As a recent exhibition at the Akron Art Museum demonstrates, video games are at a creative peak, as fine artists respond to and play with video gaming culture, visuals, and communities.
Cory Arcangel
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Artists Disrupt and Deconstruct the Modern Workplace
SAN FRANCISCO — I will admit that it had been a long day filled with mundane tasks — conference calls, email catch-up, copyediting — when I wandered into the exhibition Office Space, currently on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
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From Calder to Kruger, the New Whitney Museum’s First Show
The inaugural exhibition at the new Whitney Museum is not perfect, but it is pretty damn good.
Posted inNews
Warhol Computer Art Discovered on 1985 Floppy Discs
A multidisciplinary group at Carnegie Mellon University has recovered three new digital images produced by Andy Warhol in 1985. The files were found on “Amiga floppy disks stored in the archives collection of The Andy Warhol Museum,” according to a news release.
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Cory Arcangel and Pierre Bismuth Tag Team in Soho
When I walked into Team Gallery this week to see their current exhibition, Cory Arcangel vs. Pierre Bismuth my gut reaction was annoyance. The exhibition presents three works by each artist. Though Arcangel’s rise to fame has come somewhat immediately and unexpectedly, as a kind of young hip digital concept artist Pierre Bismuth’s 20-year career is equally concerned with technology and media. The result is seamless and startling to an admittedly backwards curmudgeon like me.
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Extreme Makeover: Art World Edition
Since we’ve been running down the most powerless and most f***able art world figures, now we’re seeing which ones are in dire need a makeover. Anyone in the public sphere knows the way they dress reflects greatly on their work, and art people, fortunately or not, are no exception.
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Walking Into the Matrix on Park Avenue
Entering Japanese artist/composer Ryoji Ikeda’s new installation “the transfinite,” which is currently showing at the Park Avenue Armory, feels like sitting inside of a computer.
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Cory Arcangel’s (Al)ready-mades
Remember Oakley M-Frame sunglasses? They’re supposed to look like the future, with gradient lenses in a variety of neon colors and knotted frames that bear a resemblance to tensed muscle and ligaments. What they actually look like is a future imagined from the 1980s, in which some mixture of cyberpunk fashion, steroidal athlete aesthetic and Gatorade-style visual punch is totally au courant. New media prankster Cory Arcangel has turned these glasses into monuments, casting them in bronze and immortalizing them in a series of readymades called “Sports Products” (2011). Are you ready for 80s nostalgia? You better be, because it’s ready for you.
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Photo Preview of Cory Arcangel at the Whitney
Tomorrow marks the opening of Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools, a full floor of new and recent work by the artist at the Whitney Museum. Lucky you, you get to see it a day early! I previewed the exhibition and came back with a photo essay featuring bowling video games, photoshop gradients, bad golfers and epic sunglasses.
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Required Reading
This week … why are the Coptic churches of Egypt burning, Paul Goldberger is cynical of Rem Koolhaas, video of Alexander McQueen at the Met, profile of Cory Arcangel, tour of the 2011 Contemporary Furniture Fair, want to live on a houseboat on the Gowanus, Luna Park’s Berlin pics, an interview with the Met Opera’s conductor and 8 NYers are suing Baidu for censorship.
Posted inOpinion
Cory Arcangel’s Surrealist Super Mario
New media and internet artist Cory Arcangel often appropriates artifacts from earlier digital times for his artwork. In a series of videos, Arcangel hacks cartridges of the original Nintendo game Super Mario Bros., twisting the game’s graphics into surreal reinterpretations.
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Collectionof Brings Private Stashes to Public View
We’ve all wished we could break into an art collector’s house at times, just to take a look at the wealth of objects out of the public eye. Aside from being awesome aggregations of unique things, collections also communicate something about a person, their aesthetic tastes and their own preferences. Collectionof is a new website that brings the private stashes of some cultural figures to public view. Here, you can check out artist Cory Arcangel’s magazine choices or Brooklyn musician C. Spencer Yeh’s CD rack. Of course, some of it’s for sale, too.