New York City – Monday, April 21, 2014

Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson, immediately caught my attention with its entrancing, artistic trailer. I was drawn to Johansson’s gaze, and the comparison of director, Jonathan Glazer to Stanley Kubrick.

Artiholics gives the perspective of culture as told from an artist’s perspective, therefore I aim to do exactly that with this film that employed an artist’s eye to so many frames of the film [SPOILERS TO COME].

If you’re looking to see a film that doesn’t have a conventional Hollywood plot with predictable punchlines, but rather disturbing and at times uncomfortable dialogue between bizarre characters, ‘Under the Skin’ delivers that and leaves you feeling like you transported to some strange place that only an off kilter story and captivating cinematography can bring you.

The film offers a full spectrum of rich landscapes. A vast beach, rocks on the shore, violent waves, with a crying infant in its vastness and threatening tides. An urban environment, architecture surrounding busy crowds of civilians, with faces and interactions overlaid on top of one another in an orange luminescent glow suggesting the seemingly infinite layers of personalities and entanglement of connections immersed in a metropolis.

A forest dense with green towering pine trees bending and swaying in powerful gusts of wind that Johansson loses herself in as she is swallowed in bright scorching flames to contrast with the vegetation. The film concludes with the billowing clouds of grey smoke exuding into the abysmal sky Johansson’s extraterrestrial host descended from.

The chilling serenity of the natural settings is mirrored by the haunting scenes of the house Johansson lures her male victims in to harvest their skin and essence. The house is entered through a cellar door, and the unsuspecting and sexually hungry men are immersed in darkness with a stark light on them and Johansson, as she takes off her clothes. “Come to me,” she tells them seductively. They walk with a masculine strut, and as they inch closer, they start to submerge into a reflective black liquid.

One after another, men are lured into her deadly residence, and only after multiple men, does the camera reveal what occurs under the black surface the men have walked into.

In astonishment, the male character moves his limbs with a tinted blue glow on his skin. He spots another being submerged near him. The other has wrinkled flesh, as if he had instantly lost half his weight in a few hours. The two males, facing their surreal predicament, grasp hands, revealing the difference between the wrist of one and the deflated elastic appearance of the other. In a sudden and shocking moment, the wrinkled character is sharply sucked down into the depths of the abysmal darkness. The scene cuts to the bottom of a rectangular tunnel, flowing with sparkling blood pulled towards a vanishing point.

Although it is utterly horrifying, the liquid the characters are submerged within has a solitude and a silence that we can only barely reach in a deep meditation.

Under the Skin takes us through layers of human experience, and as we follow Johansson through cityscape, humans cape, forests, stillness, sexuality, fire, and snow, I considered how we travel from youth until death, searching for something or someone to fill our days, but the only quality that will take us away from our pain, lies beneath us, within us, under the skin.

Written by Andrew Kaminski

The post Layer by Layer ‘Under the Skin’ Artistically Takes Us… [SPOILERS] appeared first on Artiholics.

George Zimmerman  (yes, that George Zimmerman) is dabbling in a new hobby standing  other people’s ground…painting.   This 18 x 24 canvas is his first.  It’s the artist’s blue period. He has put it up on eBay, and in a night the bidding war has gotten it up to over 110 K.  I posted a link to this brietbart article about it last night on my facebook page when the bidding was still 99K and change and the reaction from the art community was as you could imagine:

“I’ll hang it next to my Dubya puppies.” – Cartoonist, Kyle Baker

“exit through the gun shop” – Artist, Dave Tree

“SO officially the Movie Art School Confidential was right.” – Painter, Ashli Sisk

What Ashli said was so true.  Watch this scene (above) from the movie Art School Confidential based on the comic by Daniel Clowes

There is a real life question and answer section on eBay which Zimmerman is selectivley responding to. Of the 892 inquiries he has answered 11 (at the time this post was written)

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

(via brietbart via eBay)

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When attending  0 to 60, please PLEASE don’t rush through. These works each deserve at least 60 seconds of your precious time, but once you see a piece for 60 seconds, do not move quickly on to the next piece, like the majority of art viewers do all over the world. For this show, we break the impatient habit that most viewers have, and we take our time with this art.

0 to 60 is up until January 25th, 2014 at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, (144 West 14th Street, 2nd Floor). This show allows for a beautiful meditation on time, and this review will help you appreciate some of the works more, so when you go there, you won’t waste your time.

