Previously on Skandalon: Andy Rementer

Here’s the statement related to this piece of art:

At a distance of 18,000 km from the earth the elephant Würsa would be able to balance on her trunk. It is on the basis of learned scientific calculations that Daniel Firman reached this conclusion and came to produce this extraordinary work which confounds all our certainties regarding the gravitation of bodies.

This hyper-realist sculpture calling on the skills of a taxidermist conjures up ideas of both lightness and of heaviness, so enabling the artist to offer a novel and spectacular physical and psychological experience.

Exploring the huge territory of sculpture, Daniel Firman presents anonymous characters and elements from everyday life in situation that seem to be in precarious equilibrium. For more than a decade he has been developing a unique formal language and is particularly interested in the question of bodies: Würsa à 18,000 km de la Terre, a novel creation made specially for the Palais de Tokyo is the new expression. (Source).

Same sculpture, but on the artist’s official website. Daniel Firman is a French artist born inn Bron (France) in 1966. He currently works and lives in Paris.

CineMasterpieces: Endless Summer, Bruce Brown, 1966 [click for hi-res]

About Marc Séguin:

Originally from Ottawa, Marc Séguin lives and works between Montreal and New York. Since his first solo exhibition in 1996, his work has been presented in Madrid, Barcelona, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, New York, Chicago and Florida while participating in international art fairs such as the Miami Basel. He is currently represented by several galleries including Corkin Gallery in Toronto as well as Envoy Gallery in New York. (Bio)

Art takes time. It takes time to create, and it takes time to experiment as well. If the artist creates himself while he paints, I guess the spectator creates himself while he takes some time to examine a piece of art. Or maybe it’s the other way around. One doesn’t take the time to watch a film or read a book : rather, one gives some of his time to experiment with a piece of art (DeLillo plays with this idea when he writes about Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hours Psycho). Maybe art has something to do with a dance between sacrifice and gift : one sacrifices a part of his life and, in return, is given the gift of himself through artistic journeys.

Here’s an example. Just quickly surfing the web, browsing through hundreds of pictures, one would missed the fact that the above painting was created with tar, real feathers and real butterflies (all glued to the canvas). The painting is huge : the crow hanging from the Pope’s necklace is real.

Here’s an excerpt from a 2008 interview with Marc Séguin:

In addition to the road kill series you have the pope series. Is there a correlation between the two of them besides the material that you use?

Maybe. I’m really too close to all these series to reflect on it, or it’s for people like you to find a link. I’m sure it makes sense somewhere, with the use of the use of the symbol of the crow, with the idea of infallibility of the pope in the Roman Catholic Church. There’s questions there, because in that way it addresses serious issues.

Serious issues being what?

Infallibility, or the fact that we’re living in this era where we can’t question what the Roman Catholic church does, but we can question what the Quran says or what the Muslim people do, or the Buddhists or what the Chinese do, but we never question ourselves. Dogma is a very dangerous thing. They’re supposed to stand for modesty, poverty, and whatever, and here they are—posing like peacocks. They’re blown up as these big statues, presenting themselves as bigger than life, or more important than their subjects.

And here they’re tarred and feathered.

They’re tarred and feathered because it was a way, back in the old days, to tell when somebody was wrong. They’d turn them out of the city and they could be recognized for months or years, because they were tarred and feathered. (NY Art Beat: “Death Becomes Him: The Art of Marc Seguin” by Amanda Scigaj, Oct. 29th, 2008)

See more of his work at the Simon Blais Gallery (Montreal) and Charest-Weinberg Gallery (Miami). The Canadian Art website has a slideshow about recent paintings by Marc Séguin.

Used copies of this book can still be find online (e.g. AbeBooks).

Previously on Skandalon

Techno Tuesday is a comic drawn by Andy Rementer:

Andy Rementer is a creative person based in Philadelphia. He received a bachelors degree from The University of the Arts in 2004. From 2005 to 2007 he worked for Fabrica, while living in Treviso, a small town in northern Italy. He currently divides his time between graphic design, cartooning and illustration. […] Aside from doodling Andy enjoys Italian meals, playing the banjo and drinking coffee. (more)

Check his personal website for more of his work.

“Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908 – June 24, 1976) was an American photographer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. […] After serving in military intelligence during World War II, White moved to New York City in 1945. He spent two years studying aesthetics and art history at Columbia University under Meyer Schapiro and developing his own distinctive style. He became involved with a circle of influential photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams; hearing Stieglitz’s idea of “equivalents” from the master himself was crucial to the direction of White’s mature post-war work.” (wikipedia)

Minor White was John Clendenen favorite photographer when he took up photography.

“A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.

That’s a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it’s probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.

Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. (And there’s probably more video to choose from.)” (more)

Ephemeral culture.

About Mona Kuhn:

“Mona Kuhn was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969, of German descent. She earned her degree in the United States from Ohio State University. Since 1998, she has been an independent studies scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited, and is included in public and private collections, internationally and in the United States. Kuhn’s first monograph, Photographs, was debut by Steidl in 2004; immediately followed by, Evidence, published by Steidl and released in Spring 2007. The images appearing in Evidence were photographed entirely in France, where she resides each summer.” (more)

Interesting comments about Kuhn’s work by Joerg Colberg (from his Conscientious’ blog):

“It’s probably not surprising that this kind of photography looks just like advertizing (minus the clothes) and that it usually is described as bringing back “youth” and “freedom” to photography when it is “discovered”. (more)

Colberg is quoting Alexander Adams’ analysis of Ryan McGinley’s work:

“It is here, ever more specifically, that the work continues its travel into the collective Spectacle – the domain of Guy Debord’s societal criticism – it joins product advertising in creating the image of an unattainable lifestyle – the “world vision which has become objectified [17].” McGinley shoots thousands of rolls of film, creates elaborate situations, to attain what he expresses as “the life I wish I was living.” If even he – young, hip, white, famous, and increasingly wealthy – cannot actually attain this lifestyle, it is hard to comprehend it as existing for anyone outside of the shallow frame of his camera.” (much more)

In McGinley’s case, I think it’s really hard to say if this is a weakness or a quality : his work is a symptom of its time. I find the reflexive quality in Kuhn’s work to be less evocative. Some of McGinley’s photos could offer great illustrations for Bret Easton Ellis’ novels. Just like Terry Rogers decadent photorealist paintings.