American Madness

Today’s Art edition is composed of some videos and photography.

ImprovEverywhere is a group that has done some fun things around NYC, like ‘Freezing’ in Grand Central (which was later copied on an episode ofLaw & Order: SVU). Their latest project, called ‘Human Mirror,’ took 8 sets of twins and created a mirror effect on the 6 train.

They also recently created a ‘wave’ of flashes across the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate its 125th birthday. The idea sounds great, though personally I found the video a little underwhelming.

Steve Schofield is not a performance artist, but a photographer. While he has some great pictures of boxers and dancers, what got me to his site in the first place was a series entitled “Land of the Free.” The folks in these photos are people who dress up for their obsession. There are Trekkies, Cowboys & Indians, Sith Lords, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and even Elvis. Instead of the usual shots of these folks in convention centers or online for movies, they were all photographed in their homes. I’d say it is worth checking out. (more…)

If you haven’t yet heard (though I am not sure how you could have missed it), Iran released pictures of a missile test they just conducted. The image they released was plastered all over newspapers world wide and showed 4 missiles taking flight simultaneously. The picture came from Agence France-Presse who said that they got the picture from Sepah News, they happen to be the media wing (or maybe propaganda wing) of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. There is something a bit menacing about the image of four missiles heading skyward in a successful test… That is until you study the picture a bit more.

It turns out that the missile, 3rd from the left was Photoshopped in. the dust cloud under the missile comes from the right hand side, the missile it self is identical to the one on the left hand side (the NY Times had a little fun with Photoshop themselves highlighting this). Now the question being raised is: Who is responsible for this? (more…)

Calling it ‘art’ is a bit of a cheat I guess. I mean, is it really art if it is just a picture taken from a satellite doing its job? There is no eye for the artistic behind the taking of these pictures and it just so happens that some one was smart enough to put the pretty ones together.

None the less, the pictures are pretty striking with some amazing colors so I figured I’d toss them up here for all to see. From EnvironmentalGraffiti we get the “30 Most Incredible Abstract Satellite Images of Earth.” These photos are all from 2000, when NASA went through over 400,000 pictures snapped by the satellite Landsat 7 and chose what they felt were the most beautiful for display at the Library of Congress.

Are they art? Maybe not, but they sure are pretty. You can see the other 29 here. You can even download them to use as desktop wallpaper.

Today’s installment of art comes from Jerusalem and Seattle.

First up we have some older work by Desiree Palmen. Between 1999 and 2006 Palmen worked with fabrics and paint to make jumpsuits that camouflaged nicely with their surroundings (if you are standing in a certain place that is). For fans of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the idea seems similar to the “Mimetic Polycarbon” jump suit worn by the Panther Moderns,* except these don’t change with their environment. The jumpsuits are all painted with some consideration given to the way the individual will stand (or sit) and have a realistic look to them. Makes me wonder what they look like in real life. It is interesting to see the jumpsuits mixed with some of the older parts of Jerusalem (like in “Old City Suit“). There is even text to some of the projects (located on the main page) that discusses some of the ideas behind them.

Next up** we have the work of Chris Jordan. His work is billed at “Photographic Arts,” which seems like a questionable name for a medium until you start to look at his pictures, and I mean really look at them. His most recent project is called “Running the Numbers” and spans from 2006 to 2008. (more…)

Well, I have given up on trying to make this a weekly column, so it is becoming an occasional column.

I’ve come across 2 sets of photos in the last two days. One set is pretty interesting and the other set is pretty incredible, both are definitely worth checking out.

The first set of pictures makes it to us all the way from Chili where the Chaitan Volcano has been pretty active recently. During some recent activity there also happened to be a lighting storm that added some incredible effects to the erupting volcano. The Daily Mail has a whole set of the images here.

Our second set of pictures comes from an exhibition titled “The Other Night Sky” currently showing at the UC Berkeley Art Museum. The exhibition shows Trevor Paglen’s photographs of 189 spy satellites that officially do not exist. The title of the exhibition is a play on Galileo’s The Night Sky and offers commentary on how these ‘unofficial’ satellites would paint the sky to astronomers of yesterday. Paglen is also responsible for a book about patches from military black-ops groups that has some great images of the official patches for these groups.

Mario Batali, Martha Stewart, Boogie, Jimmi Simpson, Brice Marden are just some of the faces you might recognize on the walls of Jose Picayo’s exhibition: “Mug Shots.”

That isn’t to say though that everyone whose picture is up on the walls of the gallery is famous.

Of the couple hundred photos up on the walls of the gallery, there were only about seven who we could readily identify.

Well, that is besides all the folks who showed up for the opening who had sat for their photos. (more…)

This Wednesday Jose Picayo is having a gallery opening at the Robin Rice Gallery at 325 West 11th St from 5:30pm until 8:30pm. I recommend you to all stop through and check out his work. Mug Shots is a set of 8″x10″ Polaroids (an AmericanMadness format favorite) he shot each of his subjects and that was it. No digital manipulation, no make-up artists, no after-effects Picayo puts it best saying “A Polaroid is a one of a kind image, it is a tangible ‘real’ object you can hold in your hands” (not too surprising that his work caught our eye).

By way of an explanation for this undertaking Picayo comments: “In an age of artificial beauty where absolute perfection has become society’s standard, we are often disheartened by the reality of our own flawed reflections in the mirror.” Anyway, the AM crew will be at the opening (or at least some of us will be). If you can’t make it, don’t fret, it will be showing through June 22.

AmericanMadness will have a review on the exhibition in the days following the opening and maybe even an interview with Jose Picayo to follow. We’ll keep you posted on that (so, if you have any questions for him, let us know).

This makes the third week in a row we have done our art post. Normally we send you to some images of statues or paintings or photos. This week, first up we have something a little different.

We start with Charles Cumming’s The 21 Steps. The 21 Steps is the first in a project by six authors to produce six online stories in six weeks (WeTellStories). The stories are all based on classics and, as it seems to be a Penguin Publishing project, the originals are all part of the Penguins Classics series. What makes The 21 Steps (Based on The 39 Steps) interesting and the rest of the lot as well is that they are told in a non-traditional manner. The 21 Steps plays out using Google maps, to actually take you through the story. Last weeks Your Place and Mine was written live online. Week 2’s Slice was told through blogs and Twitter. It looks to be a pretty creative project that takes story telling and re-envisions it with the new technologies available to us today. CoolHunting also has an interview with Charles Cumming. (more…)

Elvis has been gone for a while. Having died almost 30 years ago you wouldn’t exactly expect to see new pictures of him popping up anywhere. Except that is exactly what’s going on.

This isn’t some vast conspiracy theory. No Elvis spottings at Wal-mart or descending from a UFO, but rather photos taken by George Kalinsky 36 years ago at Madison Square Garden. Kalinsky was asked to give a picture of an iconic New York Moment and chose Elvis at MSG. He was expecting to dig through his file and find 8 to 10 pictures from the night and instead discovered 4 rolls of film, close to 100 never before seen pictures of the King.

Besides the general excitement of this recent discovery the folks at Graceland are thrilled, calling one of the photos one of Elvis’s most iconic ever. The NY post even has a slide show of six of the images. I would expect to see them on display somwhere before the end of the year with a catch title like “The Lost Elvis Photos” or something along those lines.

As I go back through what I have marked up the past week to post here, things that have caught my eye and such, it is looking like I will have a weekly post of art that has caught my eye from the previous week. We’ll see if I can turn this into a regular, weekly column (which requires only that I stay on top of this every week), but for now it is looking pretty good.

Without further ado some of the things that have caught my eye in the past week: (more…)