Sunday, March 09, 2003

Yesterday we went to the Armory Show. There was a lot of shitty shitty art, including a piece of notebook paper with three rectangles drawn on it in ballpoint pen. For $3,000. I kid you not.

There was some good art too. The one piece that just stopped me in my tracks and left me standing there with my mouth hanging open was a large photo of Darth Vader standing in the ocean pouring water from a Brita pitcher into a plastic bottle. I didn't know who the artist was, or what it was about, and I can't explain the effect it had on me. You can see it here. It turns out to be from a performance called Darth Vader Tries to Clean the Black Sea with Brita Filter (2000), by Daniel Bozkhov. He is an amazing performance artist whose latest project was a crop circle in the shape of Larry King.

There was another Darth Vader there too. He was in a pretty cool drawing by Shintaro Miyake. Apparently Miyake's drawings get made in crazy performances where he dresses up and makes these drawings that look like a kid could have drawn them. They are seriously fun to look at, though--they remind me how great drawing was before I grew up and decided I was an artist and shit.

Other good (but Darth Vader-less) art:

These landscapes by Patrick Jacobs. They are three dimensional, incredibly realistic, and they live behind a glass lens set into the wall. I don't know how he makes them; possibly with magic?

Patricia Piccinini's hilarious Car Nuggets. ("Car Nuggets are to cars what Chicken Nuggets are to chickens. Car Nuggets are not miniature cars or even bits of cars welded together, they are essence of car; they are lumps of carness.")

A Herman Miller office chair in a glass case with a motor under it that spins the chair around madly in a circle. As S. said, that is all there is to say about the late 90s.

A bathroom made out of translucent green silk by a Korean artist, Do-Ho Suh. The sink and toilet were all floppy. The light switch was hand stitched and perfect.

Several pieces by another artist I've recently discovered and like very much--Arturo Herrera. He uses coloring books and pages from old children's books in his art. It really gets to me.

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