Right when you walk into the gallery, there’s a site-specific installation that catches your eyes with all of its vibrant colors. The gallery has the privilege of hosting the assemblage work of artist, Lisa Hoke, whose collection of commonly discarded cardboard packages and plastic containers are utilized in unique 3-dimensional compositions right on the gallery wall. The accumulation of recycled materials marks another marker of time- the objects so frequently thrown away- without a second thought as to where they are going, or how much of them are passing through our lives. She essentially honors the sophistication of Robert Raushenberg’s assemblages, by integrating a fluid psychedelic spin of her own.Hoke’s work is immersive, and I wouldn’t underestimate it to literally swallow the viewer as I overheard someone talking to Lisa, conversing about its fragile state, and how it’s vulnerable to collapse. She revitalizes the aesthetic value of logos, covering packaging that most consumers spot when they make a purchase, with the sole intention of using the product, and throwing away the extraneous material as garbage right after their consumption.

Hoke has a gift of breathing life into mundane cardboard and plastic wrapping to become something of a contrasting value- something that will make us marvel. I met Lisa at the gallery opening, and we both took a second to admire the logos found within the materials in her installation. Rarely, do I look at the “Coca-Cola” logo, and say, “that’s a gorgeous design;” but Lisa Hoke’s work evokes that reaction. She recontextualizes everyday consumer imagery into a transient and ephemeral form; the piece at this gallery will be deconstructed once the show is over. The carefully and intuitively placed assemblage is unique to this show- it utilizes the gallery space in a way that only her work can and ever will.

The second work I’m going to mention is Last Breath, by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. This piece intrigued me instantly, with its robotic structure, and moving extremities. The work entails plastic tubing that connects to a brown paper bag that curiously inflates and deflates, at the rate much like our lungs breathe. Apparently, the work is “activated 10,000 times a day, the typical respiratory frequency for an adult at rest.” There is even a digital red counter, marking which breath the bag is at. One way we can measure time is through the amount of breaths we take each day. Have you begun counting? Take three breaths, right now. Do it, and count. Does time always have to be measured in seconds, hours, or days? Rafael Lozano-Hemmer does the extraordinary feat of reminding us that we only have a certain amount of breaths left in our life. Simply remembering his work brings a new appreciation to every breath we take. I just counted- my three breaths took 15 seconds.

In another corner of the gallery, you will find a sweet aspect of the show- that of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, within his legendary installation of white candies individually wrapped in cellophane, weighing approximately 175 pounds in total. If you have not seen his work before, or rather, if you have not tasted his work before, this is your opportunity to do so. The piece is apparently frequently replenished, so viewers are welcome to take one candy per show. I know of people who have stuffed their pockets with the candy. The sweets represent the weight of a human being, and each time someone grabs and eats one, the symbolic weight of that human deteriorates by the weight of one more candy. This reminds me that the cells in our body are constantly dying and regenerating, and that although someone may be 50 years old, most cells in their body are only around 7 to 10 years young. When enough viewers see this show, the entire installation of Torres may pass through a collection of bodies, and help regenerate the cells in hundreds of viewers.

Artist David Shapiro exhibited a piece in the show, in which receipts were displayed within a glass case. These were not ordinary receipts, as Shapiro meticulously and painstakingly reproduced a plethora of receipts from his daily life with pen, color pencil, ink, gouache, and paper. We leave a paper trail behind us, as we buy a coffee here, and pay a parking ticking there. The passage of our time can be marked through these paper receipts, and Shapiro, through these works, glorifies this evidence of our existence. The human touch is seen as not all the marks are pristine, and there are the slightest of errors and curved lines.

Caetano de Almeida’s pollution drawings have a quiet presence, as they have slight differentiations in tone on the paper behind their glass frame. Almeida’s work reveals the dust and pollution that collects over time with the use of stencils on paper outside the artist’s balcony in Sao Paolo. The pollution paintings are evidence of  how, as time passes, small particles leave traces, and you can observe that the lightest areas of the piece were out on the balcony the shortest amount of time, as they had the least amount of dust and pollution collected on them. I am horrified by what the pollution is doing on the lungs of people that breathe in this air everyday.

We constantly keep track of time, and our lives, especially in NYC, are ruled by time- we have to be on time, we want to spend time with the right people, make time for memories that matter. This exhibit enlightens us to consider how everything in our lives accumulates or deteriorates, subjected to the grand ruler of time. There are more artists, and I recommend purchasing the book that accompanies the show, so you can get a more insightful look at all the artists.

