More Post-Holiday Debris

Chinese New Year Parade

Today my friend Jorge came down from Connecticut for a day in The city, this was the aftermath of the Chinese New Years parade.

I don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You

What a weirdly great christmas song that I've never heard until now. St. Etienne does a really rad cover too..

Phantogram - Mouthful Of Diamonds

I've heard this song hundreds of times on the radio and never paid attention to the lyrics till today....genius...and they look great !

Winter Museum Weekend

Me and my friend Elyazid were taking advantage of all the great art there is to experience in NYC this weekend. That's Ely aping Picasso (dont we all) and me riding Carsten Holler's tubular slide

Umit Benan

I loved his idea of presenting his fashion show as a tableu vivant depicting an army barracks. he's a pretty foxy guy himself too.

Wooden Rooms

Maurizio Cattelan In The Brooklyn Rail & at The Guggenheim

The Maurizio Cattelan exhibition at the Guggenheim was amazing, I highly recommend it to anyone who is the least bit curious, it's only open till 1-21 so get over there quick. Theres an interesting interview with the artist in the current brooklyn rail, an excerpt appears below, you can read the entire interview here We’re at a moment when you go out and see 20 shows and notice a trend—low key, lo-fi. You go out and you see 50 shows and you can be sure you won’t remember a single image. You remember moods. What is happening right now is everything is related to the past. I think whatever happened in the past 100 years is the main subject of today. We are in-between generations; it’s a borderline passage. It’s like if you lose your long-term boyfriend, and before you get to the new one you rebound, experiment. You never know where the new relationship comes from. But in the meantime you need to move some things around; it’s very important to see the past.

logical Graffitti

Marsden Hartley

This is easily among my top 10 artworks ever created.....why I can't say

Losses loom larger than gains

I take this as another way to say that the things we most regret are what we didn't do rather than what we did do. I've been helping out at the New Museum these last few weeks of the Carsten Holler exhibition where the centerpiece is a long tubular slide that goes from the 4th to the 2nd floor. It's a little scary but a lot of fun and I ride it at least once a day, but I get a lot of people who change their minds or are having doubts about riding it and they ask me what it's like and I think about those phrases above and try to encourage people to let go and ride it. Letting yourself go rather than being ruled by fear is definately the way to go, it's how we develop our sense of who we are. I read an interesting article on the subject here

Post Holiday Tumbleweave

Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy

I kind of loved this movie for a lot of reasons. It started out very confusing and just got more so. It took a while but at a certain point I realized my confusion was a result of the filmaker's subtlety. I lot of very complicated, emotional information was communicated with a kind of visual shorthand, as in the scene where the character played by Benedict Cumberbatch (above), an intelligence agent , is told that from now on everything he's doing will be monitered. He immediatly goes home and kicks out his gay lover, with no explanation and much to the lover's confusion. It's heartbreakingly sad, and I was reminded that this kind of heartbreak was commonplace back in the dark ages. This kind of second class citizinship for gay people was a given and the gay guys actions here (denying himself a relationship) just reinforced society's homophobia. The guys acceptance of the fact that he couldn't have a lover was probably the result of some kind of shame he felt about himself, creating a vicious circle of repression, acceptance and shame. This film was incredibly evocative of places and times that no longer exist. Although the Budapest of the 70's looked a lot like the Budapest I saw a few years ago. And the Istanbul of the '70s did look a lot like the Istanbul I saw in the '80's, I have a feeling that Istanbul is quite different there these days. I would love to find out soon, that was one of the coolest places I've ever been to.

DeKooning at MoMA

Carsten Holler at The New Museum

It's a cool show, closes Jam 15. This is me floating in the tank with some friends