In Living Color

You can watch interviews with all the 20 to Watch artists on the web!

My favorite is this lame Raymond Uhlir guy, who sounds like a total art-tard. Who let him in the show?



comic courtesy of Married to the Sea

Nobody Reads This Thing Anyway

I've noticed from the message boards and comments on almost every art blog and arts site (not this one. Still under el Radar!) in Texas that things usually descend into a horrible acrimony really fast. Is this state made up entirely of bitter, festering, hateful, failed artists? Then I read the comments on Fecal Face, and everyone is pretty positive. Maybe a little too positive about some things they maybe should be, say, a little less totally positive about. But it's refreshing. Or maybe they edit their comment boards.

Or maybe I'm just a big ol' pussy, but I'm glad I'm leaving for grad school in the fall. Wherever that may be I hope it's a happier place than Austin. I'm also glad for one brand new awesome person in the world. The sum of things usually work out for the best.

Weekend Warrior

As many of you may know I'm in a little show called 20 to Watch at the Austin Museum of Art. The opening was this last weekend and kicked ass. Mama Uhlir was proud. And it's a good show overall, I think. Eric Zimmerman has a really nice installation involving an overhead projector covered with architectural model-style towers and little trees iluminating the wall. It activates the space in a good way and translates the ideas from his accompanying drawings effectively. Rebecca Ward painted a wall to loosely resemble a game of Tetris with the falling pieces handled via projected animation that almost perfectly matches the painted pieces. Surrounded by a field of black, it's a neat spacial effect. Jill Pangallo turned herself into a living doll in one of the best/creepiest performance/installation pieces I've seen in a while (although the question was raised what the impact of the piece would be to the public as the performance was limited to the members-only preview).

If you're in Austin, or want to come see the work and hang out, DO IT. Otherwise you can wait until the show comes to a venue near you. After Austin we go to Blue Star in San Antonio (Fall 2008), the Grace Museum in Abilene (Spring 2009), and then Diverseworks in Houston (Summer 2009) .

There's also a good discussion to have about the importance and relevance of shows like these. Since I'm an biased participant now, I'll leave it up to the blog team and the comments below to expand upon this bait. For now.

I Review Video Games, You Make Art

Video games, like manic-depression and drugs, are known to fuck-up an artists drive and focus. If you are trying to make a living by painting nudes at the community center, you should spend your time and resources doing that, and not “just one more game” of online Tekken with the good folks of Japan. I’m here to help. I can give you that “in the know” trendy videogame edge, without any of the cost or effort. I review video games, you make art.

Games will be reviewed on a scale of one to five vaginas.

No More Heroes (Wii)

The basic premise of the game is to become the #1 assassin of all time by defeating a series of ten assassin bosses. When you cut people with your lightsaber-type sword, limbs fall off and blood rockets out of their bodies. It’s the most satisfying way I have ever experienced killing another human being in a videogame. The game, artistically, seems like what the Clash would have done if they had liked videogames and not punk music, and were also popular in 2008 and not 1982, if that makes sense. The parts when you are not killing people are boring enough to ruin the game. I picked up coconuts for half an hour. I wanted to do the Bruce Lee with my Wii nunchuck. If I still smoked weed, I would probably consider this “THE BEST GAME EVER MADE!!!!” I mean, you save your game by taking a shit, that’s like, deserving of a gravity bong rip or something.

({})({})({}) three vaginas.


Burnout Paradise (Playstation 3)

Jenny and I played this game for hours. You race cars around an open Grand Theft Auto style environment. It reminds me of the original Ridge Racer or San Francisco Rush in terms of just pure car game enjoyment, but that probably means nothing to you. I feel like I’m six-years-old in my back yard sandbox putting Hot Wheels in my mouth when I play this game. They have a whole mode of play called “Showtime” where you try to explode as many cars as possible by throwing your wreck of a car into oncoming traffic. Just like real life. I want to stop writing this blog and play this game right now. What keeps me here is a sense of commitment to reviewing video games for an audience that shouldn't be playing video games. I love you.

({})({})({})({})({}) five vaginas.


