This week we talk to the artists and curator of the stellar new show at Monique Meloche, Chronic: Handmade Nightmares in Red, Yellow and Blue.
Duncan, Richard and Amanda together again interview Fendry Ekel, Dylan Graham, Fokert de Jong, and curator Astrid Honold. Exciting conversation, interesting insight, talk about the many meanings of “chronic”. Fun times!!!
ALSO THIS WEEK: The Duncan haircut poll. Be sure to go to Badatsports.com and vote on Whether or not Duncan should get a haircut. The fate of the world is in your hands.
Also! Those of you in the drawing school we frequently discuss on the show, sharpen your pencils!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/03/headbutt.wookie.ap/index.html
Fendry Ekel
Dylan Graham
Folkert de Jong
Astrid Honold
Monique Meloche
Rietveld Academy
Millenium Hilton
9/11
Paul Gauguin
Vincent van Gogh
Home Depot
Piet Mondrian
Mies van der Rohe
Dow Chemical
Edvard Munch
Google
Mark Rothko
Barnett Newman
Ad Reinhardt
Lawrence of Arabia
George W. Bush
BBC News
CNN News
Whitney Tassie
Direct download: Bad_at_Sports_Episode_75-Meloche_Chonic.mp3
- Episode 869: Nato Thompson and the Alternative - April 17, 2024
- Episode 868: EXPO 2024 - April 10, 2024
- Episode 867: Gary Cannone - April 4, 2024
Duncan, you just need to rock a haircut like Alexander Hamilton’s. He’s looking awfully fancy on the new ten dollar bill.
Duncan, Maura is right. Just look at Hamilton in all of his glory.
Did anyone see the show? Reactions?
What the hell? This was a pretty interesting piece, where is the commentary and dialog, or is everyone over at Art or Idiocy witness the latest Wesley freakout???
Pardon me, witnessing not witness. My mistake.
I tried to post some thought provoking mind blowing shit yesterday & it wouldn’t go! WTF? Is this thing on?
Ok. I guess it is.
So like I was saying…
More photos form the show on MM’s Website: http://www.moniquemeloche.com/
Again with the accents. Will the exporting of American jobs overseas never cease? And must Bad at Sports encourage it?
These guys made me think a lot of the importance of getting in w/ like-minded folk & doing art in conjunction. When I was in grad school I had the great Laura Letinsky as an advisor. She stressed the importance of being connected to the art scene & keeping connected with your art pals. If you don’t have a peer group of artists, your chances of continuing to make art over the long haul are greatly diminished.
The tricky thing I’ve always found is that the reason many of us are artists in the 1st place is because we don’t get along with anybody. While they were out playing Wiffle ball we were inside drawing pictures of Mr. T fighting Wolverine. Or practicing Ninja techniques in the basement.
Ok, so I thought it was thought provoking before…
Whatever, man.
the wine served at kavi gupta’s opening was much more tasty than the wine served at meloche.
Sorry Bawlzaqe, yes I was over at Art Idiocy perptrating typo hell as usual and witnessing ERIK’s freakout.
P.S., I expended all my positive energy on the David Reed entry at Sharkforum and a review for Art in America, so no comments here yet, and I expended all my nasty energy at A or I, so I won’t be attacking you Ball-Z-Akk. Don’t lose heart. Next week I’ll be snippy with you again.
Reed:
I tried to put the URL under “Reed” and failed.
http://sharkforum.org/archives/2007/02/is_david_reed_our_caravaggio_o.html
I went to check out the rant explosion on Art or Idiocy and Eric removed it!!! He has a post up there defending his removing the exchange.
what happenned to the polvo interview, sport dudes?
It’s coming, patience grasshopper. We are mere mortals with a backlog of material.
I second Balzac (or whatever). What was up with the disappearance of the wacky dialog on Art or Idiocy, I am startled that EW would yank posts. I caught the beginning of the rant-fest and missed the punchline. Does anyone know if it got particularly ugly or personal? What lead to the removal?
Yeah, it started very ugly and personal, with a very childishly-phrased attack by Art or Idiocy on Klein— NOT usual for Erik. Then it went on like that, on the part of almost everybody who wrote in as well. Wesley attacked Erik’s attack with some very well-thought-out concerns, but of course expressed rather belligerently, and then five or so of Erik’s friends attacked Wesley, and so on. Believe it or not, although I was one of th first to berate Erik for his very silly personal attack, I tried later to get some solid concerns discussed, like trying to get Erik to express real complaints instead of insults and vocabulary like “that’s retarded.” (Yeah, sometimes I’m reasonable, just don’t count on it being a habit!). But nobody went for that and Erik never really stated any clear concerns. Although it does appear that he attempted to secretly join the fight under the name “anonymous.” One woman even berated us for attacking a “poor young boy of 25.” It was ridiculous. And I did my best to have at least 100 typos per comment, making entire lines unreadable. It was a very good example of all that’s potentially BAD about personal blog-“zines” and open commenting. Too bad. I hope neither posts nor comments sink that far very often there or elsewhere.
This sort of thing makes me look ever-so-forward to the “Fight Night” that Industry of the Ordinary is putting together.
