Screengrab AFC
There are very few venues for experimental video and indi film in the city, and with the reported financial troubles over at the Pioneer, and now MonkeyTown announcing that if they can’t find 300K in the next month they will have to close up shop, the scene is in danger of experiencing two very significant loses. I will leave it to The Reeler to discuss any further news at The Pioneer, as he is clearly the expert in that field, but as someone who has attended MonkeyTown several times over the last year, I have more than enough experience with their programming and restaurant to be able to say that MonkeyTown is too important to have disappear from the art film and video scene. If there is anyone who is looking to invest 300k in a film local, now would be the time to take action.
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Tom Moody just posted a mini review of Paul Slocum and Cory Arcangel’s performance at VertexList at Digital Media Tree. Tom and I were standing beside each other when we took photographs of the event, so I won’t bore you with another jpeg that varies 1% in angle just to prove that I took the picture. I hope to put together some more cohesive thoughts about the show sometime mid-week.
Giorgio Armani presents Art ReviewScreengrab AFC
I mentioned this Friday, but ArtReview launches today. That’s right folks, now there’s more art crap to read on the Internet. If you haven’t subscribed already, it’s worth your while just to see the format they’re using. It seems wholly unnecessary to me to recreate the experience of reading a magazine for the web, particularly because it means clicking through “pages” of ads before you get to anything. It’s not a great feature in a magazine, but at least you can flip through it relatively quickly. In this format, you can’t bookmark a thing, and anyone who has less than a cable connection is going to spend about two seconds with this “magazine” before they decide they have better things to do. As for ArtReview’s “Power Issue“, their list of the most important art world figures is interesting, as lists always are, but the ranking appears to have been generated basically at random. Jerry Saltz is ranked #57 in the art world and the dude is up for a Pulitzer. Tracy Emin, easily amongst the most over rated artists in the world right now, beats him at a ranking of 51 also beating out Matthew Barney who is listed at #90. Oh yeah, and Google, #100. Having read T.Whid’s thoughts, When Google has achieved the net art masterpiece what are the artists to do, I’m inclined to find their inclusion problematic, since you can’t really give it ranking that makes sense. I’ll leave Art Review’s #1 pick as a surprise for you folks, assuming you’re still interested.
UPDATE: On-The-Cusp has a great post on ArtReview’s most powerful, breaking the 100 down into galleries/dealers, artists, and media. Congradulations are in order, as those guys appear to have cinched the #56 position of power, knocking some swiss architects out of the running.
Tom Friedman, greenyarnalien, 2006Yarn, Styrofoam and paint
153 x 24 x 15 inches
I received word this week that Gagosian Beverly Hills has announced their new Tom Friedman show. I guess this means he’s left Feature Inc. I haven’t seen anything good at that gallery in ages, so my commentary on the move is basically this: What a surprise.
Gwenessa Lam, Window no. 3, 2005oil on canvas, 42 x 84 inches
In old news: Currently at the Queens Museum of Art is their third biennial of Queens based artists, The Queens International 2006. Tyler Green is probably right that Art Fairs are a better way to discover emerging artists than biennials, but this does limit your artist discovery to those who make work that meets a market demand and have gallery representation. The best way to discover new artists, is the same as it’s always been: immerse yourself in the contemporary art scene and go to shows like this one. Biennials such as this are much more interesting because they curate within a much smaller region, and are not like that of The Whitney, or PS1’s Greater New York show, which typically feature the work of artists you see all the time in Chelsea galleries anyway. On the subject of art fairs, Tyler will have at least one non-gallerist blogger to keep him company in this year, as Art Fag City will be covering the Miami fairs this year.
MoMA has announced they have created a department for New Media. Klaus Biesenbach, a man who has the last PS1 Greater New York show as his most high profile curatorial effort, will be the chief curator of this new division. It was noted by many at VertexList Saturday night that he was not in attendance, so it looks like Mr. Biesenbach will need to get himself added to the mailing list of galleries such as this and artMovingProjects if he is going to keep up to date on the scene. The last thing anybody needs is another arms length curator working in the art world.
Rhizome publishes an interview with video game artist Eddo Stern conducted by Thomas Beard. As the best artists often are, Stern proves to be incredibly articulate when discussing his work.
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