~’NANO’ . . NICHOLAS STEINDORF, ‘MINI-ME’ . . DUSTIN YELLIN, ‘MINI-ATURE’ . . ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT at SPRING BREAK / UP-DATE: FRI MARCH 13 – 11:15 am
UP-DATE: see photo of CURATOR NATALIE KOVACS – with the ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT ‘BROTHEL’, just added to bottom of the post.
coming up – watch out world !!!!!!
THE SPRING/BREAK 2015 – BREAK-DOWN !!
in the over-wrought art scene, the dumb-downed critical masses of the commercial art fairs & the mad, mass crush of aspiring artists with their non-stop production . . .
the big big stand-out trend is: SCALE !!
scale, such an ugly word. like fish . . scales.
or, the scales of law . . that the ‘blind’ justice chick, holds.
‘size’ . . works for me: and, the more ‘nano, bite-sized / mini’ . . . the better – !!
just plain ole size . . as opposed to let’s say, concept-driven, hyper-realism, minimalism, narrative, or purely pictorial-based works. I began to really notice this, back in June 2014 with that . . deep-dish, indie 170 SUFFOLK pop-up.
JACK SHANNON, mini or toy replica USA flag, stuck in a tiny hand-made clay ‘rock-like’ foundation.
170 SUFFOLK – a pop-up group show curated by SEAN VEGEZZI, ANDREW KASS & ABELINE COHEN,
LOWER EAST SIDE, MAY 31 – JUNE 5, 2014.
see: HELLO, 170 SUFFOLK
of course, a scant summer passed, when . . SATAN CERAMICS, JJ PEET & CREW – nailed that mini-ature . . notion !!
JJ PEET, miniature cup, SATAN CERAMICS, SALON 94 FREEMANS ALLEY, LOWER EAST SIDE.
SEPT 7 – OCT 25, 2014.
see: SATAN CERAMICS, OPENING NITE PIX
hello . . .
for absolute sure, appropriation is NOT THE KEY WORD any longer . . .
for what’s going on, and being thought about – on and around the scene these days !!
e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y is so over that . . everybody is so on board with original statements, and . . one-of-a-kind hands-on / artisan-like vibes.
rebel rebel, indie . .
means . . original CONTENT !!
call it the BROOKLYN HAND-MADE ONE-OF-A-KIND MINDSET . . vs. RICHARD PRINCE & JEFF KOONS – IMAGE / PHOTO THEFT . .
or, go a-w-a-y: BARBARA KRUGER wannabes. that’s so stale.
IMAGE & PHOTO COPYRIGHTS, ARTISAN, LOCAL-BASED, ORIGINAL-TAKE VOICES of the social network, and, even yes – the cult of the SELFIE, it all comes down to SINGULARITY . . how funny is it, how powerful ironic – that this is where the easy-to-rip-off-digital world has brought us. full circle.
back . . to the preservation of intellectual property ownership, and the appreciation of the hand-made, and singular . . both in craft and art object & video, and thought/concept/voice.
in popular culture think, mini series, big stars.
think: GIRLS & HBO. HOUSE OF CARDS, etc. etc. HOMELAND. endless list.
with a just little shout-out to the music world / and those Marvin Gaye copyright rip-off artists: ROBIN THICKE & sad sad day, PHARRELL WILLIAMS – making headlines this weekend.
I understand moving those ole-time music genres ahead, but come on Pharrell – admit to duping the drumstick riff, at least. give credit where credit is due.
NANO, MICRO, PIXEL, BITE-SIZED, MINI, MINIATURE . . YOU NAME IT !!
they all spell: BIG MESSAGE – POWERFUL LITTLE PACKAGE !! GETS YOU AHEAD OF THE MADDENING MASSES !!
1. ‘NANO’ . . NICHOLAS STEINDORF / DARREN WILLS – CURATED BY YULIA TOPCHIY.
NICHOLAS STEINDORF + DARREN WILL, ‘PURPLE’ – a 30 SECOND (!!) VIDEO PROJECTION, of a TINY RED & BLUE COLOR ‘CARD’ – DIGITAL ANIMATION BY NICHOLAS STEINDORF / ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK BY DARREN WILL.
SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW, 2015 – a truly indie fair, was subtitled: ‘TRANSACTION’ this year.
just as SPRING BREAK, was my best take . . on the sheer madness of ARMORY WEEK, these guys were my best take on SPRING BREAK . . !!
I thought they were among the best young ‘un-kowns’ of the entire week, it’s easy to call the celebs, and the guys who have been around the block. and to auction.
it’s hard to call . . the new-found talent.
