In conjunction with “Open for Business”, Brian and Patrica will interview René de Guzman live in public at Triple Base Gallery on Thursday, July 10th at 5:00 PM. The raw interview will then be posted to the site as that week’s show.

René de Guzman is the senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California. Previously, he was the director of visual arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA).

UPDATE: The interview will be held at 5:00 PM, not 6:00 PM as previously listed.

See you there!

Bad at Sports is participating in “Open for Business” at Triple Base Gallery from July 10th - 13th. The west coast team will be there with stickers, custom BAS Audio CDs, MP3s and more schwag. Come by and barter for the goodies. Check out lowdown from Triple Base after the jump…

Open for Business
July 10 – August 3, 2008
Marketplace Hours: Thursday & Friday: 5-8pm, Saturday & Sunday 12-5pm

Throughout the month of July, Triple Base will activate the gallery with alternative art commerce. A weekly rotation of artist booths designed by sixteen contemporary artists and creative inventors will each provide an offering of goods, services or information. The set-up facilitates an active space for exchange and social interaction, allowing the artists to highlight their influences or endeavors outside of their regular visual art practice. Each week (Thursday through Sunday) four different artists or artist groups will man their custom-designed booth and conduct a project that engages the public. Artists will offer limited edition and one-off items, provide services – from tattooing to yoga lessons – or distribute information that will either be for free, trade/barter, or simply be for sale in cold hard cash.

Participating artists include Alissa Anderson, Bad at Sports, Taha Belal, Michelle Blade, Shashanna Chittle, Beth Cook, Tara Foley, Suzanne Husky, Justin Limoges, Travis Meinolf, Kyle Mock, Scott Oliver and Jesse Schlesinger.

Outside the Loop Radio which reportedly broadcasts from it’s (for our benefit) 100-watt artsy-fartsy radio station took time to interview Richard and DMac and ask about the birth and direction of Bad at Sports. If you want to listen to the entire episode click here for the direct link.

Duncan & Richard appear at 6 min 20 seconds into the show. Richard geeks out over audio tech, Duncan tells the back story with eloquence. They both have a jaw drop moment when the hosts ask how you could get hate mail doing a art audio program.

Check it out.

This week:

First, some generally embarrassing banter, Duncan discusses his dance career, we talk about Richard’s terminal nerd-dom, and eventually introduce the show. Brian and Richard have announcements

Second, Terri and Serena interview artist Mary Rachel Fanning about her many and varied projects.

Third, Duncan talks to Diane Grams about her book “Entering Cultural Communities: Diversity and Change in the Nonprofit Arts”.

Next, more silliness in the closing, and then, you sit and wait until next Sunday where we send more wackiness your way.
Secrets
6 +
Wendy Babcox
Rozalinda Borcila
Yana Payusova
Sherry Wiggins
Emily Jacir
Larissa Sansour
Bronx Museum of the Arts
Glass Curtain Gallery

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_148-Grams-Fanning.mp3

Ciaran’s paintings do just what this brand of painting aims to do. Well, some of them. The idea is really lovely; what at first seems simply under-described, gives way to a transcendent moment of reverie. That by flinging off all sorts of extra baggage, the paintings may, if done well, describe ever so much more than the ones that contain excessive information. In the case of this exhibition, the effect is achieved so well in a few of the works. “Frozen Tree” is a superb painting. Barely breathing through the flat gray field of color is a vibrant, odd fleshy tone of under painting. The fallen tree and its exposed root clump are rendered just enough, and not too much. The root clump, like an explosion on the otherwise quiet composition, makes the work a succinct beauty. “Storm Damage” and “Circular Cloud Formation” achieve the same thing- calligraphic gestures doled out in minimum, and with confidence. Like a good haiku, if I dare say.

What troubles me though is where the work devolves into forced naiveté, as in “Late Evening”, a small square painting with a clumpy brown hill dominating the lower two –thirds of the work, leaving room for a flat turquoise sky fitted with a tiny sliver of moon. Here it seems like a failed study. He describes only what is put down in paint. (There’s a hill, and there’s a moon.) It’s the difference between thinking about doing (those striated ridges on the hill feel labored, contrived) and simply doing, as in “Seven Sticks”, where a lovely, subtle confidence shows in the decisive mark-making. I’m also not a huge fan of the places in the show that seem overwrought, as in “Hunting”. Let the paint do the work, my friend.

Overall, it’s a good show. I love seeing the paintings all together, even if they represent a body of work in progress. I liked seeing Murphy’s undecided relationship with description on parade and I can’t wait to see more work by him- I have a keen sense that a more signature vision will emerge. And I think it’s going to be really good then.

