Giant Robot’s physical space in Santa Monica GR2 hosted “Post It Show 6” recently in conjunction with artists Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson at the helm as curators and I forgot to tell you about it… I did. I had even gone down there and shot nice images of some of the almost 2,000 pieces you could pick up starting at only $20.
While most people consider natural disasters to be dangerous and devastating, Lori Nix regards them as her personal muses. Growing up in rural Kansas, Lori’s childhood was filled with its share of tornados, snowstorms, floods, droughts, and insect infestations. She is also fascinated, or maybe a bit obsessed, as she’ll admit, by the idea of the apocalypse. These forms of nontraditional sources of inspiration have transpired into photographic masterpieces in Lori’s collections like “Accidental Kansas” and “The City.”
The most interesting aspect of Lori’s work is how she goes about creating it. Before she whips out her camera, she spends months constructing incredibly detailed dioramas. Once everything is in place, she’ll photograph her scenes, blow them up, and alas her picture perfect vision of a decaying landscape is born.
Lori took a break from dreaming of destruction and creating ruin in order to give ChinaShop a glimpse into her creative process, tell us about her newest series “The City,” and discuss her kinship with Mother Nature.
This past Saturday Alhambra’s decidedly happening Gallery Nucleus hosted an opening party for their Poster Peepshow exhibition, which features lots of luscious pin up art from the past and present. Cheesecake and erotic artist Olivia De Berardinis, whose work has been prominently featured in the pages of Playboy, signed copies of her books for a seemingly never-ending line of fans, and Suicide Girls Sash and Milloux modeled for a packed live figure drawing session. Original Catwoman Julie Newmar, L.A. glamour gal Lenora Claire, and Runaways producer Kim Fowley were also in attendance.
Conjoined – a superdimensional art show curated by supreme monster painter, Chet Zar, is currently up at Copro Nason gallery, and it is not to be missed.
Conjoined is a collection of work from the cream of the pop surrealism and lowbrow crops, alongside rare work by renowned special effects creators, some of whom have never exhibited in a gallery setting before.
Oceanic Awareness Collaboration and Andi Campognone Projects are proud to present the 1st annual Art for Awareness Benefit. A one night event Saturday, February 26, 2011 from 6 – 11pm, featuring art work by 50 artists from around the country and as far away as the UK and Indonesia.
Google unleashed its ambitious Art Project this week – a visual library of more than 1,000 images of art from 17 major museums from around the world. The paintings, sculptures and installations are rendered in such detail – around 7 billion pixels each – that you can zoom up to the brushstrokes of the individual strands of hair on Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
What do we know about big American comic cons? We know they are held in convention centers, deafening places filled with bright lights and berber carpeting. We know they are dominated by huge media companies. We know they are filled with socially awkward fanboys.
Well, Angouleme International Comics Festival, the largest comics con in the Western hemisphere and the crown jewel of the French bandes-dessines scene, is nothing like that at all.
Picture if you will a charming medevial town, filled with cheese, fine wines and sexy fire-eaters. In this town there are a number of comic-filled tents. And the comics they showcase are the most experimental, badass, lavishly printed, dirty, existentially questioning, silly and odd comics in the world. Except for one tent filled with superheros, which is tiny and sort of shoved into the corner. That’s what Angouleme is like.
Typical circus acts and themed cirque du soleil have been done so many times but none have dared to push the limits the way that Cirque Berzerk does. Affectionately referred to by many as “Tim Burton’s ideal nightmare,” Cirque Berzerk is a sexy Death-themed traveling circus, which experiments with edgy burlesque, saucy cabaret, alluring aerial acrobatics, daring fire eating, extreme contortion, and immoral temptation.
When Kenny Scharf was painting his mural—an orgy of candy-colored cartoon faces in various states of distortion—on the northwest corner of Houston and Bowery in downtown Manhattan, he said he wasn’t worried about graffiti writers painting over his piece, as they did to Shepard Fairey’s “May Day” mural at the same spot in July.
I just paid a visit to Tarot 2, currently on display at Downtown’s Hive gallery and collective, and might have acquired another favorite artist. Yoko D’Holbachie – one of the five featured artists – is a Japanese painter specializing in… Eh, who needs labels. Her universe is a cross between the realm of Trapper Keepers and Disney’s Fantasia, as well as a home to myriads of mystery plants and adorable inhabitants. Painted in eye-scorching neon rainbow palettes, D’Holbachie’s psychedelic candyland is definitely my new guilty pleasure.
