Ocularpation: Wall Street

Inspired as much by the comic genius Andy Kaufman as he is with the philosophies of John Cage, the Zefrey Throwell is no stranger to controversy, and has become an expert at getting people to pay attention. Whether through paint, film, or performance pieces, the New York-based artist has spent his career drumming up wildly ambitious projects that deliberately try to turn heads as a means of sparking up conversation. His work has been displayed at MoMA, the Whitney, and Lincoln Center, but he prefers the street to the confines of the gallery.

In the past year he’s “painted” with the garbage-riddled pavement of New York by dressing up in a white jumpsuit and dragging his belly across Union Square; in November he organized and participated in a seven day strip poker game as a means of exploring contrasting economic models, and, in an adventurous project titled “Midtown Games,” had 100 people take part in a 250 meter run through Times Square at morning rush hour. In another, titled “Why Not Take All Of Me New York?”, Throwell lived with complete strangers in a different borough of New Year each month for an entire year. The idea was conceived as an attempt to break his commuting habits—to break free from the constraints of routine—and it worked well. For him, there is nothing more uncomfortable than contentment.

But these days he’s best known for his work in the financial sector. This August, he and 50 volunteers acted out what he calls “a Freudian nightmare” and marched down to Wall Street dressed as businessmen, vendors, street sweepers, and prostitutes, took off their clothes, and proceeded to do their “jobs” for five minutes completely naked. Three people were arrested. Onlookers, many themselves on their way to work, were both amused and baffled. The press, meanwhile, went wild, and the event was covered by major media outlets around the world. The aim of Ocularpation: Wall Street was, in his words, to “bring a sense of transparency to one of the most mysterious streets in the world…and draw attention to the absurdity of the modern economic model.” The performance brought a much-needed media focus back to the financial district, two months before the Occupy movement took over Zuccotti Park and captured the world’s attention.

I spoke with Zefrey at his Ocularpation: Wall Street exhibit, which runs through February 11th at Gasser and Grunert on 19th Street. In addition to video footage from the performance, the exhibition features paintings and generic mass-market objects (phones, coffee cups and Yankee hats, to name a few) uniformly coated in artificial gold spray paint. After Ocularpation, Zefrey will head to California for his next project, Entropy Symphony: Movement III, a 1000 car horn performance that will take place on highways throughout the Los Angeles area during rush hour on February 15th.

Make sure you won’t miss Lane Koivu’s interview of Zefrey Throwell next week.

Sette Giorni by Manuel Agnelli & Marco Klefisch

Manuel Agnelli (leader of Afterhours) and the illustrator Marco Klefisch are the protagonists of the first book of the series called Caratteri, published by the editorial studio Ready-Made, which will be presented this evening at the Triennale in Milan. The project thought as way to create dialogue among creative people with different backgrounds – Music and visual Arts – starts with a volume came out from two years of informal meetings among the two contemporary artists. Entitled Sette Giorni (Seven days), as the days of the week, it refers to the main time unit of measurement of the human beings’ lives.

This series of books is based on the ambitious idea of combining modern and more traditional printing methods – texts are laid out and printed using digital technology, while the illustrations are produced following to traditional techniques (press, etching, silkscreen, woodcut). Sette Giorni (Seven days) is a unique issue, which creates a connection between the run off Manuel Agnelli’s texts and the more rational and raisonne 7 etchings by Marco Klefisch (one per day). Marco’s work reflects his point of view and interprets Manuel’s thoughts in a non-literal way in a sort of brainstorming, which conveys in a prestigious and totally innovative way of perceiving artist books.

The presentation at the Triennale in Milan (December 16, 8pm) will be accompanied by an installation by Marco Klefisch that recalls the illustration made for the book and a performance by Manuel Agnelli and Xabier Iriondo (vocals and guitar of Afterhours).

Monica Lombardi

Direktorenhaus / Alpenglühen und Edelweiss

Direktorenhaus, the space for contemporary applied arts and experimental design (best known on these pages as the host of Illustrative), is hosting Alpenglühen und Edelweiss, starting tomorrow. The event will feature two exhibitions, Down By The River, showcasing the hypercolor and fantastical imagery of Erik Mark Sandberg, which show “quite plainly the topics beauty craze and consumer culture,” and a second exhibition, Graphic Tour, which takes a look at the vanguard of graphic design with artists such as Erik Mark Sandberg and Damien Poulain and others. Meanwhile Sean McGinness is finishing up his sprawling, work-in-progress exhibition Somewhere Over The Rainbow elsewhere in the space.

