Oh, so THAT's what happened to that thing...

 

(image of poor Lady Liberty from flatbushnelson on Flickr)

Long story short, I'm a 6.5 year resident of Ditmas Park, one of the more recently annointed "it" neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Since 2004, a tiny, fairly dirty coffeehouse named Vox Pop has had a tattered Statue of Liberty replica out front. The previous owner tried to run the place into the ground with questionable business practices (amassing a ton of healthcode violations and fines) then cut his losses and ran, leaving the poor new manager to deal with his mess. In the end, it all turned out okay, because just like in "It's a Wonderful Life," concerned residents decided to cough up their hard earned money to pay the fines, reopen the place, and stake a claim in ownership.

Then several weeks ago, someone stole the statue from the sidewalk. Not too surprising, if you ask me. Its right arm was literally being held together by duct tape when last I checked. There is such a thing as industrial solvent, soder and paint to repair artwork properly (i.e., duct tape is not fairly archival material, per se). So much like the lawn gnomes held hostage who have ransom videos sent back to their owners, the thieves of the statue decided to post their "statement" on You Tube and a shitstorm has ensued.

Truthfully, I really don't care much about this story, which appears to be nothing more than mere vandalism and 15 minutes of fame for the perpetrators. As an art lover, I'm much more interested in the artistic merits of the video, which are dubious at best. To say not a lot of thought went into this piece would be the understatement of the year. I can't tell if their goal is to make a statement against U.S. interventionism overseas, or against Vox Pop itself-- i.e., "Die hippie scum." Truthfully it seems much more a punk-ass attempt at bringing back horrible memories of the slaughter of Daniel Pearl. From the crap-ass audio and pitifully poor lighting, to the sabotaging of poor Liberty's face from the blunt end of a baseball bat, this experience for me was the equivalent of watching an early episode of "Saved By the Bell," before A.C. Slater was a cast member. Like, seriously, what was the point? "We don't want your freedom?" Yeah? Well, I don't want to see your video, nor drink your victim's coffee either. It's almost as if you can sense the perpetrator just learned in Film 101 about subliminal frames and is so excited, he can't wait to share. Note to creator-- it's been done before-- and a hell of a lot better. (see the famed "The Exorcist" demon face as my example)

 

According to the Daily News, this is a huge deal, so check it out. In the meantime, as you can probably tell, I really don't care for the much lauded Vox Pop. Their coffee has a bitter battery acid taste, with no nutty undertones; they got rid of the best tea they ever had (a fantastic strawberry green); shut down their awesome summer BBQ guy; and continuously tout how environmentally conscious they are, yet blast two air conditioners with the door open on an open mic night where it was literally 60 degrees outside. Upon me asking the counterperson to turn down the air on the frozen solid 9 customers in the room, I was told, "It gets hot in here with all the customers." Ha. Liberty be damned.

For FB'ers, here's the link, because the video won't show up in the blog import. Enjoy.



 

Fallen angel: Laurel Nakadate at Leslie Tonkonow Projects

Laurel Nakadate simply does not know her own power, for if she did, she'd certainly have mercy on the damned souls that populate her provocative works on display at Leslie Tonkonow Projects. Known primarily as one of the "hottest" female artists working today, Nakadate is an example of pure physical perfection-- an ideal feminine specimen-- but she turns our aged notions of feminine beauty on its head by also being sly as a fox, and naughty as a misbehaving two-year-old.

Throughout Fever Dreams at the Crystal Motel, you can almost feel bedbugs crawling up your neck as you watch the Yale-educated artist and her various cohorts laying belly-up on mattresses long ago needing disposal. In one clip, Nakadate writhes on the hardwood floor, possessed. The squalor of the cheap motel envelops you as a pitiously haggard gentleman monotonously intones for Satan to release her captive soul. "Go away evil spirits. Leave her body. Leave! Leave! She's a good girl." Good girl? Hmm. I wouldn't go that far.

Nakadate is a good girl by no means. No, here is a woman who knows what she wants, when she wants it, how she wants it, how much she wants it, and she's going to get it NOW. This reviewer loves this quality in her. Nakadate is literally the most powerful female artist out there working today. But at the same time my heart goes out to the various sad sacks she seems to gravitate to (i.e., prey on). For Nakadate is more like a lionness on the hunt for sweet game. What's terrific about the artist's body of work is the powerful role reversal. In Nakadate's world, there are no male predators following innocent young lasses into dark alleyways, for the artist herself is a far more terrifying concept than any anonymous thug.

In one of the best scenes from Little Exorcisms, Nakadate directs the camera to repeatedly zoom in on a drifter filling up at the pump. We're in some corner of Nowheresville, nary a soul around. He smiles creepily in as come-hither way as he can conjure, thereupon playing a charade with the camera. Casting his line as if he were a fisherman reeling in his catch, he giggles uncontrollably. But the joke's on him as his genetic flaws are bared for the whole world to see-- a gaping hole where his front teeth should be, with vicious fang-like overgrowth of a jaw too inbred to be able to hold this bone structure. Maybe in his next lifetime he'd be able to catch a lady like Ms. Nakadate, but it's highly doubtful. Though I believe the artist in the past has mentioned her relationships with these cast of characters are harmless, I'm not so sure. In this case, I must ask if reverse gender victimization is excusable if they don't realize their part in it. Becoming self-aware is not necessarily in the cards for each of us, and for those that do not have that ability, kid gloves may be a necessity.

In another video, a bikini-clad Nakadate dances provocatively in the desert to the strums of Bruce Springsteen. Evoking Tawny Kitaen and her legendary Whitesnake poses, the artist becomes her own video vixen-- her serpentine motions thrill, electrify and captivate. Much like a young woman experiencing the joy of her sexuality for the first time, she directly confronts the viewer with raw attraction in its most basic form. The Id of Ms. Nakadate knows no bounds, and this is a powerful concept.

In a far funnier vignette, Nakadate rides in a train car looking out the window at the barren rural landscape. Suddenly, up comes her tank top as she flashes her breasts to an audience of no one. At first it's funny, and then upon subsequent views, I found it a great study in vanity and cock tease 101. It's certainly one of the funniest tongue-in-cheek narratives of the "look at my tits" culture that plagues today's young women, who seem to only know their value from Girls Gone Wild, or reality tv porn stars.

Fever Dreams at the Crystal Motel will be on view all the way until July 24th. There's simply no excuse for missing it this summer.

Makes me want some hot cocoa

 


I've recently had the pleasure of discovering the work of Swiss via New York artist Clarina Bezzola. There's a lot more here than what first meets the eye. I encourage you to take a chance on her "Swiss Miss: A Gathering" performance video clip on her website. Some days it seems we all must put on our best show for entertainment's sake, before we wriggle back into our own annelid sheaths. Really interesting stuff.

 

Saving Airstream Ranch

"That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."
-John Stuart Mill.

"Being eccentric is one thing, being an ass to others is another..."
-Olympia Lambert

Ahh, Central Florida-- land of open sky, enormous sinkholes, rattlesnakes, armadillos, and ground zero of mobile home living. Right now controversy is a'brewing over a man who at first look seems to have meant well, but group mentality has taken hold and the call to "Clean that shit up" has now arisen.

(photo at left by Kathleen Flinn of The St. Petersburg Times)

This blogger herself grew up in a tiny enclave in Pasco County known as Dade City. Us yungins' would entertain ourselves for eons based on a slight rearrangement of the town's lettering. You see, in them thar' neck of the woods there isn't much to do. So it isn't much of an exaggeration to say that when ANYTHING happens outside of the ordinary, it is considered to be extraordinary.

Take one Frank Bates, an admitted "eccentric" living in Dover, near Plant City in Hillsborough County (an aluminum living town if there ever was one). You see, Frank has the general aura of a performance artist/RV salesman and general shit-stirrer. A few years ago, after taking a helicopter trip around the country-- (yes, a cross-country helicopter trip)-- Frank got inspired after visiting Texas' famed Cadillac Ranch's ode to Stonehenge and decided to do his own homage on the property next to his dealership, utilizing the grande dame of the road, the Airstream trailer. (This guy might have Hunter S. Thompson beat in terms of randomness.)

