Yoko Tanaka, Igloo Head and Tree Head and Fritz Lang’s M.

Posted in Artrage on Saturday April 26, 2008. Shoutouts.

We poured over the coffee-table book the night before and in the morning walked down the broadway to an instant photo place, five PCs in the back room. Vague and non-specific printed map in hand we plotted our route through the labyrinthine tube network, our final goal a huge yellow flower on a wall near Bethnal Green.

Banksy is an icon now, his tongue in cheek creations worth thousands of pounds. Still, as we wander the streets of suburban London, we don’t see anyone else obviously doing what we are. We find four and are running concentric circles around where we think the fifth should be when a man pushing a scooter approaches us, “It’s not here. I know what you’re looking for, and it’s not here any more. They sold the wall it was on, the whole thing. Took it out and built a new wall. Two thousand pounds.”

“Oh,” we say, “that’s crazy. What a pity.” He snorts at us and rolls his eyes, “Crazy, yes, but it was there for three years,” as if it were stupid of us to dawdle on the opposite side of the world. Most don’t last a week.

There is a crack that runs the length of the Tate Modern, and I spend the afternoon looking at Pollocks and Mondrians, but nothing comes close to finding that yellow flower on the wall. Art is always personal.

Posted in Travel on Thursday January 24, 2008. Shoutouts [1].

Soft as sleep the snow fell

Posted in Artrage on Sunday October 7, 2007. Shoutouts.

Sugarshock: Battle Royale with Cheese (by. Joss Whedon & Fabio Moon)

Posted in Artrage on Sunday August 5, 2007. Shoutouts.

And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now. Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood.

-Dylan Thomas

Posted in Artrage on Wednesday May 23, 2007. Shoutouts.

The New Yorker attempts to hunt down Banksy, the “quality vandal” who’s hotter than hot right now – the only problem being that no-one seems to know who he actually is:

I asked Unangst what more he could tell me about Banksy, and he replied, “The only thing I can say is he’s like everybody, but he’s like nobody.” And so began the koan of Banksy, whose own talents as an aphorist—“Never paint graffiti in a town where they still point at aeroplanes”; “Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red Indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet“—seem to inspire all who cross his path. Banksy has convinced nearly everyone who has ever met him that promulgating his image would amount to an unconscionable act of soul robbery.

I think Banksy is the perfect example that art – and it is art – is all about concept. Nail the concept and you can worry about execution later. This follows that medium a lot of his work is published on, ie. walls, streamlines the process. It has to be fast and it has to be visible – and that immediately eliminates a lot of the bullshit. Here’s a flickr group for further reflection. I love the guy, and love his stuff, and love that people are falling over themselves to pay for it. Quality.

Posted in Artrage on Wednesday May 16, 2007. Shoutouts [1].

This may be the greatest piece of street-art ever created. I wonder if they pasted it up incrementally?

Posted in Artrage on Monday April 30, 2007. Shoutouts.

Dance of the flight attendant (via. kottke)

Posted in Artrage on Friday January 12, 2007. Shoutouts.

While the steep entry fees have a tendency to make me choke and stumble around clutching my throat, I do enjoy going to art exhibitions. I checked out three shows whilst I was Tokyo-side and this is where I write about them. I might even muse a little about the deeper issues. What makes a good art exhibition? What mystic collection of factors cohere into something that’s enjoyable to wander through? What leaves a lasting impression? Probably I’ll just end up talking about booze though. Join me!

The Tokyo – Berlin / Berlin – Tokyo event at the Mori Art Museum on the 53rd floor of the Roppongi Hills complex in the centre of Tokyo was immaculately laid out, meticulously curated and one of the most boring exhibitions I’ve ever seen. The main problem seemed to be maintaining the, at times tenuous, connection between Tokyo and Berlin that was the exhibition’s focus. Choosing mediocre pieces of art solely because they match or were influenced by something being done on the other side of the world does not make for good viewing; it’s an art history lesson, nothing more.

