Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow. Mike Monteiro.

"Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow. Let’s scratch our heads and give up and wake up and try it again. Let’s fail at digging the well the first three times to get it right the fourth. Let’s build faster horses, and then strap rocket ships onto them. Let’s start a company, let’s watch it fail, and then let’s start another one. Let’s be the boss. Let’s take the boss down. Let’s order too much of something just to see where our limits are. Let’s take a chance precisely because it might fail. Let’s take the hard way out. Let’s go to the moon. Fuck it; let’s go to the moon again. Let’s quit our jobs. Let’s work at being better at what we do by fucking up faster, not less. Let’s fuck up really fast. Let’s wrestle sharks, fight monsters, and disagree with the board. Let’s borrow so much money it becomes someone else’s problem. Let’s start a 10-hour drive by announcing “I’m not into you anymore.” Let’s dump everything out of the garage onto the sidewalk and build something really cool in that space. Let’s start out to build a better mousetrap, and halfway there let’s decide to jump on the mice’s team. Let’s bet on a longshot. Let’s buy her a drink. Let’s start baking bread in our cubicle. Let’s try bringing fresh water to distant villages precisely because we have no idea how to do it. Let’s pool our money. Let’s take their money. Let’s solve that hard problem. You know that one that keeps you up at night? Let’s tackle that bastard. Let it kick our ass a few times, and then finally get it right. Let’s find out what’s at the bottom of the ocean. Let’s tame the Kraken. Let’s just fucking tell people we’ve readInfinite Jest and move on. Let’s forgive our parents. Let’s do something with the goddamned planet. Let’s rent an electric generator and open a food cart that sells nothing but frosted PopTarts, but makes a lot of fucking noise. Let’s have a breakthrough. Let’s have a breakdown. Let’s agree that bruises fade, bones heal, hearts mend, and that tomorrow we’re right back on that horse and that this time, THIS TIME! we’ve at least got a rocket strapped to its back."

Saatchi Oil Spill

This is the first Richard Wilson instillation I have seen (or smelled), but I will be keeping an eye out for more in the future. In the basement of the Saatchi gallery this black pool of petrol makes for a fascinating instillation. The perfect black mirror plays with the viewers perception and is powerful not only in odor.

The pictures don't do it justice. Go see for yourself and than tell me how they are going to get all of that oil out of there.

Art in Words

I was formally introduced to Ed Ruscha's 50 years of painting last night at the Hayward Gallery and he made an excellent impression. Ruscha falls into the group of my few and favorite artists whose unique perspective is not only groundbreaking but simple, like they are able to see the world from an obvious vantage point before anyone else realizes its there.

His cross-sections of words in art and art in words are not only easy viewing but speak to the flexibility of genres from advertising to exhibitions, a reflection of his pop art origins. In fact they are all the kind of pieces one might want in their own home.

His most recent work an interpretation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road would have been interesting but I am sorry to say I missed it! Below are a few images from the Hayward exhibition:

The Detail it takes to Disappear

Below are a few images of Liu Bolin, a new contemporary artist to keep an eye out for. Bolin views his work as a protest against the dark side of a society that lets people disappear. He works with assistants and his project can involve standing still for hours on end. Despite previously having his studio closed by the Chinese government, he is currently working in Beijing.

The Power of Portraits

Ever since I first studied art history, I have had a certain fascination with portraiture. The attempts and the successes produced when an artist captures a person in an image is always interesting to pick apart.

Richard Avedon spent five days in the UN photographing some the most powerful people in the world and the slide show of their images is not be missed. The article appears in this weeks New Yorker and slide show is available on the New Yorker Website.

Can you imagine if John Singer Sargent had the opportunity to paint Muammar Qaddafi? Maybe I should keep my portrait dreams to myself..

5 Years 2 Minutes 20 Seconds

Serge Gainsbourg - animation des graffitis sur 5 ans du mur rue de Verneuil

from Arnaud Jourdain on Vimeo

A short film of the layers of graffiti outside Serge Gainsbourg former home in Paris.

So Long SHUNT

Its a sad day when the only club-art instillation hybrid in an abandoned train station closes. That day is today. With different artists and performers every evening, SHUNT was always an interesting place for a drink and was packed this past Thursday with the end so near.

In a city obsessed with guest lists and members clubs, the queue for SHUNT speaks to it's egalitarian door policy; it doesn't matter who you are, you have to be here before 11:00 and you have to wait to get in. Apparently the minds behind the magic are looking for a new venue, but its hard to say where another cavernous space exists that is just waiting to be filled with surprises around every dark corners.

SHUNT's front entrance in London Bridge train station

So long SHUNT

More Kapoor

I will fully admit to being a fadist, but this is for anyone who missed the Cloud Gate reference in my last Kapoor post.

A Sculpture Says a Thousand Words

"I have often said that I have nothing to say as an artist. Having something to say implies that one is struggling with meaning. The role of the artist is in fact that we don't know what to say, and it is that not knowing that leads to the work." -Anish Kapoor

Slug

Svayambh

Tall Tree and the Eye

Ever since I saw Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate reflecting all of down town Chicago, I have wanted to see an exhibition of his work and the Royal Academy of Arts finally provided me with the opportunity. Kapoor's sculptures play on instillation and are like magnets interacting with their viewers; from small children to my date, it was easy to find visitors to the gallery guiltily looking around before quickly reaching out to touch the art. His pieces are a wonderful balance of organic forms and synthetic materials, which like a new species of plant feel oddly natural and totally foreign. Kapoor is one conemporaty artist whose work I will believe will be survive into future generations.

Shooting into the Corner

Every 20 minutes a canon would be loaded with red wax and shot into another room of the gallery. I pity the intern who has to clean the thirty tons of wax, which will be splattered all over the walls of the Royal Academy for the duration of the exhibition.

Koons in Covent Garden

This is the closest I will get to a thanksgiving day parade this year

Walking in my Mind

The Hayward Gallery's summer exhibition was entitled Walking in My Mind, and it included the works of ten artists given a space to turn into their imagination. From polka dots to porn every room was completely different, but entertaining none the less.

Jason Rhoade's imagination almost smelled like a boys room, but I appreciated how straightforward him and Thomas Hirschhorn were about the amount of junk that piles up. My surprise favorite was Charles Avery, a young Scottish artist whose work I will continue to look for.

I loved the nature of the exhibition because it directly required the artists to indulge in their inner monologue. Unfortunately, the exhibition was an instillation and all the pieces of the different creative processes have been taken down, but here are a few picture that I was not allowed to take.

A man in a suite in Chiharu Shiota's web

Yayoi Kusama's expression of her hallucinations

Charle's Avery's infinity chamber

Yayoi Kusama

Enigmatic as Ever

picture source flickr

The Mona Lisa had a worse than average week, an enraged Russian lady threw a tea cup at the painting in the Louvre. The attacker (who did not manage to damage Mona) has been placed in a psychiatric infirmary.

A Contradiction in Flavors

Louis XIV vs. Jeff Koons