Written and photographed by Andrew Kaminski

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New York, NY – Friday, June 7, 2013

I’ve mentioned on Facebook Before that no matter how many times I enter The New Yorker Caption Contest I will never win because my captions are a little too over the top for them.  Well, two days ago I entered the Design Taxi caption contest (which is basically the same concept), and WTF?!!?  I won.  First try bitches! Then again, the caption is brilliant.

If you don’t get the joke, the superheros  Lee Sargent drew going to parent / teacher night (doing what appear to be the Charlie Brown sad walk) are all orphans, a common trope among superheros.  The “Justice League” is a team of Superheros three of these characters (the DC Comic characters) are a part of.

In case you don’t follow us on Facebook, here are a bunch of my rejected New Yorker caption contest submissions:

  Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post And The Design Taxi Caption Contest Winner Is………Me?! appeared first on Artiholics.

New York, NY – Monday, April 22, 2013

One of NYC’s own living art legends, Kenny Scharf was arrested in Williamsburg / Bushwick, Brooklyn late Friday night for spray painting a black and white cartoon drawing of a snake in his signature style on private property (pictured above).  Kenny is a contemporary of Basquiat and Keith Haring.  One of the last of a dying breed of graffiti artist-cum-art stars of the 1980s.

Prior to this weekend, his most recent stint in a New York Prison for Graffiti charges was 30 years ago.  The now 55-year-old’s initial post on facebook after his his prison stay was of the image above with the caption:

“Just Spent 20 hours in 2 Brooklyn jails for this.”
-Kenny Scharf

I broke the story in this article on ArtSucks.com, and in the 9 hours since that posting the article has been read thousands of times by people in 44 countries, shared over 900 times, and liked over 335 times on Facebook.  It has been sourced in articles on Animal New York, Gothamist, Bushwick Daily, and Papermag and retweeted, forwarded, and stumbled hundreds of times.  Thanks for sharing everyone!

UPDATE: Day 2:

ArtSucks is becoming a 10-year-overnight-success, as the article is only a few clicks away from  500 likes.  The story is spreading, and a whole bunch of new sites have picked it up:  GalleristNY, Mass Appeal, Juxtapoz, Fecalface, Blouin ArtInfo and coolest of them all The Huffington Post because they gave us major love by just reprinting the title and first two paragraphs of the article and sending traffic directly to the site with a Read the whole story : Art Sucks.

Because they used my words verbatim, I can now add The Huffington Post to my writing credits.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INITIAL ARTICLE ON ARTSUCKS.COM.

I spoke to Kenny Scharf recently and conducted an exclusive INTERVIEW WITH HIM this evening- read it here.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Kenny Scharf Arrested – The Scoop appeared first on Artiholics.

NEW YORK – Tuesday, February 19, 2013

“I Will Not Be Your Father” – 20 Ad Lines For This Piece of Pop Art

Sometimes pop culture combines with art, making pop art.  In this case the art is not only funny, but functional.  I opened the floor to comments on facebook to see what type of nerd sensibility my friends have towards the Darth Vader “I WILL NOT BE YOUR FATHER” Condom, as well as to come up with some witty ad lines for this product.  I quickly brainfarted a bunch out to get the ball rolling…

I was going to try to work out something with kessel run and 12 parsecs, but I had a bunch of art openings to go to, so I left the floor open.  Here is the best of what you came up with:

#10  The Darth Vader Condom —

Um, can I get an incest joke? – JP Marin

#9   The Darth Vader Condom —

The “Darth Player Condom.”- Mack Simpson

#8   The Darth Vader Condom —

Even a scruffy nerfherder can get it in. – Sly Augustus

#7   The Darth Vader Condom —

You can’t chewbacka your way out of this one… – AngeeLuz Octavia Cortorreal-Perez

#6   The Darth Vader Condom —

Only your ovaries could destory me. – Jemile Nesimi

#5   The Darth Vader Condom —

The force strong with this one – Louis Nieves

#4   The Darth Vader Condom —

With this blast shield down I can’t feel a thing. – Zack Menna

#3   The Darth Vader Condom —

For when you want to keep your midi-chlorians to yourself. – Todd Whyte

#2   The Darth Vader Condom —

Ahem… ‘come… To the dark side’ – Mitchell Crozier

And the #1 Best Ad Slogan- as voted on by Facebook Likes:

Red 5 I’m going in… – Michael J. Brotschul

Written and crowdsourced by Cojo “Art Juggernaut

P.S.

Let’s keep the ball rolling.  Feel free to add your own ad lines below.

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