Archive for May 5th, 2007

This exhibit, on display at the Museum of Modern Art, is a collection of works harvested from fifteen different modern artists with abstract sensibilities. It ends June 11^th and I highly recommend a viewing. If you can’t go or are too lazy to put the remote down and get off your hedonistic ass, check out this review.

First off, the whole concept behind the exhibit is kinda nifty. It explores how the artists,” have culled from slapstick, comic strips, film, caricature, cartoons and animation as springboards for abstraction, not to withdraw from reality but to address perplexing questions about war and global conflicts, the loss of innocence, and racial stereotyping.” Deep, huh?

Here’s a list of some of my favorite pieces to give you a glimpse of the kind of coolness on display:

Inka Essenhigh

Cheerleaders and Sky

Like a fresco you might see painted on the ceiling of a cathedral in Bizarro World, this is a gorgeous rendering of cheerleaders floating through the sky like retarded lil’ angels.

In the artists own words: “The cheerleaders must be divine if they come from the heavens, but they drop like fat turkeys while trying to maintain their composure.”

Juan Munoz

Waiting for Jerry

This is an empty white painted room. The only thing in the room is a mouse hole cut in the middle of one the floorboards with light poring out of it. There is also manic Tom and Jerry- like chase music playing in the background. Simple, but mind blowing.

Philippe Parreno

Speech Bubbles

Dozens of helium filled white balloons clinging to the ceiling. All in the shape of speech bubbles, the kinds we see in cartoon strips. Trippy.

Gary Simmons

Boom!

What this guy does is sketches in chalk on blackboards or dark canvas. Then, he puts on golf gloves and by applying different levels of pressure in different areas, erases and blends and stretches the image. It’s a lot sweeter than I make it sound.

This one piece is an image of a cartoonish pluming explosion done on a canvas with more square footage than my apartment.

According to the artist: “Cartoons are the first and earliest form of getting pleasure from a violent act.”

Those are just my personal favorites, but there are a bunch of other truly unique and thought provoking pieces there as well. Like I said earlier, it’s worth the trip.

A Valuable Lesson: I also learned that MoMA, which normally charges $20 to go into, has FREE admission every Friday night from 4pm till 8pm. This is provided as a service from the evil overlords of the Target Corporation. (Thank you, Satan!)

After mentally checking my outfit for red carpet worthiness (fail) I shrugged and headed to the Tribeca film fest to mingle with the stars and, as it turns out, cringe at everything but the sight of a very naked Lucy Liu for a couple hours.  Upon arriving to film fest central I was directed to the wrong theater.  Two cabs, 20 bucks, and a stick of bbq’d street meat later, I finally made it to the eerily remote Battery Park Regal Cinemas Theater.  A single cardboard sign directed me to the “festival.”  No red carpet, no stars, just a lot of dorky white dudes coming out to stare at (did I mention?) a very naked Lucy Liu.

 Check out the preview…it’ll save some time.

Anyways…  Wow.  So bad.  SO SO SO bad.  And did I mention that Lucy Liu, and at least half a dozen other really hot women are all sorts of naked?  And yet, still, bad.  To be fair, it was stylishly bad for the first hour or so, but for the entire last hour of the film you could actually see the actors reading their lines off the page. 

BISHOP:  No, stop.

SADIE: (Naked back flip, lots of odd camera angles, shoots vampire in throat) I’ll stop when I’m dead.

BISHOP:  Oh!  The irony!  A vampire!  Dead!  Oh man, the audience will NEVER pick up on that one!

Yeah.  Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t see it.  Just don’t pay any money to see it.  Marilyn Manson has a cameo as a bartender sans makeup, which is almost worth paying for, and the copious nudity is really pretty amazing.  The action is even pretty good.  It’s just the writing…whoa.  It’s that bad.