So if you happen to find yourself in Berlin this week, stop in for a look see. In addition to the talent on display and the prime space, they’re serving hot honey wine and tangy Berlin Mules.

Signs (Metamorphosis) / Bouke de Vries

Bouke de Vries had an extended stay in Milan recently while he exhibited in a solo show, Signs (Metamorphsis) at the always on the vanguard Maria Gloria Gallery. De Vries is an artist polymath, his career shifting across mediums and his work always remaining devoid of compromise. His trajectory has taken him from restoration of art to the spotlight of the pop culture art scene, commercial art, jewelry (he released a line in collaboration with Anoushka earlier this year) and on to political activism. His most memorable works are perhaps those which openly criticize chairman Mao Zedong, and . His pieces look like otherworldly pastiches of a hedonistic, ethereal dreamscape, and they showcase flaw to great effect.

“In this flawed world, perfection seems to be an attainable goal… But not-quite-perfection is often easily dismissed and discarded…”

Bouke De Vires Filmed by Matteo Cherubino

For the occasion of his stay, 2DM’s Matteo Cherubino filmed and interviewed the artist among the eerie, surreal backdrop of his recent sculptural work: surreal cross sections and self-contained worlds of a parallel universe. Or a Cherubs. Butteflies. Cigarettes. Dramatically combined with porcelain. In conversation, the artist reveals inner working of the artist’s mind, his depth of perception, and his extraordinary and unbound working process.

De Vries also presented together with Gloria Maria Gallery at this year’s MiArt, showed at Artissima this year, and often exhibits at his home gallery, London’s Vegas Gallery.

Tag Christof – special thanks to Bouke de Vires & Gloria Maria Gallery

O Come All Ye Hackers!

Over Red Stripe tall cans in KK Outlet’s cozy Shoreditch space last night, we swooned over some seriously cool sweaters. But these were no run-of-the-mill charity shop finds: they’re handmade hacks with tons of personality. Artist Andrew Salomone has hacked a portable knitting machine from 1980 so that it can be used just like a desktop printer. Input a nifty design, and presto! Nan’s knitting needles are done for.

The show’s centerpiece is something of a shocker, and takes the level of awesome heretofore thought possible in a festive jumper to brave new heights: behind a handily knitted, snow-covered house is an entire light show replica of the legendary Slayer Christmas Lightorama. The ultimate holiday house on the ultimate holiday jumper, and a pleasantly over-the-top slice of American suburbia to rock around the city this holiday season.

The California native, Brooklyn-based artist knows how to make waves with his work: his Cosby inside a Cosby inside a Cosby sweater (which unfortunately didn’t make an appearance) was featured on Good Morning America, and he’s more recently aligned himself with the #occupy movement (and has helped keep some happy activists toasty warm). For O Come All Ye Hackers, the artist together with KK Outlet will also be making a few new pieces based on user-submitted artwork (visit their website for specs).

Catch some sweater action (and maybe even the artist) or pick up one of Salomone’s bespoke sweaters until December 22 at KK Outlet in Hoxton Square.

Still Life / Nacho Alegre

Apartamento has been a quiet revolution in fine art of magazining. Its slightly informal and totally unpretentious approach to the otherwise formal and pretentious topics of design, art and culture has made it one of the coolest and perhaps most influential of the decade. With its oddball format and excellent mix of content, it walks quite the line between substance and extravagance. But among its most memorable constants are the whimsical still lives of 2DM’s Nacho Alegre. They have become one of the signatures of the magazine, and seem only to get better with time.

From drinking glasses to ingots of marble, to teacups, mason bricks, freestanding fabric, and most recently bread, the still lives are just plain delightful. Many seem to defy gravity, and others seem to take on lives of their own. All have tons of personality.

Beckman’s College in Stockholm is currently hosting an exhibition of the the still lives, which span three years. Still Life comes as part of a string of events surrounding the recent launch of issue #08, which kicked off with the I Feel Orange party in London and went onto an exhibition of Nathalie du Pasquier sketches in Paris. The current exhibition opened last Friday the 25th and will run until the 9th of December.

