Posts By matthew rose
Letter from Berlin – Forgeries, pheromones and clones, ten questions for Jonathon Keats
Jonathon Keats has brought the cerebral into the art marketplace. Nearly 15 years ago he sat in a gallery for 24 hours looking at a nude model and selling his thoughts to art collectors. A few years later he copyrighted his mind as a sculpture. In 2004, he tried to genetically engineer God to get to the essence of the Divine. He’s enlisted string theory to purchase real estate in other dimensions, and created a silent four-minute and thirty-three second ring tone remixing John Cage’s composition 4’33” . And he even sold collectors the experience of spending money. Now in ... More » »
Letter From Paris: Keith Haring’s Political Line
—Sometimes lost in discussion of Keith Haring is his work’s political edge. Matthew tells us all about it in his review of the Paris exhibit of the artist’s works.–the artblog editors————————–>It’s hard to believe that the ever-youthful icon of the 1980s New York Artworld has already been gone 23 years. Keith Haring, the most famous subway scribbler the world has ever known, took chalk and markers and finally paint and canvas, and spread his scribbles across pretty much everything in his path. An expansive exhibition of his more political works – touching upon the state, media, capitalism, racism, nuclear and ... More » »
Letter From Paris: On The (Rail)road To Versailles
Three hundred years ago getting to Versailles, the celebrated French seat of power, was a bit of a slog through muddy country villages. Only 20 or so kilometers southwest of the Eiffel Tower, the trip was made by horse or coach or worse, by foot, and could take the better part of a day. But Revolutions have consequences. Today for about $8.50 you can now jump on the RER C suburban railroad from a handful of stations along the left bank, and shoot over to Versailles in half an hour. And your coach might be a royal one. One in ... More » »
How To Launch An Art Fair
Back in September, I was solicited over the Internet to exhibit at the Select Art Fair at Miami’s Catalina Hotel. I was, according to the e-vite, the kind of artist that should take advantage of a unique art fair opportunity during Art Basel’s annual Miami art orgy (December 5 – 9, 2012). The pitch: For only $4,800 I would be able to show my work in a hotel room – one of only about 60 – right around the corner from Art Basel Miami. The founders proposed the curious idea that I could sleep in my gallery space! I wrote ... More » »
Letter From London – Soap Tricks, Shark Attacks and Weeping Women
My summer’s last hurrah took place over a long 5-day Eurostar Chunnel weekend in London dotted with a few blockbuster exhibitions, a talk with Patrick Lears, artist and Whitechapel Gallery deputy gallery manager, a touch of urban archeology, and a walk in the park – all washed down with cool pints of British bitter. My itinerary was random: I gravitated towards noisy (Damien Hirst) and whispery (Edvard Munch) exhibitions at The Tate Modern, and the unexpected – The Saatchi Gallery’s New Korean Eye show; a dash of traditional – a day in Kensington Gardens – where Lady Diana lived – ... More » »
Letter From London – An interview with Gloria Zein, on dancing chickens and German art
In 1998 I met the German artist Gloria Zein in Paris. We were on the street near my house in the 14th arrondissement. She handed me a postcard. It was a cross between a BYOA (Bring Your Own Artwork) and dinner at her house in Paris: one had to cut a circle out of her card and insert a “sign of our existence” into it – an assignment with tape, staples or whatever was handy. Since then I have been following Gloria’s career with wonder. In 2002 she asked her male friends to send her photographs from the Internet of their ... More » »
Letter From Paris: La Lumière Parle at La Maison Rouge
Light speaks. And its voice is perhaps never as strong and clear as in the City of Light. La Maison Rouge, the exquisite art space and foundation in the Bastille quarter of Paris, is proving it with Neon, Who’s afraid of red, yellow and blue? Curated by David Rosenberg, this illuminated carnival of flashing and glowing colored light is the first and perhaps largest exhibition of illuminated tubular art works. And it’s noisy, too, with the low persistent electric buzz flowing through the show – think: Flashing Tiki Lounge martini sign after midnight on the Vegas strip. Over 80 artists ... More » »
Letter From Paris: Cartoon City with Crumb, Elam and Shelton
Paris is awash with counter cultural pen and ink these days. Long the home of the bande dessinée (comic strip), the City has recently succumbed to the vaguely psychotic allure of one of the country’s adopted misfits: Robert Crumb. Crumb, who lives in the south of France, hit the capital with a one-man all-out visual assault of desperate men and thick-thighed women at The Musée d’Art Moderne. Visiting British cartoonist Elliot Elam dropped into town to see the big show, but also to meet another of his cartooning idols, Gilbert Shelton. Shelton, who lives in Paris, is best known for The Fabulous ... More » »
Rick Prol’s WEEGEE at Grey Art Gallery in Williamsport, PA
Rick Prol’s “Weegee” at the Grey Art Gallery in Williamsport, PA is a throwback to a New York when the world was black and white and crime scenes dominated the news, the streets and the public’s imagination. The artist whose career surfaced from the rubble of the East Village scene in the 1980s, captured a similar sort of crime world with his own art. Like Weegee (Arthur Fellig) who roamed New York’s Lower East Side looking for, finding and dramatizing death, Prol is also a legend who scratched the surfaces and came up with something equally unsettling and equally beautiful. ... More » »
Letter From Paris: Markus Hansen’s Palindrome
“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” – Woody Allen Markus Hansen, the Paris-based German artist, is trying in more than a decade’s worth of projects to see what it might be like to be someone else, and then to confront that very notion of being someone else. Using a Felix the Cat bag o’ tricks to flesh out the narrative or even the feeling he’s someone else (you), one senses the tugging or nudging – imagine Peter Pan’s moment he lost his shadow – out of one’s singular identity. It’s a bit more than ... More » »
Next Page »