Check this except from the opening paragraph of Tokyo-Berlin / Berlin-Tokyo: a continuing dialogue of modern cities which is included in the catalogue for the exhibition:

In a cultural sense, this form of modernity has usually been associated with the political, philosophical and scientific advances of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment. Yet at the time of the Enlightenment, Edo, as Tokyo was then known, had already sustained a culture that, in its size, lively use of images and media and levels of consumption of goods, could already be regarded in some ways as “modern”. This kind of modernity, however, was framed within a feudal social and economic structure that had been unaffected by the revolutionary republican ideals and industrial innovations that had impacted so strongly on the countries of the Atlantic Rim.

Yick. With the depth of resources the curators had to play with and, judging by the venue, the endless wads of cold, hard cash thrown at them, you’d expect something with a little more soul.

For me, the most compelling pieces were those that focused on the cities themselves; an eight-hour romp through the centre of Berlin caught on camera, hand-drawn maps of pre-war Tokyo, some black and white photos of houses. Oh, and the walls the art was hung on, they were mostly great. Some were red. Some green. One even had some graffiti on it. Marvellous.

To add insult to injury, the companion exhibition called Design Deutschland: 80 Years of ‘Made in Germany’ was nothing more than a product fair for German cars and kitchens. You cannot choose a marketing brochure for BMW as the best example of German design for the year 2005 and expect people to take you seriously. Nor can you display a kitchen and then leave fliers for local suppliers next to it. Dedicating an entire gallery to the latest models of Mercedes, complete with marketing drones and renderers? Please. We may be capitalist whores, but we are not that stupid. Why not showcase some of brilliant graphic, multimedia and especially product design coming out of Germany guys. Please? Please?!!

Enough with four door silver saloons already.

Olafur Eliasson is a Danish artist who’s done some stunning work over the years, including one the most popular installations ever shown at the TATE Modern in London, The Weather Project. There was a small show of his work on at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, just near Shinagawa. On Monday we trucked up to check it out. The exhibition included 10 pieces of his work from 1993 through to 2005. Easily the best was the famous Beauty piece a shimmering curtain of water, set in a darkened room, with a semi-visible rainbow flowing across it.

This was a good exhibition. Sure it was a little overpriced and, unsurprisingly, the girl at front desk got snooty at me for trying to pretend I was a student, but the art was great. Beauty is beautiful, mesmerising even, and the rooms filled with carefully arranged spotlights and mirrors breaking up light and reassembling it are fascinating and otherworldly. Besides, there’s a nice courtyard and a Nara Yoshitomo room done up like a studio upstairs. His stuff always makes me happy in the way only cartoon children with large knives can. They’ve extended this one until sometime in March, so check it out if you get the chance.

The third exhibition was called “YAMAGUCHI KATSUHIRO, From Experimental Workshop to Teatrine” and it was showing at the Kamakura Museum of Modern Art. The city of Kamakura seems purposed designed to cater for the thronging hordes of domestic tourists searching for beauty away from the towering glass monstrosities of Shinjuku. Surprisingly, the museum was basically deserted. Did they know something we didn’t? I’d wager yes.

The exhibition was dull. The pieces were poorly maintained. Showed their age. Failed to excite. The less I write about it, the better I’ll feel. The poster was nice though. Oh, and I liked the trees.

It gets so much better though. The companion exhibition of Francisco Goya etchings at the nearby Kamakura Modern Art Annex (catchy name guys) left me feeling empty and, strangely enough, wishing that Goya had just stuck to wearing tight pants and stabbing bulls in the neck with sharp spears, rather than taking up a career in art. Maybe that’s just me though. I’m sure if you were a Goya fan and could stand temperatures in excess of a billion degrees you would have loved the show.

Me, I was happy to escape onto a Shinkansen and head back towards Kansai. All this culture left me with a savage desire to see how many flavours of chu-hai I could sample before I passed out. Stay tuned to see how that works out.

Posted in Artrage on Wednesday February 22, 2006. Shoutouts.