Melissa Dixson, Taxidermist

Spend Halloween With NECK FACE

In 2004, you couldn't turn a Brooklyn corner without encountering a hairy arm, bat head, or sharp-tooth demon rendered by NeckFace. The mark of NeckFace was so prolific, in fact, that one could literally give directions using his tags as landmarks. Okay--maybe that's a stretch, by they were everywhere.

Since then, NeckFace has been a busy boy, moving his work off of the street and into the art gallery. This Halloween (appropriately), he will unveil his latest series of twisted drawings, paintings and sculptures, as well as a full-scale haunted house and skate demo. 

Unfortunately, (for me anyway) Into Darkness will be held at OHWOW in Los Angeles.

 

The video trailer:

Opening reception Sunday, October 31st @ 7PM

 OHWOW

101 S. La Brea
Los Angeles, CA 90036

One Hundred Million Sunflower Seeds on the Floor

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has covered the floor of Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern with 100 million hand-painted porcelain replicas of sunflower seeds. 

A team of 1,600 skilled artisans from the Chinese city of Jingdezhen, known for its porcelainware were employed for the task of molding, firing, and hand-painting stripes on the tiny seeds. The workers found it "very difficult to understand" the reason for doing so.

Why sunflower seeds?

"Sunflower seeds, he said, had a particular significance in recent Chinese culture and history. During the cultural revolution, Mao Zedong was often likened to the sun and the people to sunflowers, gazing adoringly at his face. But sunflowers were also a humble but valued source of food in straitened times, a snack to be consumed with friends."

The piece is inspired by Twitter. The artist really likes Twitter. You can follow him here.

 

 

via The Guardian via Gawker

Fred Tomaselli at Brooklyn Museum

 Field Guides, 2003, photocollage, gouache, acrylic, resin on wood, 60 x 84 in.

 

Opening this week: The Brooklyn Museum presents a mid-career survey of American artist Fred Tomaselli's work from 1990 to 2010.

Tomaselli's highly detailed paintings on wood are comprised of unorthodox materials: images of flowers, birds, butterflies and human body parts clipped from magazines and layers of real drugs (both legal and illegal).

The result? A kaleidoscopic universe laced with historical and cultural references.

 

Fred Tomaselli

October 8, 2010–January 2, 2011

Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Helene Appel: Chopping Board

 

Chopping Board, 2010 Oil on canvas, 30x45 cm

Painter Helene Appel is currently exhibiting her work through October 24th at The Approach in London. All works are composed of oil paint on linen. 

A couple of Helene's earlier works that I particularly like:

Leek, 2009 Oil on linen, 72x118cm

Untitled, detail, 2008 Oil on cotton, 170x90cm

 

via: I'm Revolting

Rumspringa, Cocaine, and a Very Long List

 Image via NYT

Pop artist Rob Pruitt's ambitious 13,000 square foot exhibition of new works at Gavin Brown's Enterprise AND Maccarone Inc. opened last Saturday. The show, Pattern and Degradation is inspired by "Rumspringa", a traditional grace period which gives Anabaptist teenagers the opportunity run wild in the non-Amish world before deciding to return to the church or leave the community.

“I’m very interested in the way American culture sort of celebrates and craves a certain period of bad behavior in people,” Says Pruitt. “And then I started to think about how the life of the artist is a sort of permanent rumspringa, how artists are allowed by society to be the ones who get to act crazy and drunk for everyone else.”

Among the spectacle are paintings based on Amish quilts (the result of extensive research and visits to Amish country and Pennsylvania quilt museums), self portraits, tire sculptures, and wallpaper made of photos of Pruitt's Facebook friends.

Cocaine Buffet Grand Prix, image via pojodi

 

In 1998 Pruit presented Cocaine Buffet at a group show in an artist's studio, long mirror on the floor with a sixteen-foot-long line of real cocaine. Guests were encouraged to get down on their knees and sniff sniff sniff. And sniff they did.

 

In 1999 he presented a project called 101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself which is quite fun to read:

The artist is probably best known, however, for his glittery panda paintings.

Earlier this year, Abrams published Pop Touched Me: The Art of Rob Pruitt, the artist's first comprehensive monograph which examines two decades of his career.

HC, 250 color illustrations, 9 3/4 x 11 inches, $50.

 

Pattern and Degradation

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, through October 23

620 Greenwich Street

 

via NYT

Butch Craft

 

Last night Moss kicked off the fall season by introducing the contemporary design world to newly-coined "Butch-Craft" movement in its SOHO store with MAKE ME.

The exhibition features furniture made of "manly" materials like wood, metal, steel and drywall with a 'rough-around-the edges', 'I-made-this-myself-in-the-garage' aesthetic. 

Oscar Magnus Narud's Keel collection: tables in rough wood and iron.

Joost van Bleiswijk: Corroded collection "no screw, rust glue"--archetypical Dutch farmer's cabinet, monumental candleholders and clock in wesathered steel, with natural rust finish.

Manmade series by Peter Marigold.

