Monthly Archives: April 2008
Links
IT’S
HARD TO
IMAGINE THAT
THE WORLD WAS NOT
ALWAYS IN FULL COLOR, BUT
IT’S EVEN HARDER TO IMAGINE
THAT THE FUTURE WILL ONLY BE IN CYAN
This is the introduction to Paddy Johnson’s meditation on the resistance of cyan to the bleaching effects of sunlight on an offset print; written in response to the call for entries put out by Private Circulation for their cyan issue. Deep within it is a small picture of Gary Neville stuck to the door of a football loving shopkeeper. Neville, forever a red, captain of Manchester United and embodiment of all things therein, suffers the indignity of the unforgiving sun of countless New York summers by being discoloured to a humiliating shade of cyan, the shirt colour of fierce city rivals Manchester City and giving further credence to the truth of Johnson’s opening mantra.
It’s a really nice essay, click through to read it here.
Stasis: Flux no more
Despite the inherent and wilful knowledge that they are only ever going to be temporary and temporal in nature, it is hard not to feel a little sad when the life of an artist run space, and a good one at that, comes to an end. And so it goes with the Flux Factory in New York; soon to be flattened by the stampede of the daily commute. The artist run space should, ideally, mark its end with implosion, gorgeously, and be forever marked by the irreconcilable artistic differences between its members who thereafter don’t speak to one another for at least ten years in the manner of all the great rock bands. Maybe this is the plan, maybe it is just a matter of timing, but the municipal councils always beat them to it and after years of subsidies, realise actually, they are situated in a really sweet location. They almost always end with the “Man” sticking to them. Ben Davis, on Artnet, writes a good obituary:
Flux Factory has just opened what looks to be its final show in its current space, aptly titled “Everything Must Go.” The MTA has announced the eminent domain takeover of the block to make way for a rail link to Grand Central Terminal.
“Shitty,” is the answer Flux Factory’s Stefany Anne Golberg gives when asked how the group feels about this state of affairs. “The MTA has made this about as difficult as they could.” Information has been impossible to get, she says. “We’ve known about the possibility for two years, and then it’s just like, you’ve got 90 days to clear out.”
Golberg, one of the Flux Factory’s core members along with Jean Barbaris, Morgan Meis and Chen Tamir, says the organization is looking for a new building. It is likely, however, that after “Everything Must Go” closes, the 18-odd artists who currently live and collaborate in the space will disperse. In the future, Golberg says, Flux Factory will probably separate living and exhibition spaces, marking an end to an adventurous experiment that began with a bunch of New School philosophy undergrads living together in 1994.
Phoenix some time soon.
Universitas Leadership Sanctuary
Utopian utopianism, from the Guardian:
Donna Vassar, part of the Vassar education dynasty, has launched plans to build a $300m (£150m) private getaway for stressed-out presidents and prime ministers who want to “reconnect with their unique purpose in life”.
The Universitas Leadership Sanctuary is intended as part monastery and part conference centre where the most powerful men and women on the planet can get away from it all with a combination of reading, contemplation and even a spot of gardening.
To remind them of their role as leaders of the planet, the sanctuary will be built in the shape of a four-storey globe on the shores of Lake Las Vegas…
Not only does this look like and serve the same purpose as Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, it also seems to be rooted in the same fantasy. A trademark of the Fortress, from the comics anyway, is that it contains a memorial statue of Superman’s parents holding a large globe of Krypton; Vassar’s sanctuary by contrast looks like shards of Kryptonite supporting a large globe.
Untitled…
The May show at Ubu in Glasgow has been put back a few months until later in the year. As I begin to finish all the work that was due to be in it, so I begin to document it. I’m posting this one for now – the smallest – as a teaser here and on the works page of my website. No title for this one yet…
2 of 3
Like the drawing a couple of posts below, I have not decided on a title for this one yet. But this is just recently completed and also now up on the works page of my website. It is part of a loose tryptich of which the drawing below is another part.