1966,
and 1968.
(blue)



























Jan 1st, 1966 Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" reaches #1
Mar 12th, 1966 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Oct 6th, 1966 - LSD is declared illegal in the United States

April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities, lasting for several days.
November 14, 1968 – Yale University announces it is going to admit women.







images
1. Barnett Newman, The Moment, 1966
2. Blinky Palermo, Blaue Scheibe Und Stab (Blue Disc And Stick) 1968






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"Blaue Scheibe und Stab [Blue Disc and Stick] (1968) is one of Blinky Palermo's most celebrated 'Objects', created at a time of great discovery and creativity in the artist's life. Palermo created a series of two-part wall works in the late 1960s, but Blaue Scheibe und Stab is the only one which was intended to stand on the floor instead of being hung like a painting. The artist, who was perhaps most famous for the inclusion of fabric in his works, here employed yet another non-artistic medium, thick adhesive tape, which added a special dimension to the piece: 'the blue tape engulfing the disc and the stick functions much like the fabric in the Stoffbilder, asserting its ready-made identity at the same time that the work's sublime beauty transcends it.


Although color was always a key element of Palermo's work, Klaus Schrenk believes that the blue tape's physicality, in addition to its hue, is crucial to the success of the piece: 'The slight overlap of the tape creates a surface structure which has a very special part to play in this work. The shaky equilibrium which obviously exists between the upright rod and the disc is corrected visually by the horizontal lines of the tape. This absence of a latent stability in this two part work may also be the reason why the artist chose to relocate it from the wall onto the floor. But here there is no hovering in space, no extension of the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional, as is the case with Palermo's wal lpieces. Instead, Palermo packages the centrifugal forces that are locked up in the disc - forces which threaten to upset the work's instability any moment."



taken from here...











-------------------------

Matt Connors and Fergus Feehily
April 3–August 14, 2011
Dallas Museum of Art











Concentrations 54: Matt Connors and Fergus Feehily

April 3–August 14, 2011
Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Galleries

The project-driven series Concentrations focuses on the work of emerging artists. This pairing of solo projects by Berlin artist Fergus Feehily and New York-based Matt Connors brings together two artists who each produce complexly beautiful paintings that challenge traditions of abstraction and push limitations of the painterly surface.

This will be the first solo museum exhibition for each artist and the inaugural installment in Concentrations 30th year. On view from April 3-August 14, 2011, Concentrations 54 is curated by Jeffrey Grove, the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.


go here for more info.
above work by Matt Connors.








---------------------------

power ballads....
power beds....
power box.....













"I gotta take a little time
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older"




















"We're leaving together
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back
To earth, who can tell?"





images:

1. Zanotta Design, bed, 2010
2. Mika Tajima, A Facility Based on Change, 2010 Herman Miller Action Office I panels, canvas, acrylic, silkscreen, paper, pins, clips, Elizabeth Dee Gallery





power ballad text:
Foreigner, I Want to Know What Love Is, & Europe, The Final Countdown"










-------------------------

Maybe we could also have
a slow-art movement,
and take an hour.

- James Turrell

The Roden Crater, Arizona

"I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer. Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on. But, you know, there's this slow-food movement right now. Maybe we could also have a slow-art movement, and take an hour."

"The Alpha Tunnel"

The Roden Crater project is best described as a series of underground chambers and tunnels honeycombing an extinct volcano in a particularly remote part of northern Arizona. This complex system of subterranean rooms and culverts includes a number of precisely oriented skylights, designed to focus on certain celestial events. The "Alpha Tunnel,” the current centerpiece of the project, has been termed "the world’s longest naked-eye telescope.”

taken from here...

image taken from here..., luciano z

"At Roden Crater I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I did not want the work to be a mark upon nature, but I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces ... I wanted an area where you had a sense of standing on the planet. I wanted an area of exposed geology like the Grand Canyon or the Painted Desert, where you could feel geologic time. Then in this stage set of geologic time, I wanted to make spaces that engaged celestial events in light so that the spaces performed a "music of the spheres" in light.

The sequence of spaces, leading up to the final large space at the top of the crater, magnifies events. The work I do intensifies the experience of light by isolating it and occluding light from events not looked at. I have selected different portions of the sky and a limited number of events for each of the spaces. This is a reason for the large number of spaces. "













perhaps we can drive to the roden crater in 2011.

written while listening to "streamside"


---------------------

Magdalena Keck
Interior Design

"the bedroom"



























Magdalena Keck looks for essence, taking the simple and making it special through imagination, details and finishes. With thoughtful questions and close observation, she guides clients to express their individuality and needs.

Inspired by nature, art and technology, Keck’s signature approach combines immaculate craftsmanship and function to achieve a distinctive elegance through honest, clean and genuine design.

more here...

-----------------------

the grid will always
remain the same,
my friends.

1970, 2010.





























the grid will always
remain the same,
my friends.

1970, 2010.


