Eye Candy Friday: Angelika's Addiction or The Language of Laughter

This week, a poll sampling folks from 15 countries found that Americans are considered the funniest of nationalities and the Germans are the least funny.  The Reuter's report on the poll quotes Mark Twain's saying that "a German joke is no laughing matter."  We'll, they may not make us laugh (intentionally), and it might seem that they are incapable of laughter themselves.  But there could be some exceptions.  Below is a video that has, of late, smitten and amused Angelika to no end.  I'm sharing it here to give you a wee indication of what I've been living with recently.  Every so often I hear the audio of this video wafting in from the other room joined with laughs and those "oh that's so cute" sort of sighs.  The German lady just can't seem to get enough of this.






This next video might serve as some evidence that Germans are indeed capable of eliciting laughter from others - simply by being themselves.  This news report is on a laughing club (lach club) in Germany, where there is a proscribed time and place for everything.  This video is in German.  That just makes it funnier.





Speaking of the German Language, Mark Twain's meditation on trying to learn the German tongue is entitled "The Awful German Language".
For my own purposes, I have no intention of really to speak German.  I'm just trying to hone my mimicry of any spoken moment of German I come across.  Also, my lack of knowledge and comprehension does nothing to prevent me from reciting any German text I find to Angelika.  I find this pastime enormously amusing. I believe she does too. Her amusement is manifested in a pretense of eye rolling incomprehension of  what she's just heard. 

 I will say that Angelika, being German and all, is not among the unfunniest of folks. I guess since she is also an American citizen, the balance of her national identities places her in the middle of the spectrum.....She's part of a hybrid group:  1/2 Kraut + 1/2 Yank = Krank.

I've posted a couple some recent ECF posts over on MAYKR which I didn't get around to posting here, but you can find those and all the others under the Eye Candy Friday label at MAYKR.com

Some of the Greatest Things:

In no particular order:  Reeses Peanutbutter Cups, Mama Rinnhofer, Icci, 

Constantin Brancusi, the Green Onion Lounge in Omaha, Nebraska. 

ManMade, NatureMade

Saw this monstrosity while crossin Park Ave last week.  

Later discovered it's a work by Urs Fischer.  whatever.

I found this drawing when I returned from work on Thursday. 

 More adolescent made than man made

The Two Most Beautiful People in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Two Superstars: Angelika Rinnhofer and Billy Name.

Angelika and I visited the home of Billy Name last week to have a chat with that man of myth for an upcoming episode of  Dead Hare Radio. 
A selection of Billy's photographs from his days documenting life in Warhol's Factory are currently on view at the Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Rhinebeck, NY ( 22 E Market St.) through May 22.  Billy will be giving a talk at the gallery on Saturday April 30th during a reception taking place from 5-8pm.  These particular photos on exhibit were originally included in an exhibit curated by Emma Lavigne entitled "I Am A Cliche - Echoes of the Punk Aesthetic" which was part of the 41st Rencontres D'Arles Photography event last year.

I'll be capturing audio from Billy's talk which I expect will join portions of our conversation with him from last week for the radio show. 

 Considering he's the man responsible for making the Silver Factory silver, I couldn't resist snapping a few images of the shiny-backed insulation on Billy's back porch, from which one can see the Mid Hudson Bridge, the color of which he claims inspired the choice of decor for Warhol's studio.

Billy's roommate.  I didn't catch his Name.

By chance, Flavorwire recently published a "where are they now" item on Andy Warhol's surviving Superstars, including Billy.

Eye Candy Friday: hi yo, i've got plenty of time.

Not much to say.  Just something to loooook at. The listening isn't bad either. This video by Michael Bell-Smith comes via Art Fag City.


Art Tape: Live With / Think About from Michael Bell-Smith on Vimeo.


The Eye Candy Friday Archive

Meet yer Maykr: Charlotte Schulz. Listen on 4/19/11 @ 5pm on 91.3 FM, WVKR, Poughkeepsie, NY.

 Charlotte Schulz and Peter Iannarelli talking seriously.

This Meet yer Maykr installment, focusing on the work of Beacon, NY artist Charlotte Schulz has an added element: audio.

 One of the drawings on the wall of Charlotte's studio.

In fact, this Meet yer Maykr is an audio studio visit which will be heard on The Dead Hare Radio Hour on WVKR 91.3 FM in Poughkeepsie NY.  My conversation with Charlotte, and fellow Beaconite artist Peter Iannarelli who joined us will be aired on Tuesday April 19th at 5pm on WVKR, 91.3 FM in Poughkeepsie, NY.  If you can't pick up the station, you can listen to the live stream at wvkr.org.
As usual, the podcast version of the show will be available to listen to and available for download on iTunes later in the evening of April 19.
Listen to the episode here and now:

Images from the installation Object Lesson, curated by Karlos Carcamo at Para/site in 2005.

courtesy, the artist, via: charlotteschulz.com

There are more images from the Para/Site exhibit on Charlotte's website, 

and here is the Object Lesson press release.

