Soy represents dense nutritional life. Bomb is, obviously, an explosive destructive force. So, “soy bomb” is what I think art should be: dense, transformational, explosive life! —Michael Portnoy

I sometimes wonder how the NYC folks I’ve lost touch with are doing these days. For instance, my former roomie and occasional partner in performance art/music/fashion shenanigans, Michael Portnoy. A multi-talented, mischievous fellow who rented me a room in his flat on the Lower East Side when I first arrived in town, Michael’s “diverse practice spans dance-theater, metafunctional sculpture, fascist socials, experimental stand-up, prog-operatic spectacle, an aerobic restaurant where food leaps out from the walls, and Icelandic cockroach porn.” Noble pursuits, one and all! However, Mister Portnoy remains best known for his balls-out impromptu guerilla dance’plosion during Bob Dylan’s performance of “Love Sick” at the 1998 Grammy Awards:

(I love that it took almost a full minute for anyone to realize Soy Bomb wasn’t part of the show and “escort” him offstage.)

A bit of background info: the Grammys production team had hired Michael and two dozen other extras to stand in the background and wriggle in a shambolic, vaguely beatnik fashion to “give Bob a good vibe.” $200 to do a bit of insincere finger-snapping on live television? Not bad work if you can get it. But Michael had more grandiose visions, and of course, the rest is history. Love it or hate it (and to be sure, I love it a little more every time I watch it) “the Soy Bomb incident” has become one of the most memorable moments in televised award ceremony history, right up there with Sasheen Littlefeather declining Marlon Brando’s Academy Award for him to a chorus of boos, Jarvis Cocker interrupting Michael Jackson‘s pretentious BRIT Awards spectacle, and Sally Fields mewling “you like meee!”

Advertising copywriters and art directors are always looking for the never-before-seen visual twist to sell a product; it’s what we live for (well that, and the gifts/ass-sucking of media reps). But sometimes, in the holy quest to be Cannes Gold Lion original, ad creatives shutdown their left cerebral hemisphere and lose their fucking minds.

It’s easy to follow the creative brief thought process here: “Toilet Duck gets your shitter so clean…it (blankity blank blank blank).” It’s a perfectly acceptable toilet cleaner strategy. However, showing a woman using a hopper to wash her face is not an acceptable dramatization—I don’t care how long or bristly her toilet brush is. This image (click here for closer look) has to immediately turn off a large portion of potential buyers, yes? At best, she is getting harsh chemical residue in her eyes/mouth/nose. At worst… Now, I’d personally have no problem washing my face in my toilet, if I had no other choice. But remember, I’m obsessed with commodes…

This ad (click here for closer look), via Colombia, is…bizarre. It’s for Nutrecan senior dog food. And that is a blow-up sex dog doll, complete with blowjob mouth. I really don’t need/want to see the rear view. You can kinda feel your way to wtf the ad agency was thinking here: the sex dog doll is for “adult” dogs only, as is this dog food. But, throwing some logic into the dog pound for a sec, canines wouldn’t be interested in a sex dog doll. Only humans (and primates) stick their willies into plastic holes. Plus…why are you attempting to sell dog food with a SEX DOG DOLL? OK. So, which visual is wronger? Tell me, Coilhousers!

Morning, mein lieblings. Not that it looks much like morning out there, with the streetlamps still on at nearly 7am and a sky as cold and dark as Satan’s bunghole. The only sign of life in the street below my window: two scabby possums going at it atop a mildewed stack of phone books over by the garbage bins. Dunno what drugs they’re on, but I could really use some right about now. Stupid uncontrollable yawning. Stupid irrational mid-November mood slump. Stupid Seasonal Affective Disorder with its stupid, STUPID boohoo abbreviation. How is anyone supposed to take that name seriously, anyway? “Hey boss, sorry about my general nonproductivity, irritability and/or copious drooling… I haz TEH SAD.”

Guten Morgen. We’re German, we’re mod, we’re impassive, and inexplicably, we’ve changed Ozzie’s lyrics to reflect our deep admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s masterful mystery story, The Hounds of the Baskerville. PS: Bert took the brown acid. Do not make direct eye contact.

Consider this week’s Better Than Coffee clip a kind of “could be worse” meditation. Judging by their sickly pallor and glazed eyes, phlegmatic-bordering-on-undead “dance moves” and seeming recalcitrance to the sainted spirit of Sabbath, I’m certain that Cindy, Bert and the rest of the Hits a Go Go kids are in far more desperate need of full spectrum light therapy than any of us. (Especially that one ‘luuded up little bitch with the unfortunate Friends-era Jennifer Anniston hairdo. Gah. What a dog!)

No, home-brewed coffee just ain’t cutting it today. If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to catch one of those possums and gnaw the hot, steaming pineal gland right out of its face. Tschüss!

