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KA-Blewsh

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i'm gonna color this bitch and win me a t-shirt!!

weekends

Last weekend was a little crazy, I was tired so I didn't write about it. We went to Kiel Johnson and Christian Tedeschi's show at A+D Museum in LA entitled "Atmospheric Conditions." It was a cool show, there was some sound art thing at the end that we left during cause it was taking just way too long, but Kiel and Christian's work was good. We then headed off to a chill party in West LA, and Saturday we went to the Hammer, MOCA, and La Mano Press. I had a print at the La Mano thing, but unfortunately the event was poorly attended....ah well. Sunday we went to the student galleries at school and then hit up The Walkmen show at the Troubadour, they were amazing (buy all their albums, except for the PussyCat Dolls thing, a cover album, phtth).


This weekend I didn't end up doing as much crazy stuff. I watched Midnight Cowboy. It was kind of tamer than I thought it was going to be. From what I heard, I thought it was going to be a disturbing look into the underbelly of a seedy Pre-911 New York. I had visions of drugs, violence, and uncomfortable scenes. Not so much. The plot is this, Jon Voight (a southern rube)quits his job, dons a cowboy outfit and goes to NY to become a "huslter," i.e. sleep with women for money. He fails at his first few attempts, and looking like a sucker, runs across Ratso (Dustin Hofman), who con's him out of $20. After this the cowboy goes broke and gets desperate, then he ends up tracking down Ratso but doesn't have the balls to beat him up. After this, they become friends and for the rest of the movie try to steal and scavenge their way into a career in "hustling." It doesn't work out too well. Interspersed throughout the movie are flashbacks of the cowboy's past and Ratso's visions of the future.


Apparently, the brief boob and butt shots in the movie were supposed to be shocking back in 1969. Not so much now. The movie ends up being more or less a "rube in the city" story where Jon Voight's character learns the ropes pretty slow, but eventually does figure them out. Good acting and good direction though

Then yesterday, I went to the CSULB faculty show in downtown Long Beach. All the faculty was showing here and I was surprised to see Jay Kavapil (our past Graduate Advisor) to be showing some pretty nice ceramics peices as well. The show was so-so, most of the fine art professor's work was really nice, the new head of Sculpture had a chiselled marble work I thought was impressive. The people who I expected to have good work did have good work, but some of the other work, like graphic design, was pretty terrible. I guess I just don't understand graphic design, but the graphic design work in the show to me was pretty lousy looking.

Anyway, after the faculty show we went up to the unadvertised M. Ward show at CSULA. Again, a pretty amazing show. Buy all of his cds.

Nothing So Strange

I got the movie Nothing So Strange from the library (where else) and thought the premise was interesting: Bill Gates gets assasinated in a public place and there is a group that is trying to uncover the "truth" behind what they believe is a conspiracy in the shooting.

The movie ends up being more about the group (Citizens For Truth), than about the shooting. The group sounds like a bunch of nuts and does what most conspiracy groups do, get very angry and try some grassroots techniques to drum up support for their cause in cheap and ineffective ways. They have a solid theory about the shooting, and some evidence to back it up, but their PR is a nightmare and their leader is angry and disruptive (although I thought the actor should have played a more angry role). They actually build up some steam in the end and get the movement to gain some momentum, though it is short lived.

The movie worked pretty well as a fake documentary and the story was interesting and very in-depth. The acting was good too, the characters seemed genuinely awkward and nervous, and there is an old lady in the group that I can easily see being in a conspiracy meeting. I was surprised at how deep the story was and how far the film makers went to make it seem real. Although some of it seemed like a parody of conspiracy nuts, you did feel some sympathy when they weren't winning some battles. Anyway, it was a pretty good movie, especially for the obviously limited budget.

Last Weekend and Culver City junk

Last Weekend me and some friends went to a sort of lame party, somewhere, I'm not really sure where I was just directed to it. The party itself wasn't bad: booze music etc etc. The worst was that people ended up either as slutty this or that (mainly a slutty version of something very not slutty, like a scientist, or a prison inmate), or the male version of a lame outfit: no costume whatsoever. A dozen or so guys strictly wore what they wore all day but included a silver mask. I went as Shawn of the Dead (again, I know I know), but the group I went with included, a bearded lady, another bearded lady (his wife) and a battered housewife complete with a bun in the oven. Anyway, the music included a lot of 90's dance music (Salt n Peppa, Young MC, you know the kind), some candy (milk duds!) and massive amounts of alcohol.

