~mirf/THUNDERDOG

thunderdog-red & white

thunderdog #1
thunderdog # 2

5thunderdog # 3

…THUNDERDOG …’brainstorming a clouded world’

JEFF WALL and MIKHAIL SOKOVIKOV aka 1134 NYC aka THE CANAL CHAPTER also launched a limited edition ‘toy’ – a protoype of their collaborative tag – mirf – in the – THUNDERDOG 2006 TOY LABEL PREVIEW – which ran from Feb 11th – March 2nd at FUSE GALLERY, on the Lower East Side. Headed up by TRISTAN EATON, and roaring out of BROOKLYN, THUNDERDOG is a multi-media, multi-purpose creative agency and toy label.

thunderdogstudios.com

photos from the opening event, Feb 11, 2006

filth

filth aka Lucas Irwin – is the Senior Art Director of THUNDERDOG.

below is the mirf prototype – the toys are in limited editions of 1,000

mirf

mirf aka 1134NYC aka THE CANAL CHAPTER – 1134NYC.com




~Robert Gutierrez

Robert Gutierrez

the card for: ROBERT GUTIERREZ, ‘fever atlas’, February 4 – March 11, 2006.
Sixtyseven, 547 W27, suite 309

The first NYC solo show of the California based painter: ROBERT GUTIERREZ. …”intimate in scale, intensely colored and finely detailed. A combination of landscape painting, figurative work and abstraction, Gutierrez’s paintings tend to invoke open-ended narratives with a nod to Filipino-folk supernaturalism.”

His work was included in the recent exhibit, ‘Bay Area Now’, at the Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco.

Robert Gutierrez was born in Manila, The Philippines. He currently lives and works in San Jose, California.
His first showing at Sixtyseven was part of ‘Things of that Nature’ in 2005.

more info: Sixtyseven




~We Made It, BOSTON

Ben Jones on beach-card

‘WE MADE IT’, January 28 – March 10, 2006. SECOND GALLERY’S INAUGRAL SHOW. INSTALLATIONS and VIDEOS BY: DIANE CARR, BRENDAN HARMAN, MICHAEL MAHALCHICK, FRANKIE MARTIN, ANDY MEEROW, PAPER RAD, EZRA RUBIN.
SECOND GALLERY, The Distillery, 516 East 2nd ST, South Boston, MASS

…. walking the beach, alone, is BEN JONES of Paper Rad, and from the looks of it, one could reasonably assume, he also designed the card.

second gallery




~Interwoven, ZURICH

Interwoven

‘While Interwoven Echoes Drip into a Hybrid Body’. an Exhibition about Sound, Performance and Sculpture.Rita Ackermann & Agathe Snow, Dave Allen, Peter Coffin, Chris Cunningham & Bjork, Delia Gonzalez & Gavin R, Russom, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Mileese*, Seb Patane, Banks Violette. 21. Januar – 26 Marz 2006. migros museum, Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zurich

the card was designed by: Ibrahim Zbat, Riviera Design, Zurich. The organic forms with which he worked were created from the ERNST HAECKEL book, ‘Kunstformen der Natur’.


www.migrosmuseum.ch




~slow burn, GENEVE

slow burn #2

‘slow burn’, curated by Jonah Freeman, January 26 – March 11, 2006, galerie edward mitterrand, 52 rue des bains – 1205 geneve — here’s a shout-out to all our friends in the show — alexandre singh, ara peterson, blake rayne, cheyney thompson, eileen quinlan, jim shaw, john tremblay, liam gillick, lucy mckenzie, matthew brannon, michael phelan, nate lowman & peter coffin.

image: JUSTIN LOWE, ‘shadowy couple above crystal waters’, 2005, laminated custom pigment print mounted on aluminium, 23 x 30″

www.edwardmitterrand.com




~ERIKA SOMOGYI/Violet Dawn Love Song

Erika Somogyi card

the card for ERIKA SOMOGYI, ‘Violet Dawn Love Song’, which ran from January 5 – February 11, 2006 at Monya Rowe Gallery on W 26th St.

card image: Erika Somogyi, ‘The Voice in the Fire’, 2005, watercolor, gouache, and color pencil on paper, 22 by 30 inches.

….. what was more luminous? the constellation of Erika’s paintings, with their otherworldly yet somehow politically charged implications, or the equally shining constellation of underground stars, also just on the edge of being borne into the mainstream universe, who came to Erika’s opening to celebrate their friend’s vision and achievement.

