Blog

Dave Hickey Day

I haven’t seen this posted anywhere, so I thought I’d link to it. This is Hickey’s lecture in MP3 form from the Frieze fair this year. It deals with art and money.

Here is an interview with Hickey in the Believer which has been posted other places.

note: If you take a drink after every time he says, “do you understand” or “you know what I mean” you might get quite drunk—that is if it is an alcoholic drink, of course.

Murakami @ MOCA

I went to the members’ preview of Murakami’s retrospective, survey, or whatever MOCA calls it.

I never saw a problem with the Louis Vuitton booth, and it fit in quite well with the overall installation and body of work. I saw at least one member with bags under his arms. I also liked the all-white-attired staff in the shop. It was a bit alien being in the boutique, but no more so than being in one of their stores anywhere.

In my opinion the best painting in the show was the painting on the outside wall of the boutique, 727-272. Another set of paintings I liked was of smiling flowers that appear to fold around a sphere. They were good images, but as with most of his painting they could be vinyl prints and not really lose any impact.

I don’t know if this particular one is in the show, but as way of example here is a flower ball.

TAKASHI MURAKAMI
Flower Ball (3-D), Kindergarten, 2007
Acrylic and silver gold leaf on canvas mounted on board
39-1/2 inches diameter

There was no need for Kaikai Kiki to have a booth within the exhibition like LV. MOCA functionally turned their bookstore into a booth for them (I am not passing judgment, more a point of fact).

Next door at the Japanese American National Museum, there is going to be a Giant Robot biennale art exhibition opening on Nov. 3rd. They currently have a nice exhibition about the Japanese influence on gardens in the US up until Jan. 13th, which is also the duration of the Giant Robot exhibition.

nuit américaine

“day for night” or removing the background and replacing it with black. Sunset and Vine

A Pink Version

A while ago, I blogged about a fluorescent light missing its sign, and stated that I wouldn’t paint it for various reasons, then I reversed myself by the end of the post. I was thinking about making a similar claim of “liking the it but I won’t paint it” for this image, but then again they would make a nice pair of paintings.

As with the other one, this is unedited, except for making it web friendly (reduced size and saved for web). I forget what store this hangs over. It is next to Mexico City in Los Feliz.

the first one.

From the Streets of New York

Somewhere near 7th Ave and 13th, I think.

Leaving New York

Tonight is my last night for what has been a very good trip to New York. The show is doing well, I saw everything I wanted to see, picked up some new paints to try, saw friends, and I didn’t need to run around to get everything done.

Installing “The Exhibition”

Put the show up today, though I mostly watched and accessed the internet from the gallery computers. Went to the Spotted Pig for the second day in a row. Very good burger, but I can’t believe they got one star in the Michelin Guide. I had their beets the other day and the only flavor was salt, but very good burgers.

Hector Soriano

My friend, Hector Soriano, past away on Wednesday. He was suffering from liver and kidney failure. I know some of you knew him but may not have been in contact with him in recent years as he seldom left the desert after graduating from UCLA in 2001. Whitney and I were fortunate enough to visit him on what would be his final day. He will be sorely missed.

NYC

I arrived in New York last night in preparation for the opening of my exhibition at Plane Space.

Oct. 10th (Wednesday) from 6pm to 8pm, 102 Charles Street, between Hudson and Bleecker in the West Village, link to the gallery website HERE for further information. The catalogue they made for the exhibition looks really good.

So once we finished a “welcome to New York beer” and returned from dinner, I walked across the street to take some picture of an old style fluorescent flood light that stands above a single gas pump in a small parking lot full of service vehicles. The structure has been there forever, but I don’t recall ever seeing it on before.

Unrelated, this picture is from a few days ago in LA. The light was fading quickly and this is what I got before the sun went below the horizon. The painting is of my dentist with a reflector.

Red, Yellow and Blue

One of the best things about having a blog is being able to tell people things they probably don’t care about. Whomever I might have relayed this tidbit to would have probably placatingly responded “that’s nice.” And to those who reads this, that might be the most enthusiastic response I get. But as I don’t have comments on this page, I will not have to hear any lack luster utterances.

For more than a year, I have been painting variations of the latest bus shelters in LA. The first ones had yellow ceilings, and because of my driving patterns it was a while before I noticed the red ones.

Last week while driving to UCLA at night, I noticed blue ones on the west end of the Sunset Strip. Hopefully in the future there will be some light posters in the lightboxes, so I can blast out the image as I did with the yellow and red ones. Here is hoping there is another Citi campaign soon.

(note: the yellow and red shelters have been photoshopped.)