Cyclone
Green Lantern Gallery in Chicago.
1511 N Milwaukee. (Sat - Wicker Park) til June 28th.
If you are in town and need a break, go visit the space and say hi to Caroline from me.

www.amandabrowder.com

Cheers friends, and I look forward to seeing you all in LA for July - October. Stuart Keeler and I will be attending the RAID Projects residency and plan to whip up some fantastic projects. Also, read about our project at Gallery 400 in the current issue of Sculpture Magazine.
…your pal,

Amanda Browder

This week Duncan and Richard are joined by guest host Tony Tasset to talk to Pamela Fraser and Randall Szott about their work, arguing and their project he said-she said.

From their web site: http://hesaid-shesaid.us

he said-she said is an exhibition and event series held in the home of Pamela Fraser and Randall Szott. They will take turns presenting what amounts to an ongoing conversation about art and culture - Ms. Fraser presenting art and artists, and Mr. Szott sharing the activities of people who work in other contexts. Together they hope to offer up a fun and thoughtful take on current ideas in art and life.

Richard makes Duncan feel bad. Much mirth is had by all.

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_147-Faser-Szott.mp3

To be honest the coverage is pretty trite and limited but the idea is pretty fun and if it was seriously embraced for longer then 1 day it could be a very interesting and culturally “bridging” activity.

Saddly it is only one day and like that episode of M.A.S.H Klinger goes back to company clerk the next day only to have nightmares of the life he had as Hospital Unit Command.

Read More:
Sports on Arts
Arts on Sports

Seems I am in fashion though, since a handful of my compatriots are shutting down near the same time. 40000 last December, soon Navta Schulz, Gesheidle and others. Closings here, closings in New York, even my friend in Boston are hanging it up. What gives, you ask? A writer for Time Out Magazine recently talked with me and a couple of the other dealers about this little black cloud and what conditions exist that make this happen, particularly in a clump, as often occurs. “Whose fault is it?,” she wanted to know. I told her in a conspiratorial tone that I had plenty of ideas.

Oh now. To consider Chicago alone, it would be very easy to slide into that familiar unison of voices about how collectors here don’t collect, museums here don’t connect with the galleries and local artists, there’s not enough critical attention, Chicago can’t compete with LA and NY, etc. Actually, it come out as easily as my breath to shout out a mental “Here, here!” to accompany these tired voices of disappointment. And I could maybe also choose to take a trip down the path of righteousness and talk about people who’ve started galleries with seemingly limitless free financial support and how all the successful galleries are connected in an incestuous web of nepotism and homosexual ego stroking. After all, these are the things I gossip about in my spare time (to people who can’t get back at me, of course).

But here’s the big bad bald truth, people: I’m just not that good at running a gallery. No, thank you for your support and encouragement, and I truly appreciate your assessment that I have a “good eye”, I do! It’s just an unavoidable truth to me that we’re being flushed out of our excuses, me and all the other quitters, by the simple fact that there are a few people out there who have been able to sustain important programs and be happy running a successful gallery in Chicago and certainly elsewhere. In other words, it can be done, so there’s no use in talking about how hard it is to do it. After examining this enigma from all possible angles as I sit contemplating in my quiet, ever so quiet little art space, it has shown itself to be a simple organism. Making a life (if not a living) out of selling arbitrarily priced objects that no one needs is a very competitive venture. Not as easy as it looks. You have to want it. I mean really super bad. If you are going to create a successful system of supporting artists, connecting with institutions, and staying happy and successful as an art dealer, you have to want that more than a lot of other things. Like more than a paycheck, for example. More than every single Saturday for the rest of your natural born life. More than healthy exposure to the sun. You have to welcome payment in the form of some awkward social cache rather than in money, and you have to not mind being chained to a desk between four white walls for years, with the exception of those times you pack up your wares, like a traveling salesman, and take the show on the road. All of these things have to be fun and exciting to you. Additionally, should be armed with the knowledge that this span of time from start-up until you can comfortably travel the world attending all the most exclusive art parties will very likely stretch out longer than you or any one else expects.

I know, I know, there is always the matter of the art one shows. I can see it- I can imagine this wickedly brave program where every exhibition brings up weighty conceptual questions. Where shows at Lisa Boyle are all intellect and no charm (craft only a carefully neglected by-product). Each exhibition parading its unsaleability all the way to the pages of the Almighty Artforum. I can see it. I know the program and which artists show there- I lusted for it with one half of my heart. I just don’t want to afford it. I don’t want it bad enough to work another job and dump hours a day into a black hole in order to pay my gallery, and I don’t have the ambition to get a backer and join league with the true business class of art dealers.

I had fantasies of finding my gallery in a booth at NADA or ZOO in London, where all the collectors flock and fight over work. I coveted the idea that I would bring home checks in the amount of 4 months’ rent for each of the artists I showed there. But even with good intentions, I was hobbled by the lack of fortitude or schmooz-ability to get there. Truthfully, I’d rather be perfecting my technique at the Playdoh Fuzzy Pumper Barbershop and writing a book than skulking down Vyner Street in October trying to catch an invitation to a party for a fair I’d never get into. And it occurred to me that I should just do what I’d rather be doing.

