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The piece is made of Exxon, Shell, BP, and Mobil oil cans, but overnight, the local gallery staff had them secretly changed to Petronas labels. Though this violates the contract, I decided to keep the piece in the show because of the strange situation this tampering creates–a nationally owned oil company rushing to put its logo on a piece of art that is highly critical of the oil industry and what it appropriates and extracts

Over the past 45 years, the members of the collective have been documenting the industrial communities living along the river Tyne, the fishermen, the shipbuilders, the people working in the coal and steel industry, but also their families, the unemployed and the marginalized communities. The result is a vast archive of photos and films that present both both artistic and historical value

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Verlag für moderne Kunst has launched a collection of art audio CDs. I’m coveting the Jake and Dinos Chapman, the David Lynch one and crying my eyes out because the Jonathan Meese is in german only (although i did enjoy listening to the audio snippet in which he talks about stuff that are metabolisch and pornografisch.)

The one i had to have right here right now is the audio CD of conversation excerpts with Jeremy Deller

Felice Varini named the work he made for the Cardiff Bay “Three ellispes for three locks” but everyone there calls it “The Barrage Circles.”

Like most of Varini’s works, this one is an anamorphosis, a distorted projection or perspective requiring you to occupy a precise vantage point to reconstitute the image. The most famous example of anamorphic perspective in art is the skull in Hans Holbein painting, The Ambassadors

In the exhibition JULIE NORD – XENOGLOSSY we are invited into a strange home, where nothing looks as usual. Doll-like girls with shiny, almond eyes, bunches of flowers and cute little animals tempt us to take a closer look at the pictures. It all looks enchanting, but a closer look at them confronts us with an abundance of grotesque hybrid creatures, sculls and meat-eating plant

Among Daisy Ginsberg’s latest activities are a residency at SymbioticA, a collaboration with James King and Cambridge University’s iGEM 2009 grand-prizewinning team and then there’s Synthetic Aesthetics. The project investigates shared territory between design and synthetic biology, invites exchange of existing skills and approaches, and enables the development of new forms of craft and collaboration

In a series of symbiotic encounters and parasitic relationships, the solo presentations are often interrupted by incongruous presences or perturbed by unusual juxtapositions: drawings by Kara Walker surround a tomb by Urs Fischer; Maurizio Cattelan’s homeless man kneels down in front of Kiki Smith’s Bat Woman; Robert Gober’s haunted rooms incorporate Gregor Schneider’s architectural fragments, etc.

Nathalie Djurberg makes candy-coloured plasticine puppets who have have orgies, who torture each other and suffer alien, abusive relationships. Djurberg, who won the Silver Lion award for best young artist at the Biennale, was the super star of Venice. I went to see her video installation 3 times and the room was always jam-packed with people drooling over her animations and taking photos of her monstruous flowers as if their lives depended on it. Not that i acted any differently

Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón has opened a very very good exhibition a few days ago. ‘FEEDFORWARD – The Angel of History’ addresses the current moment in history where the wreckage of political conflict and economic inequality is piling up, while globalized forces–largely enabled by the “progress” of digital information technologies–inexorably feed us forward. I’ll write about it in details in the near future but i’d like to share with you straight away one of the most interesting artworks i’ve discovered there

I doubt there are many galleries like heliumcowboy. First there’s that name. Charming and puzzling. Not even an interview with the gallery director has helped me uncover its origin. Then of course there’s the artists the space represents. Since its opening in 2003, heliumcowboy has been showcasing artists ‘who are capable of pushing boundaries, are a little underground and whose aesthetic is the forecast of art’

Ever since i found about his tattoos on the pin-ups and luchadores appearing in vintage Mexican magazines, i was in love Dr Lakra. The tattoo artist lives in Mexico. A couple of weeks ago i was in Mexico too and there was a solo show of Dr Lakra at the kurimanzutto gallery. I felt like the happiest person in the world. Now, in retrospect, i feel that i’d been happier had i not forgotten in a taxi my lovely camera with all the images i had taken at the exhibition

In fast and witty episodes, Filmmaker Ben Lewis meets some of the most discussed contemporary artists and challenges their work with the kind of provoking questions you can expect from someone who recently penned an article titled ‘Who Put the Con on Contemporary Art?’

I’ve never had any interest in football (that’s soccer for you, American friendz.) Never ever. I come from a country that never won any championship (and if they ever did, well… i still don’t care), i find men in shorts a rather pathetic affair and i just don’t get sport on tv anyway. There’s been just one exception to this until last week and it was Eric Cantona, his sardines, his iced tea commercials

The online channel covers in a very professional and surprisingly fast and elegant way the opening receptions (vernissages) of exhibitions and events and i’m grateful to them for that. I profess an intense dislike for vernissages where people seemed to be more passionate about tepid wine and showing off their mere presence at an art event than about the artworks on show…. but that doesn’t mean i’m not curious about vernissages

The U.S. are all over the newspapers because of the upcoming presidential elections. Yet, most of us know very little of the art and culture of the area that lies between the East Coast and the West Coast. And what we think we might know of it is often just a bunch of cliches. The aim of the exhibition is to offer a more subtle picture of the ‘Heartland’ but it is also to questions traditional definitions of cultural centers and peripheries