Photograph Neil Rough

I’m out of town so there won’t be any posts today. We will issue a reminder though that tomorrow is the NADA Art Book Swap in Chelsea, so don’t forget to bring your old books out to exchange for new ones.

Also as luck would have it, a tipster sent our offices spam so strange we felt it fit for republishing. We don’t actually recommend you follow the link below.

Hello my friend!

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://softsoil.hk) are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..

My dog and I are still alive :)

As some of you may have noted, I posted the first of a two part interview with the New Media art collective MTAA over the weekend, so you can scroll down to read some of that text below or simply head directly over to the iCommons blog by clicking on this link.  While you’re there you may also observe the second half of the interview which is scheduled for publication today. Unfortunately, I won’t have the opportunity to directly link to the interview today, as once again, I am away.

I’m out of town today which means I won’t be able to link a vast majority of events that seem to be going on this weekend. I am told however that the icommons blog will have an interview I conducted with new media artist in residence MTAA later today.

UPDATE:

Upon the request of a commentor the events I mysteriously refer to are:

Brainstormers at the Brooklyn Museum for Target First Saturdays (8-9 pm fourth floor)

“Will The Real…” at Fivemyles.org. Video and objects by Michael Paul Britto . Wayne Hodge . Zach Rockhill, Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 4 - 7 p.m.

Related: Interview with frequency artist Wayne Hodge

Due to the fact that I’m leaving town tomorrow to install a show I curated for corporate America, I’m not going to have that much time to update AFC. As such, posting will be decidedly sparse around here until Tuesday.

Meanwhile, if you feel like ruminating on the latest Jeffrey Deitch quotable (the dealer is a pr machine) check out Looking Around’s recount of a lunch time panel discussion at the New York Public Library this past Monday. Blogger Richard Lacayo provides a great account of a forum Deitch shares with panelists Lisa Phillips, Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan; and Roberta Smith, deputy art critic of the New York Times. There were a few enjoyable sentiments recounted, but for once in my life, I’m going to quote someone other than the ubiquitous dealer, opting instead for Looking Around’s summation of Smith’s take on the market, which “rains down money on a few very young artists, “a market-driven WPA.”" Lacayo continues his account saying, “She took the realist position, skeptical of the market but resigned to it. “The art market is just one more form of opinion, a gross, inarticulate form of opinion.”"

Christopher Lowry Johnson (Left), Julie Evens (Right)

Images copyright Winkleman and Julie Saul Gallery respectively

And on that note, for those who’d rather discuss art James Wagner has a nice review of Christopher Lowry Johnson at Winkleman. I liked the paintings too, but find myself suspicious of their beauty. I don’t like paintings that too overtly look like something you should buy, and these works certainly walk that line even with their political content. Of course you don’t have to go far to find an example of art that actually crosses said line, as Julie Saul gallery has a number of cliche paintings by Julie Evans currently on display. In line with the problems of kitschy art, these works suffer from predictability and formulaic approach. Circles, patterning and floral shapes are to Julie Evans what the fan brush is to Bob Ross: a safe method of achieving a pleasing result. These elements too easily fall into pretty arrangements defined by the square format of the surface, turning beauty into something of a bore. Additionally, the work is easily the most girl centric I’ve seen in Chelsea this month, an attribute I’m very wary of as highly gendered art tends to indicate that the artist’s experimentation happens within a fairly narrowly defined field.

Note: Inexplicably scads of positive write-ups for Evans show abound on the web, including one from Ed Winkleman himself. The artist has a number of these links on her blog, though there are more out there than she’s listed.

Image copyright Neil Rough

I’m out of town today so a full gallery report will have to wait until Monday. I will note however that the Dana Schutz show is worth seeing, and Zach Feuer has even opened up an additional room for viewing. Also, I removed a delicious link to blacktown.net with flash animation and music I thought was quite spectacular when a commenter tipped me off to the fact the lyrics to this site were women hating. General human error effects this site as it does any other, so apologies for that.

I guess technically today’s a holiday so it’s not like I need to be posting any notices here, but seeing as how I’ll be out of town on business I’m just going to assume not everybody has it off. Here are a few choice music videos to take you into the long weekend, (people using newsreaders will have to click through for the videos as always)

Jack to the Sound of the Underground via: Jeff Sisson

This video features The Nihilist Spasm Band (comprised of Canadian art stars, John Clement, Art Pratten, Bill Exley, Murray Favro, and John Boyle) demonstrating how to use various non-traditional instruments to make music on a Japanese television show. The hosts clearly don’t know what to make of the noise band at all. They’ve cracked a few jokes, but unless you understand Japanese you’ll not get them.

Deerhoof’s Kidz Are So Small animated video. Via: Drawn!

And as a special Easter bonus this commercial for Golden Gate Funeral Homes is especially sweet. Via George Hotelling.

Danielle Mysliwiec,  Fortress III, 2006, Oil on Board, 16 x 16 inches

I’m out of town for the day, so unfortunately I won’t be able to give you even a few fresh links. Regular programming here returns Thursday, but in the meantime enjoy the woven paint of Danielle Mysliwiec (whom you may remember from last year’s emerging artist series.)