1. Osaka, 1970's Worlds Fair, also known as Expo 70. Switzerland's Pavillon. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind."
2. Lonneke Gordijn & Ralph Nauta, Fragile Future Concrete Chandelier, 2010











----------------

"It seems silly to
superimpose words on work."
--------



























images:

1. John McCracken, electric, in bronze, via David Zwirner
2. Willy Rizzo 1970's coffee table, via here





John McCracken in an interview writes: "It seems silly to superimpose words on work. It seems natural to me that these things are applied to the work as that's what I try to put in it. I've always been interested in metaphysics-so I guess one also does a self portrait of one's body of ideas. My own work has puzzled me-especially as it relates to the plank. I kept coming back to making planks and I kept wondering if I was being habitual or obsessive or responding to demand, or if there was more to this plank form than I consciously realized. I wondered if they were a life form from somewhere that was channeling through me and it didn't make any difference if I understood them or not.


It worried me a bit-I believe in being intuitive but not being unconscious. I started to realize that these were figurative things that are both in the world and out of it. Because it leans at an angle, when you put a plank in a room, it kind of screws things up-it can be a little disturbing, but I found I liked that. When you set things vertically they go with everything but when you set them at an angle then you have something that shifts away from our reality. It's partly in the world and partly out of the world. It's like a visit. "




more of the interview here..









-----------------------








-------------------

(tony smith vs. tricky) presences......

"Dedicated, medicated,
They bend and break me
Overrate me
I take a small piece and make it breathe."

Smoke, 1967, fabricated 2005, LACMA

"This massive sculpture is Smoke, by artist Tony Smith. At 24 feet high and 48 feet wide, it’s one of his largest works—and the only large-scale piece conceived specifically for an interior space.

Smith’s works explore his lifelong interest in the patterns found in nature. “Smoke” is comprised of 45 extended octahedrons, or 8-sided modules, that resemble crystals. In the upper part of the sculpture, they are assembled in hexagonal formations like those found in honeycomb."

Brand new, you're retro.
Brand new, you're retro.
Brand new, you're retro.
Brand new, you're retro.

"Smith called his artworks “presences” rather than “sculptures.” Despite its geometric structure and logic, Smoke evokes a sense of openness and expansive growth. The aluminum lattice appears to rise and swell as you move through the work.

Smoke was originally constructed in 1967, for the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, from painted plywood. Tony Smith died in 1980 but his wife Jane persisted in having all her husband’s designs made into permanent works of art "

"Let me take you down the corridors of my life.
And when you walk, do you walk to your preference?
No need to answer till I take further evidence.
I seem to need a reference to get residence.
I'm a good neighbor"

This permanent version of Smoke was erected here at LACMA in 2008. Yesterday's excursion to LACMA had me camped out under Tony Smith's 1967 "Smoke." Smith called his works "presences" rather than "sculptures." To feel the weight and the strength of Smith's painted aluminum in this tight, towering space makes me weak at the knees. Post apocalyptic crystalline presences.

text sourced from LACMA here..
lyrics by Tricky's "hell is around the corner"
& "brand new you're retro" more here...

---------

(let's make buildings )
to begin again.
to escape again.





























(let's make buildings )
to begin again.
to escape again.


1. the pylon chair, by Cappellini
2. Sarah Sze, yellow fire escapes installation, 2002








--------------------------

james welling
times two
today.

New Abstraction #1A, 2009
signed and numbered by the artist Tibetan wool and silk

hand-knotted rugs, and photography.

1. James Welling hand knotted rugs at Bravin Lee, New York

2. The City Proper curated by James Welling 20 November 2010 – 15 January 2011
at Margo Leavin Gallery.

An exhibition of photography curated by the artist James Welling. The image about is by Shannon Ebner, 2010, Fixed Knot Fence. (I finally saw this show today. It's the last weekend up, don't miss it.)







--------------------------------------

Ricky Swallow
14 January – 19 February
@ Modern Art, London

"Form here is a container not only for ideas,
but for the expression of the idea of forms themselves."

Make-do Suite 2010
seven patinated bronze elements, oak table

----------

"Swallow’s evocative objects present themselves as the introduction or precursor to narrative and external references. As ever, Swallow is informed by the influences of art history – however in this new body of work we see a synthesis of his own distinctive manner brought to a reading of Californian modernism, British modern ceramics, and a wider recollection of vessel forms in painting and sculpture as the basis for both abstract and figurative gestures."

"The accumulation not only of pieces from which objects are formed, but of sets of objects themselves, reveals a collectors logic: of making sense of things through the meticulous accumulation, placement and reorganisation of parts. The improvised forms of these new sculptures continue Swallow’s engagement with the still life tradition, arranging and preserving a concentration of forms. The ever-present dynamic of verisimilitude in Swallow’s sculpture is further complicated in these new pieces as his emphasis shifts to building a sculptural idea of a vessel, for example, from fragments, embedding the process of replication more deeply within the act of making. Form here is a container not only for ideas, but for the expression of the idea of forms themselves."


text taken from here..






(I was lucky enough to see these new pieces before they left for London! All you lucky Londoners, don't miss this show. )




---------------------

roche bobois
1973

Hans Hopfer, Canape Player...
"place your bets"



















Currently fixated on the 1973 edition of Hans Hopfer's Canape Player.

Endless possibilities and an ad campaign that gives me goosebumps.
Oh, 1973, come back. Need more fix? Go here to Roche Bobois's Musée Virtuel.

Head spinning. 1984 and 2008!




--------------------

the
modern
drape.









the modern D R A P E
1. To arrange or let fall in loose folds
2. To hang or rest limply:



(images above)
1. Zanotta Italy. more here...
2. Michael Landy at Palais de Tokyo







-----------------------------