Ryan McGinley / Wandering Comma

Every so often, a photographer comes along whose work helps to define a generation. The whimsical, teenage hormone-heavy images that rocketed Ryan McGinley to notoriety in the 2000s look and feel like some of that decade’s definitive music: you can almost hear MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular within some of his earlier work. Lights. Beauty. And a youthful lack of inhibition. Excitement in a world of ominous futures and a tenuous present, and an overall feeling of being caught up in a universe that is much, much bigger than any of his subjects He captured the decade’s zeitgeist – or at least the sentiments of its youth – brilliantly.

The Parsons graduate has been making waves for well over a decade now, and since becoming the youngest photographer to have a solo show at the Whitney in New York, he has gone on to become a fixture of the contemporary photographic landscape, and into places like the covers of Sigur Rós albums. His style “has evolved over the past decade from a verité snapshot style to one that is more cinematic, even epic.”

Last night his newest exhibition, Wandering Comma opened at Alison Jacques Gallery in London. Seven new works were made for the occasion, all in the largest format the artist has ever displayed in. And his “orchestrated spontaneity” is has never been on such full display. One look at the drama of Taylor, Rushing River, and it’s clear The sex and tenuousness is still there, but it is certainly altogether more cinematic. And like every good thing that starts off simply, success brings complications.

Still, McGinley has grown into his success well and the works are all excellent, technically masterful and certainly worth seeing. Catch the exhibition at Alison Jacques on Berners Street in London, running until December 22.

Artists Drawing A Line Under Torture

Art with a good cause is something we can always get behind. And Artists Drawing a Line Under Torture has one helluva worthy goal behind it: the complete eradication of torture and organized crime. An initiative from charity Freedom From Torture, it seeks to seriously curb the tide of the worst of human abuses through generation of awareness, with all proceeds to benefit the London-based charity. Part of a larger weeklong program, it will also run alongside a separate exhibition called Thirty-Six Pounds, featuring emerging artists who were once themselves victims of torture.

Works will span several genres, from figurative illustration to performance and magic, and will feature the likes of Gillian Ayres, Edmund de Waal, Michael Craig Martin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Karl-Anders Björk, Joe Tilson and several others, with many pieces having been created especially for the occasion.

Opens tomorrow at The Loading Dock Gallery, at 91 Brick Lane in London with an auction to follow on November 28th.

PADNY


The mood was self-consciously dapper to the point of dread last Sunday at the first annual PADNY at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The exhibitors, with the tips of their noses characteristically arched toward the heavens, sat at round tables and behind mahogany desks quietly sipping Ruinart Champagne and skipping their airbrushed fingers across complimentary iPads. The fair was decidedly more design-oriented than its Paris and London counterparts (the Paris version started 14 years ago; the London version began in 2007), bringing an Apple-indebted enthusiasm for simple, functional aesthetic and contrasting it with striking 20th century art sensibilities. The works were (for the most part) undeniably beautiful, blending a variety of sculptures, paintings, architecture, design, and aesthetic, satisfying many curiosities for the average 99%-er in a way a museum like MoMA or the Met never could. PAD managed to be all over the place without feeling disconnected.

The setting certainly helped. Perhaps most beautiful of all the works on display was the host, the Park Avenue Armory itself. This is no insult. Completed in 1881, the Wade Thompson Drill Hall is a pinnacle of American architecture, with its 80 foot high vaulted barrel roof overlooking more than 55,000 square feet of un-columned open space. Finding a better setting to debut such a dramatic European-indebted exhibition would be about as easy as raising the Titanic. The grandiosity of the space matched that of the exhibitors themselves. Take, for example, the John Berggruen Gallery from San Francisco. Here they were pushing iconoclasts like Georgia O’Keeffe’s Pink Roses and Larkspur for $850,000. By comparison, Anish Kapoor’s Teal Mirror, a beautiful 13 square-foot stainless steel piece from 2011, was going for $950,000. Maybe because we’re so far removed from the upper-reaches of the art trade universe, these prices seemed… (well, to most of us these prices are absurd. Right?) But maybe not: The title of recent article by the Times seemed to sum it up perfectly: “Show of Hands, Please: Who Can Buy Art?”