Check back soon for more images, and audio from our studio visit.

One of the paintings from 2000 that was included in Charlotte's exhibit of paintings at the 

Van Brunt Gallery in 2009.

 A detail of Charlotte's untitled work for Windows on Main St., 2006

A Chelsea Stroll in March

NYC is simply a dense cluster of little villages and nowhere does that notion ever feel truer than in Chelsea.  I had a little time to catch a few shows back after making an art delivery back in mid March.

I saw two colleagues from MoMA at the Andrew Kreps Gallery.  I ran into a designer I was helping install this week at Bard CCS.  I ran into Amy Lipton on 11th Ave.  Amy told me about a new gallery in Beacon that I hadn't even heard of.  It's called Estuary Gallery.  It's located over at the loft project off of Rt 52.  Amy said she tried to go to the opening of the inaugural show the previous Saturday, but couldn't find the place (it can be confusing to navigate that area if you're not familiar with it, especially at night.)

At the Josh Smith Show at Luhring Augustine Gallery, I met Jerry Saltz, who was marvelling at the great awfomeness (my word, a cross of awesome and awful) of Smith's work - which has provided me with at least a couple of hours of entertaining conversations.  Peter Acheson and I caught his previous exhibit from last March at Luhring Augustine.  His latest painitngs seem to be striving more for awesomeness than awfulness (something I'm not sure could be said of previous groupings) - aside from those stop signs;  I was challenged by Mr. Saltz to put something that awful in my next show.  That will be priority one, next show I have. 

I also met Phong Bui, editor of the Brooklyn Rail who was at the Augustine with the artist Joel Shapiro.  I spoke with Phong about recording an interview with him for Dead Hare Radio. I was actually capturing ambient sounds during my walk through the galleries and created a sound collage for show #3 of Dead Har Radio.

Let's see....what did I see?  Some unexpected and weird videos - in 3D by Gary Hill, “of surf, death, tropes & tableaux: The Psychedelic Gedankenexperiment,” at Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY through April 23.

I watched Terence Koh edging his way around a mound of salt on his knees at Mary Boone.  Some black and white reliefs of Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks, I believe.  A Tara Donavan at Pace(?) that was a bit too prim for me.  Also, Richard Butler had a show at Freight and Volume.  I'm back and forth with his work, but I'm digging some of his new larger heads.

Eye Candy Friday: Misdirectionals

I can't remember when I learned about the Dazzle Camouflage that was used for British and American navy vessels in WWI and WWII, but I do remember my surprise and thrill at the discovery of it.  You'll see these images repeatedly online, along with other contemporary incarnations of the concept.  For some reason, the newer and alternative (non naval) implementations of the Razzle Dazzle paint schemes don't have the umpphh that the forms overlayed onto these vessels have. The ships themselves are visually stunning canvases on which to deploy the patterns.  There are many references and links to a RISD site that accompanied an exhibit about Dazzle Camou, constituted by material donated by RISD Alum, Maurice Freedman, who was a camoufleur in Florida prior to attending RISD.  
The graphic patterns of the Dazzle paint schemes are particularly appealing to me currently.  I'm relating them to the repetitive graphic qualities of road signs which have been becoming more an more fascinating to me in recent years and which have been finding their way into some of my paintings, but more on that later..

via: http://www.rihumanities.org/

via core principles.blogspot.com

The French Cruiser, Gloire

from Twisted Sifter via Jeff Thompson's blog.

via Twisted Sifter

 via Enemy2Fashion's blog

The Mauratania in Dazzle paint, via: merchantnavyofficers.com

Technical Notice

It seems my main site, christopheralbert.com was hacked or simply had a bad day last week. I'm forwarding traffic here until I get a little time to get things in order, sometime this week.

Sorry for the inconvenience....and deprivation to your visual senses...

Eye Candy Friday: Lost? Never. Just Found pt 2 *with bonus audio

This week's ECF is a belated stream of consciousness addendum to the ECF of the week before last  in praise of the found object.
Our recent Art Book Club (ABC) selection was W.J.T. Mitchell's What do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images; a really astute investigation of images (totems, fetishes, idols) and their presence and power society.  It's well worth a read, or two.  It's one of those reads that asserts itself as framing overlay for how you (I) relate to images.  I also surmise that it's a book that due to the subject and structure is timeless in its relevance; it added a layer of insight and reflection on recent events in Egypt, Libya, Japan and the National Portrait Gallery and more distantly Iraq, as well as the even more quotidian visuals we encounter without noticing.
Mitchell articulates the essence of the found object in a way that I meaningful and recognizable, noting the very finding of which is, by nature a 'fortuitous circumstance'. 