So off Bates went, submerging a group of junkers in the sandy ranchland directly facing I-4 (Central Florida's major thoroughfare connecting tourist meccas Tampa and Orlando.) But now his creation is getting its first taste of censorship amidst cries for the public good. Hillsborough County has fined him repeatedly for the "eyesore" that the neighbors are up in arms over. Of course, apparently Mr. Bates decided to sink the shinier side of the Airstreams facing the neighbors, blinding them. These neighbors are apparently in other trailers of the non-Airstream variety. Apparently the ruckus has caused many discussions amongst the neighbors of varieties like, "What in tarnation is that nut up to now?"

The funny thing is, if Bates were in this fair city of ours, he just might get a space in the Whitney Biennial, or at least Andrea Rosen Gallery.

(Andrea Zittel's 1995 "Travel Trailer Units"; personalized trailer design,

for the astro-turf lover in you)

Last week Bates had his day in court. He was given until April 15th to cease and desist-- (I.E., dispose of his trailers) with the County Code Enforcement Board unanimously deciding his creation is not "art," per se, but garbage. I can't help but chuckle, knowing how much the contemporary art world has been discovering a newfound love of trailers and trailer trash-- Andrea Zittel, Amy Vogel, Cheryl Molnar all come to mind, as well as Kai Althoff and Nick Z.'s wild installation last summer at Barbara Gladstone. The only thing missing there was smashed up cans of PBR.

(at right-MOMA's ode to trailer trash, 2007)

What strikes me the most odd about this whole story is that there's so many other factors at play other than just government declaring what is and what isn't art. Number one, why are we so fascinated as a culture by those in less-than-fortunate circumstances? The literal act of "sinking a trailer into the dirt" is doing something against its very purpose. To their owners, an Airstream represents a freedom from being tied-down. The open road lies ahead; the sky is the limit. The next door "mobile homes" are quite different. They are fixed to their concrete foundations, with no way to escape. Their owners find themselves trapped in a temporary existence, but on permanent plane.

(Above, Amy Vogel's recent take on the bucolic, but dark undertones of living amidst the temporary)

And for those of us in the urban centers, all of this almost sounds laughable. We immediately dismiss trailer trash, thinking of Jerry Springer rather than a hardworking family unit based on closeness, or love of nature and the land. And when art does focus on this sub-genre of society it's not necessarily "embracing" and sharing in the laughter, but I feel it's much more the act of the school bully. We're here in the top galleries of the world, pointing like Nelson from the Simpsons, shouting, "HA-HA!"

In fact, cruelty is something regularly overlooked in contemporary art. The upper eschelon's fascination with the underclass knows no bounds, nor boundaries. Perhaps Mr. Bates himself has overlooked the effect this has had on his neighbors as well. Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, as well as freedom to create one's art. But in Bates' case, he's more of a Richard Prince, doing an appropriation of a much-better made, and much more accepted display in Cadillac Ranch, to say nothing of Stonehenge, lest we forget the O.G..

Still, I do find the censorship issue in this case to be unsettling, but at the same time this is almost insulting to these residents, and in their own backyards-- literally. It is one thing to have public art in public spaces, but when hurt feelings gets involved, where does the property line end?

(at left, Cheryl Molnar's "Airstream" Trailer)

Paging Sir Mix-A-Lot

Oh... my... god.

Her butt is so big...

Seen at the closing of the Armory Show Saturday evening. I believe the artist's name was Anastasia.

If anyone has any information on her, please do share. I was enthralled by her presence, as were the horde of other paparazzos snapping away. This was performance art as its most visual eye-candy induced engaging. The dress itself was also quite impressive, as was the wearer's stamina. It must have weighed a ton.

For some reason I keep picturing Dick Cheney must be hiding under the camouflage in some varied state of undress.