That the question is as rhetorical as the answer is frustrating. But that shouldn’t get in the way of the way of the work itself, and in all fairness $20 was a modest fee for the average spectator to pay to see what PAD had to offer. Sculptor Thomas Roberts’ work was there. Mr. Roberts, a Belfast-born artist who also dabbles in jewelry and furniture, seems to have struck a unique chord between beauty and functionality. His recent work draws influence from his time spent in India, particularly the concept of devotional art, and on occasion displays his sense of humor with titles such as Lingham, named for three pieces of tree trunk stacked atop one-another.

There were many others—including 20th century masters like Picasso, De Kooning, and Man Ray—with rare, less prominent work on display that added a sense of excitement and discovery to names long canonized. The Australian photographer-turned-painter Helmut Koller had two entire walls to himself, one displaying Two Giraffes On Yellow; the other, a dramatic red and white zebra against a blue background, both something you might see after eating a bag of kabenzis and walking through the Bronx Zoo. Koller’s animal drawings combine the dramatic color contrasts of Pop Art with isolated images of exotic animals in mid-motion, as if taking inspiration from Eadweard Muybridge’s Sallie Gardner at a Gallup. The price for his paintings—$20,000 for the zebra—probably more for the pair of giraffesinitially seemed like quite a bit of change, but less so after taking a few laps around the fair. Which, in the end, isn’t surprising. Because even when you know can’t take it home, window shopping is rarely this rewarding.

The Editorial: Handwriting Lives!

Much has been made of the fact that “designers don’t draw much anymore.” And while that may be mostly hyperbole, it is true that designers across all disciplines make use of the computer in their work exponentially more than their forbears. Whether that results in a loss (or gain) of quality is very much open to debate, but most would agree that good design begins with good ideation outside the context of the computer. That means sketches. Renderings. Mockups. Models.

Nevertheless, there aren’t many today who lament the loss of handwriting as a valued skill across our culture. Today, if we write anything by hand, it’s almost certainly scrawl in lopsided capital letters on Post-Its or in chicken scratch in a Moleskine. We manually write notes for only for our own consumption, and so like eating dinner alone in front of a television, it’s easy to get sloppy. Burp. Sauce on the shirt. Hell, nobody’s going to see it anyway! And so the art of writing has pretty much died. Only that which has been made real through keystrokes seems to be of any importance.

But what beauty there is in letterform! Just look at the old love letters your grandparents might have stored in a dusty box in their attic. Gorgeous, well-formed letters in elegant cursive. Curves and straight lines, and the exuberant, unique forms of the more whimsical letters like “Q” “S” “W” and “B.” And despite her arthritic hands, granny can probably still probably outwrite you. Go granny!

From the rigorous lessons in penmanship all primary school students used to endure to the onward march of digitization, it seems that the death of handwriting was systematically inevitable. But does that put us in a better place?

None of this, of course, is to discount the works of great typographers. On the contrary: good handwriting certainly leads to an increased consciousness of quality typography. And its safe to say that good type designers have an enormous impact on our environments, too. (See our May editorial about Cooper Hewitt lifetime achievement award winning typographer Matthew Carter.) But the fruits of a typographer’s labour should only be part of the scope of our written ecosystem.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the Associazione Calligrafica Italiana. And for the festivities, they invited the work of contemporary calligraphers to an installation conceived by the architect Tommaso Landini. On display were pieces ranging from “formal writing to expressive calligraphy” and “from legible texts to abstract marks.” It is writing as craft, the craft of writing as innovation, and innovative forms as new tradition.

So fortunately, the culture of calligraphy – through the efforts of great institutions such as the ACI – seems to be thriving. Although relegated to relatively small coterie of designers and aficionados, today’s calligraphers nevertheless continue to do splendid work and push boundaries. Calligrapher Luca Barcellona, a modern day handwriting rockstar whose influences interestingly include typography, new and vintage signage and graffiti art, has done work in a host of highly contemporary settings for brands, galleries and others. He hand-designed our flourished hexagon “B,” in which Gothic and 1970s and romantic elements combine to very interesting effect.

On the horizon, fingertip handwriting recognition on touch devices might someday free us of the keyboard altogether and waves of innovative handwritten projects are being executed by independent publishers. Positive signs that good handwriting is still something we desire. But it remains a rare thing indeed to see a piece of letter design done in wet ink on the same paper we see as an end product.

So, let’s go write a pretty letters to our grandmothers. Even smudged up and imperfect, it’ll feel pretty good.