One more time: The Sponsored Candidate

Nice to see this idea surfacing again. Thomas Friedman, who gives a hat tip to "the blogosphere," on banking and the finance sector's influence on politics:

U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from.

Serfican Ozcan in 2010:

And 2006:

Shepard Fairey offers free Occupy downloads

As Hyperallergic runs down Occupy Wall Street–related art -- including Rachel Schragis' Mark Lombardi-esque diagram, The Declaration of the Occupation of NYC -- Shepard Fairey has made several downloadable designs available on his site. A sampling:

Walker Art Center gets a black-metal logo

When I interviewed Christophe Szpajdel, "the Paul Rand of Metal," last week for an upcoming video as part of the Walker Art Center exhibition Graphic Design: Now In Production, I asked the UK-based artist if he could create a black-metal logo for the museum. He returned today, and after showing off some 50 new logos he created in the past week -- for bands like Jucifer, Human Remains and Powerlord -- unveiled his Walker black metal logo.

Bits: 10.19.11

• A student at Cambridge in 1979, artist John Devlin was forced to move home to Canada after a year due to mental illness, and ever since he's been obsessed with the university's architecture -- the beauty and mathematics of it; the new book NOVA CANTABRIGIENSIS features Devlin's renderings of reimagined and reconfigured Cambridge buildings as they appear on his imagined utopian island of the same name in Nova Scotia's Minas Basin.

• In his book Pig 05049, Christien Meindertsma tracked all the products made from a single pig -- the title is its tracking number, of sorts -- which ranged from ammunition and photo paper to heart valves and chewing gum. The project is part of the Walker exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production, which opens Saturday.

• In a similar vein, photographer Dacia Pierson explores the meat industry, noting that a half million chickens are killed for food each hour in the U.S. "Within the American food system, this process is largely hidden by the USDA and willfully ignored by consumers," she writes. "The project aims to create more transparency in this system."

• The Guggenheim diversifies... into house paint.

• What I've been writing at my day job: "The Hippocratic Oath of a Photographer," "Aesthetic Apparatus’ ‘Monotonous’ Poster Installation and ‘Waterfall’" at the Walker, " and "The Art of Letterhead," among others.

• Bookmarkable: The ACLU on the rights of photographers.

• Walker director Olga Viso (full disclosure: my boss) on what the Istanbul Biennial is lacking: "an indefatigable spirit of generosity and faith in the potential of art to not only transcribe the exigencies of the present moment but transcend them too."

• Urban farming... on wheels.

• Your moment of hobo skull nickels.

Bike-lane stencil: "You look good."

Spotted in Northeast Minneapolis.

NY intervention: "What is essential..."

Via Social Design Notes.

Superflex's Power Toilets

Danish collective Superflex looks at seats of power in a new series that replicates key restrooms. In The Netherlands, it’s a replica of the toilets used by members of the UN Security Council in UN headquarters in New York, “one of the most secure buildings in the world.” And in a Greek restaurant on the Lower East Side, the public restrooms are now identical to those used by execs at J.P. Morgan Chase’s HQ.

Anish Kapoor on Ai Weiwei and the art world's need for a "singular voice" on freedom of expression

In discussing his support for Ai Weiwei earlier this year -- he dedicated his sculpture Leviathan to the then-imprisoned Chinese artist and withdrew from a show in Beijing -- Anish Kapoor hits on a point I've been making for years: That part of the power art has in the realm of politics and social justice comes from its ambiguity. That is, because art is difficult to define, it's harder to dismiss as mere protest.

Says Kapoor:

An art work can be nebulous in relation to the politics of its situation. It can indicate a discomfort without actually articulating it and therefore it’s much harder to pin down. It’s much harder to say: ‘This is subversive.’ It’s hard to define what subversive is –– especially in contemporary language and contemporary visual culture. Ai Weiwei, in that sense, is somewhat more articulated towards a series of events — noting down the number of people killed by corruption and maladministration, or collecting and making monuments with marbled doors of all the houses that have been knocked down and land that’s been taken away from the so-called squatters. It’s still nebulous though. If you look at the work it’s just a bunch of marbled doors. It doesn’t obviously say what we infer from it. Though we know what to infer of course.