Finally, the answer to the question about what created the conditions for this spate of gallery closings is a valid one. As I’ve stated, my reasons are personal, but there is a broader vapor enveloping a lot of galleries in the same genre as mine. The financial downturn is affecting art sales in the lower and moderate ranges. There is also this sea change regarding art fairs’ role in the life of a gallery. While a great load of fun for some people, they have grown over everything like a suffocating mold and swallowed up a whole heap of what an art dealer has to do on any given day. All for the honor of showing work in ramshackle booths along with a fuckthousand other artists. It’s a different job, being a gallery owner, than it was even five years ago.

And there is any combination of perennial issues with how many emerging galleries Chicago collectors will support, how much institutional involvement occurs, and how galleries here can compete on a national and international level. It’s different for everyone to be sure, but I suppose it’s safe to conclude that in general, all that has happened is that some of these challenges have become more pronounced recently (as they do in cycles) and squeezed out the least hardy of us. Fortunately, a new crop will grow up in our place, as we move on to make a mark someplace else.

As for me, I can be reached at the Korean Student Relations office of Robert Morris College where I am taking students to the “next level” using the wizardry of ESL instruction. (On a part-time basis.)

A Bad at Sports Basel Art Fair Overdose!

The intro and outro are extra creepy this week. Highlights(?) include Duncan talking about some fantasy involving wearing tight short shorts and Teena McClelland!!! Tom Burtonwood interrupts the recording by shooting rubber bands. Chaos!

After Richard and Duncan are done making a mess of things, the real pros come in and present a fantastic report from Basel.

Lamis El Farra, emerging artist, and the EuroShark Mark Staff Brandl, seemingly perennially emerging black sheep artist, traverse and discuss the entirety of the King of Art Fairs, Art Basel. Yes: the Fair Itself, Art Statements, Art Unlimited, Scope, and the Solo Project. They only missed Liste and Print Basel. Sorry, but all the rest was already enough. Of course they were at the VIP opening (ahem) and managed to talk to more people than you can shake a stick at: artists, gallerists, museum directors, curators, critics, art magazine editors, fair organizers, all the hangers-on, …er…, important elements of the international artworld.

Gerhard Mack
NZZ
Herzog and de Meuron
Schaulager Basel
Andrea Zittel and Monika Sosnowska
Vitra Design Museum
Rem Koolhaas
Basel Art Statements
Basel Art Unlimited
Marc Spiegler
Thomas Hirschhorn
Roland Waespe
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
Udo Kittelman
The Rolf Ricke Collection
Dave Muller
Three Day Weekend
Florian Berktold
Hauser and Wirth
Mary Heilmann
Subodha Gupta
Dan Graham
Pippilotti Rist
Christoph Buechel
Tony Wuetrich
Hanspeter Hofmann
Leiko Ikemura
Leonard Bullock
Florian Suessmayr
Leipziger Schule
Neo Rauch
Boers-Li Gallery
Qiu Xiaofei
Alex Meszmer / Reto Mueller (Zeitgarten)
Elizabeth C. Baker
Art in America
Chaim Soutine
Museum fuer Gegenwartskunst Basel
Kunsthaus Zurich
Ferdinand Leger
Museum Tinguely
Gary Justis
Marcia Vetrocq
Glen O’Brien
Raphael Rubinstein
Interview magazine
The Magazine Antiques
Artforum
Museum der bildenden Kuenste Leipzig
Gunther Sachs
Berlin Biennale
Faye Hirsch
Sharkforum
ArtNews
Ellsworth Kelly
David Zwirner Gallery
Greg Kwiatek
Paul Bloodgood
Galerie Karin Sutter
Beyeler Gallery
Next Fair
David Reed
Erik Colan
Wesley Kimler
Scope Art Fair
Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings
Carrie Secrist Gallery
Loreen Hospodar
Kelly Chen
Art Chicago
Petroc Sesti
Robert Standish
Römerapotheke Galerie Zurisch
Philippe Rey
Filiale Galerie Berlin
Vera Ida Mueller
Solo Project
Stephanie Sherga
Hans Gieles
Vous Etes Ici Gallery Amsterdam
Martijn Schuppers
Olivier Houg Galerie Lyon
Mathias Schmied
Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_146-Art_Basel.mp3

Mr Saatchi, 65, snapped up five cutout cartoon characters by Angus Sanders-Dunnachie, 28, the total price of which was £7,900; seven of ten landscapes by Jill Mason, 33, each priced at up to £600; and all 13 paintings by Carla Busuttil, 26, which were priced between £450 and £2,500.

Mr Saatchi had asked for a discount, but none of the students wanted to reveal how much they had agreed to.

