Thundercat – Is It Love

Steven Shearer, "Poem for Venice", Typographical Maquette

Shearer is representing Canada at the Venice Biennale. His portraits of rockers, displayed inside this pavilion, don’t move me (I am alone in this). But I sure as hell feel his megapoemliths. This flamboyant and masterful expression has a quiet and thoughtful corollary in Shearer’s commentary on his work. Painting characters with a balance of masculinity and femininity “creates a stillness”. Et cetera. Dude, you had me at Cornholination.

One Floor Up More Highly copyright Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Recently I lapsed into an old conversational tic I’d thought extinct in my language: emphatic declaration. Specifically, I declared as bullshit the declaring of Patti Smith’s work as bullshit. The irony pierced me instantly, and I retreated into bemused introspection for a couple of sips.

The experience improved my reading of this interview with Katharina Grosse. Whose work I deeply dig. (…could have selected an image featuring materials other than soil…could have left out “dig”……….)

Katharina Grosse.

The Mahotella Queens – Wozani Mahipi

Thanks to our occasional guest titler @whyowhyvonne and the typically nourishing read there, Unmissable.

Dr. Dre Ft. Nikki Grier & Sly – Mr. Prescription

"Grace Throckmorton", Torin Stephens 2010

“images found on the internet of people who have died…downloaded and projected into a space that was either important to that person in life or was the site of their death…”

I saw this on Wooster last week, and took the time to learn more. I was surprised by what I learned. There are few other words posted with this work on Stephens’ site. I found I didn’t care, and learned instead that some things are better experienced without knowing how it is to project onto a horse.

The Artwork of Torin Stephens.

A post named not to celebrate my freedom from Facebook, no, but for a song in a playlist. Not because it’s the best song, but because it has the word “year” in it, and it’s January 1st, and that’s just how far we can push the envelope round here.

A day like this in a year like this deserves bonus music. So not just one track this Focussed, but a whole playlist. These are all 2010 releases, and another thing they have in common is our love for them.

Crystal Castles – Year Of Silence

Food, Thomas Strønen, Iain Ballamy & Christian Fennesz – Mictyris

Either/Orchestra – Portrait of Lindsey Schust

Tritton Cello Ensemble – Le Phènix_ I. Allegro

Emeralds – Now You See Me

Brooklyn Rider & Kojiro Umezaki – Lullaby from Itsuki

Joe Frawley – About Memory, Part 1

Flying Lotus – Nose Art

Four Tet – Love Cry

Laura Marling – Devil’s Spoke

Stephen Hough – Chopin Mazurka in F minor, Op 63 No 2

Myra Melford – Night

No Age – Skinned

Laura Veirs – July Flame

A Place To Bury Strangers – It Is Nothing

Fanshaw – O’ Sailor

From a small square of lcd screen, you can only imagine how beguiling Holly King’s photographs of multimedia models would be if you saw them in their fullsize chromogenic glory. Unless you are like my gallery-mate, who found them garish and so would likely prefer less visual information. But you are not like her. She is wrong, and you are right, and now you must remember to watch for Holly King work hanging near you.

Holly King: Works.

Diana Bennett - Seed Bags

There is a corner of Engine Gallery that flips my Lynch switch. I am gliding towards a mysterious item, and as detail increases, so does the attraction. But now repulsion begins to creep in. I can’t stop. I arrive at the item. The depth below the perfect surface of the sphere beguiles. And in the depth -

Chaos and Cacophany!

Strands and puddles and murk and spray and all of it feeling very vulnerable and violent. Spilled.

The gallerist approaches and tells me that the series was created in response to Bennett’s experience of her granddaughter’s malignant tumours. I must know more.

There is not much more available online, and as usual it is an exercise in magic-spoiling, the habit I can’t shake. Simple glass, mirror, varnish, embedded items equally common. Bennett is a former executive at TV Ontario. But of course the real magic of art is that unsolveable effect, much more than the sum of its parts. The flip of the switch.

Tumourous work not pictured, but viewable at the link below.

Diana Bennett at Engine Gallery.