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This week: The kick off of a series of programs recorded at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions in San Francisco during BAS’s mini residency as a guest of Chris Duncan during his “Eye Against I” exhibition. Brian and Duncan talk with Chris about the series, and then the main event Tammy Rae Carland! In addition to being a fascinating guest, Tammy is the only guest we’ve had who has a song written about them to utilize as their intro/outro clip (by the awesome band Bikini Kill no less).

Bio lifted from Tammy’s site:

Tammy Rae Carland was born in Portland Maine in 1965. She received her MFA from UC Irvine, her BA from The Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. She is an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts where she also Chairs the Photography Program. She is represented by Silverman Gallery in San Francisco and primarily works with photography, experimental video and small run publications. Her work has been screened and exhibited in galleries and museums internationally including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin and Sydney. Her photographs have been published in numerous books including The Passionate Camera; Queer Bodies of Desire and Lesbian Art in America.

Her fanzine writing has been republished in A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over the World. She has also published photographs and received reviews of her work in numerous national media including: The New York Times, Big, The Los Angeles Times, Spin, Details, Out and The Village Voice. In the 1990’s Carland independently produced a series of influential fanzines, including I (heart) Amy Carter. She has collaborated on the record art of some seminal underground music releases for the bands Bikini Kill, The Fakes and The Butchies. From 1997-2005 she co-ran Mr. Lady Records and Videos, an independent record label and video art distribution company that was dedicated to the production and distribution of queer and feminist culture. Tammy Rae Carland lives in Oakland California.

PS: A hearty “Fuck You” to Libsyn and their crappy software. This is the third time I’ve written this. Turn off or down the “time out” function on your site, jerks.

Versailles art show hit by injunction bid
From the wet dreams of the marketing people behind Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami’s show at Versailles a descendant of the man who built the Versailles Palace in France is seeking an injunction to prevent modern works by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami from being shown there. The legal battle is fronted by Sixte Henri de Bourbon-Parme in defence of “respecting the chateau and ancestors.” The ultra-conservative royalist has united with a group, the Versailles Defence Coordination, to file the suit, in which they stake a claim for the “right to access to heritage.” Read more here

Prince Charles offers to oversee London architectural planning
This week in “What could possibly go wrong?” Prince Charles offers to take on key architectural planning role in the vaccum created by the quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation that had its funding axed in the comprehensive spending review. The offer, announced by the foundation’s chief executive, Hank Dittmar, has been met with dismay by leading modernist architects who fear Prince Charles may use the role to advance his own traditional tastes in design. Read more here

Studio Manager Anne McIlleron talks about her boss William Kentridge
William Kentridge who is the focus of Art:21′s first feature length documentary (recently reviewed here and just broadcast on PBS this week) let his Studio Manager Anne McIlleron speak on what looks to be B-roll of the Art:21 documentary, its interesting but I am still of the opinion that William Kentridge wasn’t the best subject in the world to get this kind of treatment, just me I am sure. See more here

Kronos Quartet Interviewed
I cant get enough of Art Babble I admit and  double so for the Kronos Quartet (which Duncan & I caught in concert last time they were in Chicago and were amazing) so when you merge the two together it’s PB&J perfection. See More Here

Chagall’s America Stained-Glass Windows are Back on View in Chicago
What more do you need to say then that, everyone just needs to bring their significant other and get to kissing. Read more here

New Yorker cartoonist Leo Cullum died
Leo Cullum, whose cartoons kept readers of The New Yorker laughing for 33 years, has died. He was 68. Read more here

The art world’s own Bernie Madoff
Lawrence Salander Read more here

Google DemoSlam is previewed
Google has previewed a new site called demoslam built to encourage the creation and rank the best tech demonstrations on the net, part of me has long thought this was something the art world should have created a long time ago, free idea (hey get what you pay for) to whoever has the time and wants to put the work into it, Youtube was built for the Art world and a project like this (even though we all wish it looked like Vimeo). Have at it and God bless at this point I just want a life for a while lol. Read more here

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This week: Tom and Duncan talk to super-talented painter Alexis Rockman. There is a Smithsonian retrospective
that opens this month so check it out.

The following stolen from the Greenpeace site:

Alexis’ paintings visualise the hopes and popularly held fears about scientific progress and the wide-ranging effects of human intervention on animal species, ecosystems, and the natural world.

We are brought face to face with a future that is at once surreal and unsettlingly familiar. Mutant animals, geometric landscapes, alternative environments either sterilized by science or unredeemably altered due to pollution. All this makes for some uncomfortable viewing.

“My position is one of ambivalence as the horse is already out of the barn so to speak; it is not biotechnology that is the problem but corporate America or globalism or colonialism. The implications of using this technology are far more devastating because of the unknowable effects. This is something that is very disturbing and visually compelling to me,” explains Alexis.

Despite the questions that Alexis’ work throws up about humanity’s role in shaping a dystopian future, there’s no obvious judgement in it.

Every element in the art is painstakingly researched. All the biological images have been developed through extensive collaboration with specialists in molecular biology, genetics, natural history and medical science.

“I really have to say these are relatively neutral images even if I use information that tends to make people feel uncomfortable. But I don’t see that as negative. I try to show things that are obviously familiar but also inform them with as much cultural and scientific history as I can, so that they are credible.

“The stuff that may not be noticed – for instance the geometry of the landscape in ‘The Farm’- to me is far more scary than an albino hairless mouse with cartilage growing on its back. I am also trying to make an emotionally resonant image that reaches people. I try to make it as credible as possible without making it boring.”

Alexis is aware of the political power of his work. As an American, he believes he is well placed to bring attention to the consequences of his homeland’s environmental, economic and political policies.

“I am of a generation whose relationship with the government and big business comes out of a post-Watergate scepticism. How could my work not have a political effect? I feel like I am in such a privileged position I would find it unconscionable if I didn’t take advantage of that as someone who cares about these issues.”

Collectively, the paintings presented in ‘Wonderful World’ offer a graphic vision of a bio-engineered near future in which human and animal bodies, crops and plants have been genetically altered to suit a variety of needs – whether commercial, aesthetic, medical or gastronomic.

Despite the potentially complex nature of the exhibition he makes a point of not being elitist, as his subject is something that touches every person on the planet.

“I don’t expect anyone to know anything. That is why I am a populist. If I have a show and people from different demographics come to find out about global warming, I don’t want to lose half of my audience due to my arrogance. It has to be decipherable to a six-year-old child. I try to construct it as an onion with different layers of meaning and iconography.”

The negative consequences of industrial and technological progress are rarely addressed in a modern culture fuelled by the products of multinational entertainment conglomerates. Alexis’ paintings hang out on the edge of complacency, forcing us to confront a vision of the future implicit in the choices we, as a society, make today.

This weeks show is dedicated to the memory of Penny Zeidman.

The Chicago Loop Alliance has announced their short list of 10 artists to win the $50,000 in cash prizes for the inagural Art Loop Open.

All of the Artists on the short list have done amazing work and many that were not included deserved to make the final but this isn’t really about awards its about engaging the public. To that end Bad at Sports has officially come off the bench to support one canidate to win and that would be Steve Hamann’s History of ‘Bad at Sports’ (Work on Paper).

I know reading that you might think we are biased but that could not be further from the truth; I hate Steve Hamann. He is an annoying artist that has been the bane of my existance for longer then I would like to admit so when I ask you to vote 6 or 7 or even 10 times for his work at theWit Hotel (hell get a room and just vote everytime you cross the lobby) you will know that I do so on the merits of the work and no other reason. How great must that work be for me to ask the thousands of readers of Bad at Sports to reward a man that reads dead baby jokes in nursery wards. I may not love the artist but I salute the art.

Now having established that we will all vote for Steve “The Ego from this point out” Hamann to win lets spend some time on the great artists that should get second and third. They are hard working artists the lot of them and deserve more attention then even this is giving them, starting with a old friend Bernard Williams.

Bernard Williams: Buffalo Chart (Installation)
Block 37

Catherine Jacobi: Forgetting (Sculpture)
Block 37

Daniel Lavitt: Till We Meet Again (Sculpture)
Chicago French Market – MetraMarket

Giovanni Arce: Bush (Painting)
Block 37

John Dempsey: “The Great American Landscape” (Painting)
Macy’s

Joseph Ivacic: Staying Connected (Sculpture)
Hotel Burnham

Lauren Brescia: Surprise… (Installation)
Block 37

Len Upin: Helen (Work on Paper)
theWit Hotel

Yva Neal: WAKA: Wall Altat of Kismet Abundance (Installation)
W Chicago – City Center

Guggenheim gets turned down on its plan to create the Hot Dog Stand Frank Lloyd Wright would have built
The Guggenheim Museum considered the hot dog vendors outside its NYC landmark designed by Wright to not be in keeping with the look and style of the venue and in that vein pitched an idea to the city to build their own. Reports say that they thought the benefits would be increased revenue and a elimination of the generic style brightly colored stands. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission turned down the plan unanimously though saying “It detracts from the landmark and causes it to compete with the main building,” Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the commission, said of the proposed kiosk. “All of our standard appropriateness tests are not met here.” Too bad since I would have loved to see what they would have done, someone needs to publish the spec drawings for that plan. Read more here

TED Prize this year goes to Street Photo-Grafitti Artist “JR the Photograffeur”
Part of me is just glad that the joke awarding of food pundit Jamie Oliver is past and Jr is actually interesting albeit I wish I knew more about his work prior to now. NPR’s blog “The Picture Show” does a good job of covering a broad array of his work so I won’t say more then check it out. Read more here

Stereotypical Art Show Award Goes To Sue Williams: ‘Al-Qaeda Is the CIA’
I read about her show in the New York Times (a article with not a single image?) and was both annoyed by the lack of photos but more so curious as to what this show looked like. After looking up the official 303 Gallery website I enjoyably went through every photo. Sadly not for ascetic reasons or conceptual ones but the show is a virtual cornucopia of the current trends, tropes & stereotypes of the gallery scene today all in one places. There is the mish-mash theme, publicly antagonizing titles,  the glory in “shitty drawing”, the mix of rich color highly elaborate wallpaper with monochromatic underplayed items, the go to masturbation references, war of the sexes & ironic elevation of the sensational and banal. I would have been able to win my Art World bingo game for the month but was just missing either deer illustration, skull illustration, taxidermy animal or human silhouette. Maybe next time. Read more here & See more here

NUDE in Chicago
Part of the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art (SOFA) exposition this year in Chicago (Nov 5th-7th) will be a exhibition of sculpture being built at booth 920 with help from the audience.  Chicago artist Dana Major Kanovitz will be building the sculpture out of paper that the audience will hand to her. This is part of the larger series on show at the Perimeter Gallery which is showing a group show of artist who are looking to take a new stab at the oldest of genres in art, The Nude. You can read the press release and see images here

Danes get upset over Lego Sex
Employees at the town hall of Roskilde near Copenhagen have taken offence at the work on show in the building, paintings of two men made of Lego figures having sex. According to Danish press reports, artist Svend Ahnstrøm’s piece, which shows ‘Kurt and Anders’ pleasuring themselves in a public park, has prompted three internal complaints. But no objections have been raised about Lego depictions of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. “It’s hard to believe that something like this can offend people in today’s Denmark,” said Ahnstrøm. Deep down I wonder if his real thought was “Three people? a lousy three people? Seriously people are too lazy to protest….” cause look at the work and sing “One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn’t belong” the artist even agrees since he places Kurt and Anders at the bottom of his page last on his site. See more here

Mall in Manchester, England creates replica of Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s Tomb & Treasure
Read more here

Dutch Venice Biennale 2010 – Dutch pavilion
The Dutch pavilion is very interesting this time round and “we make money not art” does a good job of covering it. Read more here