“And I feel fine”

I move back to Chicago to live and work and what happens those evil “physicists” who just can’t be content in knowing that it only takes 3 licks to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop have to split it open to find the “charm” inside. By doing so might in fact end the world as we know it.

I get back here only to have it all end? Well to help count down the moments to your doom (or the evaporation of your student loans if your of the college persuasion) here is a countdown clock ticking down the time before the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is turned on. So aperently if it’s anything that the Swiss do well it’s clocks and very large high-energy particle accelerators, the two just go hand in hand.

Thanks go out to the Wanker we all know and love Richard “Speak Gravely but carry a Talking Stick” Holland for the clock.

This Week: Duncan and Amanda (from the Amanda Browder Show) talk to Rachel and Ed “Edmar” Marszewski about Proximity Magazine, fried chicken meals, sperm banks and much more. Max interrupts.

Also, Philip von Zweck talks to Angee Lennard about Spudnik Press! Be sure to check out their website for info on classes.

Sadly the excellent Cheryl Donegan exhibition at He Said-She Said has closed, but be sure to check out the space’s website at http://hesaid-shesaid.us.

This episode is Mohan free. No Mohans were harmed in the making of this episode.

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_145-Proximity-Spudnik.mp3

Chapman hoped the defacement of Hitler’s work, which includes landscapes, vistas of Roman ruins and still life, which the dictator painted when he was young, would have him “spinning”. The changes they had added meant it was no longer Hitler’s work, he added.

“If hell exists and Hitler exists in it, he would be spinning if he saw these. It’s not his work any more. It’s our work,” he said.

The museum’s surveillance camera caught the vandalism on May 16, police said Thursday.

The 31-by-37½-inch oil-on-canvas painting of a black starlit night had a large vertical gouge in the middle and was damaged beyond repair & valued at $1.2 million according to a police affidavit.

Court documents indicate Serebrykov used a key or other implement to damage the painting because he disliked it.

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_144-Wainwright_on_Rauschenberg.mp3

So in an art world filled with talent the Driehaus Foundation has announced this years Chicago award winners.

Rumor has it this year was extra tough and all nominees and winners should be proud.

The answers as to who they are after the jump.

Driehaus Foundation Unveils Winners of 2008 Artist Awards

Driehaus Individual Artist Awards are the only unrestricted, annual awards for Chicago artists

CHICAGO – The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation is thrilled to announce this year’s winners of the Individual Artist Awards: Jason Lazarus, Anne Wilson and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle.

“This year’s entries proved that Chicago artists are always innovating. I am extremely proud of the thriving artists’ community we have in the Chicago area,” said Sunny Fischer, executive director of the Foundation. “The Foundation supports local working artists, allowing their work to continue to enrich our communities.”

The awards are given in recognition of the artists’ past works, talent, commitment to the field and promise. This year the Foundation increased the amount of the cash awards. Each artist will receive $15,000 to use as they see fit. There are no restrictions on how the artists can use their cash awards.

Here is a brief introduction to the winning artists:

• Jason Lazarus is the winner in the emerging artist category. Lazarus’ photography has earned him a slot in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 12 x 12 New Artists/New Work series and he has appeared in group shows in New York, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Lazarus lives and works in Chicago. He teaches photography to undergraduates at Columbia College Chicago, Robert Morris College, and Saint Xavier University. To see some of Lazarus’ work, please visit http://jasonlazarus.com/.

• Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist who creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, and DVD stop-motion animations that explore themes of time, loss, private and social rituals. She uses found materials that are familiar and rich with cultural meanings. Wilson’s art is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; and Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. She is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wilson’s work can be seen at http://www.annewilsonartist.com/.

• Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle investigates diverse subjects such as climate, immigration and the global impact of social, political, environmental and scientific systems. Often working with technical experts across multiple disciplines, Manglano-Ovalle produces objects that are technically complex, yet engaging. His early work focused on collaborative explorations with young people in Chicago, which led to the founding of Street-Level Youth Media, a community arts organization for youth. Manglano-Ovalle has exhibited his work at acclaimed institutions both nationally and internationally. To learn more about Manglano-Ovalle and his work, visit http://inigomanglano-ovalle.com/.

“We’re always awed by the depth of creativity shown by the submitting artists,” said Britton Bertran, Individual Artist Awards coordinator for the Foundation. “The jury committee never has an easy choice, but I think they, like the Driehaus Foundation staff and supporters, really enjoy the process and celebrating the winners.”

The Foundation asks more than a dozen arts professionals to serve as anonymous nominators; five more are chosen as jurors who review all artists’ works. Nominators and jurors are local arts experts. The list includes:

• Susanne Ghez, director of the Renaissance Society;
• Lane Relyea, art critic and professor at Northwestern University;
• Lisa Dorin, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago;
• Carol Ehlers, independant curator; and
• Nick Cave, artist and past winner of the Individual Artist Awards.

