Chicano Mosh- Los Viejos
Riverside band Chicano Mosh released this single and video in June of this year.
They are opening for Israel’s Arcade at The Roxy in Los Angeles on Saturday, 12/21/24.
Dec 162024
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Dec 132024
Anthony James uses math and science to explore concepts of the infinite in his Portal sculptures. One of them, 80″ Great Rhombicosidodecahedron, 2020, pictured above, is currently on view at Palm Springs Art Museum.
Dec 122024
The above work is Olafur Eliasson’s Edgy but perfect kinship sphere, 2020, spotted at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery’s Los Angeles location.
Eliasson is showing work in a solo exhibition at the gallery’s New York location that includes two new light installations, one of which includes sound, a series of recent watercolors, and two new sculptures. That exhibition will be on view until 12/19/24.
In Los Angeles he has a solo exhibition at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, on view until July 2025. This show is part of the PST ART: Art and Science Collide programming taking place throughout Southern California.
Dec 122024
The pictures above are of Kapwani Kiwanga’s sculpture On Growth, commissioned for the High Line in NYC. This sculpture will be on view until February of 2025.
From the High Line about the artist and the work-
Kapwani Kiwanga is a conceptual artist working across film, performance, sculpture, and installation. Through exhaustive research into topics including colonial history, social segregation, and marginalized stories, Kiwanga constructs artworks that tease apart power imbalances and the imperceptible nuances that comprise the aesthetics of power. Often grounding her projects in architecture and horticulture, Kiwanga has created artworks that engage a wide variety of subjects including mono-crop agriculture in Tanzania, the oil and fracking industries, ceremonies related to key moments in African independence, and historical racist lantern laws from New England and New York. In her ongoing work Flowers for Africa, Kiwanga installs fresh arrangements of cut flowers that are replicas of bouquets visible in archival images of the inauguration ceremonies of African countries.
For the High Line, Kiwanga presents On Growth, a sculpture of a fern encased in glass. The multi-faceted case is constructed from dichroic glass, which captures and transforms the light that passes through it, changing tone and color as it’s viewed from different vantage points. The work references Wardian cases, a predecessor of the terrarium, which were used to transport uprooted plants to Europe from overseas, allowing those species to continue to thrive amid London’s polluted air in the late 19th century. These enclosures resembled jewelry cases at the time and, similarly, often protected treasures from distant lands. On Growth draws on the colonial histories of institutional and commercial botanic nurseries that heavily influenced the scientific understanding of plants and horticulture of today.
Dec 092024
Dummy- Nine Clean Nails
This song is from Dummy’s 2024 album, Free Energy.
The band is playing at Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles on Sunday, 12/15/24 with Guck, Puli, and GMO.
Dec 072024
Teenage Dads- Boyfriend
Every month I listen to the majority of bands/singers/musicians/artists who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.
The song above is from Australian band Teenage Dads’ 2024 album MAJORDOMO.
Below are November’s selections-
Dec 062024
This mural by James Bullough was created for the 2022 edition of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida. It replaced the previous one by Joram Roukes from the 2017 edition.
For more work by Bullough, also check out his Instagram.
Dec 062024
As part of their programming for PST: Art & Science Collide, Getty Museum is showing Lumen: The Art & Science of Light. The exhibition includes a collection of European medieval artwork, along with several contemporary works, that focus in some way on the science and concept of light.
From the museum about the show-
Through the manipulation of materials such as gold, crystal, and glass, medieval artists created dazzling light-filled environments, evoking, in the earthly world, the layered realms of the divine. To be human is to crave light. We rise and sleep according to the rhythms of the sun, and have long associated light with divinity. Focusing on the arts of western Europe, this exhibition explores the ways in which the science of light was studied by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers, theologians, and artists during the “long Middle Ages” (800-1600 CE), when science and religion were firmly intertwined. Natural philosophy (the study of the physical universe) served as the connective thread for diverse cultures across Europe and the Mediterranean, uniting scholars who inherited, translated, and improved on a common foundation of ancient Greek scholarship.
This story is equal parts science, poetics, and craft. By bringing together a variety of media that materialize light and objects that communicate how medieval people understood the lights of the heavens and of the eye, this exhibition demonstrates how science informed the artistry of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. To convey the continuing sense of wonder inspired by starry skies or moving light on precious materials, the exhibition includes several contemporary works of art placed in dialogue with historic objects.
Below are a few selections-
“On the Construction of the World”, in “Book of Divine Works (Liber divinorum operum)” (text in Latin), Rupertsberg, Rhineland, Germany, about 1210-40 CE by Hildegard of Bingen (German, 1098-1179 CE), Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment
About this work from the museum-
The nun and philosopher Hildegard of Bingen is known for her deeply religious visionary experiences in which she communed with the fiery “living light” (lux vivens) of God. Yet her evocative spiritual imagery reflects the language of science and cosmology. Shown at lower left, Hildegard, an illuminator as well as author, recorded her dazzling vision of the human at the center of nested elemental spheres. The figure is ringed by heavenly bodies, the clouds, and the winds, all encircled by the figure of flaming Caritas, or Divine Love. As a way to understand humankind’s relationship to the Godhead, Hildegard’s imagery emphasizes the correspondence between the body and the cosmos; just as the four humors affected health, the four winds controlled the earth, and the vivifying power of divine light nourished both.
