The report from Saturday night

Dino lights candles at Dorsch

Dino Felipe sets up for his performance at Dorsch last night. The preparation was fraught with technical difficulty, but got up and running stunningly, a parody (homage?) to Lies, among much else. Even crouched down on the floor and lighting candles, he somehow dominates the room. Dino was also one of the judges in last week’s laptop battle, and has been reviewed by pitchfork and deleted by myspace.

The work in the exhibition was a mixed bag, but there was lots of good stuff to see, especially in the project room, for those who braved the absurd heat. I’m serious, though, it was something like 85° and 80% humidity and no breeze, try standing in an unventilated warehouse with 500 of your closest friends (and another 500 on the street outside). The good news is that I have been personally assured by Mr. Dorsch himself that this is the last exhibition ever without AC. The units are on the roof, and the duct-work is getting run right after the show closes. It’s going to be the end of a sticky era.

Even with all that, the highlight of the evening was Cliff Chidree’s new film, Somethin Awful. Cliff splits the difference between Charlie Chaplain and Matthew Barney, and this 30 minute short (On 16mm! With sound performed live! Shown at the esteemed Bas Fisher Invitational!) must be seen to be believed.

Speaking of homages to Guns n Roses, we stopped briefly at “The Bar” in Coral Gables, where the worst cover band ever played Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (yes I know it’s a Dylan song, but they were covering GnR, trust me) and attempted, rather unsuccessfully, Honky Tonk Women. Could not have gotten out of there fast enough.

TNFH went out too, and has more stuff.

Posted Sunday June 11, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [3]


 

Salzinger at ArtCenter

stereoview image with breast masturbation toy

Holy crap: my pal Samantha Salzinger just got written up in New Times by Carlos Suarez De Jesus for the show at ACSF her work is in:

Through the other viewer one gazes upon an alpine clearing where a rubber replica of a porn star’s breasts bursts from a patch of daisies and heaves toward the clouds. One is immediately struck by these works’ shared sensibility with glory holes found in seedy XXX book shops that allow perverts to drop in on the action in coin-operated film booths.

Good job. Samantha worked super hard on these and she deserves to get some credit. If you’re extra slick, you might be able to can stare at the above images, cross your eyes, and get a taste of the 3d effect (though you need to check them out in person to see how amazing they really look).

Posted Wednesday May 31, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [6]


 

The City of Miami beach is soliciting designs for new manhole covers. Anyone who lives in Miami Dade county can submit a design, due July 5. The city’s Art in Public Places Committee will review the designs, and the city Commission will approve the final selection. Fun?

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Nostalgia weekend

Posted Friday May 19, 2006 · Permalink · Comment


 

wynwood by dig

This picture is from this post at Dig. Dig is the more graphically-oriented partner-blog to tNFH. He takes these great nighttime, low-angled, slightly cattywhompus pictures of streets and buildings, often focused on an empty middleground. For the full effect, click the images on the blog and say “view image.”

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KH of tNFH reviews the Anna Maria Maiolino show at MAC for Miami Sunpost. I wasn’t crazy about the show myself, but I intend to see it again.

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One of these days I’m going to write up a whole big thing about how Miami Art Guide sucks so so bad. Meanwhile, check this out – they’re apparently biting content from tNFH. Nice work, guys.

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KH and Jose have art-things to do tonight.

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Ecko's graffiti lawsuit

ecko's house - computer rendering

It seems that there’s a Miami Beach law that bans anything that looks like graffiti, even if it exists with the property owner’s consent. Marc Ecko is challenging the law. The image above is a computer rendering of the piece his business partner wants to put on his house on Pine Tree Drive.

Coral Gables famously requires color samples before issuing permits to allow painting a house (and you can paint your fence any color you like, so long as it is green), but a law prohibiting “graffiti” is particularly vague. Appropriately, Ecko has won similar lawsuits in other cities.

Posted Sunday May 7, 2006 · Permalink · Comment


 

An article about the local art scene covers artists’ jumps from gallery to gallery in absurd detail, but has a great quote from Snitzer: “All the artists that are mad at me because I won’t represent them? Tough shit. It’s my dime.” (expletive restored)

Meanwhile, Turner reviews Novoa.

