Elastic Minds

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Lacoste, the rag maker of choice for the fashion unconscious, has found that Larissa Sansour is just a bit 'too pro-Palestinian' for their taste in upscale banality. Her work 'Nation Estate' was nominated for the €25,000 Lacoste Elysee Prize awarded by the Swiss Musee de l’Elysee, but mysteriously the polo shirted chumps at Lacoste misplaced their taste & spine and had her removed from the nominations, then-

In an attempt to mask the reasons for her dismissal, Sansour was asked to approve a statement saying that she withdrew from her nomination ‘in order to pursue other opportunities’. Sansour has refused.

Quite a neat little censorship scam- censor the work then try and force the artist to pretend they withdrew it, which makes me wonder did Stalin wear polo shirts? One person who does like Lacoste is mass murdering fascist scumbag Anders Behring Breivik, to the point where Lacoste asked the police to make him stop wearing the brand in court. Which leaves Lacoste desiring a prosaic, conservative, elite image that is so intellectually vacuous it does not discern between a far Right Christianist terrorist and an artist's work that represents a dispossessed and oppressed people. I guess they sought to avoid controversy, Mission Accomplished...in the Bush sense.

"Sustainable Trash", first solo exhibition of Stefan Gross in Belgium opens tomorrow @ Harlan Levey Projects. Stefan's work transforms the gallery into a surreal kingdom of colorful plastic, plush toy animals and other sculptures, offering the visitor a trip into his own magic world. The exhibition starts very playful and light with a selection of recognizable pieces but the more you enter into the epicentrum of the show, the more Paul McCarthy-like sensation it evokes. The back room of the gallery is one giant parallel-universe: goodbye Xmas and jingle bells, this is the real stuff! Ho, ho, ho...

Play here with the infographic!
(HT @deafmetal)

(image: Nocturne PAN by Silvia B.)

If you hurry you can still catch the opening and/or afterparty of The War On Drags/based on a true story curated by Martin C De Waal & happening at this very moment @ Meneer Malasch in Amsterdam.

Participating artists include Ton of Holland, Caron Geary, Natasa Heydra, Silvia B (see image above), Bloedworst (previously known as Antistrot), Iris Roskam & Martin C De Waal himself - selection which promises that you definitely won't get bored!
The exposition runs till January 29th 2012.

We're adding the Cloud skyscrapers from Dutch architecture bureau MVRDV to our "dream buildings to live in" list. The design of the two towers creates the effect of being exploded into a pixel cloud in their middle part. They are to be built in South Korea, at least if the recent controversy around their shape - said to resemble the exploding WTC towers - won't bring on too much of a bad karma. Fingers crossed these beauties will see the light of the day!

Branding of items from all ways of life - Chanel logos firmly leading the competition - served as art inspiration so many times, that the intended surprise effect (we resisted using the word 'juxtaposition' ;-)) became a commodity of its own. Yet these sleek chainsaws customized by Peter Gronquist still managed to bring a grin of amusement to our faces. More branded arsenal can be seen on Peter's website.
(The Vuitton electric chair also scores well.)

(image: visitor inspecting Martin Boyce's installation "Do Words Have Voices" at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, the hosting institution of this year's Turner Prize)

Congratz to Scottish sculptor Martin Boyce on winning this year's Turner Prize. Boyce's victory has been largely predicted, so no real surprise; what's worth noticing 'though is he's the third Glasgow-born or -educated artist in a row (preceded by Susan Philipsz last year and Richard Wright in 2009) to win it and therefore confirming the importance of Glasgow on the map of contemporary art.
Boyce has been selected from four candidates, the other shortlisted being sculptor Karla Black, painter George Shaw and video-installation artist Hilary Lloyd.

(image by Doanie: Hirst's pickled shark - the true collector's catch)

On the eve of the Turner Prize 2011 winner announcement, we also unexpectedly have a nominee for the Brit Art Comedian of The Year award: Charles Saatchi. Saatchi has been nominated for his hilarious article in this week's Guardian, trashing the new generation of "masturbatory" & "eurotrashy" collectors plus other vulgar players of today's art world. The youth these days...