Wode, the revolutionary art fragrance from Boudicca explores further the myth around Queen Boudicca [or Boadicea]. Legend has it she and her tribe wore a cobalt blue paint on their skin that gave them a ferocious and mythical look when advancing into battle. When finally defeated by the Romans Queen Boadicea killed herself by swallowing hemlock, an extract of which is included in Wode. When Wode is sprayed a vibrant cobalt mist appears and settles on the skin and clothing. Whether touched or not the ‘Wode Paint’ begins to fade and disappears completely leaving the scent behind.

That’s the official story. However, after watching the painfully seductive concept video below, my imagination went entirely elsewhere.

Perhaps half-dreaming before my daily dose of caffeine, I was whisked away to another time, where countless mermaids were enslaved and sacrificed for a wicked queen. Something of a Countess Bathory, she soaked in their cobalt tears to gain a mystical quality that made her irresistible in every way. With each bath, her skin would glow an opalescent blue, her voice would hypnotize and her eyes would leave you breathless. Alas, the magical effects of the tear potion were short lived and the slaughtering of mermaids went on until none remained on Earth.

There was another, Hentai-friendly scenario, best left to your own imaginations. Now I will have my coffee and try to make peace with spending $200 on this beguiling squid spray.

If you’re in the UK, Wode can be acquired here, otherwise consult the stocklist for a purveyor near you.

Laurie Lipton’s work reminds me distinctly of two artists who terrified me as a child. There was my parents’ Brueghel book, in which Triumph of Death broke my brain at age 5, and my 3rd-grade discovery of Stephen Gammell’s ink drawings in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. (Gammell also illustrated a children’s book about the Holocaust called Terrible Things, which I’ve never read, but the very idea of Gammell illustrating such a thing frightens me already.) Lipton’s hyper-detailed images of lace-wrapped ghost brides, gloating war profiteers and haunted dollhouses are mixed in with images of “ordinary” scenes such as this old man (or woman?) dining alone. In context of the other works (or perhaps, even by themselves), these images hold just as much mystery.

As if Lipton’s work isn’t scary enough, selecting images of hers for this post from her MySpace page led to the most uncanny ad moment of my distinguished internet-surfing career. Even without the corresponding image, the rectangle ad below looks more like an anorexia PSA or a Caryn Drexl photo, but finding it next to Lipton’s depressing Mirror, Mirror drawing takes it to a whole new level of creepy. Click here for the larger version. After seeing it on that one page, I never saw that ad again. Can internet ads become “possessed” by the content that surrounds them? Someone in Japan, make that movie, please.

[Thanks, Xenia!]

• Laurie Lipton MySpace Page
• Laurie Lipton Site (lovely layout, infuriating gallery navigation)
• Laurie Lipton Exhibit at CorpoNason in LA

San Francisco-based artist Fred Einaudi has the sort of work that makes you do a double take. You’ll find yourself wondering what it is you’re actually seeing and whether you should laugh or cry.

The subject of death is most prevalent in Einaudi’s paintings. Though gas masks, skulls and children are commonly used symbols, seeing them depicted realistically and not in the exaggerated low brow style we’re used to, lends for a provocative experience. While I wouldn’t call this work “subtle”, it is difficult to gauge just how much humor Fred tries to inject into his paintings. Whether we see a young boy poking a woman’s floating corpse with a stick, Leda getting it from her swan, or a mechanical girl hungry for canary flesh, the intent, the artist’s voice, is subdued. Fred Einaudi’s realistic, dry execution reminds me of public service announcements from a post-nuclear word.

• Official website
• Short interview on Blather

More images after the jump for you!

Even when he’s drawing space vehicles, the myriad of minutiae executed with sharp precision hints at Keith Thompson’s classical influences. I’ve spent hours browsing Keith’s incredible portfolio and getting lost in the stories written for most of the art on display. The worlds behind each piece feel thoroughly conceived – it’s clear the author mulled over each detail of the fable along with the art. Gorgeous detailing decorates mutants, deities and demons, some of it recognizable, like this machine-beluga or the violin necks in the legs of the lovely musician below.

When a talented skald of the Swedish courts, renowned across Scandinavia for his unparalleled musical prowess, revealed himself as a disguised woman, she was swiftly executed, and the embarrassing events were stricken from polite conversation. Her sudden return to court functions shook even the staunchest war veterans, but not enough to stay a second wary, though swift, summary execution. Upon further returns, each revealing the scald to be strangely repaired in a manner befitting tailor more than physician, the court began to almost embrace the eerie presence. This cycle of returns and executions leading to a more and more transfigured court poet became something of an exalted tradition.

Thompson’s work is largely concept art along with two sections of illustration work with some beautifully fleshed out pieces you must see to believe. I’m not posting those here simply because of how great they look full-size.  Click. Click, also. Here the old school is especially visible, with the pieces reminiscent of Arthur Rackham and Edmund DuLac –  two of my childhood’s favorite illustrators. Thompson uses traditional techniques he converts to digital in the process, which is described and taught in an instructional DVD.

