You left me no other action / cool off whiner, 2004

After Aix en Provence i'm in Turin for Artissima, the contemporary art fair. Not as exciting as the previous years but there're still a few discoveries i'd like to share with you.

Starting with Canadian artist Jon Pylypchuk whose psycho puppies were pretending to behave kind of decently on the floor of the Alison Jacques Gallery booth.

The fugly pets are made using mostly trash materials: scraps of wood, bits of fabric, felt, fake fur, glitter, and glue.

erections pointing at stars and angels, 2004

Fabio Paris Art Gallery (from Brescia, Italy) was showing a couple of nice works at Artissima, such as Space LED, by Tonylight (see previous post.) My favourite piece at the booth was an eerie picture of a guy i though i'd recognized. He was dressed in white and was cautiously walking in the greenest fields you can dream of. Looked like Hans Bernhard from Ubermorgen to me ;-)

psychos_hans_02

The gallery's press release explained the work as follows: "Hans Bernhard is loaded with 10 years of internet & tech [digital cocaine], mass media hacking, underground techno, hardcore [illegal] drugs, rock&roll lifestyle and net.art jet set... Hans Bernhard's neuronal networks are connected to the global network, and his mental illness - the bipolar affective disorder that in March 2002 sent him to a mental hospital - is the network's illness." That experience, in which those two levels - digital and real, bio & tech, nervous system and operative system - merge is summed up in several works, Psych|OS - Hans No. 02 is one of them.

At some point i heard the gallery owner talk about the artists he was representing. Adorable. Like a dad who's dead proud of his kids. He was particularly delighted to explain visitors the latest project of Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG), a portrait series of Second Life avatars they made after having lived in the virtual world for over a year. Btw, the 01.org are presenting "13 Most Beautiful Avatars", a Second Life portrait series, at Second Life's Ars Virtua gallery, as part of rhizome Time shares exhibits, on November 15 - December 29, and a "real life" show at the Italian Academy will run November 30 - December 19.

SL is very trendy these days, the Jen Bekman gallery's current exhibition is called Photographs from the New World. The work, by James Deavin, documents user-generated landscapes in Second Life. In New York until December 9, 2006.

I don't like everything Bruno Peinado creates. But when i do, i spam all my friends with images of his work. Now it's your turn, you're my friend too:

At Artissima, he had several pieces, the only one i really dug is Untitled, Vanity Flight Case, a giant disco ball-like skull that was slowly spinning and projecting bits of lights onto the black walls of a small room. You were either hypnotized by the skull or disoriented and nearly sea-sick if you had the bad idea to watch the little lights turn around the room.

A year ago, i fell in love with The Big One World. It was nowhere to be seeen at Artissima but here's the portrait of this Black-Panther version of the Michelin Man.

Peinado a gogo.

Artissima, the art fair that closed yesterday in Turin, was even more recreative than the last edition i attended (two years ago.) Best moments (ex-aequo): buying for peanuts art magazines i'll never find the time to leaf through and catching hilarious snippets of conversations all over the venue: "The problem with contemporary art is that if you don't pay attention, you end up thinking that the dust bin is an art piece" (note that this phrase exists in "urinoir" version) or "I've seen enough shit for today, if you want to stay here, feel free. I go home!" As befits my happy-go-lucky nature, i just ignored the crap (there was a fair dosis of it i guess, but i'm not an expert) and focused on what made me smile.

Here's a selection of the gadget-related art pieces. A warning, first. None of them were doing anything interactive. Either because they were out of order or because they were not meant to. But Artissima is an art fair, the traditional kind, so at least the pieces had some eye-pleasing value.

Amplified Pair, by Leslie Deere, which wasn't working when i took the headphones.

Patrizia Giambi, Ci facciamo in quattro per servirvi meglio.

Space LED, by Antonio Cavadini (aka Tonylight), is a tiny monitor that the artist has created by assembling 192 blue LEDs. The screen is controlled by an old computer and features animations from the 8bit period, in this case Space Invaders.

My big favourite was the painting cum joystick by Belgian artist Franky D.C. There's a few more images of his work on the website of the Hoet Bekaert gallery.

Artissima set on flickr.

Just back from my first trip to Artissima. Ladies with necklaces, chihuahua under the arm and super shiny smiles, men wearing (gasp!) crocodile shoes and designer foulards. Do they still exist? Yes, and it is so not my scene. So, i quickly decided that they would be part of the fun. And it was indeed a fun afternoon.

I'll write some proper posts this weekend. In the meantime, let's have two fast and easy picks.

Super star Tom Sachs' cute Lost in the Wilderness:

Oh! Bliss! I finally saw Kent Henricksen's bourgeois embroidery blemished by little men with hoods and bad intentions.

More Sachs images and Tom Sachs at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.
And more Henricksen: on flickr, John Connely, galleria Glance.

Artissima picture set (to be continued on Sunday.)

No fancy trip! Just blogging from my kitchen in sunny Turin and it's the first time i've ever been excited at the idea:

I'll spend the week re-blogging for eyebeam which has always been one of my favourite source of information. Hopefully i'm not going to spoil the place.

Surprisingly the Village (Turin, a surreal place i can't escape) is going to be slightly more animated than its shroud for a change: Luci d'Artista are illuminating the Winter since yesterday so we'll be out in the cold making tons of pictures again. Todo will be showing Face2Face2Face at Club To Club, the electronic music and arts festival. On the 9th, they'll have us play with ONEWORD, a social, SMS-based display of crowd moods and feelings at AB+ club.

On Thursday there's a new exhibition dedicated to contemporary art from Korea, China and Japan opening at the Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Allooksame/Tutttuguale.

Finally i'm counting the days to Artissima, an "international" contemporary art fair which is usually good fun. Artissima kicks off on Friday at the Lingotto. The place, an ex-Fiat's car factory, has been revamped by Renzo Piano and you might have seen its rooftop test track in the getaway sequence of The Italian Job.

That's just one week, ok? After that be sure that i'll resume my attempts to get away from this place!