Eligible artists must have lived in the Chicago metropolitan area for at least one year. They must be currently practicing their art, have spent some years as working artists, and have exceptional talent and commitment.

Past winners of the Individual Artist Awards include: Brett Bloom, Nyame O. Brown, Paola Cabal (emerging category), Nick Cave, Juan Angel Chávez, Julia Fish, Gaylen Gerber, Vanalyne Green, Gisela Insuaste (emerging category), Judy Ledgerwood, Laura Letinsky, Brennan McGaffey, Helen Mirra, Darrel Morris, Laurie Palmer, Dan Peterman, David Philpot, Karen Reimer and Richard Rezac, Sumakshi Singh (emerging category), Christine Tarkowski and Philip von Zweck (emerging category).

Those of you are brave and fond of the “dirty” words.  You might as well check out “Why The Fuck Not Ppodcast?“  Think of it  as a  more plat-formists, music oriented and bizarre Bad At Sports from Europe.

Ppodcast has a more aggressively open ended mandate for the project and offers sound artists and experimental musicians a platform for their stuff.

Also, they introduced me to Lily Allen and I think I’m in love.

His work is largely inky black desaturated figurative photos of individuals in minimal or distant urban environments wearing either loose clothing or nude. The catch is that there are also nude teen age models included.

Wikipedia sums up the events of the last few days quite well:

Controversies

On the 22 May 2008, the opening night of Bill Henson’s 2007-2008 exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, depicting nude children, was canceled after Hetty Johnston, a child protection campaigner, lodged a complaint about the exhibition with the New South Wales police [1] [2][3].

It was announced on 23 May 2008 that a number of the images in an exhibition of his work set to go on display at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington, Sydney had been seized by police local area commander Alan Sicard, with the intention of charging him with “publishing an indecent article[4], under the Crimes Act.” The seized images were also removed from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website, where the remainder of the series can now be viewed online[5].

On 25 May 2008, The Age published uncensored the image which was used on the print and email invitation, accompanied by an article by John Elder.[6] Superscript text.

Additional Information

Since then additional galleries have either been raided or have taken down exhibitions that were in the works.

To see additional works of his to inform your opinion you can visit his gallery representation Tolarno Galleries or view an index of images online via google

Who is the hell doesn’t know what Highlander is? For shame. All of you, add it to your netflix queue pronto!

This week: Duncan, and a panel of superstar critical thinkers, Lori Waxman, Kathryn Hixson and James Yood discuss, Highlander, Artropolopolopolis, Robert Storr vs. the universe, and regionalism in an action packed, smack down of art critical smartness.

To digress for a moment, in googling everyone’s name to minimize errors I was astonished to find that there once was a Chicago Art Critics Association. Sadly their website was last updated in 2006. It seems to have died of disinterest. I wonder if the meetings entailed “Beat-it” style knife fights, alas Bad at Sports missed the boat there.

Only Duncan will be amused by the opening song, as he knows there can be only one, and only Kaveh Soofi and Dominic Molon by the closing song.

Joseph Mohan. There Duncan, I said it.

Lori Waxman
James Yood
Highlander
Artropolis
Robert Storr
Tom Burtonwood
Garden Fresh
Gaylen Gerber
Whitney Biennale
Gap
Ashley Bickerton
Robert Ryman
Artforum
New Art Examiner
Thomas Blackman
Merchandise Martv
Donald Judd
Andy Warhol
Gerhard Richter
Basel
Old Gold
Francesco Bonami
Barnett Newman
Jewish Museum
SFAI
James Rondeau
Ivan Albright
James Rondeau
Marcel Duchamp
Anne Wilson
Tony Fitzpatrick
James Rondeau
Kerry James Marshall
Wesley Kimler
Jeff Wall
Chris Wool
Charles Saatchi
Lari Pittman
Charles Ray
Documenta

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_143-Roundtable_fun.mp3

Artist Benjamin Verdonck is currently nesting on the Rotterdam Weena Tower. His performance “The Great Swallow” involves a nest, man, and a gaint egg.

Here’s the YouTube video clip:

In February of this year the Marc Jacobs run House of Louis Vuitton issued a copyright lawsuit demanding $20,000 a day for each day she continued to use this image and reimbursement for legal fees. Plesner is scheduled to meet with Louis Vuitton in Paris with her lawyer on May 30th since she refused to comply.

New York Mag has a interview with Nadia Plesner that makes for an interesting read.

While the House of Louis Vuitton is busy spending thousands of dollars suing her instead of capitalizing on the moment by making a donation in her name to charity and realizing that parody/caricature and non competitive market copyright have a considerable barring on this “copyright” case. May Bad at Sports suggest other parody related/for profit targets for their attention.

SNL Season 31: Episode 10 - Where a copyrighted Louis Vuitton like background was used to parody a sweet sixteen skit.

Sue Chewy Vuiton again (and fail again) - If at first you don’t succeed-waste court time agian.