“The Glorification of the Virgin”, attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Haarlem, northern Netherlands, about 1490-95 CE, Oil on panel
The painting above by Geertgen tot Sint Jans has so many fascinating details and was part of a section titled Divine Darkness.
The wall text from that section-
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all associate God with light. In the Creation story told in Genesis, when light was created, so too was darkness. As medieval optical theorists understood that sight was contingent upon light and that bodily vision was not possible in darkness, theologians of the time equated the unknowable, invisible aspects of God with darkness. According to a medieval “negative theology,” God exists beyond human perception and poses a challenge to vision itself. The fifteenth-century Christian theologian Nicholas of Cusa wrote that “God is found when all things are left behind; and this darkness is light in the Lord.” Such contradictory associations between God and both light and darkness were fundamental to the verbal and visual expressions used to elucidate the nature of the divine.
And about the painting-
Golden light surrounds the glorified Virgin Mary and Christ child at the center of this intimate and absorbingly detailed devotional painting as a luminous host of angels fills the heavens with eternal music. Their brightness contrasts with the dark perimeter that envelops this apocalyptic vision to suggest the ineffable darkness in which God dwells.
Constellations from a Hebrew Translation of Ptolemy’s “Almagest”, In an astronomical anthology (text in Hebrew), Catalonia, about 1361 CE, Tempura, gold, and ink on parchment and Astrolabe (with Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic Script), Iberia (Spain) or Italy, 1300s CE
From the museum about these two items-
In the Muslim and Christian courts of Europe, and particularly in Iberia, highly educated, multilingual Jews held important positions as physicians and astrologers. Jewish practitioners of these related fields contributed original works on astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy, drawing from and improving on Greco-Arabic sciences. At left, the Hebrew translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest (a work that was little known in Europe before 1200) updated the ancient text with the addition of astronomical tables that guided religious observance. Only a small number of European astrolabes with Hebrew inscriptions survive. This exquisite example lists the names of twenty-four stars in a combination of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. The centermost circle marks the ecliptic, or the sun’s path, and is labeled with the zodiacal signs in Hebrew.
“Untitled (Mugarnas)”, 2012, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Mirrors, reverse-glass painting, and plaster on wood
One of the most impressive contemporary pieces in the show was the sculpture pictured above, by Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian, which captured and reflected light so beautifully.
About the work from the museum-
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was deeply inspired by a visit to the Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz, Iran. The vaulted domes and walls of that site are covered in dazzling, intricate mirror mosaics that fracture and dematerialize space while reflecting light and amplifying movement and activity in the shrine below. Farmanfarmaian began exploring these mosaic techniques, eventually collaborating with master artisans to produce sculptural and wall-mounted works that incorporate mirror mosaic and reverse-glass painting. Untitled (Mugarnas) adopts the sacred and decorative forms that are common in Islamic architecture, and expresses the perfection of creation.
This exhibition closes 12/8/24.
Dec 052024
Chris Marker’s 1983 poetic travelogue Sans Soleil brings something new with every rewatch. The film consists of footage, some stock and some of Marker’s own work, taken around the world, with a focus primarily on Japan and Guinea-Bissau. Along with these images, a narrator (Alexandra Stewart in the English version) reads from the letters she received from the fictitious cameraman. Within these letters are his thoughts on memory, history, culture, and life itself.
On this viewing it was his mention of Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting to Princess Sadako in Japan at the beginning of the 11th century, and her lists, that stood out for me.
He says:
“Do we ever know where history is really made? Rulers ruled and used complicated strategies to fight one another. Real power was in the hands of a family of hereditary regents; the emperor’s court had become nothing more than a place of intrigues and intellectual games. But by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon had a passion for lists: the list of ‘elegant things,’ ‘distressing things,’ or even of ‘things not worth doing.’ One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of ‘things that quicken the heart.’ Not a bad criterion I realize when I’m filming…”
Finding things, however small, that “quicken the heart” is a lovely criterion for life in general and this film is certainly on the list.
After watching Sans Soleil, and researching Marker, I watched one of his earlier works, the science fiction featurette La Jetée. Constructed using still images, it contains only one brief shot made with a movie camera.
Using voice over narration, the short film takes place after World War III and tells the story of a prisoner in a post-apocalyptic Paris forces to time travel to the past and future in the hopes of saving the present. The man has a vivid memory from his childhood before the war of a woman he had seen at the airport, just before witnessing a man’s death. Through his time travel he is able to meet and develop a relationship with her as an adult. Time and memory, themes also present in Sans Soleil, were subjects Marker retained an interest in exploring in many of his films throughout the years.
La Jetée would go on to influence many artists, musicians, and filmmakers over the years. One of the most famous examples is Terry Gilliam’s movie 12 Monkeys which uses several of the film’s concepts of time travel.
Criterion Collection has released both movies together along with Marker’s six minute film Junktopia, and other extras. For more information on his filmography, Catherine Lupton has written a very informative essay on their website.
Dec 022024
Fazerdaze- Cherry Pie
This song is from New Zealand artist Fazerdaze‘s 2024 album, Soft Power.
She is opening for Pond at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Thursday, 12/5/24.