Call of Duty 4 (Playstation 3)

If you have ever been addicted to hard drugs, you know how this game plays out. Five days after scoring some Call of Duty 4, you’re face down in a pile of empty AMP cans and Dorito bags with a controller in your hand, naked. This game will ruin your life. The basic point of the single-player game is to defeat what I’ll call “Queda” and restore balance to the force of imperialism. There is a level where you are dropping bombs out of an airplane at night on ant-sized “Queda.” There is a level where “Queda” sets off a nuclear bomb, and you crawl to your death. I want to draw a picture of Allah in the sky over Denmark after playing this game. War is awesome. The multiplayer game is like mainlining Ajax.

({})({})({})({})({}) five vaginas.

NO B.S. here

Good news! Our friend Sean Carrol's blog is very popular and spreading the Houston art love all over the world! According to Glasstire's newswire, it "gets 6,000 hits a month and has had 37,000 page views since launch, with visits from 113 countries and every state in the union. Average New York City readers spent 7½ minutes on the site" via Bill Davenport.

I have to say that not all the content on there is particularly interesting or necessarily true, since Sean aka B.S. (for Buffalo Sean) considers himself a "gossip columnist" and doesn't feel the need to spell names right on occasion. It's nice to see that his efforts are paying off though because we do see him at almost every art opening/event/venue in town. The guy has no filter, neither a good or bad thing, but useful since it ultimately leads to the support of anything interesting in Houston, and there's plenty of that.

Funholes

I keep reading, hearing, feeling this general mood that enough people aren't doing enough things, and if they are doing things they aren't doing them awesomely enough. I am sadly guilty of making these complainings myself. I say stop bitching that what's happening isn't good enough and start making things happen yourself. I'm going to second Jenny's emotion from a previous post about keeping things positive, so here's some constructive hints:

• Stop hating your friends for having shows. Start working harder and making more art-friends so you too will have a show that is sparkly.

• As a footnote to the above, start an organization like the Young Republic or the Austin Video Bee. Make a hive. Talk some jive. Stay alive.

• Get a better job that lets you pay your bills. Nothing makes the character of a person more bitter and bilious than hard-scrabbling for each dollar. The starving artist is totes over.

• Don't be an asshole. Be a funhole.

I've Got Soul, But I'm Not a Soldier

Southland Tales is being released on DVD on March 18th!! For those who missed it, this film was in theaters for a bout half a week in a few cities (Austin got lucky), and is probably my favorite film of 2007. Only because I didn't see There Will Be Blood until January. I won't spoil the details of this masterpiece from the director of Donnie Darko, but I do give it a very high personal endorsement. However, I will say it's a film you either "get," or you don't, and definitely not for those who don't understand irony.

Last Night's Party

I could probably count on two hands the artists working in Texas whose work I truly admire and when one them shows up on the Howard Stern show...well, it makes you pause. Apparently Robyn O'Neil is a Benji admirer (whatever that means), and she used the opportunity to ask him out for a date. I don't know whether to file this away under the "Her Business" folder or attempt a further examination. I suppose it's within her purview to use her sexuality to whatever end she sees fit, but this choice must have some kind of impact upon her career as an up-and-coming blue chipper. And in the spirit of due diligence it's only fair to also remind everyone that Jeff Koons (NSFW) exposed all of his junk to public scrutiny (proceed with conversations on gender inequality and double standards).

For now, though I'll leave you with a photo to ponder on this balmy Sunday.

*Original Photo Deleted*

*UPDATE* Robyn had a great on the show, so everyone can relax! Yay!

Pitcher or the Catcher? Or the Shortstop....

I know everybody out there probably listens to this already, but if you don't I highly recommend Bad at Sports' weekly podcast. It's not just the Chicago art scene anymore. Oh, it's so much more than that! They've interviewed gallerists Jack Hanley and Leo Koenig, artist Jeff Wall (a personal favorite), and Chicago critic/theorist James Elkins. For the literary inclined, each epsiode usually ends with a book review. They also talk on a regular basis about the pros and cons of the MFA, the state of art schools, and what it takes to move to New York (for the so inclined). There's also conversations from their bureaus in London, Central Europe, and San Francisco about what's happening in those geos. So don't say I never gave you nothin'.

Daddy's gonna finish his morning scotch now. Go outside and play.