Emvergeoning

That’s still another thing about the Correspondence School, it’s not just the letters, the postcards, the drawings, the poems, it’s also the New York Correspondence School objects. The Spam radio, for example, was a radio in the shape of a Spam can, which had a little handle on it, it was a thing the Spam Corporation made one year as an advertising gimmick. It was something they gave to people, and you could go to the beach with your Spam radio, and play your radio on the beach, it was a little radio inside of a Spam can, and I didn’t really treasure it very much so I gave it to Jim Bohn.

…

But to get back to that radio, I gave it to Jim Bohn — which is BOHN and not BONE — and the following week he was in Soho walking around with his wife and carrying the Spam radio as a kind of prize trophy. He was taking it out for a walk, and the minute I saw him with it I realized that he had given it some kind of notoriety and importance, and I was intensely jealous that he was walking around with the Spam radio and that I hadn’t thought of walking around with a Spam radio, like the time I had once walked around with the head of Candy Darling in a plastic bag. So still another week later, I was in Soho again and went to the supermarket and bought a real can of Spam and put a little handle on it, and then I was walking around with that.

— Ray Johnson

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As many of you know, San Antonio sculptor / performer Jimmy Kuehnle has been in Japan since August working on a Fulbright project. He recently posted photos of his first two exhibits, at the Kyoto Museum (Artjam 2007) and the Aichi Geidai Gallery in the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Continuing a body of work he started in San Antonio, Kuehnle fabricated huge, inflatable sculptures, which also served as interactive / performance pieces.

Mr. Bubble Head, which Kuehnle made for Artjam, is a huge orange inflatable sculpture with ropes criss-crossing inside. Kuehnle spend much of the opening inside the sculpture tugging on the ropes as people walked by, creating an impression of organic response to the viewers’ presence. Museum visitors were also allowed inside the sculpture at various points, turning it into an interactive sculpture.

His piece at the Aichi Geidai Gallery, called Big Blob, was another inflatable sculpture made of the same orange material. This piece, however, was a suit which Kuehnle could walk around in “like a large leviathan.” After his performance in this enormous suit, Kuehnle invited audience members to try it on — but it seems a bit more unwieldy than those ridiculous sumo suits.

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We here in San Antonio have begun following one of the more mighty traditions of the olde world every Christmas.. we grow Mustaches and celebrate them on the eve of Christmas Day every year, at noon, in front of the Alamo. 2007 was no slouch. (this post also settles the continuous question over the need for a “mustaches” category/tag..as you can imagine, proper spelling is also an issue.)

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Shameless self promotion? possible. This is for the opening of our show at FL!GHT Gallery tonite on South Flores. Over 40 artists have brought new and old work to be sneezed out of our “Dry Goods” room. The image you see is of the halfway completed hanging..just a taste of what you’ll see tonite.

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(updated on 11/29/07) follow up by the landowners “buff” crew :

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Heres a little recap of the Ken Little performance of Yoko’s “Cut Piece.”

(all photos by Justin Parr, click here for a more extensive folder of images)

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I took part in San Antonios semi-regular Bike Gang Summit the other night for Halloween. During the process of riding through spooky parts of the city, we stopped at a cemetary on the East Side. It quickly degenerated into a game of Wheres Waldo..take a look (Waldo makes an appearance in each of these images).

To see images from the entire night go here.

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Contemporary terrorists draw inspiration from Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

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The following comments on the work of Sol LeWitt were sent in by artist, writer, and Emvergeoning reader Chris Karcher. While this piece isn’t a revolutionary reevaluation of LeWitt, I think Karcher’s emphasis on the playful, humorous, and lyrical aspects of LeWitt’s work helps to balance a critical narrative that is too often weighted toward detached conceptualism. I hope you enjoy it.

The two recent exhibits of new work by Sol LeWitt (“Scribble Wall Drawings,” PaceWildenstein Gallery and “A Cube with Scribbled Bands in Four Directions, One Direction on Each Face,” Paula Cooper Gallery – see this Weekend Update at artnet.com) provide an occasion to comment on the legacy of an iconic American artist. This short note is inspired by the fact that LeWitt died in April of 2007, and both exhibits consist of work created after his death.

The catalog produced in conjunction with a retrospective of LeWitt’s work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 2000 wanders across a lifetime of output starting with early figurative work, then moves on to the geometric work with which he remains closely associated and finishes with the later paintings of irregular brush strokes and lines. LeWitt produced a staggering number of drawings and paintings. In between he oversaw the creation of large numbers of constructions, sculptures and wall drawings. It certainly appears that the man enjoyed making things. And, that he enjoyed painting and drawing.

“The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product.” LeWitt wrote this in 1967 and it remains, perhaps, the most prevalent conception of what his art was about; the idea, not the output. LeWitt was widely known for his use of other artists to actually create his “finished product,” so it is not unreasonable that people assume Lewitt was above the dirty work of putting pen-to-paper or brush-to-canvas. This notion of the artwork itself not being the point dogged LeWitt throughout his career. Yet his later work is so colorful and lyrical that the label “conceptual” no longer seems to encapsulate it. His comment from 1982, “I would like to produce something I would not be ashamed to show Giotto,” may better speak to LeWitt’s true sensibilities as an artist.