He also is critical of the art world for its lack of unity on human rights issues:

The art world is extremely fragmented. It is a place that’s also infiltrated by money and other instruments of influence. And it never finds itself in a place where it can shout. I think we need to learn how to do that and find a way to have singular voices. Through the whole period of Soviet repression of artists, which was severe, the art world didn’t say a thing. The avant-garde has held itself away from human rights. It’s been a great struggle for artists of non-European origin. It’s been a great struggle for women artists, quite contrary to the sense that the aesthetic world is an open forum –– it isn’t. It’s extremely doctrinaire and extremely partisan. And I think those battles are still being fought. So it’s not surprising at one level anyway.

I can only explain it by [the fact that] these old instruments of power in the art world are generally male and white, and within a certain aesthetic tradition. All of that has begun to fall apart in the last decade or so. We still haven’t got to the point where, if you like, lone, outsider voices can be properly heard.

On corporate personhood

Via Edward Winkleman.

Solidarity with Moustache Man

Moustache Man -- New York resident Joseph Waldo -- has friends. After his arrest in June for scrawling the word "moustache" on subway ads, sympathetic graffiti is cropping up -- spelling out in Sharpie the word "solidarity." 
 

Bits: 09.17.11

STRICTLY AMERICAN, SCARCITY TERMINAL, Erik Brandt, 2011, part of the MCAD show Supergraphics
 
• In a rare radio interview today, Ai Weiwei said he's considering dropping out of activism. Urged by friends and family to do so, the 54-year old artist and social critic said, "I have to be careful ... because I may lose my life." Detained for 81 days without charge earlier this year, he noted that of thousands of artists in China, "nobody dared ask one question." He advised young artists to leave the country, noting, "This is crazy." On Aug. 31, China's parliament published its plan to make disappearances like Ai's -- detentions without charge or contact with family or legal representatives -- legal.

• Video: Gerhard Richter painting.

• Mike Leavitt's "Art Army" action figure series has some new members, including Ai Weiwei , Barbara Kruger and a sawed-in-two Damien Hirst. [via]

• Kellogg Co. is threatening legal action against a Mayan archeological group for using a toucan image in its logo; company lawyers say the depiction is too close to Toucan Sam, the Froot Loops cereal mascot. Compare the two.

• Minneapolis exhibitions: 2010/11 MCAD–Jerome Fellowship Exhibition: Greg Carrideo, Teri Fullerton, Julia Kouneski, Brett Smith, and Jonathan Bruce Williams, opens Sept. 30, at the MCAD Gallery, and Supergraphics, now on view at MCAD's Gallery 148.

• Your moment of Robert Rauschenberg's chili and John Cage's cookies.

• Twin Cities Zinefest, organized by antiquarian photographer and self-described radical librarian Lacey Prpić Hedtke, is next Saturday, Sept. 24, in Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis.

• This week, Modern Arts Notes' Tyler Green asked me what work from the Walker Art Center collection best fits news of the spike in bullying and LGBT suicides in Minnesota's largest school district. Here's what I came up with. 

• Shepard Fairey's art makes a cameo on The Young and the Restless.

Panel tonight: Art, politics, censorship at the Soap Factory

Hope to see you there:

As part of the Soap Factory's fall exhibition of Three Artists: Guo Gai, Meng Tang & Slinko, we present a moderated discussion on the subject of Art, Politics and Censorship.

Speakers are Professor Edward Farmer and Professor Tom Rose from the University of Minnesota, Eric Lorberer Editor of Raintaxi Review of Books and journalist and blogger Paul Schmelzer from the Eyeteeth blog.