This weekend I ended up going to Lab 101's 3 year anniversary gallery opening. In the line up were: Anthony Lister who does dripping sketchy paintings of superhero comicbook characters, and I believe was also handcuffed and duct taped on the floor of the gallery dressed in a Captian America outfit

Kelsey Brookes, who does some paintings that look like people wearing masks with a lot of decoration and geometric shapes.

And Kill Pixie, who does paintings that were of Native American people and objects in shifting and unstable landscapes, as well as scultures of blue canoes that stuck out from the walls.

The show was alright, I felt a lot more comfortable being there than the first show opening I went to, there was some Tecate, some wine, and by 7:30 a bunch of people. I noticed with this show too, almost all of the work was sold, except the Kill Pixie paintings which I actually liked better than the Kelsey Brookes paintings that sold. Kill Pixie's had this nice resin gloss on the top of the paintings (which I really like for some reason) and the work seemed to have more going on in them, these strange narrative's with these weird characters. The show also attracted some local weirdo's, one woman that we saw at the Scion show that was putting chapstick on her forehead, and this other really awkward guy I found out at one time went to Long Beach State. We snuck out before they got attached to us "like gum on a shoe."

We also went to the Blum and Poe gallery breifly that had some interesting video art and gold paintings, it was pretty cool, but we wanted to hit up the other Culver City galleries, and the Giant Robot show in LA.

The other opening's in C C were boring so we headed up to Giant Robot show at the Japanese American History Museum in LA. We made it there with about a half hour to spare. There was a ton of people there, and there was even a line to get in to the exhibit. A bunch of artists had stuff in the show: APAK Gary Baseman David Choe Seonna Hong Sashie Masakatsu Saelee Oh Pryor Praczukowski Souther Salazar Eishi Takaoka Adrian Tomine

One of the most interesting was a large scale spraypaint mural with real ninja throwing stars in it and some other paintings on the opposite wall of very tiny paintings with very tiny painting brush strokes. I don't remember the names of who did what, but I swear next time I go to an opening I'll bring my camera. Anyway, the exhibition was fun, but it was tiny. I think the whole exhibition was maybe 2 medium sized rooms. With that many people we were expecting more...

BLK/MRKT opening

Last night I decided to go up to Culver City to check out some galleries. The BLK/MRKT gallery opening was ok, I got there kind of early so I didn't really know what to expect. I bumbled around for a little bit, but not knowing anyone at the opening I felt awkward so I left pretty quickly. The artwork was pretty good, semi-abstract backgrounds that become figures and shapes to create strange comic book like scenes. There was one with an angry dog attacking that I would have to say was my favorite. The artist was Dave Kinsey, here's some images I ripped off the web...

The weird thing about this show, other than a maniquin with a bag on it's head in the entrance, was that I got to the show about an hour into it and all but two of the paintings had red stickers. Unless there was a feeding frenzy of buyers as soon as they opened the doors, why have a gallery show with only two paintings for sale? It's like when bands re-release old albums with a couple of new tracks on them. Why not come out with a new album and bump the new tracks on to that? Or just leave them on the cutting room floor? Anyway, it was a cool space, I just wish I brought more people to talk to...I was getting weird looks. Maybe I was weird looking...

I went home and popped in two space horror classics: Alien and Event Horizon.

I had never seen Alien all the way through, and I was surprised that it was pretty consistant with the others in the series, despite the variety of directors at the helm. It's a plot everyone knows, ship comes across an abandoned planet, the spaceship gets busted, the crew runs into a alien species, and from then on the rest of the movie is a race against time to repair the ship and blow up the alien. It was still pretty good, even for being slightly dated. Although I do have to say this was on the one movie in the series that made the Alien pretty rubber-suit looking.

have to say though, those face-huggers still freak me out...

Good movie, although it does make me question why Ripley decided to save her cat instead of her friends, and why the alien at the end didn't just rip her head off instead of sleeping in the corner for a bit... Oh well, the alien flying out of the airlock and getting roasted on the jet engine was all worth it. Hilarious!