Photograph Naomi White

We’re out of the office today, so the blog will be rather quiet. On a design note, we’re still working out a few bugs here so bear with us. Normally this sort of thing you do before a relaunch not after, but sometimes life sucks, and you just deal with it as you can.

Well, welcome to the new Art Fag City website everyone! Aside from the redesigned flashing logo, you’ll note a few changes around here that I suspect a number of you will be happy about (most notably the moderated comment feature.) As for myself, I’m happy to be able to say that we’re now able to host the occasional video without the help of youtube. I’m pretty happy about this since I’ve grown tired of describing work and hoping that readers will take my word for something rather than just watching it and deciding for themselves. Also pleasing to me is the fact that massive links will finally live up to its title. Thanks to the help of Jeff Kirsch, my delicious account now feeds directly into the blog, (non-delicious users should interpret this simply to mean we will now feature daily link posts.)

I’ve added a few About, FAQ and Credit pages for the blogger stalkers amongst us, but rather than have everyone parse through the links, I’ve copied and pasted the FAQ below as I believe it’s relevant to the relaunch. Enjoy the read, and send Jeff Kirsch an email telling him how great his CSS looks. I think he’s sick of mine.

What’s with the name Art Fag City?
To the best of my knowledge the term art fag was first used to describe pseudo intellectuals and poser artists in the song You’ll Dance to Anything by the Dead Milkmen, though this meaning does not describe the rationale for the blog title. The term simply means to describe Manhattan as an island full of “art fans”, but guess what sounds stupid as a website name? And thus Art Fag City was born.

What a great logo! How do I make one of my own?
Like many fine internet products, the Art Fag City logo began with GR Sites Instant Logo Generator. For a basic version of this logo you can use the generator to make your own. To turn the file into an animated gif, you need superficial technical knowledge of the Adobe ImageReady program. Endless Google results with these instructions found here.

Speaking of which, who designed this AWESOME site?
Thankfully, being an artist gives you the ability to make a site look exactly the way you envision it, so you can attribute the site design to one Paddy Johnson. It also helps to have the technical support of Jeff Kirsch on hand.

Why Do You Hate Eric Fischl so much?
I don’t. The Art Fag City bi-line “As relevant as Eric Fischl” pairs the inherent unevenness of blogging, with the career of one artist. I’m not a fan of a lot of his work, but I don’t claim to dismiss it either.

What kind of camera do you use to take your pictures with?
Clearly a really shitty one.

You never used to have comments on your site. Why the change? And why do I have to verify my email address with you to leave a comment? Doesn’t the fact that I’ve written something signify that I exist?
Probably 70% of my readers have complained about not being able to leave comments, and since I enjoy the feedback, (positive and negative), I wanted to open up a space for that to happen. That said, anonymous comments tend to encourage a feedback system I am not interested in. I’m not the Catholic church, so I have to assume that God as witness will not necessarily ensure ethical behavior. As such, all email addresses must be verifiable, or the comment will be deleted.

You’re a dude right?
No.

It’s official: The Art Fag City relaunch is slated for Monday morning. Following Tyler Green’s request for updated or omitted urls, please also send them along to artfagcity[AT]gmail.com with the subject title blogroll. Sunday night marks our deadline as well.

We’re still very busy around here, so the five million stories we’re supposed to be reporting on will have to wait. In the meantime I encourage you to consider The Blood Scarf.

The long awaited fusion between the body mod crowd and Make Magazine geeks is upon us.

Photo copyright Neil Rough

I think God is punishing Christians by keeping the technical knowledge from their faith that would allow them to create embeddable videos without an automatic start function. I’ve removed the video from the post below because having it run every time I loaded my web page it annoyed the fuck out of me.

In other news, deadlines are pending so you won’t see much on the site today. In the meantime enjoy the work of Neil Rough.

Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel uttered the title of this post many years ago, and it still surprises me that the quote hasn’t circulated more. Wikipedia surely fails us today, as I notice the entry sorely lacks these words.

In other news, posting will be lighter than normal this week, as we prepare to relaunch Art Fag City. Thankfully the day draws near when you no longer have to read about what a piece of shit I think blogger is.

We’re out for the day, but you can expect to hear from us through out the rest of the week and into the weekend as we cover the New York art fairs.

Editors note: Scratch that. We’re back. Interview above!

In a bizarre turn of events it appears as though the corporate world does have some use for me and I will remain out of town until Friday. Almost as unbelievable as that nugget of information is the fact that Exit Art finally redesigned their website. Gone are the days where you can’t find material of any kind on the site without experiencing blurry text and a boy who whips the sense out of you as you scroll links to pages you might follow. The only downside to the retirement of whipping boy is that I’ll have to find something else to complain about during slow news days. Thanks a lot you guys.

In other other news, Tyler Green writes a rare personal post on Valentines day, attributing his love for art to his mother. It’s very touching. Via Bloggy.