Naughty Teens, Garbanzo Beans, Rancho and Language Games

21Jul09

The gaze is everywhere in Eric Yahnker’s installation Naughty Teens/Garbanzo Beans. It is behind the shades in low-lying plaster sculpture John Wayne Dressed for Tennis. It floats above our heads when projected from the large-scale graphite drawing Her Happiness Scramble. The naughty teens from the title piece stare us down, as does the viewer’s own [...]

Filed under: Artists, art theory, contemporary art, critique, exhibition, interdisciplinary, local, peripheral vision, popular culture, visual culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: ambach & rice, association, connotation, ed ruscha, eric yahnker, gaze, humor, image, installation, jean-francoise lyotard, language, language games, moby dick, pop art, popular culture, rancho, sartre, satire, text, the postmodern condition, visual culture, we are the world, words

Spectacular, Spectacular: Venice, Vegas, and the A-Y-P Expo

17Jun09

On Artsbeat, Randy Kennedy recently recounted a Kafkaesque experience receiving his press credentials at the Venice Biennale:
“The words ‘grande confusione’ are often heard. They were running through my head as a woman told me I was in the wrong place and that I should walk to the Arsenale, the other site for the event, several [...]

Filed under: contemporary art, critique, destruction, excess, exhibition, interdisciplinary, local, museology, popular culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: a-y-p, alaska, blockbuster exhibitions, casinos, dave hickey, dawn cerny, exhibitions, exposition, fear and loathing in las vegas, hunter s. thompson, journey, kitsch, las vegas, pacific, pilgrimage, popular culture, press credentials, randy kennedy, seattle, spectacle, venice biennale, visual culture, yukon

Galaxy of Signifiers: G.I. Joe and Jenny Holzer

17Feb09

While watching the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie trailer during the Superbowl, I remembered an amazing article in the October issue of The Believer recounting the impact of G.I. Joe on visual conceptions of war, particularly during the 1980s, when most of today’s soldiers in Iraq were coming of age:
“G.I. Joe’s epic advertising [...]

Filed under: art theory, contemporary art, critique, exhibition, interdisciplinary, peripheral vision, visual culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: commercialism, contemporary art, G.I. Joe, installation, jason boog, jenny holzer, LED, military, protect protect, roland barthes, s/z, signified, signifier, television, the believer, the rise of cobra, visual culture

History, Critical Thinking, and MTV

18Nov08

It is always surreal to happen upon a retrospective on MTV.  Sunday night, I was watching a retrospective of MTV’s Total Request Live show, which ended that day after running for a decade.  Most people over 25 probably are not overly concerned with its departure, but my understanding from the little MTV I continue to watch is it represents the [...]

Filed under: critique, interdisciplinary, peripheral vision, technology, visual culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: doug aitken, fatboy slim, le voyage dans la lune, millennial generation, mtv, music videos, smashing pumpkins, teens, trl, visual culture, web 2.0

The West Wing on the Small Screen

06Nov08

“No wonder your president has to be an actor, he’s gotta look good on television.”(Dr. Emmett Brown responding to the idea of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States, Back to the Future 1985)
When the television became a household standard in the 1950s, the sudden change in image culture dramatically affected the Presidental elections, [...]

Filed under: critique, interdisciplinary, peripheral vision, visual culture   |  1 Comment
Tags: aaron sorkin, back to the future, election 08, image culture, mccain, museum photographs, obama, santos, television, the west wing, thomas struth, vinick, visual culture