From Juxtapoz:
Bigfoot’s solo show, Survival In The Modern World, opened last Saturday, March 24th, at Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City/LA, CA. This collection includes a wide range of styles addressing the singular theme of the man and myth known as Bigfoot. The gallery has a comprehensive photoset of all the works in the show on their website, www.coreyhelfordgallery.com.
Here.
LA Weekly:
The opening reception for Mark Ryden’s new exhibition, “The Tree Show” at Michael Kohn Gallery, was six hours long. If you glanced at the invitation beforehand, you might have thought this was a misprint. Six hours? Two is customary. Three is generous. Six, you might be forgiven for concluding, falls somewhere between pointless and pretentious. But then you would be seriously underestimating both the breadth and the fervor of Ryden’s fan base. In fact, the extension was merely practical.
At 3 p.m. on Saturday, midway through the opening, a line stretched out the back door, down Crescent Heights and around the corner onto Beverly. By the time the gallery closed its doors at 6, the guard who’d been hired to manage the flow had counted 2,222 visitors — this in addition to the 220 who’d attended the private preview two nights before. (All those twos make a curious pattern for an artist with a professed interest in numerology.) Kohn associate Samantha Glaser confirmed later over the phone that Ryden himself had been there throughout, milling with admirers and signing autographs. Each time I’d seen them in the course of the week leading up to the show, Glaser and other gallery staff appeared to be wavering between exhilaration and exhaustion, taken aback by the machinations of a network they weren’t used to handling and didn’t entirely understand. Ryden, on the other hand, was clearly in his element. “Oh, he’s having a great time,” Glaser said. “He’s just in heaven!”
Here.
Wooster Collective:
Dan Witz has been working on a new series of figurative paintings for two upcoming shows in Europe; one in London at the Stolenspace, and the second in Paris at Addict Galerie.
If you check out Dan’s website, you’ll notice that he’s quietly previewing a few of the pieces.
Here.
SF Gate:
Fritz the Cat will be there. Mr. Natural will be there. The Snoid will be there.
But R. Crumb will not.
“Robert wears his nerves on the outside of his body,” explains Crumb’s wife, Aline, as they swap the Sheraton room telephone back and forth. “He appreciates the fact that all these people love him. He wants that love. But he doesn’t know what to do with it. And when he shows up to these things, it takes him a while to recover and get back to work. The only reason he’s in New York City now is because it’s a Valentine’s Day present for me. I eat it up. That’s why I can’t wait to get to San Francisco.”
To call Robert and Aline Kominsky Crumb eccentrics would be too simple a way to describe a very complicated but content couple, who met and started drawing comics together in the 1970s in San Francisco.
Here.
Little People:
ps. Got a couple of exhibitions coming up this month. The first is in a completely unofficial capacity… I will be placing some little people around The Leonard Street Gallery for the opening night of their new show Eleven on Thursday 8th March. Eleven features, unsurprisingly, eleven artists who “…question the nature of the street art/fine art divide” (or make pretty pictures anyway) and includes Blek Le Rat, SWOON, D*Face, EINE and Elbow Toe amongst others. I am not sure if my little people will survive the opening night, but if they do you might be able to find them if you go and see the exhibition (which you should because it will be cool and you will be the coolest in the class for going). It runs from 9th March to 18th April at The Leonard Street Gallery, 73a Leonard Street, London.
More news about the second exhibition in a week or so!
Here.
via Wooster Collective:
Why don’t we just see them for what they are? They are regular people just like us, they just have a team of retouchers waiting at the ready.
Printable cold sores allow us to take action! Bring these people back down to our level, and tell advertisers that you don’t agree with their message. How can you help? It’s easy…”
Here.
