Bang Bang

MEDIA HASH, NEWS, DISPATCHES WITH SALT

ARTISTS ANNOUNCED FOR WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2012 - Some Cool Choices for Movie Fans

December 21st, 2011 • Paul H-O

As usual, YOU, and a lot of good artists out in the cold again. Hey look it's VINCENT GALLO! WERNER HERZOG! ANGELINA JOLIE! Man, this is great, The good times are back for the lean mean WhitBi machine. Vincent Gallo? I have to look and see what his art looks like. I'll get into that later, if it matters at that point, this list just came out of the Press Office. H-O


NEW YORK, December 21, 2011—The Whitney Museum of American Art today announced the list of artists participating in the upcoming Whitney Biennial 2012, which takes place at the Whitney Museum from March 1 through May 27, 2012.

Kai Althoff, Thom Andersen, Charles Atlas, Lutz Bacher, Forrest Bess (paintings selected by artist Robert  more »

The Mercer Street Medical Case (v1 part 1) 3:40

November 7th, 2011 • Paul H-O

Popular Doctor for New York's Creative Community Gets Booted by Greedy Landlord

My version of Dr. House is real. New documentary at square two is in reality in pre-production, a drama with 27 hours of real-time video about Dr. Daryl Isaacs, the uniquely brilliant and prolific internist, gives me his story of the struggle with the American medical establishment fix - all specialists and no GP's. He demonstrates in check form the insanity of "for profit health insurance' companies", Isaacs' massive patient load, and the surprising facts behind his inclusion in the hit film - SUPERSIZE ME, by then documentary director, Morgan Spurlock.


The Mercer Street Medical Case begins as a New York real estate nightmare, because Daryl Isaacs loses the lease on his medical practice and must move by the end of May. It was April and I began shooting the  more »

GEO LOCO – THE REIMAGINED LANDSCAPE – GROUP SHOW

October 30th, 2011 • Paul H-O
Geo-Loco-temp1

Here's the card. The line-up. The locator map. Curated by Henry Sanchez and including Phil (Brainpan) Beuhler, Carla (RunningDear) Gannis, Eve Andrea Laramee, Eto Otitigbe, then around the block to Curator Sanchez. Mash that landscape, boys and girls! Now if the L rain is running on Saturday the 5th... The equivalent of a good review is 'preview', and I say do the preview, so do it.

Sotheby's - Art Auction Action Against It's Art Handlers = STILL LOCKED OUT

October 30th, 2011 • Paul H-O

While many in the hoch-kunst elite and it's hopefuls would rather turn a blind eye (the other is tone deaf) to the union-busting attempts at the lower wage scale employees of Sotheby's - the online art zine HYPERALLERGIC seems pretty busy looking at the not pretty picture of big ticket art, and producing content on it's discontents. I'm liking it. I recommend it, even if one of it's sponsors is part of the problem.

A Portrait of Paul (an interview by Roger Adams, 2007)

September 28th, 2011 • Paul H-O
Directed and edited by former intern Roger Adams. He was the only intern still in high school I ever hired. He's the only one that ever applied. He made a very good film at 16, it's called "Slapboxing".

Odd Nerdum Thrown in Joint for Tax Jam

August 23rd, 2011 • Paul H-O
From Artinfodotcom via News from Norway August 19, 2011

Odd Nerdrum, the Norwegian artist sentenced to two years in jail for tax evasion, won’t be allowed to keep painting in prison. He’s appealing his sentence, but if it stands, the 67-year-old Nerdrum will have to leave his brushes and easels behind.

Newspaper Aftenposten reported that the Justice Ministry has stressed that convicted prisoners aren’t allowed to continue their business activities while held in custody. For someone like Nerdrum, who has lived off income from sales of his artwork, his passion for painting will thus conflict with regulations governing prison terms.

It’s different for other convicts, who have been allowed to paint, read or conduct approved hobbies as a means of passing the time in jail. Aftenposten noted that convicted robber Johnny Thendrup, for example, sentenced to 13 years in prison for the commando-style NOKAS heist in 2004, took up his old hobby of painting while his case was pending. He has since continued to paint while incarcerated at the Ila prison for high-risk criminals outside Oslo.  more »

The B.Wurtz Show is the Art of a Distant Future Past

August 18th, 2011 • Paul H-O
Charmaine Wheatley - Wurtz blubagbloview ruler
Location: Metro Pictures
Exihibiton: NYC June 22 to August 5, 2011

Prologue:  Charmaine Wheatley and I had a series of conversations about artist, B. Wurtz, because he was having a retrospective in Chelsea.  She said, "you told me about Wurtz like a year ago and I looked at his work online and was atypically into his "assemblage" sculpture so when I read in TimeOut he had a show up at Metro Pics I headed over. It was high on my list of priorities. Then I emailed you, "I went and loved it".  Then she wrote back to talk about it, but she started drawing the work she liked.  Ms.Wheatley rules in her own realm, deliberate cartooning with precise writing, attention to detail and subject that reminds me of monks quilling illustrated tomes.  She said maybe we should try to do something together about the Wurtz show. I saw the first drawings and thought, I'll try to use these black marks that come out of these buttons to keep Charmaine's pictures from touching, so people can see them better.  It's a work-in-progress and we will stick with Wurtz in the spirit of Wurtz; simply, working with material we bought at the wrong kind of store.  I can't work the layout code here worth a damn.  (Charmaine's images either shrink or explode)  Maybe some smart graphic artist will come in and fix it.  That was how it worked before, when I had a camera and it would drive people nuts, and someone took it out my hands.




Buttons, the kind we use for clothing, are one of Wurtz's earlier object elements. It's hard to avoid buttons, and for hundreds of years we've had them, and they're still here. He specializes in monuments to efficient, proven technology like tin cans, shoelaces, coat hangers. Common materials our society uses every day, every class, and taken for granted.

Wow, there is a lot of work in this show.  I thought Wurtz's work would be in one gallery room or two, but he's got the whole big box gallery. It's hot as hell in here too. I feel for the front desk people - giant walls of glass facing south, one could grow dope easy in here.  A-list galleries in Chelsea are sleek, white, gas guzzlers. Why not have ceiling fans?

Metro is a humongus fancy gallery, with a museum scale show by Feature Inc's very own B. Wurtz, International Artist of Mystery. Feature is a medium-sized gallery that has been a hothouse for talent. (talent often lured to greener pastures). Feature WAS in Chelsea but went back downtown, where vacant storefronts and mixed class neighborhoods still exist for about another 15 minutes.

B.Wurtz had an early rise along with Feature, and it's weird alien flavor, and was instantly recognized as an 'artist's' gallery.  Wurtz maintains his conceptual and material integrity to the humble degree that he's been professionally back-burnered in the fashion industry of art.  Word has it that some early work has been acquired by one of the major museums uptown.  Summer in Chelsea is not where the art market is, and rare, very good art like this, will go unseen and undersold.  We did wonder what was behind it, is he poised to become the veteran mine canary of our economic demise?

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