go to here to see a preview of something that is part of something way bigger. WHOA.
From my profile of Chicago artist Gregory Jacobsen:
Flags in butts, drippy cunts, shit beaks, and fleshy chunks of meat caught in seemingly intimate moments: these are the images Chicago artist and musician Gregory Jacobsen chooses to render in his awkward acrylic, confidently sensual world. “I was always interested in weird, fucked-up imagery and I always made ‘shocking’ little pictures,” Jacobsen says, “but it took me a while to really push it in a direction where it transcended ‘shock-art.’”
I rip Matthew Barney a new taint. Just kidding:
For the four people out there that aren’t familiar with Matthew Barney and the Cremaster Cycle, let me give you a quick rundown so you don’t look like an idiot when you go to your Teaching Assistant’s Valentine’s Day party and everyone’s talking about their cremasters. Matthew Barney, love him or hate him, has had a tremendous impact on the world of Modern Art, if only because everyone says so. He has been called “the most important American artist of his generation because his imagination is so big” by Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, alternatively, the joke about the Cremaster Cycle is that the trailers are arguably the best part, distilling about seven hours of striking visuals into manageable minutes. In five independent cinematic ventures, Barney builds a phosphorescent, lubricated world with its own logic.
read more ball-talk…
The most scathingest review I ever typed:
“Even though the pigeon is a pigeon, not the most sensual animal by any means, Austen appears to long for the bird’s affection, but is continually rejected. Austen often looks like his face is going to explode at the bird, and the mustardy, clumpy substance on his face reinforces that eruptive potential.”
“What looks like an arbitrary slapping together of stuff found in a basement dodges dumbness in the context of the space and mission of the project. The real payoff will be Johnson’s paintings, which should provide the viewer with a point of reference for interpreting Johnson’s macro and micro views of her arrangements. Johnson’s rabbit-themed heaps of meticulously placed detritus will be translated into carefully crafted, clean paintings to be unveiled at the show’s closing on November 22.”
http://fnewsmagazine.com/2007-apr/the-crusade-to-save-artists–asses.php
From an interview with Barbara Degenevieve where she cooked me scrambled eggs:
Barabara says, “The ACLU told me that I was their ideal visual artist witness. My work is sexually explicit and if COPA (Child Online Protection Act) was to be put into effect, I could be in a lot of trouble, like being prosecuted, fined and imprisoned. A good portion of my work is sexually explicit: male nudes and sexually explicit text, language and video, not necessarily female nudes except for brief clips in Desperado. So if a child came to my website, because the child would be able to access my work without age verification, I would be liable for causing ‘harm to minors.’”
From my pathetic interview with the Wu-tang’s GZA:
“GZA: I stopped eating pork in 77. I stopped eating beef in 89. I stopped eating chicken and fish and turkey in 96 because I figured I don’t want to eat anything that’s dead. Meat is so contaminated. It’s so full of drugs and toxins and poisons – I’d rather not eat it. I think it was a piece of chicken that turned me off. It must have been really nasty looking.”
If you’re into boring interviews with unpopular women:
“I think the art scene in Chicago suffers from a Second City mentality. Having grown up as a New Yorker and having become a Chicagoan, I have always been amazed at how weirdly Chicagoans relate to NY. It’s such a love/hate relationship but nonetheless one that ends up making Chicago feel inferior. If Chicago would simply accept that its scale can never rival or equal that of New York’s but that there are terrific artists, curators, gallerists, museums and the best Art Schools in the country, Chicago could simply feel proud of what it has and encourage the range of experimentation that makes it unique. There is a confidence issue here that Chicago needs to overcome.”
A bad show on a bad night:
“The world needs another review of the MCA’s birthday party, Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, like I need another hole in my head, and for this I apologize. But every review I’ve read is boring and excruciatingly balanced. All the critics seem to say different variations of the same thing: “This show is kinda good and kinda bad. Happy birthday.” Why is everyone afraid to hurt the MCA’s feelings? Why is everyone not talking about the boring, stupid, shoe-gazing elephant in the room? I fear no art, as the MCA would say, and I also fear no art institution; I will say it: Sympathy for the Devil is like a huge, sorta pretentious, cold, burgerless, Aerosmithless Hard Rock Cafe.”
read the rest. Why not?
Kind of mean of me:
“Bruce Noel Mortenson–like many contemporary artists–is a collector of arbitrary images: figures he makes up (like two-headed monsters), doodles (like you might find in a middle school students’ carefully considered spiral-bound notebook), cultural icons (like the Rubik’s Cube), and the rare contemporary art references. Mortenson’s menagerie of congested, brightly colored compositions are easy to dismiss as decorative high-brow doodlery. The hippy-dippy, day-glo-synthetic swirlings of his paintings, combined with the pseudo-spiritual titles he gives them (the show is titled Journey into the Realm), don’t exactly encourage the viewer to take him seriously.”