The “poor young boy” statement was despicable, in light of-and given the fact that 18-19 and 20 year old men saved the free world in WW2 -and given that 140,000 men of the same age are risking their necks now -however ii-advised and misbegotten our adventures in Iraq are. What? Are artists just spoiled immature wimps living milquetoast lives with no backbones?
-I answered Erik -due to the fact that he put up this ad hominem attack on some very good points Paul Klein brought up in the recent artletter. Look: its common knowledge -my big fight with Tony Fitz and Paul last year over the direction of CAF -among other things -I wanted CAF -to be not unlike BAS or sharkforum -certainly not some lame-ass provincial museum -I am back working with them -only because they had to the good sense to realize that I was right and they were wrong -and to admit that to me-my point being -particularly with Paul -I think he is right about one tenth of the time -and this happens to be that time. If Erik wants to dispute that -fine -but is it too much to expect a reasoned argument? -as opposed to an inane, specious and insipid proclamation as to how provincial and embarrassing Pauls piece is -no reason given? I just think the issues Paul brings up are too damned important to us all to be dismissed in this off-hand, cavalier manner.
Pauls contention and examination of the HUGE! price discrepancy between good work here and work in NYC -isn’t about resentment or, envy, its about taking a good look at the current atmosphere/market of the art world -as we should!…….Jerry Saltz sure thinks so with articles in both the Voice and Modern Painters discussing this very issue -as does Jed Perl in the cover story of last weeks New Republic -which is featured on sharkforum-
LA challenges NY by simply ignoring it -I think it would be a wonderful thing if there were full page Kay Rosen style ads in the art rags suggesting collectors come to Chicago and get some very good work at very good prices -I think since this is the reality of the situation, we should exploit it.
-One more point that was brought up in the discussion that ensued -I found interesting -was one artists proclamation that John Currin has painted ‘superlative paintings…..hmmmmm -ever look at contemporary architecture? furniture design?…….do you see Frank Gehry doing bad Americana rip-offs Peter Keating style -when you go in Luminare or Moss -do you notice any creaky wooden rocking chairs with lots of fancy lathe work? -Of course not. Architects and designers are fully aware of the 20th century -and are pushing the aesthetic advances made in essential form ever further…….only in the so called visual high arts -would a tarted up -bad imitation -of the illustrator Norman Rockwell -who painted from photographs -illustrations -made to be photographed and printed as magazine covers -not to be considered as good paintings -nor are they- only now, would this visually ignorant junk- this crummy illustrative drech, be considered seriously -which says so much more about what the art world has become than it does about a laughable hack like Currin -or to quote Jed Perl, ” how did something so high fall so low?”
Bottom line -I think people like Erik are threatened by the idea of change in the art world -of the status quo being challenged -mommy and daddy paid a big pile of cash for junior to attend SAIC and get that diploma -and what use is it going to be if the rug is yanked out from beneath him? -should have studied accounting Erik -there’s a real future to be made.
-Oh yea, I also suggested to Erik (who enjoys portraying himself as some form or other of canine species,) that he might want to bone up on his drawing skills. As far as dogs go, Erik might want to look at…. Valesquez did some good dogs, Titian was a huge dog painter -then today, you have the wild-eyed psychedelic dogs of bay-area funk/master painter Roy de Forest…..
-my point being, if you are going to go around referring to yourself as ‘artist extraordinaire’, its probably not a bad idea to at least be ‘artist semi-competent’-
I think Erik blew some wicked street cred by yanking the disucssion. For those who are too lazy to check his site, here is the post that was put up after he took down the discussion the Shark is refering to.
Asinine.
Art or Idiocy?, just as any blog, website, periodical or publication, is under no obligation whatsoever to allow any comments. In particular, Art or Idiocy? bears no responsibility to comments that assault our glorious leader’s person, character, art, upbringing, financial status, education etc. etc. And Art or Idiocy? especially does not have to give any comments that then move towards blatant self-promotion, verbose accounts of one’s achievements and endless bitterness a forum.
Finally, Art or Idiocy? is in no way required to provide any sort of platform or soapbox for others to air their own personal grievances, chemical imbalances, rants, raves or fatwas. Especially when they are in direct opposition to our own evil agenda(s).
When an ensuing “discussion†devolves into what became this post, Art or Idiocy? has every right to exercise its executive authority. Therefore, this post has been removed. Our apologies. If you have any unfinished or unresolved issues regarding this matter, please feel free to start your own blog, website or zine.
Erik Wenzel
Director,
Art or Idiocy?
We Sharks exercised our ‘executive authority’ and swam off with the censored discussion- After further consideration, we felt this guy has gotten way enough play off of his self described idiocy-thus we decided against putting it up on sharkforum.
I finally was able to listen though the whole podcast (on my way to teach art history in Liechtenstein). It is very good. They really talked well for themselves, spoke clearly and directly — almost no typical artworld jargon — and they conveyed a feeling of enjoyment of the process of making art. And I have to say I always love that Dutch accent in English.
Provencial devine
The center of the universe
crust in the
geometry of the I.
“Do you think today is particularly bad?”-(i think that was Richard) Awesome moment, as people making things as aware as possible we cant stand for the unanswered moment. We have to get beyond the corn flake isssues we are led to believe are relevent. Or, in this case celephane wrapped waffles, wheatabix..what ever you choke down with your caffeine in what ever place of otherness you reside. Thanx to the artists interviewed for reminding me to seek creative fellowship.