Category Archives: Art

Slide Hill, Governors Island

Here is the architectural rendering by West 8, the firm that is designing the island, showing what it would look like.

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Click for larger image.

And here’s a picture I took yesterday of the finished, sort of, project (the trees will grow larger).

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Uncanny, except in reality the kids are all adults. There were in fact many children enjoying the slides, but somehow none of them made it into this shot.

 

Stephen Wilkes’ Wrigley Field Day to Night

The other mindblowing photo I saw at the Brooklyn Museum sports photography exhibit was this one, a picture of Wrigley Field from outside the park, that shows the day transitioning from day to night.

This is a sample detail to give you an idea:

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Wilkes took more than 1500 images, then blended them together to make the full image, which you can see in full at the Gallery Stock website.

You can see more of Wilkes’ Day to Night series on his website here.

Tomasz Gudsowaty: Mexico’s Car Frenzy

I was at the Brooklyn Museum show about sports photography this past weekend. It’s a fine survey of the art of sports photography, with some iconic sportastic imagery that everyone knows (Cassius Clay towering over the fallen Sonny Liston in Maine, for instance) and then some other striking stuff.

This picture is by a Polish photographer named Tomasz Gudzowaty and it is a constant amazement to me. The spiral of the roadways and the careening angles of the cars is dizzying, and at the same time embracing. My first thought was of what rules such races might be run, and my second thought was who needs races, the speed is the thing!

Copyright Tomasz Gudzowaty.
Copyright Tomasz Gudzowaty.

You can find more of his pictures of Mexico’s Car Frenzy at his website here. I think his shots of the cars are stronger than the people shots, but all are worth a looksee. And I’ll be coming back to this one often.

The best video you’ll see today. Or tomorrow, but don’t put it off.

I’m not sure why it is. It seems to be a promotion for a band called the Avalanches, who have a new album coming out. It’s called Soda_Jerk vs. the Avalanches and was made by someone named The Was, I guess. But really, you should just watch it. Really, you have to block off 13 minutes and watch it. And don’t worry if you don’t know the Avalanches or don’t like the Avalanches. The film is the thing, as you’ll see (and hear, the soundtrack is great), and it’s amazing.

UPDATE: I hope you didn’t put it off, because the video seems to have been pulled. That’s a shame. Sure it was a copyright mess, images copped from scores of films, but they were reassembled in the most extraordinary way by The Was.

Here’s the screenshot Vice has illustrating its now linkless story. It doesn’t get close to showing how cool this video was (is). I dare call it the greatest video ever made. I hope we find a legal copy.

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Patti Smith on Camus at CUNY

smithoncamusCUNYI went to see Patti Smith talk with Kevin Baker about Albert Camus last night at the CUNY Graduate Center, in what they call the Altman Building.

It was an amiable chat about the great French writer’s first and last books, both unfinished before he died (The Happy Death and The First Man). Smith read from each and talked some about her love of reading, especially French literature in translation.

The talk ended with Smith telling a story and singing a song.

Molly Lowe’s Redwoods

Pioneer Works is an art space in Red Hook Brooklyn.

Discovered/Founded/Developed by an artist named Dustin Yellin, Pioneer Works is a building, artist studios, a public space, a gallery and a garden.

What I know of Yellin’s work, he’s taken cut outs of mostly Victorian imagery and layered them between sheets of glass, so they become 3-d collages. I won’t mince words. These sculptures are beautiful and mind-blowing.  And impossible to photograph. You have to be there.

Redwood’s is the installation of three on-site pieces in the Pioneer Works gallery. The photo only hints at their grandeur. The real payoff is the movie, which is an hour long, has no dialogue, and is about a young woman, presumably Lowe, finding a way to tell her family’s history through the fragmented memories of her  demented grandmother.

The movie uses face and hand masks and lots of plastic design to render the story in a really real way and really unrealistic way. With emotion, but also with the understanding that emotions and memories get confused. That’s part of the story.

A Saturday afternoon well spent.
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