What better place, though, to locate the roots of the found object than in the foundling, a poor, orphaned creature that might just amount to something.  The moment of finding the found object is the moment when one feels oneself to be pregnant or about to adopt something (which comes to the same thing).  This is, I think quite distinct from the moment of finding the lost object (fetishism) or the sublime object of ideology (the idol), neither of which are capable of surprising anyone or of binging newness into the world.

The excerpt above, paired with a portion of  a conversation I captured between Angelika and Peter Iannarelli as part of the Beacon Art Salon's Contemporary Artists on Contemporary Art series, in which Peter talks about his penchant for claiming authorship of found objects..even when those objects aren't lost crystallized the thought in my head that in some way, the studio is a place where conditions can be set in such a way as to create an instance - one that approximates that sensation of an object found.

  

I don't work in an overly determined manner in the studio.  In fact, I leave a lot of room for randomness and automatism in the pursuit (unconsciously) of the found object.  I don't think he'd agree, but when I visit Peter Iannarelli's studio, I see the mechanism found object cloning at work.  But then, we're all just trying make personal discoveries...
So, slightly appropos of nothing other than through the stream of consciousness and fortuity of time, we come to the visual portion of your Eye Candy Friday serving.
Today's images come from the pre-MAYKR photo archive that I happened to  be perusing through recently.  I came across these images of an  installation that Peter Iannarelli did in his studio at Spire Studios  back in 2004, when Spire was still very much the beating heart of  Beacon's art life (to my mind).  This installation probably stands as the high water  mark of  Peter's Walmart phase.  His studio was bedecked as a crazy  post  big box rave, complete with strobe lights streamers and giant  shopping bag windsocks.  Come to think of it, if I'm correct, it was a rave that sported  only the sound of oscillating fans and rustling plastic.  I was a  majorly cool visual experience, and I treasure these photos of it.  I feel  fortunate that I uploaded these images two weeks ago since my external hard  drive crashed to the floor last week, and possibly along with it, a  substantial chunk of the unpublished MAYKR photo archive (along with a  boatload of other data).  I haven't yet had the stomach to really try to  investigate what might be salvageable.

BTW, if you're looking for other treats in the  found object category, look no further....yes, indeed, look further, but don't miss looking at......than Joy Garnett's Unmonumental series of images.

Your complete Eye Candy Friday Archive @ MAYKR.com

What the press is saying about ME.

"....a friend of Ms. Rinnhofer's, artist Chris Albert." - The Pulse (of the Harvey School), March 2011, Vol 11, Issue 10.

 photo: Rachael Borné/The Miscellany News

Matthew and I were interviewed by Emma Daniels of Vassar College's newspaper, The Miscellany News for a story on the Dead Hare Radio Hour.  The story, Dead Hare Radio Hour fosters Hudson arts community, came out last week.  The Misc.'s arts editor Rachel Borné stopped in to the radio studio while we were airing show #1 and snapped the photo above.

Just a couple of bearded, aging hippie/mountain men making radio.....or that's what the caption that comes to my mind when I look at that photo....

Eye Candy Friday: Catch an eyeful

Today's ECF is a commemoration of the procedure endured today by one of us here at KAMP MAYKR.

Art Boobs is an ever growing compendium, in blog form, of all things boob in art - contemporary and not.  I'm a longtime Art Boob subscriber and find it refreshing and enlightening tour through art history.  I usually consume art boobs through my google reader, so on visiting the site today for research, I found that Frank van Eykelen is the man behind Art Boobs.  To him, I say thank you. 
And for those who find this content somehow uncouth or simply not your cup of tea, perhaps you'd appreciate Frank's compilation of photos of people with their giant zucchini on his Stereoparty blog.

But back to boobs.  This Ted talk by Deborah Rhodes, is one that should be watched and passed along. 

(I'll say I have had issues with the marketing juggernaut of Breast Cancer fundraising Campaigns that have infused itself into a  - at the expense, I think, of other, more deadly cancers, statistically speaking.  But cancer is cancer and information relating to innovations and knowledge pertaining to treating/detecting cancer in all its forms should be explored and supported and spread and given the opportunity to be debated, not cast aside by those steeped and committed to the line of conventional thought.)

Still haven't had enough?  Here's a full frontal peek-a-boo taken by c-monster of a work created by Raquel Paiwonsky.  I just found Paiwonsky's website, which features an eyeful and then some.

