Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

YooouuuTuuube – The creative exuberance of the web has touched my brain this beautiful Monday morning. I like this video mosaic creation thing/tool/hack a lot. Try it out for yourself by picking a YouTube video URL you want to mess around with and have this site create your psychedelic amateurpiece. Muppet fans should definitely check this one out of Beaker performing “Ode to Joy.”

BKLYN Designs – About a week ago I went to see the Tara Donovan exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Since then, I’ve had my eye out for neat designs made of funky materials. The BKLYN show caught my eye. Speaking of design, we’ve got a design show going on and it’s kind of a big deal.

Storker Project – Mark Jenkins is an artist that is also doing cool stuff with an interesting material. Check out Mark’s often funny and adorable images of little guys made out of packing tape hanging out on stuff.

Monday Music – “New In Town” by Little Boots (Fred Falke Remix).

I’m rather disappointed to have missed what was, no doubt, the most intellectually and aesthetically stimulating several days Indianapolis has seen in a while. However, in an attempt to prove that what I was doing in absentia was even slightly worthwhile, I will give a brief report of my trip to NYC last week.

First up was the Armory Show, which brought quite a few folks to New York last week. Like many, I have a conflicted relationship with art fairs. I continue to go to them, although the experience is a manic exercise in ambivalence: one is alternately perturbed by crowds of art socialites, happy to run into people one knows (which causes one to worry whether one is posing as an art socialite), worried the art might be decent but that the context is spoiling it, and elated and relieved when encountering a few strong artworks that stand out from the huddled thousands on display. I came away with the impression that much of the art presented at the Armory was decorative and generally uninspiring, although there were a few notable exceptions. I’m a fan of David Shrigley’s work, and there were a few good pieces on display at Anton Kern’s booth, including a most clever projected animation entitled Lightswitch (2007). Ronald Feldman Fine Arts played host to a witty boutique-within-a-boutique with Christine Hill’s The Volksboutique Armory Apothecary, for which the artist worked from behind a counter to dispense personalized remedies to the sundry ailments of visitors. I also had the pleasure of seeing my friend and accomplished video artist Lida Abdul, whose work was on view at the booth of Giorgio Persano Gallery.

Of the handful of satellite fairs also going on, I made it to Pulse and Volta (whose names sound rather ridiculous next to one another) and enjoyed poking around the booths with my most esteemed colleagues Lisa Freiman and Allison Unruh.

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