Two weeks ago, I found myself in Los Angeles with an afternoon to kill. I ventured to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and stumbled across a small exhibition by 18th C. Spanish still life painter Luis Meléndez. The exhibition, titled “Master of the Spanish Still Life,” was a quaint two-room show decked out with bizarre gray stucco walls treated with a ragging technique that made it look like a display at a suburban home furnishings shop. Faux finishes aside, what immediately struck me as I perused the canvases were two works in particular that I would characterize as Rococo food porn — they were pretty hot.
Art
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Surveillance vs. Sousveillance
In his latest edition of Hypermedia, artist Artie Vierkant explores ideas of surveillance and sousveillance in the work of artists Jill Magid, Steve Mann, Josh On, Ryan McKinley, and Trevor Paglen.
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Jack Tworkov’s Contribution to the New York School: An Interview with Jason Andrew
Jason Andrew is the curator and archivist for the Estate of Jack Tworkov and was the mastermind behind the recent retrospective of Jack Tworkov’s work. A prominent figure in the Bushwick art scene, Jason Andrew is also the founding director of Norte Maar, which encourages, promotes, and supports collaborations in the arts.
Artist and writer Sharon Butler corresponded with Andrew about Jack Tworkov’s contribution to New York’s art scene in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
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Indoor Migration: Dain, Aakash Nihalani & Peep-o-rama
This movement of art in- and outside has been of interest to me since I regularly began following street art about a year ago. The contexts in which the work can be seen often varies dramatically, and these environmental shifts raise a number of questions: does the work itself change as it traverses public and private domains? If so, how? And what does this translation mean for our understanding of the work? A few months ago, I crisscrossed Brooklyn and Manhattan to investigate street art’s translation from the street to a gallery setting.
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Peru Ana Ana Peru Goes Inside at Brooklynite
Depending on how a street artist uses the street they may have something to lose by moving into a gallery space. Peru Ana Ana Peru, which is composed of two artists, use the street primarily as a way of making their striking and fantastical images even more so. We are struck by a colorful image or by a traditional picture frame on a signpost. We wonder what they’re doing there, so we investigate. But a closer inspection is unhelpful: An old portrait with the face scratched out? What does “Peru Ana Ana Peru” even mean?
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The Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World
A few weeks ago Art Review announced the Top 100 power brokers in the art world but we thought they missed the real story. So Hyperallergic has released its own list of the people who have never received their moment in the sun.
We present the Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World!
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Public Space Can Be Used Against You: NY Street Ad Takeover #2
On Sunday, many New Yorkers were probably trying to figure out who whitewashed and pimped out some of the city’s boring billboards. If you liked what you saw then let me introduce you to the man behind the renegade campaign, known as New York Street Advertising Takeover (NYSAT), his name is Jordan Seiler and he wants to return public space to the people.
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Information, Aesthetics & Fun: An Interview with AIDS-3D
Hypermedia columnist Artie Vierkant interviews artists Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas, who are more commonly known as AIDS-3D. Their work deals with a multitude of issues at the intersection of art, technology and society and they frequently employ cultural ephemera from the Internet rendered in aestheticized and irreverent ways.
Their work has been exhibited at The New Museum, PPOW, The X Initiative, Gentili Apri Berlin, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, X Biennial de Lyon, and on the Internet. They recently contributed an essay, “Hubris/Nemesis/Whatever” for Art Fag City’s IMG MGMT series.
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iBlanket: “Ads” That Don’t Sell & Encourage Debate
My husband was walking down Bedford Avenue on Wednesday, and he spotted someone pasting up posters on a wall which is almost always dominated by a giant Shepard Fairey poster, so frequently in fact that it might as well be his permanent ad space. It was lunchtime and no one stopped or cared. Knowing my love of street art, and what can sometimes be inane details, he quickly snapped a pic with his camera phone and emailed it to me with the message, “Someone covering up fairey [sic].”
What at first glance appeared to be a run of the mill “sniping” (i.e. illegal posting of corporate advertising), turned out to be a new street art campaign, iBlanket, though the artist prefers the term public art. The brain child of Bushwick artist Ann Oren, iBlanket riffs off the ubiquitous Apple “i” genre and turns our attention to the problems of homelessness just as the temperatures have started to plummet.
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Frankly American at the Met
Much has been written about the traveling exhibition The Americans, but here’s a recap: Swiss photographer Robert Frank won a Guggenheim fellowship and drove around the United States in 1955-56 taking pictures. His book The Americans, with a forward by Jack Kerouac, was published in 1959, and met with acclaim and controversy. Some people didn’t like the America that Frank saw. On the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication, the entire series has been shown at several U.S. venues, and is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
From images of a funeral in South Carolina to a wedding chapel in Reno, Frank revealed a nation that looked burdened, anxious, and lost.
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In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: Napalm Death, BHQF & My Jerry Saltz Dream
When a gaggle of Meriden teenagers got together in the early 80’s to form Napalm Death, they weren’t thinking of completely restructuring the DNA of the Song. They weren’t thinking about inventing a new Metal genre, Grindcore. They weren’t thinking about garnering the lifelong support of John Peel. They weren’t thinking about any of these things. They were just bored with the music they were hearing. They wanted to make something faster than Punk. They wanted to kill it, the latest tired beast. Turned out the beast was already out of breath, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need a good clubbing. Overkill never hurt anyone.
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Hypermedia: Exposure
Hypermedia: Critical Issues in Contemporary Media Art is a column written by artist Artie Vierkant for Hyperallergic. Each article discusses an existing or emerging theme in practices at the intersection of electronic media and the arts, drawing from the contemporary and the historic, the pervasive and the obscure.
The Internet has bred a certain degree of cultural democratization — citizen journalism, revolts aided by the use of Twitter, the rise to fame of Soul’ja Boy, etc. The same is true to a degree in art, but for the most part older methods of working stay cribbed in older methods of distribution.