Your Eye Candy Friday archive.

Dead Hare Radio Hour, show #1 in the can.

The first show of Dead Hare Radio Hour dropped yesterday. It was pretty thrilling to hear it on the radio.

What a roller coaster of emotions, stress, etc. But finally getting it on the air is exceedingly rewarding. Now we just have to turn around and do the same thing next week..and the week after that and the week after that.

You can listen to show #1 on the player below. And by this point, it should be downloadable...(We're still learning this as we go.)

The Dead Hare Radio Hour Launches, March 22, 2011

 
I've been chained to my computer of late even more than previously.  The culprit behind this turn of events (aside from my own impetuous urge to get my self into burdensome, but rewarding projects) is The Dead Hare Radio Hour.
DHRH is a joint project with Matthew Slaats.  He had proposed to me the possibility of doing an art related radio show at least a year ago.  Ideas are easy to say yes to when they are just ideas.  Matthew had shopped the concept around to a couple of local internet radio operations before it occurred to him to check with Vassar College's radio station, WVKR. Matthew works at Vassar in the technology department.  The proposal was accepted and we were suddenly faced with a new recurring deadline, another unpaid gig that comes fully loaded with a vacuum custom made for sucking up hours of personal time.  We both had one of those "oh shit" moments.  Then we went forward, with trepidation and excitement at every step.
Our first show airs tomorrow, March 22 at 5pm, Eastern Time.  Our regular timeslot - provided we're not pitched from the station will be Tuesdays from 5-6pm.  In addition to the broadcast originating in the Hudson Valley (the signal strength is 3400 watts and can be heard in portions of five states,)  the show will be streamed live on WVKR's website, and it will be available for download as a podcast. (Podcast will be available for download by Wednesday evenings....consider subscribing to it - when the feed is set up this Wednesday.)

The format of the show will largely be talk, with interviews and conversations with artists and curators and such, but we also want to feature sound works from artists and musicians and folks who are engaged in radio as an art medium.
Matthew and I are of like minds on many fronts - one of them being that we both are interested in catalyzing and sharing conversations about art and culture -  but we bring different aspects to the show.  He's an artist with heavy a social practice bent and I tinker in the studio.  I think he's more concerned with investigating the role of the artist in society than I am and this may well be reflected in the directions we each follow in uncovering content for the show.

The Hudson Valley will be a major focus of the show content, a - because there's a lot of interesting people and projects based here, and b - because this is where we're at, and the content of the show will, in some way, be borne of convenience (but not of laziness.)  But it's not only going limited to this region...by any means.  We'll be capturing the folks we encounter on our art-driven paths.  It's a big/small world out there and we're interested in examining how concerns/inspirations/connectedness in large and small contexts intermingle and influence the work and conversations that are happening on the ground, in any region.  We will be bringing on board other contributors to add to our coverage.

Given our schedules, much of the show content will be pre-recorded, although we look forward to doing some live in studio things as we are able.  I think we're both far less interested in interviewing people than capturing conversations between people.  I, for one, am an avid listener.  I hope to set up situations that other folks are apt to enjoy listening to.

So Show #1 features two interviews.  We speak with Carolina Miranda of the blog c-monster.net and Duncan McKenzie of Bad at Sports.  I follow both of these individuals, gladly.  ( I've been an avid listener of the B@S podcast since 2007.  It is my weekly dose of art.)  Part of what I appreciate most about both of these projects is the mixture of intelligent reflection and humor (not rarely, the adolescent kind.)  High and Low, intermingled as they should be.
I find both of these interviews entertaining and informative. I hope ya'll will too.  This being our first show - there is some unevenness in the audio quality of show 1, but we're learning valuable lessons everyday as we get our radio legs.

Why the name?  There's a little context on the Dead Hare website, and I'll be posting a bit on that here soon too.

Today Angelika reminded me of these photos she took of a dead hare several years ago in Eastern Colorado.  Dead Hares are everywhere these days.

Eye Candy Friday: Lost? Never. Just found.

I  spied this small sculpture while walking to the Hudson  Valley Tweetup held at Chill last Sunday afternoon.  Though tiny, this  piece has a presence that could rival any di Suvero over at Storm King (which opens its 2011 season on Apr1, BTW.)   On the way back, this thing still presented a pull on me.  So I took it  home.

The new acquisition, re-sited at Kamp Maykr.

 This found work in Poughkeepsie strongly recalls (to my mind) the recent David Hammons exhibit at L&M Arts in NYC

This jacked up Mac laptop screen could pass as a pretty good abstract Cosima Von Bonin piece.

(I couldn't get a photo without that glare)

The full Eye Candy Friday archive over @ MAYKR.com