Make Me: The Emergence of Butch-Craft in Contemporary Design

September 15th - Novemeber 14th, 2010

Moss Gallery, NYC

images via mossonline.com

 

Sue Williams: Al-Qaeda is the CIA

 American Enterprise 2009
 

Opening this week, 303 Gallery in New York presents Al-Qaeda is the CIA, a twenty-year retrospective of Sue Williams' paintings. I've been following her work since I first encountered it in 1997 while a studying painting at Pratt Institute. At the time I was really struggling to figure out how abstract painting could contain content and meaning, and her painting really influenced my direction.

Williams' work can be described as shocking, confrontational, vulgar, absurd, playful, and comical all at once. Her paintings take on subjects ranging from sexual abuse to gender to politics. 

Williams' early work explicitly referenced rape and abuse with absurdity, and while her focus is very much the same, her aesthetic has changed drastically over the years. In the mid-nineties, her all-over painting technique can characterized by a jumble of lines depicting body parts and biomorphic shapes--limp penises, legs akimbo, various orifices, intestines and arteries. The sexual acts are skillfully hidden beneath a surface of a thousand brush strokes. 

With Polka Dots 2009

Bindweed and Red 2005

Red Flouncy (Go Team) 1997

Tighter Flocky with Green Yellow 1997   

   

Al-Qaeda is the CIA

303 Gallery

September 18 - October 23 2010

547 W 21st Street

New York, NY 10011

All images via 303 Gallery

Takashi Murakami at Versailles

,

Takashi Murakami, Japanese pop artist known for his manga-inspired art and collaboration with Louis Vuitton, will exhibit a number of large-scale sculptures in Versailles. 

The official opening is September 13th, but its already causing outrage and controversy. Protestors are citing some of his more outrageous sculptures. In Lonesome Cowboy, a man uses semen as a lasso, and Hiropon depicts a girl using breast milk as a jumprope. 

The sculptures to be exhibited in Versailles are family-friendly.

The museum's director Jean-Jacques Aillagon feels is is his "duty to open the palace to the artistic creation of our times." In 2008 he received similar criticism for his decision to exhibit the work of Jeff Koons.

Aillagon adds that "Louis XIV and his successors were obsessed with the contemporary art of their times and were constantly demolishing parts of the palace to have them rebuilt and decorated by the finest artists and artisans of their day."

 

via: Huffington Post

 

Allyson Mellberg: An Unearthly Child

Parasite Planet, egg tempera & walnut ink, 22x30 inches, 2010 

Press release:

Allyson Mellberg’s works on paper are grounded in our relationship with the natural world, the mystical experiences we can have when we connect with it, and the injustices we continually cause in our wake. They warn us, teach us, and make us feel good to be living amongst amazing plants and animals. In this new body of work, more fantastical sci-fi elements creep into her world, creating wondrous parallels to our own.

"The title, “An Unearthly Child”, is both an homage to one of Allyson’s earliest influences, the sci-fi television show Doctor Who, (“An Unearthly Child” is the name of the very first episode of the show from 1963) and an allusion to the characters in her drawings, who are generally skin-diseased, malformed, and sickly. Allyson’s “unearthly child” is a faceless, voiceless person who lives in the world but is not connected to anything around them.

"Through her depiction of the grotesque, Allyson reveals its dichotomy by creating tender, beautiful moments with these tragically deformed creatures. In keeping with the themes in her work, she refuses to use chemicals in the making of her drawings and instead creates her own earthy palette by making pigments and inks from walnuts, egg, spinach and other natural ingredients. Not only is it ideologically and environmentally sound but Allyson is able to create a striking color palette that is wholly her own.

 

Waiter, egg tempera & walnut ink, 16 x 20 inches, 2010

 

 

Telepath, egg tempera & walnut ink, 11x14 inches,2010

 

Cinders Gallery presents:

An Unearthly Child

Allyson Mellberg

September 10 - October 10th 2010

Opening Reception, Friday September 10th 7 - 10 pm

Brooklyn, NY

Nobody's Fool: Yoshitomo Nara Takes Manhattan

Hyper Enough (to the City), 1997, Acrylic on canvas, 49 x 59 inches 

Tomorrow, September 9th, the first major exhibition in New York for Yoshitomo Nara, a leading artist in Japan's Neo Pop movement opens at the Asia Society. Titled Nobody’s Fool, more than one hundred paintings, drawings, and sculpture spanning 20 years of his career will be on view. Many have never before been exhibited in the United States.

In conjunction with the exhibition, "White Ghost"-- two 12-foot-tall sculptures made of fiberglass and steel have been erected on Park Avenue--one on 67th street and the other on 70th. Like komainu, "mythical lion-like animal statues commonly placed at the entrance to shrines in Japan as guardians. Nara, who often uses dogs and children as subjects in his work has uniquely combined the two for “White Ghost”. The sculptures will be glossy white, and will sit on rough stone like bases, referencing how artifacts and monuments from the past so often appear in museums."