The discussion will be informed and wide-ranging, covering the interlocking issues that Meng Tang, Guo Gai and Slinko address in their work: all artists who have lived and practiced under repressive regimes, and have used their work to negotiate and understand their lives as artists in those societies. The central concept is the intersection of art and politics: the speakers will look at how and why visual art can be censored, for whatever reason, across different cultures and what engagement, if any, should art have in issues that disturb the cultural status quo.

Please join us at 7:00pm for an evening of lively and informed discussion, and be prepared to join the debate.

More on Guo Gai and Natliya Slinko. Pictured: Installation of Guo Gai's works at the Soap Factory.

Marx in Minneapolis: Soap Factory, Walker host the iconic beard

For Soap Factory director Ben Heywood, what's most surprising about the installation of Crowd Pleaser -- Ukrainian artist Nataliya Slinko's giant steelwool rendering of Karl Marx's beard -- is how few visitors seem to recognize it. The Soap and the Walker Art Center are currently doing their parts to refresh the cultural memory about the famed facial hair and ideas of the German socialist philosopher and Marxism's namesake.

Slinko's piece -- which is part of a larger installation that includes a crude machine that pounds a shoe heel on a podium, Krushchev-style, and a display of work implements like shovels melded with fabricated bricks and bread -- is part of the current exhibition Three Artists: Guo Gai, Meng Teng, Slinko. Slinko's work hearkens back to her life growing up in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Writes Heywood in an email to Eyeteeth, "The whole project is about working through the memories of the material culture of her childhood and teenage years. In that way the emptiness and façadism of a steelwool Marx beard reads quite easily, as does the title; something to please the masses."

At the Walker, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes is shooting the video series Baby Marx in the galleries and the Walker environs. The premise: "The founders of communism and capitalism, Karl Marx and Adam Smith, have been brought to the future by way of a glitch-prone Smart-O-Wave magic microwave oven." The first two scenes (below) have surprisingly funny and incisive moments: Puppet Marx unimpressed by the Marxist notion of Warhol's 16 Jackies being created at The Factory, for instance, and a deadpan quip about Facebook and the lineup of Jackie Kennedy Onassis' mugs.

Circling back to Heywood's note that few in the younger generation that makes up the Soap Factory's core audience know much about Marx, Reyes' project has an instructive mission as well: According to the Walker's description, Baby Marx is playing with the "potential for mass entertainment to operate as a radical educational tool."

Three Artists: Guo Gai, Meng Teng, Slinko is on view at the Soap Factory through Oct. 23. Baby Marx is on view at the Walker through Nov. 27.

Inside the Moveable Type mobile letterpress lab

Starting out in Oregon, Kyle Durrie's Moveable Type, a box van loaded with letterpress gear that's been making stops around the country, rolled into Minneapolis last night. Parked by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the type truck opened its doors to visitors who wished to give the press a pull or talk to Durrie about the project, which she says she's been documenting for an upcoming exhibition. She's designed unique pieces at each stop, and here's what she came up with here.




More shots here.

Moveable Type letterpress van stops in MPLS tonight; afterparty at the Zine Apothecary

Moveable Type -- a 1982 Chevy van loaded with letterpress equipment -- makes a pit stop in Minneapolis tonight with a workshop and talk at the Minneapolis Center for Book Arts, followed by a potluck after-party in South Minneapolis at the Zine Apothecary, a resource center for zine makers near Powderhorn Park.

Moveable Type founder Kyle Durrie, fresh off a stop in Iowa (which is neither Idaho nor Ohio) brings her mobile letterpress studio to MCBA (1011 Washington Ave S) from 4 to 7 as she gives visitors a chance to try out a press and hear about her itinerant printing practice (a slideshow's part of the deal). Then the festivities move to the Apothecary (3310 15th Ave S.), a zine library created by artist/photographer Lacey Prpić Hedtke, where zine makers and fans can share a dish and their work.

"I'd been admiring the Moveable Type truck from afar and was sad it wasn't coming to Minneapolis," Hedtke explains via email. "I must have sent out an Aquarius brain wave, because MCBA asked if I'd want to do an afterparty at the Zine Apothecary if they could get the Type Truck to do an event at MCBA."