Every Editorial Cartoon ever made that has a Louis Vuitton related caricature - Newspapers used to be for profit industries at one time.

Paris Hilton - A living caricature of a human being who is regularly seen with a LV handbag.

WTF? this weeks show is as long as your arm and brimming with what you need to
know about the art world around you…

It’s a three shows for the price of one deal!!!

First Duncan takes on the Chicago Artist Coalition to find out, what they do and
what business they have publishing a magazine.

Next,Terri and Serena talk to David Adjaye and Cydney Payton at The Museum of Contemporary Art: Denver
and figure out how you go about building a museum.

As if that was not enough, Mark Staff Brandl our European Chief checks in to remind us
how important it is to be a member of a community.

The show closes with a tribute to the Birthday of Joseph Mohan.

Paul Celan
Gio Ponti
Mark Dery
Daniel Libeskind
Roberto
Behar
Santiago Calatrava
Luis Barrigán
Sigmund Freud
Chicago Artists’ Coalition
Olga
Stefan
Jeremy
Biles
Chicago Artist News
Rod Blagojevich
Wesley Kimler
Dwell
ReadyMade
New Art
Examiner
Frieze
Artforum
William Conger
Joan Livingstone
Peter Jones
Flatfile
Corinne
Schatz
Marlis Pekarek
Josef Felix Mueller
Urs Eberli
Clemens
Mueller
Rachel
Lumsden
Elisabeth
Nembrini
Elisabeth
Keller-Schweizer
Ursula
Badrutt Schoch

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_142-3_for_1_special.mp3

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82.

The cause was heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the Manhattan gallery that represents Mr. Rauschenberg.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. All became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged, during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal rol

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture.

Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.” Cage meant that people had come to see, through Mr. Rauschenberg’s efforts, not just that anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art (this wasn’t itself new), but that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful — that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut, which Mr. Rauschenberg celebrated.

“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

Read the full article мебелиhere

The ordinance would require anyone putting on small shows (even garage bands just promoting their own gigs) to be licensed as a “promoter” subject to a $2000 license fee and requirements for $300,000 liability insurance for any event. Contact your alderman now and let them know you don’t want to see the arts strangled this way — Do you really want the only live art in Chicago to be comprised of performances of “Wicked” and farewell concert tours by 80s hair bands? Not that there’s anything wrong with either –but don’t you want choices, variety, and a city where artists are free to perform, struggle, succeed, and even fail? Whether you’re a fan of open mike nights, spoken word, small theater groups, whatever … You need to speak up now, because all of these will bite the dust if this becomes the law in the city.

Tell your alderman that an ordinance like this would have guaranteed that Chicago could never have been the home of Second City or the Lookingglass Theater, or the launching ground for countless musicians, actors, and playwrights and poets, and that audiences and artists alike will suffer, and our city will become poorer in spirit, if this proposed ordinance becomes law.

To find your Alderman, follow the following link:
http://www.chicityclerk.com/citycouncil/alderman/find.html

And do it before Wednesday’s vote!

via highsnobiety

Building on its long history of supporting the arts, today Gap introduced Artist Editions T-Shirts, a limited edition collection of t-shirts designed by 13 of today’s most influential contemporary artists, including Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Kiki Smith, Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger, Ashley Bickerton, Kenny Scharf, Glenn Ligon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kerry James Marshall, Hanna Liden and Sarah Sze.

Gap worked in close partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art and Art Production Fund to create the collection with the 13 artists, who are all previous Whitney Biennial participants. The Whitney Biennial is a special exhibition held every two years at the Whitney Museum of American Art that features the most important contemporary art in the United States. Gap is a proud sponsor of the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

The limited edition collection is available exclusively at select Gap stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and franchise markets, as well as online in the U.S. at gap.com. It’s also available at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and at Colette, a Paris-based boutique. The t-shirts range in price from $28 to $38.

“I’d like to say that in a small way it turns consumers into creative producers,” Byrne explains on his official site, “but that might be a bit too much to claim. However, even if one doesn’t play the thing, it points toward a less mediated kind of cultural experience. It might be an experience in which one begins to reexamine one’s surroundings and to realize that culture — of which sound and music are parts — doesn’t always have to be produced by professionals and packaged in a consumable form. “I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments,” he adds, “but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down. The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world’s popular music is a good thing, for the most part.”

link

This week the West Coast Crew heads down to Ratio3 to talk to Ryan McGinley and gallerist Chris Perez.

Ryan McGinley makes large-scale color photographs of nudes in abstracted natural landscapes. With his subjects as willing collaborators, he used photography to break down barriers between public and private lives. Drawn from skateboarding, music, graffiti and gay subcultures, his models perform for the camera and expose themselves with complete self-awareness.

McGinley’s more recent work signals a departure from the urban youth culture images for which he is well known – over the past few summers he has been working almost exclusively in natural settings in the American west.

