“Is it Art or Fart?” the book has been revealed: it interprets the isitartorfart.com blog as a pocket-sized Penguin Classic-ish volume, and can be purchased at The Smile in NYC, in LA at Family on Fairfax, and at LAXART on La Cienega. It can also be purchased on the site here. This photo shows Austrian artist Franz West and California-born New York-based artist Mary Heilmann perusing its pages.
Critic, curator and friend Jack Bankowsky is wearing his Freeway 110s. Jack’s writings include some of our very favorite essays about some of our very favorite artists (Jason Rhoades, David Hammons and Richard Prince are among his recent subjects). Happy almost birthday, Jack!
Here’s Nicole, ready for business in her spiffy hat and white 110s, hanging out on Sunset Blvd. before dinner.
“I leave to you the equally rich contradictions of Nicole Miller’s awkward, unsettling video ‘The Conductor,’ in which a black man conducts an invisible orchestra without using his arms, which means mostly through facial expressions. The result evokes minstrelsy, silent movies, race relations and an almost frightening array of human emotions.” -Roberta Smith on Miller’s art in The New York Times
Craig Kauffman’s art is part of the fabric of the culture of Southern California. Resourcing the industrial materials that became ubiquitous via the growing surf and car cultures of LA in the fifties and sixties, Kauffman, ever the California renegade, employed auto-paint and fiberglass as the oil and canvas of his most iconic works: lozenge-shaped wall reliefs around which the idea of a west-coast minimal art movement called “Finish Fetish” crystalized. Freeway Eyewear is indebted to Kauffman’s amazing contributions and enamored by his brilliant forms. Craig Kauffman in the LA Times here
Untitled (Pink Bubble) 1968-9 and Untitled, 1969
See more of Kauffman’s work at Frank Lloyd Gallery’s website
Karen Kilimnik’s work examines the beauty, romance and glamour of our culture with equal-part starry-eyed wonderment and brutally honest aspirational longing. Her particular lens is both soft-focus and crystal-clear all at once. We’d like to spend a day seeing the world through her 405s, out her car window.
See more work at 303gallery.com here
“me — I forgot the wire cutters getting the wire cutters from the car to break into stonehenge, 1982”
Water soluble oil on canvas, 1998
Listen to what John Waters had to say about this painting here
Thanks to Mariko Munro and Lisa Spellman for the fantastic photo of Karen
Kurt Cobain inspired many things, our very own Freeway 405s included. Kurt, curated by Michael Darling at the Seattle Art Museum, is an exhibition that will look at the influence of Cobain and grunge music on contemporary art. Rodney Graham, Elizabeth Peyton and Jack Pierson are among the artists whose works will be on view from May 13th through September 6th. More info here