She says that following the MCBA event, the type truck along along with the Fly Away Zine Mobile will head to her place, where zine fans can peruse and check out zines (three-week limit). A sister project of the Zine Apothecary, the Fly Away Zine Mobile will be open as a reading loung, she adds, "complete with a stripy orange cat."

Opened this May, the Zine Apothecary combines the zine libraries from the Belfry Center for Social and Cultural Activities and the Stevens Square Center for the Arts, offering some 2,000 zines on topics ranging from politics and health and wellness to food and photography.

"I'm really excited about our large how-to section, and would like to build the collection so that's one of our main focuses," she notes. "We also have a 'Weird' section, and a 'Little of Everything' section."

With the surge in food-truck culture of late, the project seems to fit into the zeitgeist. But Hedtke points out Minneapolis' unique culture as more of a factor.

"It embodies a lot about what I love about Minneapolis -- it's sort of private, sort of public. It's sort of underground, but enough people know about it that it's not unapproachable. The Zine Apothecary is a little old fashioned in its content, a little new-fangled in its approach, and has something for almost everyone."

Graffiti Wars: Banksy v. Robbo

Are there rules to graffiti? That question is at the crux of the fascinating new Channel 4 program Graffiti Wars, which chronicles a long-running feud between a legendary London graffiti artist and an artist whose fame and marketability are unsurpassed in the street-art genre. While the movie tells of an alleged physical altercation between Banksy and King Robbo years ago as one possible motive for the feud, the central question of Graffiti Wars is whether Banksy "broke the rules" of graffiti by altering the last remaining work by 1980s writer Robbo.
Robbo apparently thought so, and engaged in a call-and-response with Banksy:

He responded to Banksy's image of a worker painting over Robbo's piece on a canal wall in north-central London by replacing his old mural with the words KING ROBBO.

To that, Banksy or his fans replied, adding a FUC before KING.

Banksy's infamous "I don't believe in global warming" piece was likewise modified by Robbo, who reportedly canoed to the site in a confiscated canoe (paddling with his hands) to alter the message to read: "I don't believe in global war," with the added note, "It's too late for that, Sonny." He signed it Team Robbo.

The back-and-forth continued from late 2009 and into 2010, with some of Banksy's more famous works getting Robbo retouches. Eventually, as the film tells, things got uglier, with Banksy's fans threatening Robbo (someone added a "Die Robbo" tag to one piece) and Robbo altering one of Banky's trademark rat pieces to give homage to Blek le Rat, the Parisian graffiti artist who pioneered both street stenciling and rat imagery in the '80s: Banksy Le Rat.

While Banksy once acknowledged his debt to Blek, the French artist doesn't seem to share the sentiment. "I'm not sure about his integrity," says Blek in Graffiti Wars about the appropriation of his style and imagery. Blek, whose website says he's the "original stencil pioneer," also doesn't get the same kind of props in the art world. The Deitch-curated Art in the Streets exhibition at LA MOCA dissed Blek altogether, as Carolina Miranda wrote in her ARTnews review of the show: "British prankster Banksy is given a sprawling space for an installation that includes a steamroller, stencils, and a taxidermied dog apparently relieving itself, while Blek Le Rat, a pioneer in the stencil form whose tongue-in-cheek images predate Banksy's work by at least a decade, is left out entirely."

The program -- which includes interviews with Ben Eine, Robbo, Blek le Rat and others -- concludes with Robbo starting to see some Banksy-style success of his own. After criticizing Banksy's lucrative career and his lack of "street cred" Robbo winds up with a solo show at a gallery that helped launched Banksy's commercial career, and gets a commission to do a giant mural to promote a film at the Berlin Film Festival. Unlike Banksy, who didn't make an appearance at the Oscars when Exit Through the Gift Shop was nominated, Robbo attended the film's premiere, wearing a suit and a mask to hide his identity, to vamp for the cameras on the red carpet.

