tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29794008518802309972009-11-11T05:20:57.795-08:00the art life is the good lifeCRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-80598713111436926712009-09-08T15:18:00.000-07:002009-09-08T16:36:27.930-07:00

Texturizing is not a word. But it sounds like tenderizing and tantalizing, and yet points to texture, so why not? Texture is what I liked best about a wonderful show of black, white, and spare work at Jancar Jones Gallery, SF. Sean Talley creates works that look like prints, but are drawings—no, sculptures, really, made with very fine graphite dust. They look like this:The edges are precise and

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-41841541844332880492009-09-04T19:17:00.000-07:002009-09-06T10:59:25.551-07:00

Lately this is how I've been feeling...But then I went to David Cunningham Projects, SF, and I felt better all over. Talking to yourself is very important is the title of an installation by Pawel Kruk. Talking to yourself is very important especially if you know who's who in the conversation.Kruk has previously created videos in which he impersonates famous persons. Larger Than Life, for instance

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-59592476529920912009-07-21T17:54:00.000-07:002009-07-25T17:42:00.282-07:00

Oh I missed the show! I wish I could have been there—Susan O'Malley at Ping Pong Gallery, SF. But such is life. And, evidently, not being there was just where I needed to be.Being here now, I can tell you it made me happy (Be Happy Now) to discover someone else out there thinks these pithy, optimistic statements are worthy of re-casting as Art On The Walls. I would have loved to have been there

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-3082321414765460342009-07-17T17:52:00.000-07:002009-07-17T20:07:13.759-07:00

TED, the wonderful Technology, Entertainment, Design conference people hosted Daniel Libeskind in February. His talk, online here, is a lot like his designs, exploding with enthusiasms, stretching sometimes to keep with the theme. So although I might quibble with his list of 17 words which inspire his architectural dreams, I came away, yet again appreciating the expression of his vision.

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-76940564201574235412009-07-16T14:37:00.000-07:002009-07-25T17:45:28.277-07:00

Dry Thirst of Honor is one of the photos in a show that has surprised me with its staying power, some two weeks after I saw it. The work is by Chris Gentile. The show is at Gregory Lind Gallery, SF, and the title is Reincarnation Blues.This is St John. I'm not sure if the image here conveys the photograph there, but that, curiously enough, is part of what the work is about.Start at the beginning.

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-82907933137733851142009-07-02T16:08:00.000-07:002009-07-03T13:58:53.249-07:00

Today I learned the derivation of the name Buffalo chicken wings. I had always imagined buffalo, as in bison, but no, it is Buffalo, as in upstate New York, place of the original stingy hot sauce with blue cheese dressing on the side.Buffalo is in the Rust Belt which means as a city, it has been in decline along with other massive-industry centers like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Detroit, steel and

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-21349710572035211392009-06-24T14:01:00.000-07:002009-06-27T20:25:57.460-07:00

This is one way to picture a mighty, massive California oak tree. It's an impression.Another way is to take multiple scans using some sort of mapping software, then process the data in Dreamworks to create a light display, like a sprinkling of luminescence, tracing the tree's contours, turning and spinning, creating an animated picture that is at one and the same time on the surface and on the

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-69417207910517149072009-06-03T15:36:00.000-07:002009-06-17T21:43:11.599-07:00

Okay. Stop the Music. I know that this blog is in a sorry state. The hits are way down because we are not posting very often. I have looked at this blog, and have not felt like writing anything about art recently. This world totally, totally, totally fucking sucks and I am very disheartened. Why do I want to even talk about art when George Bush and his fascist minions are turning our country into

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-11198013202824624112009-05-02T20:08:00.000-07:002009-05-02T20:21:12.400-07:00

Art in America Magazine, April 2009 edition.Yayoi Kusama courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.Elad Lassry courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery.

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-8715936845203360352009-04-24T12:03:00.000-07:002009-05-02T20:21:00.881-07:00

The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, is showing Nine Lives (Visionary Artists from) LA. I want to write about three out of the nine, one third, except, I've already written about Victoria Reynolds here and I don't have much else to say, so it is two out of nine, which is... what's the word for two-ninths? To keep with the tabulation, this is the fifth Hammer biennial exhibition of LA artists. Nine

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-11917234262690861522009-04-01T16:52:00.000-07:002009-04-10T17:51:52.043-07:00

I was so looking forward to this show. Nick Cave' Sound Suits at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF. When I saw press photos of his sparkling beaded costumes I thought, The Fishgod has returned!This dancing man knows fabric, texture and design, costume and theatricality—and he has a penchant for amassing, archiving, and recreating the sequined detritus of last year's party and your great

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-89585415375924998412009-03-29T16:49:00.000-07:002009-04-11T00:08:59.168-07:00

"You got it," Steven Wirtz said to me. "I'm so glad you got it!"Oh yeah. I got it.And the poster. I want to tape it to my wall.Like I said to the gallerist who said encouragingly, "We have payment plans..."—"Free. Right now, free works for me."Steven Wirtz (he's so nice) is showing new work by Melanie Pullen. Remember how she created crimes scenes, down to the last gritty detail in the dark back

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-11254955814330081782009-03-10T21:06:00.001-07:002009-03-17T14:40:49.545-07:00

This is Steven Cohen, performance artist.Not just your usual gender-bending monster-mime drag queen clown.No. Nor your ordinary homo-probe, eros-busting, crazy-assed Jewish shaman-priest. With a prosthetic leg. Or horn feet even.No. This is Steven Cohen, performance artist, out of South Africa.Didn't expect that, huh? I didn't either which says something about my own assumptions about what comes