NYT Magazine:
One thing that Wall knew for certain when he took up the profession in the late 1970s is that he would not become a photojournalistic hunter. Educated as an art historian, he aspired instead to make photographs that could be constructed and experienced the way paintings are. “Most photographs cannot get looked at very often,” he told me. “They get exhausted. Great photographers have done it on the fly. It doesn’t happen that often. I just wasn’t interested in doing that. I didn’t want to spend my time running around trying to find an event that could be made into a picture that would be good.” He also disliked the way photographs were typically exhibited as small prints. “I don’t like the traditional 8 by 10,” he said. “They were done that size as displays for prints to run in books. It’s too shrunken, too compressed. When you’re making things to go on a wall, as I do, that seems too small.” The art that he liked best, from the full-length portraits of Velázquez and Manet to the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock and the floor pieces of Carl Andre, engaged the viewer on a lifelike human scale. They could be walked up to (or, in Andre’s case, onto) and moved away from. They held their own, on a wall or in a room. “If painting can be that scale and be effective, then a photograph ought to be effective at that size, too,” he concluded.
Here.
Wooster Collective:
Along with hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, we’ve been obsessed by Space Invader’s work for years. This week, Invader updated his website, and for the first time, posted a Q&A which gives some background and explains what his project is all about. We thought we’d pass it along. In addition to checking out Invaders site here, you should also check out Invader Flickr pool which includes over 3,600 photos.
Here.
WFMU’s Beware the Blog:
This is probably the funniest comic book related website out there – devoted to proving that, contrary to popular belief, Superman was an a*hole. Featuring sections devoted to unintentionally sexual comic book covers, comic book war propaganda, comic covers featuring apes (it’s ridiculous just how many there are), stupid super powers, and confoundingly bizarre covers.
Here.
Wooster Collective:
From Rich Jones comes the photo above of street art in Somalia that depicts the militias that roam Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
Rich says that this article – Doctors Without Borders 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Crises of 2006 – is “one of the most important things you’ll read this year”.
Here.
Wallspankers:
ISSUE THREE STICKER CONTRIBUTIONS:
9.10do, 37 Cents, Air, Alex Robbie, Alexandro Farto, Amy Rice, Blessness, Bloodlet, Capish, Collette Elson, Danny Glix, Deadvolt, Debbie Hill, Demitri Nezis, Dolla Lama, Downtimer, Dres13, Emecuatro, Fabrice D, Fost, Hero, Jamaisvu, Jessica Monster, Jontando, Junichi Tsuneoka, Jurne, Justin G, Lala, Lisenbart, Lococateters, Logan Shirah, Lopez, Michael Metallo, Mike Walshe, Lerk, Angel D’amico, Brandy Flower, 57Even, Andrew Cook, Brian Butler, Chuck Trunks, Destroy All Media, Elider Elizondo, Ipxls, Matt Buden, Mista Breakfast, Munk One, MWM Graphics, Randy Laybourne, Rockabilly, Zoso, Monster Little, Mr. Bluespoon, Mr. Luke, Mr. Snub, Naste, Nevarestin, Nomad, Nuse, Odhill, One Trick Pony, Past, Paul Galaxy, Paulo Arraiano, Pedro Lourenco, Peel, Phlegm, Reone, Ryan North, Stephanie Toppin, Sticky, Street Carp, The Sound Of Drowning, Vhs, WUT Crew, Zerohapi, Ziqi.
Here.
Wooster Collective:
We’ve been a fan of Amnesty International’s street campaigns for years. This one, about freedom of speech in Belorussia, was done by Saatchi & Saatchi Poland.
Here.
Wooster Collective:
One of the most interesting email correspondences we’ve maintained this year is with a group of Iranian graffiti writers living in Tehran. While the communication hasn’t been easy, every time we open an email from A1one we feel like the reason for updating the Wooster site has been re-confirmed to us.
The images above were sent to us a week or so ago with the line – “It was th worst work in Tehran,,, some about Mind Control by Our Gov ,aome a teasand joke with the Voting which is in friday to choose Islamic leaders comity..”
Here.
Wonkette:
Let no one accuse the NRA of shirking its duty. Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century, is a spectacularly beautiful graphic novel. Here, for example, is one of the biggest threats to the white suburban hunter: dirty hippies and their evil sidekicks: the dynamite-carrying owl, sinister pig, angry Wall Street bull, dire wolf, terror chicken and Land Lobster.
Here.