Event Horizon was eerily similar. Same busted ship, same abandoned setting, only this one is a ship that's gone to hell and back. Literally. It also makes you halucinate, or brings your nightmares to life. Something like that. The whole thing reminded me of a Hellraiser in Space, except it was better than the Hellraiser that was in space, aka Hellraiser:Bloodlines. This movie had that guy from Jurrasic Park tearing his eyballs out and kicking the crap out of Morpheus from the Matrix. Some of the effects were kind of cheesy like the scene that shows the previous crew eating each other, and speaking in Latin(?). I think I was just surprised by the unexpected gore of the movie. I just thought it was gonna be spooky, like Scooby Doo spooky, instead it was flesh tearing spooky, like Scooby Doo...in hell!

before , during and after taking a good look at hell... Oh, and he's not dead either, just super crazy...

new slides

"Promise You Won’t Laugh", Mixed Media, ninety-six by ninety-six inches.

new slides

"...Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?", Charcoal and Acrylic Paint, ninety-six by ninety-six inches.

new slides

"You Ain’t Kidding...", Watercolor Pencil, forty-two inches by forty-seven inches. (with detail)

new slides

"Yuh-Huh", Watercolor Pencil and Charcoal, thirty-one inches by twenty-four inches.

new slides

"Nuh-Uh", Watercolor Pencil, thirty-one inches by twenty-four inches.

new slides

"If All Your Friends Jumped Off a Bridge", Mixed Media, one-hundred-seventeen inches
by sixty inches.

new slides

"How Cool is That?", Charcoal, thirty-one inches by forty-one inches.

new slides

"Great...Just Great...", Charcoal, thirty-one inches by forty-one inches.

new slides

"So I Says To Mable, I Says...", Charcoal, sixty inches by forty-five inches.

BLK/MRKT

So I thought I'd rant about art and movies in this blog.I'm going to the BLK/MRKT opening this weekend so maybe Saturday or Sunday I'll write about it. It should be a good show, well at least I heard the space is pretty good.
As for movies, I just watched this documentary called The Staircase Briefly, it's a compilation of eight 45 minute episodes from a Sundance channel series focusing on a man accused of killing his wife.
The film makers initially decided to focus on both sides of the case, the procecution and the defense, but unfortunately the procecution started to dodge meetings with the film crew and as a result they decided to focus more on the defense. To me this didn't seem fair, I felt bad for the guy accused at times, but all the way through I was convinced that the guy killed his wife. Watching the film though, I could tell the director really wanted the audience to believe he was innocent. Also, I was sort of tricked into thinking that this damn thing was only 1 dvd disc, so I got through with the last episode (roughly 3.5 hours of viewing time) on the first disc only to realize that there was another whole disc full of episodes.
It was pretty engaging and I was surprised at the ending, but some of me felt, If the film crew was not there would they be as confident as they are in winning this case? and sometimes I felt like there was some false encouragement coming from the defense. Kinda like playing a game with overly competitive people bitching about being the underdog the whole time and wondering why everyone isn't thinking the same way they are. For example, when it comes up that a friend of the defendant died the same way his wife did (falling down the stairs) the defense lawyer is appalled that someone might use that as evidence against his client. Is that really that shocking?
Anyway, it was interesting and I would recommend it, but don't expect it to be unbiased or a short movie, maybe just take it a couple episodes at a time. It will be addicting though.

Scion

I went to a Scion gallery event in Culver City, a show called UMASS. Very well put together event, I must say. DJ spinnin stuff that went from Rage Against the Machine to DJ Shadow, some free fashion magazines (I think they were fashion mags?), and free booze (now I know this is fairly regular, but did you ever have the bartender come out to you in the gallery and take your order? Free of charge??). Of course this kind of hospitality brings out weirdos and homeless people, but still, nice digs. The art was alright, as it goes with most group shows I suppose. I a lot of found object stuff collaged together, along side some interesting photography of blue-collar environments in LA. Some of the photo's I liked, but the collaged stuff tended to read like nostagia, but like bad nostalgia, like VH-1 nostalgia. "Hey, remember cassette tapes? Weren't they awesome?!" Yes, they WERE. Whoopy-doo. Unless you are going to say something new, or relate this crap to the current times in some Orwellian-history's-repeating kind of revelation, let the 80's and early 90's stay where it is, in the garbage heap. I lived through the 80's and 90's...it wasn't that great. Oh, and the bulliten board of letters to the artist while in jail were interesting. I didn't read them all (or even all of one of them), mainly because I felt kinda creepy reading someone else's jail mail. Hey, that ryhmes!
Here's some sweet Scion stuff from my "shwag bag." A hat and tee plastered with Scion icons. It also contained a cd (from Ninja Tune, but surprisingly boring tracks), and a Scion magazine filled to the brim with car ads