Keith’s galleries of Vehicles, Creatures and Undead showcase fantastic creatures, some of which take the term “Bio-mechanical” in a new direction. Perfect example: the Luxury Nautiloid below. From Keith’s attached text, some key features:

Upper observation deck used by vacationers with eyes strong enough to look up at the light shining down from the water’s surface. Huge windows offer a commanding view of the seascape from the comfort of interior dining areas and lounges.The ship can move fore or aft and when necessary these tentacles retract and the surrounding plates close up. These extended, flared muscular hydrostats are often used to pull surface craft down into the water for the amusement of the more spiteful tourists.

Beyond the jump, more art and stories from Keith Thompson. Thanks, Alice!

Oh buoy. Welcome back Web explorers to the Dr. Moreau School of Digital Art Direction. On the plate today: a tabby croissant. Because “you eat what you touch.” Lifebuoy is just the latest advertiser trying to capitalize on our post-modern germophobia, where washing your hands with simple soap IS NOT ENOUGH. Pet your cat, eat your cat. Take out your garbage, eat your garbage. Wipe your ass, eat your ass. Putting aside my utter distrust of this whole fucking product category, here’s my one sentence review of this campaign: maybe you ad creatives should’ve concentrated on visually dramatizing a believable reason to buy, as opposed to making me think about biology class, and dead cats, and whether or not I have any Pepcid in my Timbuk2 bag (I endorse both of those products). At least the cat-croissant isn’t crawling with worms. Click here for a closer look, and then jump for a second pet experiment featuring a dead hamster muffin.

[Weekly Ad Uncoiling is a guest column by CLIO, ANDY, Mobius, One Show and Bobcat pin (Cub Scouts) award-winning advertising creative director copyranter, who won those pointless awards years ago, and now seriously dislikes the “creative process” and Pinewood derby races.]

“taken”, Oil & graphite on wood 19×26, ‘Mayoi Michi’ @ Copro Nason

The work of 26-year-old painter Audrey Kawasaki, LA darling of the pop surrealist movement, always forces me into the persistent place between discomfort, cynicism and arousal.

On the one hand, her wood-panel paintings of languid, smooth and pale-skinned androgynous beauties are meticulously rendered with a sure hand and extreme eye for detail and aesthetic flow. The flawless pink and white skin of her sexy imaginary youngsters always seems to glow from within the image, the subjects look longing out with their impossibly big cartoon eyes as though they’re just aching to be touched, stroked, set free from their 2-D prison. The Art Nouveau-inspired flower, branch and seaweed forms that often surround the figures seems to undulate suggestively, giving the fantasy portraits a honey-slow-motion feel and matching soundtrack (in my head, anyway). I sort of want to go dunk my head in a bucket of icewater just thinking about the glistening parted lips and come-hither stares of her paintings. Ahem.

On the other hand, my intellectual mind can’t help leaping in to question the reactions of my lizard brain. Her style is incredibly consistent, almost to an obsessive degree; the figures she paints could all be related, and they all appear to exist in the same world, the same erotic melancholy state of waiting to be touched and taken. I am here in stasis, they say, I am waiting for you.

“Kakure Zakura”, Oil & graphite on wood 20×15, ‘Innocents’ @ Lineage

• Kakurenbu Info
• Audrey Kawaski’s Website
• Audrey Kawasaki’s Blog
• Interview at Mactribe

[Please welcome our newest guest blogger, Irene Kaoru. Irene is a designer, photographer, model, artist, and sculptor. Irene’s blog can be found here, and prints of her work can be found here.]

First, about the website: click here to go to the site of designers Lucy and Bart. Maximize the window. Move your mouse around. Get your face really close to the screen and stare into their eyes. It’s uncanny! Morphing nothing new; we all remember it from a steady stream of ’90s music videos and more recently from the hypnotic Women in Art YouTube spectacle, but this interface manages to make it novel again. Maybe it’s the fact that you can see every pore in the high-res images, the fact that you scan stare into their eyes and manipulate their faces at will, coupled with a flawless, uncomplicated execution. Either way, the simple navigation feels immersive in an unexpected way.

The designers use cheap materials such as cardboard and pantyhose nylon to produce extravagant shapes. While most art clothing made out of bubble wrap, toilet paper and tinsel tends to resemble failed Project Runway challenges, the constructions here contain volume, depth, texture and, importantly, storytelling. The motivations for the designs are explained on the site as “an instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body.” It is stated that designers Lucy McRae and Bart Hess share a fascination with genetic manipulation and beauty expression, and that unconsciously their collaborations touch on these themes, though it was not their intention to communicate this. Their process searches for “low–tech prosthetic ways for human enhancement,” stumbling on new constructions during a creative process that they describe as a primitive, blind search.

[Thank you, Nicola!]