I LIke: Lotte Geeven

Backyard Vocabulary 2006-2008, Amsterdam.

Bird Confetti, 2006 New York City

Willian Hunt @ IBID Projects, London.

William Hunt, Performance view 'Le Sang d'un poete' 2009. Photo: Mathieu Genon

Live performance of artist playing accordion and singing through a camera obscura.

William Hunt having just graduated from Goldsmiths, is already producing his second London solo show. It was a great opening night at IBID projects, somewhere which hasn't really been showing much the past year, it definately put on a great show.

Towards the back of the gallery stands an innocuous object made from metal and canvas, and fitted with electric lights. This obsolete device has been salvaged by Hunt and imbedded into the wall, concealing a hidden alcove in the next room. As you peer into the screen in the sculpture, the face of the artist miraculously appears. This camera obscura-esque sculpture blurrs the boundaries between that of a static 2d image or tv screen and that of a live apparition - allowing you the experience to view the artist 'for real'.

Hunts work works on the boundaries of sculpture, performance and sound - somthing which is of great interest in my current practice. I think the title of his 2008 performance best sums up his practice 'I Forgot myself, looking at you'

Oren Lavie - Her morning elegance (2007)

Shortcuts by Robert Altman.

Directed by Robert Altman 1993.

This film is truly one of the best films I have seen for a long while, Robert Altman is a genius of American cinema and in Shortcuts he brings together his kaleidoscopic vision of Raymond Carvers stories. It is epic in both scale and duration being a hefty 3 hours long but completely worth every second and meticulously observed. The extraordinary cast ensemble include Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Waits and Jennifer Jason-Leigh.

It follows the lives of many characters living in South California over the course of a few days. Some of them know each other, some don't, their paths cross as the film plays out, and some never meet each other. As the characters go about their lives, the perspective of the film is like a wandering observer's, I am not very well-versed in Altman's work but this seems to be a penchant for many of his films. It reminded me of the film Magnolia, in the way that characters have a butterfly effect and stories ripple into other ones, bringing all the characters together for a climatic end.

The acting is absolutely superb, especially Julianne Moore and Lily Tomlin, the cinematography is beautiful and depicts the american way of life and seediness as well as a complete demographic of american life.

The film captures the way life is full of accidents, happy ones as well as bad ones. it is a wonderful piece of cinema about the way people interact with one another without even knowing it.

Planatacia x Abstractica @ Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton.

Daniel Pasteiner The Fortress, 2008 Oil and Tyco track on MDF

James Ryan

Standpoint and curator Rod Barton collaborated in putting on this show by two young artists whom met whilst showing in New Contemporaries, who work between the boundaries of formalism and convention.

Abstraction and modernism can sound in painting as now boring, defunct terms, but Ryan and Pasteiner' intelligent approach to the hemispheres between two art worlds: Duchamps readymade and abstract/ cubist space work well together.

Brussel sprouts coasted in lacquer, scalectrix track, swirling mirror balls and yards of coloured fluorescent tubing makes this show an interlocking of different dimensions. The work considers: Geometry and media from the traditionally thought out, depth, colour and composition within modernist painting set against but also in harmony with the manifestation of translucent collage/ assemblages and light installations.

The two artists will be in conversation with Francesca Gavin 05.03.09 @ 7.15pm.

Jane & Louise Wilson: Unfolding the Aryan papers

archive still

Showing at the BFI at the moment is a short video directed by Jane and Louise Wilson, about a film that never happened (planned and heavily researched by Kubrick, then spontaneously dropped) and a portrait of the leading artist Johanna ter Steege. It begins with images of Johanna taken by Stanley Kubrick - they are for the wardrobe shoot of The Aryan Papers. Johanna was to play the lead role of Tania , a compelling character. She is a Polish Jew trying to save herself and her family from the Nazis.

The amount of research overwhelmed Kubrick, in the end it left him depressed and for his own health he had to abandon the project. Maybe the story itslef was too cruel, and he in the end was unable to tell the story. Kubrick the famed perfectionist never felt he could justify the movie, or express the cruelty shown within that period.

A beautiful, still shot video which unearths repossessed histories within film, and expresses how even the greatest filmakers know that some works can never be realised.

say things that have not been said

hear things that have not been heard

see things that have not been seen

feel things that have not been felt

learn things that have not been taught

fight things that have not been fought

create things that will blow your fuckin' mind

Spike Lee.

This is going to be my mantra for the work I create this year.

Ryan McGinley

born in 1977.
Lives and works in New York
upcoming exhibition in May at Alison Jacques Gallery

AlterModern Manifesto PostModernism is Dead

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture
Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live
Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe
Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture
This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing
Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves
Artists are responding to a new globalised perception.
They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.
The Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain presents a collective discussion around this premise that postmodernism is coming to an end, and we are experiencing the emergence of a global altermodernity.
Nicolas Bourriaud
Altermodern – Tate Triennial 2009at Tate Britain 4 February – 26 April 2009

David Kramer

I liked this piece by David Kramer, i thought it was a witty way at looking at contemporary art. he is great at humor and self-depreciation. 

Another person who is looking at the mad/witty/peculiar art world is Sarah Thornton in her book "Seven Days in the Art World' I highly recommend it. its a great way for us unsuccessful art types to get behind the scenes of some of the most prestigious art fairs, institutes, prizes.

Bailey Radcliffe