The notion of playfulness seems to escape many discussions about LeWitt and his work. Even such exhausting projects as the “Incomplete Open Cubes” series – with all its manifestations – has, at its core, a jocular sensibility. The cubes as drawings, as photographs, as small sculptures, as big sculptures, in black, in white, all obsessively depict the 122 variations. The doodles evolve into isometric renderings that become little models that become big sculptures that are in turn photographed, all of which are printed in little books and pamphlets. It is not unlike a great shaggy-dog joke. Avoid getting caught up in intellectual analysis and the juxtaposition of an incomplete cube in a gallery filled with baroque and mannerist paintings has its lighter side.

His process of seeking every combination of a series served, among other things, to ensure that LeWitt had plenty of material to work with. Seemingly endless variations of bands in four directions were turned out in seemingly endless varieties of mediums. The consistency of the form allowed for an opportunity to fully explore the interaction of colors, or in the case of sculpture, the interaction of light and shadow. LeWitt repeatedly set strict limits that allowed for infinite variety. Jorge Luis Borges, in an essay tracing the various manifestations of a single thought across time and literature, arrived at a final summation that also describes the work of LeWitt, “an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

The art of LeWitt should not be defined by hard logic and cool detachment. LeWitt’s work is better appreciated for the humor, color and inventiveness that Giotto would have enjoyed.

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… in the age of Web 2.0.

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An 8 foot tall Lego man was pulled out of the sea by the employees of a beach-side drink stall in the Netherlands yesterday. The words “No Real Than You Are” are printed on his chest, and the name “Ego Leonard” and the number 9 can be found on his back. A little googling turns up pictures of the Lego man at a music festival called Dance Valley in Amsterdam. Apparently it’s all the handiwork of an artist collective called “Ego Leonard” which is somehow connected to Du Fois. Here’s some video of the sculpture on the beach (his head turns!). Another mystery solved by the internet.

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Everybody has their own story about who won this year, Please post yours in the comments below.

All of these photos (and bunches more with labels) are located here.

click on the link below for more action!

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The BBC reports that a French woman decided to kiss a Cy Twombly painting in Avignon, leaving a lipstick stain on the $2 million work.

“I left a kiss,” she told La Provence newspaper on leaving the police station.

“A red stain remained on the canvas… This red stain is testimony to this moment, to the power of art.”

Speaking to French news agency AFP, she said the artist had “left this white” for her.

Somehow, I doubt that this is quite what Twombly had in mind…

[via Design Observer]

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A lot of you have probably seen this, but it is too funny to pass up. Plus it’s time for a new post, and I have nothing to say. (A post on Alberto Mijangos’ T-shirt series is forthcoming, however…)

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If you were to interrogate me to try and find the origin of this post, well, I would sound like Alberto Gonzales. I don’t remember. But I do know this stuff is pure gold, so in the esprit de corps of Gay Pride Month, I present the opening theme to Rainbowman: Warrior of Love.

In addition, I found the true weapon of mass destruction that would solve the Iraqi civil war if we left it in the right hands [i.e.- the enemies of our enemies are our friends]. Chances are that any YouTube video with eleven question marks dwells in the interstitial space of strange, delightful entertainment and quizzical absurdity.

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Daniel Finkelstein discovers the real meaning behind the new Olympics logo…

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A subtle and layered performance by one of America’s great performance artists (this is on the early ’80s sketch comedy show, Fridays):

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                                                 equals

The 1st level of Donkey Kong?

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The Museo Alameda Smithsonian Affiliated museum of Latin American Art opened its doors to the (ritzy) public this past Thursday, with a $250 dollar a head gala.  Heres a few highlights from the opening.  go Here for the entire story.

(the king of party, Karlos with a K)

(this is what happens when you over-photograph david zamoras casas)

(yes, thats our own Ben “Jammin” Judson right there)

It sure was fun.  Check out my Flickr page for more.

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A group of satisfied Bike Gangers looks on at the renegade video projection stumbled on in “Tacoland Park,” this last Saturday Night. The Bike gang stopped by the SWC Club, Tacoland Park, The Cherry street Bridge, Brackenridge Golf Course, Pine Street stretch, above Sunken Gardens, Ghost Train Field, and La Tuna to name a few. (some of these place names are local lore and quite unofficial) . A collection of photos outlining the entire evening in its entirety can be found here.

Shouting at an oncoming train on the Cherry Street Bridge

Legend has it that when the moon is jussssst right you can still see the trains turning on imaginary tracks out here, emptying herds to slaughter at the union stockyards.

the Lebowski Rollers + many more can be seen here.

If you were one of the many who took part, Thank you!

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For a little Sunday night / Monday morning fun, visit the Gallery of Regrettable Food. Plenty of unimaginable gelatin concoctions, absurd mystery ingredients, and heaping helpings of snarky commentary. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

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