bloody emerald sparkly tissue. And with Swastikas placed on their forehead, animated cold toy eyes and forked tongues suggestive of Hindu deities, I felt we were witness to a mutation of faith, or possibly even a dissolution of it. I’m off to see Mason’s Yard today. I don’t know which brother did what and I don’t care, I LOVE IT.

This show in New York, just ended. Anyone who sees like this needs to be seen some more. When London please…?

You can tell so much about a person from their collection of books. Friend, potential lover, there’s nothing like having a good nose through someone’s personal belongings, and the look and feel of someone’s book collection gives you an insight into their psyche and further develops how you might see them. 

Check out eFlux’s project with Martha Rosler and her library here.

You can tell so much about a person from their collection of books. Friend, potential lover, there’s nothing like having a good nose through someone’s personal belongings, and the look and feel of someone’s book collection gives you an insight into their psyche and further develops how you might see them. Spine after spine, type and cover designs span decades where their aesthetics tell you as much about the content as their titles or authors. Books that look old and well handled where you might be treated to hand-written notes in margins or a smattering of little explanation marks where the reader’s found something that excites them; maybe even a post-it note or a bus ticket used as a place holder. There’s something rather epistemological in looking upon someone’s library, where we feel we might know the truth of the collector more intimately on the basis of what they choose to surround themselves with. Yes, the phenomenology of a book collection with all its physical presence, unique character and intellectual nouse can be quite seductive to a roving mind and I don’t think looking through the contents of someone’s Kindle would have quite the same affect at all!