Erika Somogyi

ERIKA SOMOGYI opens ‘Violet Dawn Love Song’, Monya Rowe Gallery, NYC, Jan 5, 2006
Photo: Nancy Smith

more photos from the opening




~JACK PIERSON/DANIEL REICH

Jack Pierson card

the deceptively simple, yet creatively resonant card, on hard stock, 7 x 7″, spoke well for this show, JACK PIERSON, ‘Early Works and Beyond’, which ran from December 15 to January 28, 2006, at Daniel Reich Gallery. A beautifully paced overview of some of Jack’s best early work, the show worked really well in the gallery and resonanted well with the holiday season. Festive and solemn, at the same time, somehow.
(the card doesn’t scan to justice, there’s a finely defined illusion of white cloth as the background)

JACK PIERSON, ‘Early Works and Beyond’, garnered an equally sensitive review by ROBERTA SMITH in the NEW YORK TIMES, of Friday, January 20, 2006. some of Roberta’s musings:
“This small survey show of Jack Pierson’s career …. also provides a useful account of Mr. Pierson’s consistently melancholic art, its siftings through the rubble of American life and its restless roaming through photography, sculpture, drawing and language. In both medium and message, Mr. Pierson’s work is about a kind of homelessness.
Mr. Pierson emerged in the early 1990’s in a generation that reacted to the slick self-confidence of late 1980’s Neo-Geo with a dilapidated disillusionment hastened by AIDS. His approach was both Romantic and hard-nosed; it favored bits of reality or language slightly rearranged. His best known works are poignant words spelled out in the plastic letters of old signs …….
For Mr. Pierson the inanimate world brims with longing and memory waiting to be coaxed forward ….”

photos from the opening




~Gelatin/Gelitin/TANTAMOUNTER 24/7

Gelatin

from left, in cap, GELATIN’S GABRIEL VON LOEBELL, and, ALI JANKA, (center), with collector, JOHN HALL, (right) at the closing party for ‘TANTAMOUNTER 24/7’, LEO KOENIG GALLERY, NYC, Nov 23, 2005 .
( …that’s NAOMI FISHER and JIM DRAIN smooching on the left)

The Viennese performance art group, GELATIN put on one of the most intriguing and art smart of the PERFORMA 05 (the First Biennial of New Visual Art Performance, NYC) events. They built a huge live-in “replicating” factory that took over 99% of the gallery space. Gelatin, and their suprise live-in house guest, artist NAOMI FISHER, were completely enclosed, with no windows, and no way out for an entire week. Holed up with a stock of food and lots of raw art & thrift shop materials, they handmade reproductions of objects, which anybody who wanted to, could enter into their “replicating” lair, by way of a little conveyor belt trap door and voila, after a little bit of time, the yellow light bulb would flash on, and the original and the replica were ready to be retreived.

Gelatin now likes their name to be spelled – GELITIN – the story goes that they recently had a show in Japan & that was how their name was spelled & they liked it better like that.

Gelatin-yellow light

Sean Shanahan, who trekked in from Jersey, with his GELATIN ‘Tantamounter 24/7’ replica – that’s the top of the entry port.

more photos from the installation
: GELATIN ‘Tantamounter 24/7’
(scroll down to the bottom of the report – GELITIN photos start at row 19)

Photos: Nancy Smith




~JIM DRAIN & ARA PETERSON/’HYPNOGOOGIA’

Jim Drain -art work

JIM DRAIN and ARA PETERSON open ‘HYPNOGOOGIA’ at DEITCH PROJECTS, Wooster St, Soho, NYC, Nov 4, 2005.

A show of huge rotating geometrically patterned spheres, a roomful of hypnotic spinning disks, and a walk-in mirrored video kaleidescope. Pictures are worth a thousand words, follow the link.

JIM DRAIN & ARA PETERSON, ‘HYPNOGOOGIA’

Photo: Installation Shot, Nancy Smith




~JAPANTHER

Matt Reilly-japanther

Ian Vanek-japanther

MATT REILLY (top) and IAN VANEK are JAPANTHER … outrageously talented & over-the-top performers, JAPANTHER served up a knock-them-out dead performance at the afterparty for the book launch of CHARWEI TSAI’S ‘LOVELY DAZE’, which was held at a tiny dive, ICU Bar, on the fringe of NYC civilization, an almost bleak stretch that still exists for a few streets, where the boundaries of the West Village and Chelsea haven’t yet hooked up in glorified gentrification. Seeing this band in that locale was the kind of artworld moment we all live for…. its down in the photo report captions that links at the bottom, but it’s not redundant to say it again: for all of you who came to New York – to seek out firsthand live band experiences that left you in a state of shock & awe – I have just one word for you – JAPANTHER, JAPANTHER, JAPANTHER – the next time you see or hear that word – you just jump & run & get there.

more JAPANTHER photos from ICU, NYC, Oct 22, 2005

Photos: MATT REILLY, top, and IAN VANEK, bottom, who are the NYC band JAPANTHER, in performance for the Charwei Tsai, ‘LOVELY DAZE’ art quarterly afterparty, at ICU BAR, on the fringe of the West Village, NYC, Oct 22, 2005
Photos: Nancy Smith