Zoe Crosher, from The Unraveling of Michelle duBois
I almost forgot to see this Zoe Crosher exhibition, The Unraveling of Michelle duBois, at DCKT.
Zoe Crosher, Obfuscated 1, 2009
Luckily there is still one more week to catch it. The exhibition closes on February 14, 2010.
Erich von Stroheim’s Greed from 1924
Speaking of fonts, The Movie Title Stills Collection is a great resource.
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr from 1931
Looking at the titles cards of films decade by decade, it’s quite amazing to see how the use and style of type has evolved.
Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard from 1950
For me the use of type is becoming more and more important and learning about them even more essential.
Luckily, there is a great series of posts about some classic Fonts over at idsgn, covering the history and use of each typeface.
So far, you can learn about Cheltenham, Gill Sans, Clarendon, Gotham, Futura, Verlag and Din.
There are just a few more days to catch Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 at David Zwirner.
The exhibition is like a small museum show and is a total knock-out. Fun, fetishistic, candy-colored, minimal, sexy and all while radiating a cool California breeze, the works in the exhibition will recast your perspective and love of all things relating to surface.
Although this exhibition has nothing to do with photography, the relationship of the works on display to ideas of seeing and the exploration of light and space, should be more than enough reason to get you to see it.
Three early works by Robert Irwin on display in the first gallery are probably my favorite in the exhibition. The pieces chart his course from painter to sculpture to installation artist.
An Untitled dot painting from 1963-65 is the only painting in the entire gallery that I can remember and sets the stage for the other visually playful works to come. The tiny dots of color conform and co-mingle on the canvas and radiate with subtle yet bursting intensity, playing with perception and three dimensional space.
Across from the dot painting is an acrylic disc hanging off of and in front of the wall. Be prepared to be confounded even further as the disc disrupts your sense of space, time and gravity.
Other highlights include a Craig Kauffman hanging acrylic and lacquer on plastic piece from 1969, some slick and shiny early John McCracken pieces as a well as a sublime Doug Wheeler Untitled light installation created in 1969.
If you have only ever heard of Robert Irwin or James Turrell, this is a chance to discover that they weren’t working alone in a vacuum.
Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 closes on February 6, 2010.
In case you were wondering, The Photographic Project will continue again this year, albeit in a very different form.
The project will consist of 12 different self-published books, one book for each month of the year. Each book will be created during the month and released towards the end of that month (and probably shipped out in the beginning of the following month).
Things are starting off a bit slowly with the first book and will be announced shortly.
In terms of availability, the first book will be given away in the same way that the photographs from the past two years were given away, to the first responder. I will keep the second copy.
At first the idea was to only make two copies of each book but I realized that considering the amount of work that would go into making so many books, it would be a shame to not make more available.
In the end I decided that a limited edition of each book will be made available for sale on this site at an affordable price. You can buy one book at a time or subscribe to the whole series of 12 (as long as you don’t mind being surprised with each book as it is created).
Once the books within each month’s edition sells out, I will then give away the last book in the edition as well via the website. This will complete the circle of each book.
Stay tuned for more information and the release of the first book.
I haven’t been there yet but this looks like a nice place to browse some books.
Ooga Booga is a concept shop vital to the creative life-blood of LA. It gathers an eclectic range of products. Spearheaded by Wendy Yao, Ooga Booga fosters a vibrant community of independent producers. For Swiss Institute, Yao installs a lounge in which one may read over 300 titles- from self to professionally published.
On view until February 13, 2010:
Swiss Institute
495 Broadway 3rd Floor
New York NY 10012
Tel 212.925.2035
Roni Horn, You are the Weather, 1994-95
Last chance to see Roni Horn aka Roni Horn at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition closes tomorrow January 24, 2009.
Owen Pallett’s (aka Final Fantasy) Heartland is simply exquisite.
Heartland is definitely the first great pop record of 2010. The album deftly combines Pallett’s haunting voice with dense orchestral arrangements, violin, electronic keyboards, electronic bass and drums.
Grand and ambitious from start to finish, Heartland is probably Pallett’s most accessible album to date. If you’ve heard the earlier albums, Has a Good Home or He Poos Clouds, then you know what I’m talking about.
I don’t want to waste time trying to describe what this album really sounds like but if you are a fan of The Beach Boys, Björk, Joanna Newsom, The Divine Comedy or Andrew Bird, you should (theoretically) like Owen Pallett.
You can listen to a few songs on his myspace page and catch him on tour if you get a chance, as he really is a one man music machine. Pallett played a great set earlier this week at Bowery Ballroom and it’s hard not to be impressed with the musical layers and density of sound one man can produce.
still from Basic Training directed by Frederick Wiseman
“All aspects of documentary filmmaking involve choice and are therefore manipulative. But the ethical … aspect of it is that you have to … try to make [a film that] is true to the spirit of your sense of what was going on. … My view is that these films are biased, prejudiced, condensed, compressed but fair. I think what I do is make movies that are not accurate in any objective sense, but accurate in the sense that I think they’re a fair account of the experience I’ve had in making the movie.”
- Frederick Wiseman
During 2010, MoMA is presenting a comprehensive retrospective of the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. MoMA will screen four different films each month with at least two screenings per film.
The festivities got off to a great start with Basic Training from 1971, a film I had never seen but only heard about. It certainly lives up to it’s reputation and gives a very realistic depiction of what army training was and probably is still like. There is also the connection that Basic Training has to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket from 1987. According to Wiseman, someone from Kubrick’s office called and requested a print of the film and it’s obvious that Kubrick watched it with great interest.
I’m looking forward to seeing as many of these films as possible as they are rarely screened, let alone all together like this. If you don’t know the work and are interested in the so-called “documentary” tradition of photography or cinema, you owe it to yourself to seek these films out. You will not be disappointed.
You can get a sense of Wiseman’s filmmaking and editing process here. You can also take a look at what he has to say about some Dorothea Lange photographs here.
Lastly, this retrospective would be a great excuse to get yourself a $25 MoMA artist’s pass which would give you unlimited free entrance to the museum as well as to the movies.