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South Beach Chamber Ensemble

SBCE

The South Beach Chamber Ensemble performs at MAC at 4 pm on Sunday. I caught them doing the same program a few weeks ago at the Miami Beach Community Church, and they are excellent. Drawn from the teaching staff at New World School for the Arts, SBCE is a surprisingly hip string quartet. This program, for instance, includes nothing older then 1957. Between pieces, they explain, give background, and tell stories, sometimes interrupting each other to jump in on a point.

They open with Shostakovich’s String Quartet #7, which is Russian modernism at it’s best – dissonant, dramatic, and in places just plain weird. It’s the sort of piece that demonstrates why the string quartet can be the most effective of classical music units – it is able to create rich layers of texture with unusual techniques on each instrument, while allowing each of the instruments to be heard as a distinct voice. The show continues with Osvaldo Golijov’s “Tenebrae” (composed in 2003) a shimmering, slowly developing tribute to a visit to a planetarium, and concludes, fittingly, with a string quartet by Villa-Lobos, the Brazilian master.

The show is part of the ensemble’s “Music in Beautiful Spaces,” a good execution of a good idea. ($5)

Posted Friday May 5, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [4]


 

Breakin' weekend

mlp hip hop

Posted Friday May 5, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [7]


 

Michael Tilson Thomas elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

michael Bigups to Michael Tilson Thomas, artistic director of New World Symphony, who who has just been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other 2006 inductees included Martin Scorsese, Paul Vogel, and Bill Clinton. The distinction “recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.” While the fellows list mentions MTT’s other gig, as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, the award reflects on the importance of NWS, which he helped to found, and which is creating an important link between serious music’s past and its future.

Posted Tuesday May 2, 2006 · Permalink · Comment


 

FIU BFA Spring Exhibition 2006

Ross Harris,  pumpkins, oil on canvas, 5x8 in., 2005 (from ongoing series)

This Friday is the reception for FIU’s latest batch of art majors. You might think that the school would publish a little brochure, maybe with an image of each of their work, or at least do up a little web site, but you’d be wrong.

Well, my pals Ross Harris, GisMo, and Silvia Llopis are in the show, as are Lisa Ashinoff, Kathleen Bulger, Reneé Cagnina, Gary Fonseca, Javier Gonzalez, Andrew C. Horton, Efren Izquierdo, Kelly Kuylen, Luisa Maria Mesa, Adam Pedrone, Laura Ploude, Danielle Rottler, Nicole Soden, Donna Lee Steffens, and David Tamargo.

FIU runs a decent art program, and the show will be worth checking out (even if it sounds like a lot of work to cram into the Frost’s space). By the way, please let me know if there is an applicable web link for any of these artists that I missed.

Posted Thursday April 27, 2006 · Permalink · Comment


 

New World Symphony does Reich

Cookin:' Part IV

The New World Symphony’s performnace of Steve Reich’s Drumming on Saturday was pretty mind-bending. Exploring the same themes that occupied Reich’s entire career, the piece is built up from simple rhythmic motifs which grow increasingly complex through layering, variation, and “phasing.” The later technique is particularly key – it involves a repeating pattern played by two musicians, whom gradually fall out of sync with each other (one playing just slightly faster), then back into sync (when the “faster” variation gets a full eight-note ahead of the other). The effect is maddeningly complex when done by two musicians, let alone 13. Drumming opens up on four pairs of tuned bongos, moves to marimbas for the second section, to glockenspiels for the third, and finishes with all the instruments playing together. At various points, vocalists, a piccolo, and whistling augment the percussion. All of the action of the piece takes place in a very limited frequency range, and often with incredible density of notes, which result in overtones and perceived sounds that cannot be coming from the actual instruments. The piece also challenges you to “follow the pattern,” knowing full well that the variations will grown too complex by several orders of magnitude for that to be possible—at one particularly hot moment, there are nine musicians playing different patterns on the marimbas. Think of future robots playing patty-cake, fractal/chaos theory, and the game simon, but mostly nevermind: you just have to listen to it from beginning to end to get it.

