ARTSLANT
Interview with Annette Messager
Paris, Aug. 2011
“The day I caught up with Madame Messager at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, it had been a while since I'd seen her last, and I mistook another person for her. I quickly realized my error, because the artist is such an integral part of the school she taught at until recently that every few feet she's stopped by someone who wants to know what she's up to, students and professors alike. Just back from Mexico, Ms. Messager has concluded a solo exhibition tour that included three major cities. I wanted to find out more about her Mexican year, especially in the wake of the cancellation of l'Année du Mexique (Mexican Year) here in France after a rather disastrous example of international relations gone wrong. We settled into a quiet corner in a café nearby Rue Bonaparte for a conversation about solo exhibitions, traveling in Mexico, getting hit on by art critics, and one particularly dangerous topic — women who are artists.”
ARTSLANT
Betsabee Romero & Acts of Faith
October 30, 2009 - January 24, 2010
“It takes a certain amount of optimism to behold a mountain of clay and see the possibility for form to emerge. Likewise for a blank canvas, wall or sheet of drawing paper. In the same way, it takes a faithful artist to create a tribute to memory out of a cast-off tire. That faithful artist is Betsabeé Romero. Although I have never met or talked to Ms. Romero, I like to imagine her as that friend who will accompany you to the flea market and deftly dig through all the junk to inevitably uncover a number of enviable finds. She would probably just as likely be that person who comes over to your tiny, dingy new apartment and help you
uncover its hidden beauty by applying simple, deliberate changes. She might also be the one to come over armed with scissors and spray bottle when your new stylist decides to interpret your "just a couple of inches
off the top," as "I'd like the newest aspirational hairstyle, please." But I digress.”
ARTSLANT
Provocative and Playful: Cildo Meireles
July 4, 2009 - January 10, 2010
“The trouble with Cildo Meireles is that his work doesn't quite feel like it belongs in a museum. The Brazilian artist plays with colors, shapes, sounds and environments in a way that hearkens back to jungle gym days, when breaking stuff, losing track of time and going barefoot were acceptable behavior. Luckily I was able to restrain myself long enough to not get kicked out of the retrospective at the MUAC.”
DIASPORA DAZE
J’ai tenu pendant plusieurs années de suite ce carnet de bord en forme de blog Tumblr.
"ON A TROUVE !!!" ...shouted out with upraised arms, these three celebratory words resonated across the water's surface, skipping up the walls of the Chateau like a chucked stone gone oEroading. Meaning they had un-shrouded the mystery of the fountain/art installation we'd just ridden hours to encounter. The view from my
upper-floor window was the ideal vantage point to witness the spectacle of delight and discovery radiating from across the emerald carpet separating our room from the installation. They played for hours at the edge of the lozenge-shaped pool, seMing oE the spray of water and leMing it peter out, over and over again, with gusto. Later I thought about how fountains have always been about man's triumph over nature (and more specifically over an element most commonly associated with the feminine) and how this may be why I've always found them to be a bit vulgar, with their cocktail of chemicals sending waSs of eau de swimming pool my way... Here, I was able to set aside my prejudices and just bask in the tremendous energies of two kiddos encountering art on their own terms.
-----
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #24: Richard “The Ballbuster” Butterfield in Conversation with Cynthia Bregova
July 28 2010
I know very little about Richard.
I know that he is from Rhode Island, Jewish, has lived in Puebla, Mexico for twenty years, lives and owns an antiques store with his partner Victor. They have two dogs and nineteen canaries.
When I return to the shop a second time to schedule the interview Richard warns me that New Englanders are “very direct.” “I’ll tell the truth,” he says. “Come back Friday.”
I say that telling the truth is a good thing but as I am leaving I wonder if the statement I just made is accurate. After all, as anyone who has seen Rashomon can attest, truth is relative.
Against a backdrop of decorative china and glass-beaded clutches from a bygone era, I decide to pursue the investigation of Richard’s subjective truth.
-----
Delphine Coindet: An architecture of transparency
Here are an accumulation of breathy beings, whispery worlds unto
themselves stacked into pyramids of near-precarity. They are dangerous and sublime; a hopefulness and a trustfulness are also implicitly present, evoking the artist as Warholian producer. Like looking into a mirror, Delphine Coindet’s prisms reflect our heterogeneity and fragility back at us. We are there, somewhere lost amongst the hierarchy, stacked above or below or behind or out front. Amongst others of our ilk, we are each standing guard, different, yet the same.
-----
Counterplans
“I’ve never cooked...I designed the kitchen as an architect, not
as a housewife.” — Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky
The modern kitchen is a relatively recent development; having been dreamed up by the Viennese architect Margarete Schutte- Lihotzky in 1926* it was meant to upgrade and provide ease of use for worn-out factory workers in their homes. The laboratory-style fittings, with built-to-measure appliances, cupboards and countertops were considered revolutionary due to their reduced size, they allowed for a smaller kitchen overall, and reduced the user’s step-count, and thus, fatigue.”