I spoke in my friend Alex Heilner’s Digital Media class in Baltimore earlier this week. As we rode the train back to New York, he showed me photos from Burning Man 2007, and today sent me a link to this video of a midnight zombie walk in the desert. Run for the hills.
There is a new corpse flower mega-star about to bloom Monday night at Lehman College’s garden in The Bronx - the corpse flower was once the official flower of The Bronx! This is an extremely rare occurance and particularly if you missed the Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s corpse flower bloom last year! I made an animation about Brooklyn’s corpse flower - it’s on view right now at Long Island University Gallery, in a show curated by Aron Namenwirth (see previous post).
I’m showing a new animation, made from web cam stills, titled “Bloom of the Triffid” in a show curated by Aron Namenwirth of ArtMoving Projects.
Long Island University - click for directions
Digital Political Time Lapse
September 3-28 2007; Opening Thursday, September 20th 2007, 7-9pm
artists Perry Bard, Rico Gatson, Perry Hoberman, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Marcin Ramocki, Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, Paul Slocum, Adam Simon, William Stone, and Momoyo Torimitsu
Making them is an endless source of amusement. Here I’m screaming at the monster in “Slither” - I need a vacation, desperately.
Writes Ken Gregory, “Sun Suckers feed by sitting in the sun light and sucking up rays of light with their skin out stretched…They don’t bite…Sun Suckers are notorious singers…Sun Suckers communicate with other Sun Suckers using a sort of complex telepathy that uses high frequency sound waves which humans can not hear.” Sun suckers are non-native, non-invasive, machines introduced to the banks of the Red River by Winnipeg artist Ken Gregory. Read more at his website cheapmeat.net.
After visiting countless galleries in the last 3-day marathon of art openings in New York, and although I did not see everything, I am astonished and excited to write that my highlights were all in Brooklyn, and - ahem - 2 of the artists are Canadian:
1. Joe McKay’s “Lost Signal” wins for most playful and most obsessive at vertexList. McKay made sculptures from dead cell phones, and there are approximately 8 delightful sculptures that ignite the edges of the gallery, many of which you are invited to play with to make sounds and music. Bring a friend for even more fun, epecially at the cell phone piano. My favourite at the moment is the one pictured above - a quiet urban graveyard lit by an LED moon. Amidst this collection of re-animated communication devices, the sun sets in McKay’s poetic and clever performance video, Sunset Solitaire - click for artist’s website. I invited Joe to speak at Pace University on Monday with Marina Zurkow - don’t miss this! details here. image Cell Phone Sculpture.
2. Michelle Forsyth’s “Paperwork” at Hogar Collection. In her 100 Drawings Project Michelle has undertaken a plan to visit sites of tragedy across North America and document them in an unusual way - by her sideline observations, without the typical photographic document. This painting depicts a cloud floating over the site of the accident - click for artist’s website. Marvel at the extraordinary window installation, featuring thousands of pinned paper circle constellations, from the convenient bench outside the gallery, but get up close too. image Point Ellice Bridge Collapse, Victoria, BC, May 26, 1896.
3. Seher Shah’s “Jihad Pop” at Momenta Art. The centerpiece of the show is a large detailed drawing that is infinitely compelling. Its iconographies - a cube, a cross, a coffin, minarets, and muslim figures - repeat around the room with the force of pop-media saturation in a series of dark graphic prints - click for artist’s website. image Jihad Pop.