What I’m trying to say is that this shit is weird. And that gets me to how cool the New World Symphony is for doing it (and doing it well: the performance was easily as good as the one one my box cd.) And getting people to come hear it: the 704-seat theater was maybe 90% full. I was skeptical of combining a show like this with a 90-minute cocktail reception (“Symphony with a Twist,” indeed), but the proof is in the pudding: no more then one person left during the performance, and most of the crowd cheered furiously at the end (from the balcony, I saw a few people sitting with arms folded across their chest throughout the standing ovation, but that’s less then I’d have expected). Before the show, Michael Linville came out and explained the basic concepts of the piece (with a quick demonstration by a couple of the musicians) to give the audience a little background, but mostly they were just thrown in the deep end. So we have another case of NWS doing uncompromising work, and getting people to hear it. Bravo!

Posted Monday April 10, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [2]


 

Drumming Friday

Tuned bongos, y'all!

Anything else?

Update: Immigrant solidarity rallies (from the Herald):

Posted Friday April 7, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [4]


 

Yellow arrow

It’s taken a long-ass time, but Yellow Arrow [made me download a new version of Flash] finally has some traction in Miami, with 128 arrows (this one is on the sidewalk on Lenox Ave on the Beach). Yellow Arrow started in NYC years ago.

The basic idea is that you use the arrows to tag stuff in the real world (can’t be private property) with arrows you get from the site, and link the unique code on the arrow to your comment about the thing. Others who come across the arrow can get your comment by SMS from their cell. I can’t link to the specific pages on the site (drat that flash!) but poke around.

Tracking these down can’t possibly be worth the effort, but they’re definitely something to be on the lookout for. Better yet, plant some of your own – you order the arrows for 50 cents a piece, and you can do the whole thing from a cell, out in the real world.

Posted Thursday April 6, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [4]


 

Orchid Weekend

Hey: Also, I’m working on something about the UM Janitor strike. Anyone have any thoughts, e-mail me; think of it like comments in reverse. In particular, I want to get my hands on something called “Why the Protest Continues: It’s All About Democracy.”

Posted Friday March 31, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [3]


 

John Szarkowski at the Margulies Warehouse

John Szarkowski (this photo is probably about 40 years old) will be speaking at the Margulies Warehouse this Thursday at 7 pm.

Szarkowski, who was Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art from 1962 to 1991, was instrumental in the medium’s acceptance as a valid vehicle for art. His books, including Looking at Photographs, argue vigorously and eloquently for the aesthetic value of excellent photographs. This is not to be missed.

The Margulies Warehouse, the private collection of Marting Z. Margulies, includes one of the most respected collection of photographs in the world (though the collection also includes video and sculpture), including many photographs by the early masters, and some stunning contemporary work. The collection is huge and dazzling. While it may not make sense to compare it with traditional cultural establishments such as the Miami Art Museum, it may also be the one must-see stop for an art lover visiting Miami.

The collection will be open for viewing from 6 pm on Thursday; see their website for regular hours and directions.

Posted Wednesday March 29, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [6]


 

Let's get this weekend started

Posted Thursday March 23, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [3]


 

Musicians' Forum

The New World Symphony gets plenty of lip service around here, and I’ve been thinking I need to start actually attending more of their concerts (particularly after Marc’s recent visit, which he sounded exited about).

The Musicians’ Forum sounded like casual, adventurous fun (and it’s one of New World Symphony’s free events), although it turned out to be less casual then expected. The musicianship was first-rate, of course, but the program was pretty long, varied, and excellent. The evening opened with a couple of duets (who knew that a pair of trombones could be fun to listen to?), followed by the only piece composed by a NWS affiliate, 28 year old Fellow (?) Piotr Szewczyk’s violin concerto. Accompanied by a 38 piece orchestra, Szewczyk was obviously exited premiering the piece. Though I’m not sure it lived up to whatever expectations may be cast by the “very new music” claim, the piece was brooding and dramatic, and an excellent vehicle for the violinist’s scorching playing.

After intermission, more trombones, this time as part of a brass quintet, followed by an early-20th century solo flute piece. Performed by Ebonee Thomas, it had the drifting quality of much of the music of that time (see Saite and Debussy), along with some super-fast passages that Thomas executed gracefully. Ravel’s Tzigane, a violin/piano duet, closed out the evening. Ravel uses beautiful passages which dissolve into frenzied, hyperfast runs, and some Reeves Gabriel-style extended technique, atonality, rapidly alternating picking and bowing, and general craziness. A total show-stopper (the performers, Boris Zelichenok and Ching Ming Cheng, seen above accepting ample applause from the audience). Wow.

Next stop: the Percussion Consort.

Posted Tuesday March 21, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [4]


 

Vamp Friday

Posted Friday March 17, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [1]


 

Vik Muniz at MAM

Vik Muniz was a hit at Art Basel 2004 (less so in 2005), and Margulies has a couple of wonderful pieces of his, so expectations were high for the MAM solo show. Muniz has a startling trick – he reproduces existing images with off-the-wall materials, often in uncanny materials, and photographs the result. Fame has given him the resources to extend his technique to large-scale materials; the picture at right, Saturn, after Goya, is comprised of large scale junk (note the upright piano in the middle of the left edge).

It’s an impressive trick. Unfortunately, it grows tiresome through predictable repetition and over-reliance on art masterpieces from bygone eras. Muniz takes the strategy that Britto applied to the work of Keith Haring, and applies it to Thomas Demand. The exhibition catalog points out that recreating familiar images with surprising materials creates juxtapositions of meaning: “how is an image of the Mona Lisa made of peanut butter and jelly different from other images of the Mona Lisa?” If they mean that the Mona Lisa has become ordinary and everyday, then I get it. I also get that it’s fun. And while I enjoyed the joke when I first saw it, like a joke it becomes less interesting on repeated viewings, not more so.

The portraits made from circular clips of magazine pages continue to be effective, even while the tryptic recreation of Monet’s Lilies, obviously intended as a kind of tour-de-force, falls flat. The exhibition also brings some wonderful early work. A series of super-famous Time-Life images (man on the moon, 3d movie theater, etc), recreated by the artist from memory and re-photographed, out of focus and halftoned, makes for some interesting looking.

This exhibition is traveling, so in that sense it extends MAM’s reputation on the national museum scene. That is certainly a good thing; it’s comprehensive and wonderfully presented. It just has an air of ‘art for people who don’t like art’ about it.

Open through May 28.

Posted Monday March 13, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [1]


 

Shady weekend

I’m out of town, and the last few days worth of posts have all been pre-recorded (what kottke calls time-stamp fraud ). Can you tell? Whatever: please add whatever may be going on this weekend in the comments.

Posted Friday March 10, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [6]


 

Looking for a Forum

I’ve been asked to participate in a panel discussion about artblogging in Miami. I have by far the least knowledge of art of anyone on the panel, and I’m not particularly an art-blogger, so I guess I’m the non-expert slot on the panel. It’s a little intimidating, but I’m sure it’ll be fun. The panel takes place on Thursday, April 6th, 7 to 8:30 pm, at the Miami Beach Regional Library auditorium, 227 22nd Street, Miami Beach. Mark your calendars!

Looking for a Forum:
Art bloggers and artists on writing art and culture in Miami

Topics:

Participants:
Franklin Einspruch, Artblog.net
Alesh Houdek, Critical Miami
KH, The Next Few Hours
Onajide Shabaka, Miami Art Exchange
Alfredo Triff, Tu Miami Blog

Moderator: Helen L. Kohen, Director of the Vasari Project and Art Critic Emeritus for The Miami Herald

Organized by Denise Delgado, Curator, Miami Dade Public Library System

Posted Tuesday March 7, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [5]


 

Subtropics pt. 2

Another evening with Subtropics. Gustavo Matamoros and Gino Robair variously played bowed saw, bowed percussion, bowed styrofoam bowl, prepared piano, beer bottles, and electronics, while Jorge Gonçalves performed the video projection live, using a powerbook with a pen tablet running Photoshop. Absolutely. Fucking. Stunning.

Guitarist Seth Josel preceded them. Here, he performs sethwork by composer Phill Niblock: thirty tracks of prerecorded e-bowed guitar, with the final layer played live, coupled with video of manual labor from the third world. (I’m being cheap with hyperlinks—you guys know how to use Google and Wikipedia at this point, right?)

Get your butts out to the rest of the festival! Subtropics home. Schedule for this year

Posted Saturday March 4, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [4]


 

Subtropics Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival

Subtropics opened tonight. Ordinarily, you’d have recieved advanced warning, so appologies on that front [1]. This yearly music festival represents the true cutting edge of avant-garde music, and it’s amazing that Miami has been able to support it all these years. (‘Nuff respect to Gustavo Matamoros for keeping this thing going long before the MPAC money started coming in.) Sufice it to say that for anyone interested in sound art, Subtropics should be the highlight of the year. Opening night was a blast:

The evening started with Alvin Lucier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire performed by Ben Manley.

Hypersonic Test: Florida is Gustavo’s first collaboration with video artist Charles Recher since Cars and Fish. 9 performers equiped with backpack power generators, armband video ipods, and chest-mounted unidirectional sound modules walked around the room, selectively delivering snippets of south florida flavor.

Sometimes, the performers confronted each other. Yowzer! (Note the ipod video.)

David Dunn walked the whole thing home with an audiovisual presentation that pulled together chaos theory, strange attractors, bats, bugs, and small invertebrate creatures that live in standing water. Unlike in past performances of his I’ve seen, David was miked up at his computer, and set up each piece with an explanation of what the sounds were.

His art deals as much with faithfully capturing the acoustic experience of natural phenomena as with creating an artistic “work,” so his presenation had a Discovery Channel edge to it. David does not shy away from intervention when it is necessary to the piece, though – a 40 second recording of bats had to be slowed down (to reduce the pitch) to be audible, alienating it from its original time-reference, but not violating its relationship to reality.

Also got a chance to pop over to the MoCA Annex for the opening of . . . —- not AGAIN?! Sorry, the MoCA has no mention of the opening tonight at their annex anywhere on their website. They sent out a card, which I have somewhere, and I’ll post the information here as soon as I get it. Meanwhile, [Kathleen to the rescue] Luminosity, an exhibit by Natalia Benedetti. It’s a groovy skydiving video installation. There’s also an exhibition of the usual suspects from the MoCA’s permanent collection, which apparently they were upset about only being able to show for a few months every other Summer (their piece by Nam June Paik is included, of course).

But so anyway, here is the schedule for the rest of Subtropics. If you like your music weird, go.

[1] Nobody tells me nothing. I found out because of the Dorsch marketing machine, which cranked out a press release on the morning of the event.

Posted Thursday February 23, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [5]


 

Frickin' fabulous Friday

Posted Friday February 17, 2006 · Permalink · Comment


 

Things to do, things not to do

Do:

Not do: Uh, how about Kid Rock, Steve Miller, and Bon Jovi, for Christ’s sakes.

Posted Friday February 10, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [11]


 

Illegal Art

Illegal Art

Illegal Art opened yesterday at the Art and Culture Center (disclaimer: I work at the Center). I’ve been looking forward to this exhibition since I first heard it was coming over a year ago, and it didn’t disapoint. A lot of the best pieces are videos, but here are a few pieces from the show; above, Heidi Cody, American Alphabet, and Ray Beldner’s “O” sculpture (made of sewn dollar bills), a take-off on the sculpture that Robert Indiana makes lots of money licensing.

Illegal Art

Wally Wood’s Disneyland Memorial Orgy from 1967.

Illegal Art

Diana Thorneycroft’s imaculate graphite drawing of sinister Mickey Mouse and Pooh dolls.

Illegal Art

More Mickey, this time as a possibly functional gas mask by Bill Barminski.

Illegal Art

Yikes! Batman and Robin, the The Ambiguously Gay Duo. (By the way, I photographed all these in the gallery, hence the weird reflections and less-then-perfect quality).

Posted Saturday February 4, 2006 · Permalink · Comment [4]


 

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