‘knowledge’ . . . transmission = transaction: check !!
but also importantly, and why I’m putting them at the very starry top of the dizzing-ly vast mostly young new artist pyramid, that was SPRING BREAK – is that these two young BROOKLYN-based collaborators, NICHOLAS does the digital imaging, DARREN did the original sound . . totally got, as in . . ‘deep’ & profoundly, understood: ‘TRANSACTION’, ca-ching.
it wasn’t just about . . shredding dollar bills.
they priced their short videos at a concept-inducing . . $1 PER MB.
this one, ‘PURPLE’ coming in at 36.28 MB – was $36.28 (plus a small sales tax !!)
all sales were limited editions of 3, and included a signed 11 x 14 in. print specific to the video – ca-ching, count me – IN !!
talk about nano: this was the king of all nano video loops, all of 30 seconds, nano-sized, in fact . . micro-sized image, and . . micro-priced !!
it’s a . . win, win, win.
‘nano’ was such a good word, for this work, and in fact for their whole short series of 4 clips that ran on a loop, ‘nano’ as in . . birth – the smallest bio/biological unit / in-the-beginning, the most basic unit. so small, it is literally the life force – pulse !!
‘PURPLE’ was like stumbling upon the nano universe building block. like walking into a moon beam, but more powerful. less dreamy. more tech-based. it wasn’t so much a ‘representation’, as in an ‘object’ . . it was literally a life force pulse. it was an ’emitter’. a literal ‘beam’ of hi-energy life. the beginnings of life, it even struck me as perhaps, the portal to life, and perhaps other universes. the beyond.
plus . . red and blue make purple.
in a nutshell: ‘PURPLE’ was . . nano birthing !!
constructed from digital nano pixels, even the music was the sound of nano spheres, Darren Will took the actual sound of the computer, that is usually NOT AUDIBLE it is so small, and enlarged and manipulated it – as the computer actually processed each image – as it was being processed, ‘animated’.
walking through the fair, which was itself like an immense bee hive, with many smal ‘cells’ pulsing with ideas and art, this was a pure energy ‘beam’ – encountered, in the first person. it was like a truly 3-d, make that 4-d ? sculpture . . as much as it was a ‘video animation’.
I just read this morning that the JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY, or Jaxa (!!) in “one small 55 meter step” . . said “it succeeded in transmitting electric power wirelessly to a pinpoint target using microwaves . . an essential technology . . for space-based solar power.”
talk about: a high power beam !!
oh, yeah. for sure – the future is nano / micro !!
read: Japanese Agency Snares Solar Power
NICHOLAS STEINDORF + DARREN WILL, ‘Model’.
this clip was slightly larger, more in the scale of: ‘MINI-ATURE’, as opposed to purely empirically n-a-n-o. ha.
132.52 MB or . . for $132.52 – it’s yours !!
so, yes the sequence itself – was . . birthing. in scale, and concept.
here was the birth of civilization – the Greek mind-set. man. culture, art.
it was also very nano, formally – in its composition, the head placed way up there in a small corner.
very un-conventional. all about color pulse, as well.
NICHOLAS STEINDORF + DARREN WILL, ‘JAMES, TOBEY POND, NORFOLK, CT, USA’
212.07 MB – $212.07.
so, bio life progresses . .
to a modern-day swimmer, a man, a young man on a dock . . diving into the ocean. the poetics, the narrative become complex. the image starts off small and ghostly, it wavers, it fades, it literally bobs up and down on the screen, just like the swimmer.
NICHOLAS STEINDORF + DARREN WILL, ‘THE ROSE, NEW YORK STATE’.
861.58 MB – $861.58
nano – in all its complexity . . the unfolding of a flower.
the unit vs. the group.
NICHOLAS STEINDORF used an ‘hommage’ to JACK GOLDSTEIN’S, ‘THE KNIFE’ as the metaphoric / symbolic glue or bridge that linked all parts of the brief individual clips – to each other, and to the whole.
it was interesting to dwell on Goldstein’s now ‘vintage’ use of this common household object and how it was to become a huge sensation, or, eventually at any rate, and at the time for a lot of us . . when he filmed it so minimally, and so . . LARGE !!
there’s the neat trick. that was that . . era.
and please note, Pharrell: Nicholas did make a formal footnote – as to the source.
watch: NICHOLAS STEINDORF + DARREN WILL .. ‘SPRING BREAK 2015 – SEQUENCE’, in its entirety . . on VIMEO
2. ‘MINI-ME’ . . GLASS SCULPTURE BY DUSTIN YELLIN – CURATED BY NATALIE KOVACS.
unique edition, can be yours. . for somewhere in the range of $30,000 – which is actually a mini-priced opportunity for followers of this better known art scenester !!
his work usually goes in the $100,000 range.
what’s so fun about this piece, is that not only is it a table-sized mini rendition of Dustin’s classic glass pieces, which are usually human-sized, and often, far larger !! and free-standing. but since it is a smaller rendition of his work, think hotel room mini-bar !! it can, with glee . . be termed a ‘mini-me’ – !!
