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Paris Gets the General Idea

On February 11, the first major retrospective of the work of the world-renowned Canadian art collective General Idea opened at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris with 300 objects, and I took the opportunity to interview AA Bronson about General Idea and his thoughts on the group.

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What is Art-xploitation?

Wayne Coe creates complicated sand paintings on the sidewalks and floors of New York using the language of gay male porn theater advertising from the 1970s and 1980s to create ads for contemporary artists. I caught up with the artist, who was performing for six hours yesterday as part of Brooklyn Art Now in DUMBO , to ask him about “art-xploitation,” which he says is “the use of male film hyperbole to sell art.”

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How Do You Sell an Animated GIF?

Last month, we learned that Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City curated a show of animated GIFs and now I’ve discovered that Lauren Cornell, the executive director of Rhizome, is selling these often trippy nuggets of Graphics Interchange Format at the 2011 New York Armory Show. Yes, that’s right. She’s a pixel pusher. Click through to see a guerrilla video interview shot on site at the Armory, featuring several of the GIFs for sale.

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An Office in Madrid Pairs Street Artists With Empty Walls

The “Oficina de Gestion de Muros” (Walls Management Office) is an independent Spanish project that fills the empty spaces around the city of Madrid with art. WMO is putting the best street artists on the planet in touch with Madrid locals, neighbors, shopkeepers and businesses alike who have empty walls waiting to be filled with art. For their first project “Medianeras de Madrid”, or Joint Walls of Madrid, they worked with two amazing street artists: Blu and Sam3. Now, they are putting together a listing of artists to collaborate with other wall-owners. The person responsible for founding WMO is Remedios Vincent. I had a chat with Remedios to get to know a little more about this project.

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Brooklyn Museum’s New Acquisition Shines Light on Unlikely 18th C Racial Revolutionary

The Brooklyn Museum has an extensive collection of Spanish Colonial painting, but the institution’s relatively new curator of European art Richard Aste knew the museum lacked the same depth in their British colonial works. Recently, Brooklyn’s premiere fine art institution announced the acquisition of a new work by Agostino Brunias, “Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape” (ca. 1764-1796), which will partially fill that gap but there is something else about the painting that makes it interesting to the contemporary viewer, namely its multicultural subjects.

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Steve Lambert’s Anti-Advertising Agency Takes a Long Coffee Break

Yesterday, someone suggested to me that artist Steve Lambert’s Anti-Advertising Agency was calling it quits after six years of producing some of the most socially engaged work around. For those who may be unfamiliar with the group, they actively co-opted the language of advertising and public relations to question and parody its pervasiveness in our lives. The ominous looking header on the homepage of the Anti-Advertising Agency, complete with start and end dates, pushed me to contact Lambert about what’s happening with his artistic brainchild.

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Talking to Nate Hill About Punch Me Panda


During last month’s #TheSocialGraph exhibition, Hill dressed as a panda and lived in a crate in the gallery. He named the character, “Punch Me Panda.” For a penny you could either punch him in the gallery or invite him to your home in Brooklyn via tweet (@natexhill). He also roamed the streets trying to relieve people’s frustration and anger while he was dressed up in his persona. This conversation with artist happened late last month and reflects on his performance and what it is all about.