But that seems to have been the end of his rise, at least for now: A few days after filming for Graffiti War finished in April, Robbo was found unconscious with serious head injuries near his home and put into an induced coma. Robbo has been released from the intensive care unit, the London Standard wrote last week, "but his condition is not thought to be improving." As Team Robbo plans a fundraiser Sept. 4 to raise funds for Robbo and his 17-month old daughter, Banksy is being urged to donate a work for auction. He reportedly hasn't yet responded to that request.

Bits: 08.25.11

Big Yellow Rabbit, Florentijn Hofman, Oreboro, Sweden, via Juxtapoz

• Damien Hirst's sculpture Charity, a 22-foot girl with a leg brace holding a collection box, has been vandalized in Bristol, UK. The word "HOAX" has been spraypainted on her dress. Via @GroundswellBlog. (Which reminds me: I, too, am on Twitter. Are you?)

• Pete Brook, who runs the excellent site Prison Photography, is fundraising on Kickstarter to fund a road trip to do some 40 audio interviews cross-country with photographers addressing prisons and prison reform. Help fund this worthwhile project.

• Little-known fact about Clara Kim, former REDCAT director and new senior visual arts curator at the Walker: She learned to drive stick shift from a member of Superflex. That, as well as news that she'll be curating a show of video projections by Minouk Lim next May, in Minnesota Monthly's interview.

• The Rochester (Minn.) Art Center has reportedly been getting some unfriendly press over its unsuccessful request from the city for $23,000 in funds to help cover a shortfall in operational costs. Go to the local paper to vote on whether you think the center should receive taxpayer funding.

• The new issue of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, on "Grassroots Modernism," is ready for advance orders.

• Your moment of dogheadwall.

Twin Cities art weekend: Hopsack, Sing Along, Nightmare, S.S. Soap Boat

Clockwise from top let: Guo Gai, Hopsack Painting Co., Nightmare, Giant Sing Along

• The Soap Factory opens the exhibition Three Artists: Guo Gai, Meng Tang, Slinko Saturday night. Beijing-based Guo Gai's politically charged large-scale photos will be on view, and his chorale work "Lament" will be performed live by a local choir. Gai was detained by Chinese authorities for a month this April for his involvement with the pro-democracy movement; he is prohibited from traveling outside China and won't be attending the opening. Minneapolis-based Chinese artist Meng Tang will present her projection/installation piece Impression: Babel, and Ukrainian-born, New York-based sculptor Slinko will present the work-in-progress Make-Believe, which explores "the poetic possibilities of a physical object, its cultural role, the artistic labor invested in its materiality and its place in the contemporary circulation of immaterial commodities."

Mark your calendar: I'm part of a panel discussion on "the interlocking issues of art, politics and censorship" on Sept. 17 with sculptor and exhibition co-curator Tom Rose, University of Minnesota China historian Edward Farmer and Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer.

• The Future Presence Gallery, an occasional gallery at 1126 2nd St. NE, Minneapolis, presents Future Presence 3, a group show featuring works by Bryant Locher, Nathaniel, Austin Swearengin, Justin James Sehorn, Joshua Wilichowski, Hannah Hall, Russ Olson, Danielle Voight, Gregory J. Rose, Ben Lansky and Andy Shannon. Aug. 26–28.

• Hopsack Painting Co. is redoing the Dressing Room. Named after Valspar Paint's most popular color, Hopsack is the brainchild of Broc Blegen, whose inflatable George W. Bush monument I featured awhile back. His team of artists will unveil their creative use of the bland color at the Dressing Room, the residence/gallery of former Art of This Gallery head David Petersen and Crystal Quinn. Recepti0n Saturday night.

• Saturday afternoon sculptor Aaron Dysart embarks on the maiden voyage of the S.S. Soap Boat, a seaworthy vessel made from 550 pounds of soap -- a metaphorical probing into the question of what it means to clean up the Mississippi. Launch starts at 1 pm at Boom Island in Minneapolis.