Dustin Yellin . . is one strange cool cat, I don’t care what anybody says. a lot of it is jealousy, or ceiling-on-the-‘so-called’-art-critic-brain. I’m the one who first stood up, in print – against Roberta Smith who dismissed his work with one flick of the academic, stogy hand as: “kitsch”.
bite your tongues, my friends. well I remember, the days back in the early 80s when all my proto-hipster artist friends on the Bowery – used to laugh at JEAN MICHEL, that’s Basquiat to YOU . .
Jean Michel couldn’t give his art away, in those days and times. famous last words.
in fact I remember the same action happening around . . DASH SNOW, RIP.
I also came out then – as a big fan.
I don’t think it’s gonna be an RIP situation here, but it’s funny – life.
there’s no . . WINNING.
you get the feeling that although Dustin has so much, though he does spread the wealth around nicely when he wants too, that he can’t ever feel, truly . . secure. he craves so much attention, so much validation. one wonders, does he ever feel that he’s made the moment . . inside of himself ?
of course this makes for great showmanship, something a little bit in short supply at SPRING BREAK, esp for such a young with-nothing-to-lose-bunch, still in their 20’s, but we’ll leave that for the next post – TEEN BAZAAR, hoo-ray !!
magic carpet ride.
make that . . mini magic carpet ride !!
I love (glass) transparency, and I love – fables.
come on, I’m not the only one to note, the huge fab ride, the major ‘trend’ crush . . our littlest bio humans have, with their huge fascination with: all things . . U-N-I-C-O-R-N-S.
if you guys are the ‘millennials’ – then wtf are these little kindergarten babies going to be called, the ‘unicorn-ists’, aka the ‘unicorns, for short ???!!
on one side of the globe you have kids pointing unicorns at each other, on the other . . guns.
what gives ?
yin yang ?
I love fortune telling, tarot cards, CRYSTALS !! magic rocks. omens, and oracles.
rituals. patterns in rugs. folk art, fables, trips in the imagination.
it’s the same piece, mini-sized, just from a close-up view.
I love glass piled up. stacked up – so it turns, green.
must be the proto-autistic in me, loving surfaces. esp transparent glass, and esp . . plastic.
I love how the collage-d images disappear . . magic in the making, magic in motion.
superficial vs. profound ?
who’s to say. or maybe it’s yin yang. just that simple.
3. ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT, ‘MINI MODULAR BRONZE BROTHEL’ – CURATED BY NATALIE KOVACS.
ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT, 2014. bronze sculpture, 48 x 30 x 51 cms. editon of 3.
no price given.
this has to go under the internationally FAMOUS, but totally un-known and new . . to me !! category – which is what art fairs are supposed to be all about, and it was super cool to find this here, and not at INDEPENDENT or the ARMORY.
so, there. SPRING BREAK, apparently does trump all.
I thought at first Atelier Van Lieshout was an artist collective with a made up . . name !!
my bad !!
JOEP VAN LIESHOUT founded this artisan design, art workshop in 1995 in ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS . . in large part to dis-spell the myth of the “single genius artist.”
talking about: PLASTIC – as in RESIN . . !!
workshops, and . . ARTISANS.
do yourself a favor !! and read: his own words – about . . ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT
and, then check out: ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT
yeah, it was even . . wired for light.
red light . . district, huh.
every brothel has its wash basin . . .
curator NATALIE KOVACS . . in her SPRING BREAK 2015 exhibit, with “Mini Modular Bronze Brothel’ by ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT, in the center.
all I can say is:
follow the bread crumbs . . . when the work is good, responding & pulsating to the ‘creative’ universe, it all lines . . up !!
PAT McCARTHY, ‘MINI PIGEON COOP’. 2014. mixed media, mostly clay, exhibited in SATAN CERAMICS, SALON 94 FREEMANS ALLEY, LOWER EAST SIDE, SEPT 7 – OCT 25, 2014
see: SATAN CERAMICS – OPENING PIX
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH