At thispoint I’m probably in danger of turning Coilhouse into a Graham Annable repository, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, lest any of our faithful readers forget or, perhaps, for new readers who may not have had a chance to delve into the archives. His newest is The Smartest Dog in the World which, as the title suggests, is the tale of the world’s most intelligent canine, told with Annable’s Gorey-esque flair for dark humor. If you dig this, you can see more at the links provided earlier and, of course, the Grickle Channel on YouTube. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to resist the urge to post everything he has produced here.
Moki has been producing paintings since 2006 and her work ranges between portraits, landscapes, and juxtapositions of the two. My favorites, however, are undoubtedly the images like those shown here, which proudly tout Hiyao Miyazaki’s influence. Completely in love with this stuff.
Welcome one and all to the Friday Afternoon Movie for this, the day after St. Patrick’s Day, 2011. Exciting. Today the FAM presents Exit Through The Gift Shop the 2011 Oscar Nominee for Best Documentary directed by street artist Banksy that is probably not a hoax but could be. Maybe. Who knows. It doesn’t really matter.
The film follows the exploits of one Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant who runs a vintage clothing store in Los Angeles. He also has a habit of filming everything and everyone he sees with his video camera. On a trip to France he discovers that his cousin is a fairly well-known street artist, who goes by Invader. Guetta falls in love with the medium and begins to film a vast network of artists, telling them he is making a documentary. This eventually leads to him meeting the enigmatic Banksy, which eventually leads to Guetta becoming an artist in his own right, calling himself Mr. Brainwash.
Exit Through The Gift Shop impressed me most in how it was able to change, almost effortlessly, my perception of it’s subject. The first three quarters of the film really felt laced with narcissism, which I admit may not be entirely fair. I often find it hard to separate the artist from his art, which is to say that, if in a film by Banksy, the narrator of said film refers to Banksy in some hyperbolic way in regards to his fame and acumen, I can’t help but think that Banksy knew that was going into the movie. He may have written it himself. That kind of thing rubs me the wrong way. It may not be true, it may not have been the intent, but it struck me that way.
Guetta’s overnight success, seemingly built on the works and words of the people he was filming, then eclipses any of that in the last quarter. He emerges from the other end of Exit… as a fraud and a con man, quite the journey from the likeable, if eccentric, man he starts out as. Banksy emerges as simultaneously bemused and distraught at what he has inadvertently created. It’s a trick that only works once perhaps, subsequent viewings appear littered with warning signs when forearmed with this knowledge, but I found it an extremely capable one nevertheless. Regardless of your feelings about his work, I found myself agreeing with Banksy’s opening remarks. It really is a fascinating story.
Way too much going on today to put up a proper, full-length FAM. Instead, we present the 2011 Oscar winner for Best Animated Short: The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan, which tells the story of a young man who comes upon a giant, bio-mechanical “thing” on a beach and follows his efforts to help find a place for it in a world built on uniformity and order. It’s a beautiful 15 minutes with an unexpected dystopian streak. Give it a look while you can, for like all things posted in this feature, it may be pulled down at any moment by the powers that be.
Kit Lane does simply phenomenal work in felt, seek a medium which I never would have thought could elicit such a statement. Regardless of my apparent prejudice against this particular wool product, the work remains fantastic. Her Flickr features a bevy of creatures made with felt, along with other items like buttons and animal bones and she even has more traditional sculptures. My favorites, however, are the tiny, alien planetoids, like the ones features here; tiny ecosystems with their own, specific flora and fauna floating, in no particular orbit, through the void.
Washington-based Margo Selski paints surreal scenes of a neo-Renaissance. Filled with mysterious be-ruffed princesses, white rabbits, royal regalia and strange technology, her style evokes Flemish painting’s glory days. Much of Margo’s current work features this young model:
This is Theo, the artist’s twelve-year-old son, who has been cross-dressing since the age of seven. Margo comments:
Theo is starting to receive a lot of hostility from his peers in our little town in rural Washington about his cross-dressing. He has little control in his world. These paintings are a reminder to him that, although the world around you tells you that you don’t belong, the world around you can change. These paintings give him control.
She has created an entire series, dedicated to Theo, that places him in gorgeous fantasy settings and roles, crowned, holding scepters, often wearing beautiful gowns – all in an effort to empower him during this difficult, disorienting time.
Margo’s artistic celebration of her son reminds me, just a little, of Irina Ionesco’s photos of her daughter, Eva. Though Theo isn’t ever pictured nude, I wonder if Margo might one day see similar criticism: “Are these paintings empowering? Exploitative? Both?” Personally, I think they’re stunning and look forward to meeting both the artist and the muse this weekend.
“Hitherto and Henceforth”, a solo show dedicated to Margo’s recent work, opens this Saturday March 12 at Glass Garage gallery in West Hollywood, with Margo and Theo in attendance. Hope to see you there!
The official video for “Caffeine”, sovaldi off of the album You Make Me Real by Brandt Brauer Frick. Written and directed by Danae Diaz and Patricia Luna it follows the rebellion of a businessman — clad in suit, sildenafil tie, and hat — against his assembly line existence. I especially the additional elements that work their way into the scenery as he makes his way home, especially the figures in the windows of the building he scales during the finale, showing that everything is, perhaps, not as well ordered as they appear at first glance.
Etsy presents a profile of Geahk Burchill of The Castiron Carousel Marionette Troupe in Portland, cialis Oregon, case showing some of the intricate work that goes into creating the miniature, string-bound characters that populate their bizarre worlds.
Oldies but goodies: Syd Mead’s designs for the original Tron from the late 70s. Hot on the heels of last week’s post on cyborg theory, a quote from Mead on the subject:
The fashionable ideology that “artificial” lacks the inherent goodness of “natural” is an appealing, but hopelessly simplistic notion of the intellectually chic. Artifice is the result of a deliberate intent to make. Nature also “makes” things, using a set of basic building blocks common throughout the universe. Exchanging infinite time for deliberate design, nature has ingeniously built plants, planets, galaxies and unimaginable constructs which seem to structure the universe itself. What we call “natural” is simply the result of whatever set of rules nature has followed in fashioning our observable reality. On planet Earth, nature has manipulated the common elements to fashion everything from bacteria to the molten core of the planet. Discoveries in the “nano” technologies of bio, molecular, and micro engineering will re-edit the nomenclature of “natural” versus “unnatural”, blurring if not erasing the line of distinction between “machine” and “organism”, “natural” and “unnatural”, “God-given” and “man-made”.