 

Nobody’s Fool

Yoshitomo Nara

Opens Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at the Asia Society Museum in New York City

725 Park Avenue at 70th Street NY, NY 10021

asiasociety.org 

via: Artdaily

LA Peeps: Don't Miss The Rogue Taxidermy Kunstkammer

I'm absolutely pleased as punch to have been invited to be part of this exhibition! If I had a way to haul my little ass to Los Angeles this weekend, I'd be there for sure!

Details:

LA LUZ DE JESUS

4633 Hollywood Blvd

Los Angeles CA 90027

Phone: 323-666_7667

www.laluzdejesus.com

The Show runs May 7th - May 30th Click here to view works for sale!

OPENING RECEPTION Friday May 7th, 8pm-11pm

SQUIRREL MASTERCLASS/GAMEFEED Saturday May 8th 6pm-10pm. This event will include a taxidermy demo, followed by Squirrel Chili. A vegan "Mock-Squirrel" Chili will also be available. Sponsored by Schmaltz Brewing Company.

Participating Artists:

SCOTT A. A. BIBUS

SARINA BREWER

MELISSA DIXSON

ENRIQUE GOMEZ DE MOLINA

JESSICA JOSLIN

JEANIE M

ROBERT MARBURY

ELIZABETH MCGRATH

ALAN WADZINSKI

BROOKE WESTON

MIRMY WINN

 

 

Can't Wait: Tim Burton at MoMA

 On November 22nd, MoMA will open "Tim Burton, a Retrospectve. The show promises  films, photos, props, and puppets, as well as dozens of  drawings the director has created and collected throughout his prolific career. 

I hope the bike from Pee Wee's Big Adventure and the knife-y gloves from Edward Scissorhands will be on display!!

Source: New York Magazine

Don't Miss Juergen Teller at Lehmann Maupin

Shot alone one evening at the Musee du Louvre in Paris, German photographer Juergen Teller has executed a study of two nudes as they move amongst the masterpieces housed in the galleries.  Presented in large scale, the photographs capture the intimacy between photographer and subject. 

The photographs were originally commissioned for the French magazine Paradis, and are now on view at Lehmann Maupin through October 17th 2009.

Urs Fischer at the New Museum

Just in time for Halloween, The New Museum will be turning over three exhibition floors to Swiss-born wild card Urs Fischer on October 28th.  Well known for his "architectural Interventions", like that time he dug an enormous hole in a gallery floor in 2007.  His show will surely raise eyebrows and ruffle feathers--I can barely wait!

Melissa Hearts Ted Muehling

Ted Muehling is one of my favorite designers (okay I'm a fanwhore), and I was absolutely thrilled that my little Bambi piece was used in his window display at E.R. Butler.  Ted creates jewelry and decorative objects inspired by objects found in nature. Based in New York, he produces multiples as well as one-of-a-kind pieces.  Rocks, shells, eggs, and insects all inspire me, and humble me as a designer, " Mueling has said. "I try to keep shapes restrained, abstracting forms in nature, transforming them through the imperative to make objects that look beautiful and work beautifully."

My husband and I have a few of Muehling's pieces, and they are cherished little gems to me. When I graduated from taxidermy school, my husband gifted me a pair of his earrings, and I love them. When he proposed, my engage ment ring was hidden in a porcelain snail shell designed for Nymphenburg.

Covet-worthy Muehling-designed plates:

 

Yinka Shonibare MBE at the Brooklyn Museum

This exhibition is a major midcareer survey of work by the UK-based Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE. Shonibare explores issues of race, class, and contemporary African identity and its relationship to European colonialism through a range of media that includes sculpture, painting, photography, and installation art. Brightly colored 'African' fabrics (Dutch wax-printed cotton) and headless figures have appeared in Shonibare's work since 1994.  Through September 20th.  For more information, click here.

How to Blow up Two Heads at Once, 2006

Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 03.00 hours, 1998

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters , 2008

Head On

Furniture as Trophy: an Exhibition

On view now through November, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna presents "Furniture as Trophy"  From the press release:  "Around the middle of the nineteenth century, so-called antler furniture was wide-spread in the hunting lodges of the Alpine region. These “trophies” made from hunted animals are seen today as a highly scurrilous aberration of rustic conviviality. But in modern settings, too, animal material was presented as a trophy, as it were: the examples range from classics of modern interior décor design from the 1920s that use animal fur as upholstery to ironic antler furniture pastiches from the 1980s New Design era."

source: [MAK online]

visit MAK here

Sandy Skoglund's installation "Fox Games" on view now at the Denver Art Museum.

Source: www.denverartmuseum.org

Materialistic Disenchantment: E.R. Butler & Co presents an installation by FSB

Saturday, May 16th- June 31'st
E.R. Butler & Co.
55 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012

Hardware from German Manufacturer FSB is featured in a spectacular window display, in a swamp-like setting, complete with woodland creatures (many are mine!)  If you happen to be in SoHo this Spring it's a must-see!