(image: For The Love of God by Damien Hirst, 2007)

Damien Hirst retrospective on display @ Tate Modern from April 4 to September 9, 2012

Although the Olympic circus that's about to explode next year in London is most advisable to avoid, there are couple of events accompanying it which should not be missed - even if simultaneously experiencing alarming audio & olfactory stimuli which large crowds offer.
Damien Hirst retrospective @ Tate Modern is one of them - whatever your opinion of the aging Brit-art l'enfant terrible might be. Plus a chance to see live his £50 million diamond skull, one of the most-talked artworks of the last years.

(nice article about this topic can be found on Artinfo)

British politician & diplomat Paddy Ashdown (who btw has quite incredible career behind him) gave a speech on TEDx Brussels which sharpened all your senses, and not only because of the absolutely brilliant presentation. If you're wondering about Why the world will never be the same & what we should do about it, here are some useful hints.

On Tuesday Brussels hosted one of the TEDx events with, as a theme, visions about the future seen from fields of science, technology, politics & economics and science fiction literature.

The last 5 talks of the day (block called Made in Belgium) ended with this very amusing and revealing presentation about the future of health-care (and not only) by Peter Hinssen, one of Europe's thought leaders on the impact of technology on society.
Watch & enjoy ... May the S curve be with you!

If your income won't allow you to purchase art @ Christie's or Sotheby's, no need to despair! Thanks to new project by Belgian artist Geoffrey de Beer, you can now have the next best thing and for a much more democratic price.

Have a look @ Geoffrey's Art Relics series, which so far include the Bilbao series, Gilbert & George, Walter Swennen, Marcel Broothaers and Wim Delvoye. Surely we can all agree that such an authentic cloth, blessed by the divine touch of some of the greatest icons of contemporary art, is an ultimate "must-have"!

(Photo by Adam Greenfield)

So far the best creative endeavor produced @ OWS: Occupy Lego Land. We love!

(via Boing Boing)

Athens (via Unurth)



Cologne



Bogota

Street art at its best: murals by Blu from Athens, Cologne & Bogota are both great and topical commentary on the state we're in.

Opening on November 26 in Galerie Frank Taal in Rotterdam: Phil Bloom's solo show The World of the Deer and Robots. Phil Bloom, also known as the TV's First Nude, a title granted to her by Playboy and referring to her appearance - completely nude - on the Dutch television in 1967. Great stunt, that nevertheless shouldn't subdue her artistic work, which is definitely worth seeing. The exhibition runs till mid January, don't miss it.

While visiting Frank Tall, pop by in the adjoining gallery space Zic Zerp, showing, as of November 19, Dutch photographer Eric Jan van de Geer.

Up to eleven! A Spinal Tap classic that can't be ignored on this 11/11/11

(Image: I Can See the Whole Room…and There's Nobody in It by Roy Lichtenstein from 1961. The painting fetched a record $43.202.500 yesterday.)

Christie's postwar and contemporary art evening sale which took place last night in NY delivered rayher impressive results, achieving total sum of $247 million (and coupe of hundred thousands extra, whatever...). Records were broken, moods were high, celebrities (incl. Leo diCaprio) were present.

“The world’s top ten collectors were present in the saleroom tonight, and a global community of collectors was bidding aggressively on works by the pre-eminent artists in this category – from Lichtenstein to Bourgeois, Ligon to McCarthy, Gursky to Ray. We are delighted to report more than a dozen new records for many well-deserving artists, and a new top price for any photograph sold at auction.”thus spoke Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s.

Pure Tilt Shift galore!
Photographer and moviemaker Jasper Leonard tells on his blog how he made this amazing tilt shift animation. "... I took about twenty thousand pictures of various spots in Antwerp and digitally altered them to look like miniature scale models and made a five minute clip out of it."

Tattoos have been underground forever - from mysterious Yakuza gang members to sexy Suicide Girls. Tattoos have been mainstream forever - from Goa tribal tattoos to random Chinese characters. Tattoos have been rock&roll forever - from the Tattoo You LP to Henry Rollins' chest.

Garage Magazine and filmmaker Ryan Hope present 'skin', a brand new documentary that is plugged as a "dark, stylish examination of tattoo culture as high art". Expect ink & needles and Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Raymond Pettibon.

Somewhat reminiscent of Nicolas Provost's Papillon d'amour, but then with skulls ;-);
More videos to be seen on McQueenworld.