• And going on now at the Minnesota State Fair, the Giant Sing Along. Step up to one of 32 microphones to sing along with karaoke favorites presented on a giant LED screen. Shy singers, fret not: the mics are auto-tuned to disguise voices. A project by Montreal-based artists Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat, the project is put on by Northern Lights.

• Also from Northern Lights, Andréa Stanislav's Nightmare, a public video work that creates the illusion of a white horse galloping on the Mississippi, at night, and in slow motion:

Nightmare makes its much-anticipated debut launch from Harriet Island in St. Paul, MN, on Friday, August 26, 2011, at 9:00 pm.

Nightmare will initially travel downriver past the Wabasha Bridge toward Lowertown Saint Paul after the launch, visible only from the Harriet Island side of the river till it turns around. Once Nightmare turns around, it will head upriver toward the High Bridge and Minneapolis, visible only from the downtown Saint Paul side of the Mississippi. It is anticipated Nightmare will be visible from downtown Saint Paul with views of the Mississippi between approximately 9:30 and 10 pm, passing by Upper Landing Park (across Shepard Rd from the Science Museum at Chestnut St.) at approximately 10 pm.

Photographer Wing Young Huie on the stabbing death outside his Minneapolis studio

Known for his photographs of Minneapolis' urban communities, Wing Young Huie has long lived and worked in some of the city's most diverse and bustling neighborhoods. His new one in south Minneapolis was recently the site of a stabbing: 22-year old Justin Jackson was killed Friday at an intersection near Wing's studio. Police won't be pressing charges as the stabbing was ruled self-defense and likely gang-related. On Facebook today, Wing reflects on the situation and welcomes visitors to the neighborhood for today's vigil to stop by his studio. While "art and engagement" is a buzzword in the institutional artworld these days -- and an admirable one at that -- I respect the many artists like Wing who embody it, by opening their studios or using their work to reflect and examine who we are and how we're connected.

His Facebook message and photo (above):

The tragic stabbing death last Friday in front of my Third Place Gallery on 38th & Chicago has been highly charged, provoking a multitude of reactions from paralyzing fear to connective support. It shocks and exposes our bubbled realities.

I've been interacting with many of the mourners keeping a vigil, inviting them into my gallery as the blood stained sidewalk became a growing shrine. To consider all the things that had to happen, the confluence of personal and historical dynamics, in this neighborhood, in this country, to bring this horrible incident to my front door, ostensibly over a pair of shoes, is dizzying and incomprehensible.

How will this corner and beyond respond to this and its rippling currents? The wake is today, Wednesday August 24, 2011. Sometime after 3 pm a large contingent will converge here to pay their respects. A very, very large police force will be here also.

I will be here too. All are welcome to come to The Third Place today and show their support.

Peace.

Wing Young Huie

Bits: 08.24.11

Jerome Liebling, Butterfly Boy, New York, 1949

• Of Lei Yixin's monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., just unveiled in Washington, Hyperallegic writes: "It is the first monument to a non-US president on the National Mall and the first dedicated to a black American, except, well, it is memorialized in white … to fit in, we assume."

• Meanwhile, in Indianapolis, members of the African-American community are protesting a planned sculpture of a freed slave by Fred Wilson, and in Charlottesville, a resident wants a 1919 sculpture of Sacajawea moved inside because it "obviously denigrates both women and Native Americans."

• RIP Jerome Liebling, photographer, filmmaker and founder of the University of Minnesota's film and photography program. Here's Mike Hazard's short film on the photographer.

• Today Tyler Green's Tumblr blog 3rd of May -- which groups headlines with relevant works of art -- links Otto Dix's Shock Troops Advance Under Gas (1924) from his amazing series The War with news about fears of the safety of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile.

• Warhol contemporary Ultra Violet proposes a Robert Indiana-esque 9/11 memorial.

• Must-read from Pete Brook: How Google's mapping tools have spawned a new breed of art projects, for Wired.

• $278.4 billion: How much "key cultural industries" contributed to the U.S. economy in 2009, according to the NEA.

• Get your geek on: R2D2 sweater.