Friday, January 27, 2006

Music: New CD - Deerhoof


Deerhoof - The Runners Four
I heard a Deerhoof song - Twin Killers - on a music blog - You Ain't No Picasso - and was wowed. Discordant but melodic, improvisational but tight.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Art: Indian Artist Enjoys His World Audience


An article about Tyeb Metha in today's NY Times - Indian Artist Enjoys His World Audience
Excerpt
'The central passion of his work stems from his country's central wound: the 1947 partition of British India that left a million people dead, drove millions from their homes and inscribed a deep sense of anguish across his imagination. In the Hindu-Muslim clashes that broke out around 1947, Mr. Mehta watched as his neighbors butchered a stranger to death. The victim was Hindu and the attackers were Muslim, but it happened the other way around in other neighborhoods. Many Indians his age have an identical memory.
"That violence gave me the clue about the emotion I want to paint," he explained. "That violence has stuck into my mind."
The bull became a favorite figure. Not a bull in repose, but a tied-up, writhing, mutilated bull. "I was looking for an image which would not narrate, but suggest something which was deep within me, the violence that I witnessed during partition," Mr. Mehta said. "Have you seen a bull running? This tremendous energy being butchered for nothing."'

Monday, January 23, 2006

Art: Peter Tucker at Polvo group show


Peter is featured in a group show of Texas artists at Polvo gallery titled - What I Like About Texas....
Yours truly is part of the performance piece that was done during the New Amercian Talent opening at Arthouse.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Art (Theater): Intergalactic Nemesis

This was the preview/tune up show for SVT before they went to New York to present it at the Bowery Poetry Club. Go SVT!

Art: Postcards From Cutting Edges of Downtown's Art Scene

Good article from the NY Times - Postcards From Cutting Edges of Downtown's Art Scene. I like the description of the type of art critic Kim Levin is:
"For many years, Ms. Levin wrote the brief capsule reviews for the Choices section of the Voice, and she was a master of that short form. She rarely wrote negatively, and she freely dispensed stars to shows she deemed of particular interest. She was not a militant anti-elitist, but her impulse was to share rather than to exclude; you feel that openness and wide-ranging curiosity in the Feldman exhibition.
The hoarding of ephemera may seem compulsive or maniacal, but there is a sense of fun and love in it, too. Every day can be a treasure hunt for the New York art critic, professional and amateur alike. You just have to keep your eyes and mind open, like the exemplary Ms. Levin."

Friday, January 13, 2006

Art: Who Needs a White Cube These Days

A good article from the NY Times about alternative art spaces by Roberta Smith: Who Needs a White Cube These Days?
Excerpts:
"In a small storefront on Grand Street, overseen by Emily Sundblad, a Norwegian artist, and John Kelsey, an American critic, the operation [Reena Spaulings] has provided an adamant reminder that a gallery is a social organism - even a kind of family - that combines aspects of living room and studio."

"At Orchard everything is hashed out by the collective's 11 members, which also tends to expose the secret emotional life of galleries, where ambition, idealism and vulnerability intersect and conflict."

"It is difficult to be a full-service gallery and maintain a high degree of deviation for long. Friedrich Petzel, who took over the Printed Matter space next to his gallery on West 22nd Street, spoke in September of using it without benefit of a white-box redo or a set schedule. But by December, both were nearly in place, Mr. Petzel said, largely because of pressure from his artists. "

"But even the folks at Reena Spaulings admit that their artists want big careers and that they were impressed by the activities of deliberate, rather than accidental art dealers while participating in the Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland, last spring."

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Music: New CD - Sufjan Stevens


Epic, sprawling, magnificent album.
This is the original cover art by artist Divya Srinivasan (who use to live in Austin and was one of the artist's on Richard Linklater's animated film - Waking Life)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Technology: NoteShare collaboration tool

Read an article in the Sunday NY Times about NoteShare. Excerpt:
"Whether this program will work commercially, I have no idea. Its Mac-only nature obviously limits its market. But its design expresses two impulses that are both the history and the future of the computing business: letting people connect more thoroughly, broadly and richly; and making it steadily easier for them to do so."