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-83772953371832131452009-03-06T13:32:00.000-08:002009-03-06T16:02:59.279-08:00

Just as painters from the 16th century onward (Titian, Rembrandt, Fragonard, Turner, Cézanne, and de Kooning, to name a few) began to foreground their medium and make it almost as much a subject of their pictures as what the painting nominally represented, photographers, over the course of the last 50 years [—] have been doing the same.Reading this in an article by Peter Plagens in Art in America

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-68140742123220649432009-02-23T15:37:00.000-08:002009-02-27T23:26:14.574-08:00

I ducked in out of the rain and into the Jonathan Solo show at Catharine Clark Gallery, SF. Like walking into a white cloud, not exactly diversity-heaven, but diversity dream, an alternate dream world where anything is possible.I say white cloud because these precious, precise, hand-drawn images are placed in vast vacant spaces of cream paper—a lot of light and space around these extraordinary

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-63857108415092311892009-02-10T20:20:00.000-08:002009-02-16T20:32:09.133-08:00

I've been thinking about this show I saw at Queen's Nails, every time I hear some song from the 80s... Thinking about what it means to feel sentimental about a song, about sentiment in music, about conditioning experience.As part of the extended reach of the 2008 California Biennial, Queen's Nails Projects hosted D'nell Larson an LA based artist who works with video, performance, installation.

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-86011814974663399602009-02-10T18:51:00.000-08:002009-02-10T23:31:57.304-08:00

Sometimes I wonder about the timing of things. Insects for instance. Butterflies here, crickets there. Not exactly the same, and to a different purpose. But still.What I am on about is two very different shows that connected yet bounced off each other in a very... unsatisfying way. The Haines Gallery, SF, is showing new work by Binh Danh including three of his signature leaf-portraits and a

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-82733014463648863252009-01-30T18:00:00.000-08:002009-02-09T16:09:29.949-08:00

The sage returns to the original: a block of wood. A block of wood can be made into tools, but tools cannot be made into a block of wood.—MenciusBefore a block of wood is split, it can take any shape. Once it is split, it cannot be round if it is square. It cannot be straight if it is curved. Lao-Tzu tells us to avoid being split. Once we are split, we can never return to our original state.—Sung

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-13793229609915112992008-12-31T17:04:00.000-08:002009-01-09T00:09:54.690-08:00

The sun is setting on the last day of this difficult calendar year. For days I have been trying to wrap my head around the year's art events, searching out some way of framing what I saw and what I liked. What I really feel is relief it is over.But in sifting memories, notes, postcards and brochures, something emerged. This was a good year for video. (and film. Video and film. I lump it all

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-45757292907291772012008-12-12T21:45:00.000-08:002008-12-14T17:10:53.349-08:00

I can't tell you, I was so excited to read in the SF Bay Guardian that the Paul Thiebaud Gallery was showing a set of paint sketches by Franz Kline. Oh my.By far my favorite painter of the American mid-century scene, I am always happy to see his work, but here an opportunity to see something personal as well. Sketches are like that, personal, because they are the precursor to finished work, done

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-13491732068068265892008-12-04T13:43:00.000-08:002009-01-09T16:05:35.664-08:00

24 Hour ClockNam June Paik120 seconds for 24 pictures. Playing with time, shuffling along.—at the de Young Museum, SF.

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-73179557184955063992008-12-02T18:17:00.001-08:002009-02-03T20:10:58.991-08:00

New to me any way.HumbleIn the new* Humble Arts Foundation group show, there's a portrait of potted plants. Intrigued, I learned more about the artist. Peter Happel Christian explores the nexus of landscape, representation, perception and history through conceptually driven photographs that include elements of sculpture and performance art. What does that look like exactly? Like this:Site in

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-71446937710331886822008-11-25T18:49:00.000-08:002008-12-05T16:31:25.338-08:00

Artists in conversation. Video to video. Picture to picture.At Queen's Nails Projects, SF—an off-site extension of the California Biennial 2008 this year curated by LAXART—Kelly Barrie's video Astral Fields faced Mary Kelly's Antepartum.Antepartum is a Super 8 film, 1:30 minutes long, made in 1973 of Kelly Barrie in utro-in the belly-moving hidden in the full-term pregnant belly of his mother,

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-52221111965875394482008-11-23T23:47:00.000-08:002009-09-08T16:44:33.157-07:00

I passed a chunk of concrete on the sidewalk. It was a chunk of concrete. I remembered how in the gallery, inside the two plastic pots was a chunk of concrete. This was an artwork.Don't you love art?!It is a beautiful thing.I saw this artwork by Bill Jenkins at Jancar Jones Gallery (SF), a special set-aside place for having special art moments. You don't need a password to enter the gallery, but

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979400851880230997.post-1549454110566679412008-11-18T19:47:00.000-08:002009-06-06T13:45:49.325-07:00

The Fan: Damien Hirst on Francis BaconI think Bacon is one of the greatest painters of all time. He's up there with Goya, Soutine and Van Gogh: dirty painters who wrestle with the dark stuff. He's complicated. It's not essentially about formal skill or technique or dexterity. It's about belief. I believe! And the struggle, the sense that you somehow grunt your way though it by sheer will. That's

CRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05785589374020505473carolynradlo@gmail.com