At 24, he was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has also had solo exhibitions at PS1 and in Spain at the MUSAC in Leon. In 2007 he was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity award by the International Center for Photography.

Blonde Redhead

Belle and Sebastian

Ratio3

Ryan McGinley

Chris Perez

The Whitney Museum of American Art

Nan Goldin

Larry Clark

Planet of the Apes

Lord of the Rings

Easy Rider

Paris, Texas

Jean-Luc Godard

Gus Van Sant

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_141-Ryan_McGinley.mp3

First we had a story on a visually harmless apple computer virus that gets the drop on your desktop. Then we had a episode that included the Helvetica independent film that came out and was a great watch. Take the two and put them together and you get the Bullet Speed Helvetica Dropclock Screensaver™ which will make everyone happy and macophiles feel warm in that special place we only point to on dolls.

Check it out and have fun, it can be downloaded here

From the website of the artist Ranjit Bhatnagar:

“Simple automatic instruments are constructed from local materials and objects on site. The system learns the sounds it can make by trying out its instruments, and then uses its range of sounds to try to reproduce the rhythmic and melodic qualities of sounds such as the voices of visitors. It then loops and alters these imitative sequences into improvised compositions. (That last part’s not done yet, so you won’t see it in the video.)

In this example, the source audio is a bit of the soundtrack from the movie Citizen Kane, and the noisemakers are a set of found object percussion machines and an electromagnetically fretted electric guitar.”

The tech is pretty basic and the conversion to music is largely straight forward but the presentation of the idea is pretty sharp. I would love to see how well the system works with a high noise to signal ratio. Can it only make “music” in a relatively quiet room of two people talking or can it eliminate some white noise to find the melody of a large conversation.

The town’s mayor and citizens found them funny, but there is a Local vs State conflict inherint in the act. The Illinois Department of Transportation claims that the signs violated the Federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Threatening to put federal funding for projects in the city on gold till they were removed. $1,700 worth of signs are now pulled down.

Tony Matelli has always been interested in the underdog. He has become well known for his hyper-realistic sculptures often depicting characters and things just barely getting by; things nearly dead, hopelessly lost or otherwise totally unwanted. These sculptures serve as metaphors for our own social malaise and our general struggle for survival. They mimic inner states of desolation, panic, ambivalence and despair; frequent conditions associated with trying to locate ones self within our social world.

Tony Matelli has exhibited extensively in the US and in Europe. His work was most recently seen in “5 Billion Years,” at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Into Me/Out of Me, at P.S. 1 MOMA New York, travelling to KW Berlin Institute of Contemporary Art. Upcoming projects include Evolution: Tony Matelli/Alexis Rockman, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Still Life, at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand, and Die Macht der Dinge - The Power of Things, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin.

Also Duncan tries out his acting chops, with mixed results.

Tony Matelli
Columbia University
The Fifth Element
Rob Pruitt
Sean Landers

Dan Graham
Ivan Albright

John Currin
Keith Tyson
Pace Wildenstein
Charles Ray

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_140-Tony_Matelli.mp3

More work and detailed photos can been seen at her website along with future show information.

Via Brett Sokol for New York Magazine:

If the glory, freneticism, excess, and sunny evanescence of the current contemporary-art boom has a symbolic home, it’s Miami Beach. Thanks to the appearance of an exponentially more fabulous Art Basel Miami Beach fair each December since 2002, the once-tattered resort town has gained a new sense of itself as an aesthetic destination that goes beyond the mere appreciation of a set of well-wrought silicone implants. Now members of the local Establishment, enamored with their smart new friends—collectors, artists, and curators from around the world—want to see if they can get them to stick around. It’s partly about wishing to be taken seriously as a cultural alternative to New York and Los Angeles. But it’s also a bet that fertilizing the creative class is good economic-development policy—especially in a city hit hard by the real-estate meltdown. Which is why a local developer and collector, Craig Robins, is starting a free postgraduate art program in Miami.

He’s not alone in this municipal-improvement gambit: Terry Riley, a former Museum of Modern Art curator, moved down two years ago to be director of the Miami Art Museum and oversee building its $220 million Herzog & de Meuron–designed home. Riley cites the example of Spain and its Guggenheim Bilbao as a model: “They wanted to catch up, join the European Union, and transform the country. They realized that to do that, they had to go from being a cheap vacation destination of sangría, sand, and sun to a place that could compete with the rest of Europe as a major cultural destination.”

That’s what Robins, a mam trustee, wants most of all, too. “Miami is on the verge, but we need to keep stimulating creativity,” he says, rising from his office desk and passing a John Baldessari painting—a dead plant emblazoned with the credo that always happens. (“Looking at it keeps me sharp.”) “I felt that the only thing missing was a graduate school. Our artists get to the next level and have to leave Miami if they want to continue their education. Why should we lose them to Yale?” In fact, the current Whitney Biennial features three Miami artists—William Cordova, Adler Guerrier, and Bert Rodriguez—more than any other city except New York and L.A.

The son of a local developer, Robins is a Miami Beach native who’s always had an interest in art (he wanted to trade in his graduation Rolex for a Salvador Dalí print). He learned that there’s added value in a cleaned-up bohemia. “Everybody thought these properties were useless,” he recalls of South Beach’s cheaply purchased Art Deco buildings, many of which his company restored as boutique hotels and chic retail strips. Artists were a key part of the mix that revived the area: Courtesy of Robins, many found themselves with subsidized studio spaces or special commissions—enough that in 1992, this magazine christened the resort “SoHo in the Sun.” Art has been part of his real-estate strategy ever since, from the $250 million Aqua residences, bedecked with work by Guillermo Kuitca and Richard Tuttle, to Miami’s design district, where the Robins-founded Design Miami fair (in partnership with the owner of Art Basel) has drawn crowds to otherwise deserted streets. Not coincidentally, Robins is the district’s biggest landlord.

This area will also be home to his new program, headily named Art + Research. If all goes according to plan, it’ll open in September 2009 with eight-to-twelve “resident artists”—who will receive full scholarships, studio space, housing, and stipends. They hope to expand it later. The University of Miami–operated venture already has an impressive roster of New Yorkers onboard. Founding faculty include artists Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija, both of whom teach in Columbia’s M.F.A. program; Yale instructor Steven Henry Madoff; and White Columns gallery director Matthew Higgs (they will all squeeze Miami tutorials into their current gigs). Former Columbia art-school dean Bruce Ferguson consulted on it. And for added star power, sitting on the board of Robins’s nonprofit Anaphiel organization to guide the school are former Whitney director (and Robins’s cousin) David Ross, John Baldessari, and ex–Art Basel director Sam Keller. Robins will kick in $2 million to help fund Art + Research for its first four years, and the University of Miami has promised to help raise another $2 million.

Unlike at Columbia and Yale, there won’t be any formal M.F.A. degrees awarded to those who complete the two-year program, which will revolve around a topical theme that changes with each entering biannual class. Accordingly, don’t expect to see the “resident artists” hunker down in front of easels and live models. “Most art is conceptually based now. It’s art based on an idea,” says Madoff. “It didn’t turn out that the twentieth century’s most influential artist was Picasso. It turned out it was Duchamp … We don’t need to do foundation courses, how to draw, how to sculpt … You don’t need three credits for American Art History From 1945 to the Present.”

Read the full article here

In 1994 Paul Morris, Matthew Marks, Pat Hearn and Colin De Land had a vision. That vision was that New York City would have an art fair. What began as the Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair has become the the Armory fair, the jewel in the art fair empire the Merchandise Mart has amassed over the last 3 years; Art Chicago, The Armory, Art Toronto, Volta Basel, Next, and Volta NYC.

This week, Paul “the ‘marts Art Czar” Morris and Tony “Boss of Art Chicago” Karman break down why the Art Fair future is the future. Kathryn Born and Duncan MacKenzie listen with slack jaws and open minds.

The weird thing that happened is that Duncan actually started to get behind Art Chicago and the ‘marts future in the Art Business? WTF? Did he drink the Kool Aid? Was he bought off? Or is there reason to believe? Listen and find out…
Paul Morris, Matthew Marks, Pat Hearn and Colin De Land
Merchandise Mart
Tony Karman
The Armory
Basel
Millenium Park
Donald Young
Sikema Jenkings
Louis Bougouis
Barbra Mathes
Richard Grey
Kavi Gupta
Mathew Marks
Katalina Dubacker
Olifer Alliason
Louis Vutton
Frieze
Yurba Buena Art Center
Mark Bradford
Dan Cambell
Damien Hirst
Chris Kennedy
Volta
Art Toronta
Koln Art Fair
Frank Gehry
Annie Feldman
Hammer Museum
Sam Keller
Renae Cam
Raymond Pettibone
Andy Warhol
Pat Hern
Pipolatti Reese
Karen Kalimnick
The New Museum
Jeff Koons
Kiki Smith
Jim Hodges
David Hammons
Chris Burden
Richard Prince
John Mckracken
David Zwerner
Perogi Gallery
Tony Tasset
White Colums
Richard Serra
Hyde Park Art Center
Three Walls
New Langton
Robert Gober
Art Institute of Chicago
Henry Darger

Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_139-Artropolis.mp3

Biomaterial charges against N.Y. art professor dismissed.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A judge threw out charges Monday against a college art professor accused of improperly obtaining biological materials for an exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was ”insufficient on its face.”

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom.

”Obviously this is a weight off his back, but he still had to suffer through this for four years,” said Kurtz’s attorney, Paul Cambria. ”The last thing this guy is is a bioterrorist.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo