BLOOD ORANGE

by Magnus Berger / February 5th, 2010

We’ve been really into this song I’m Sorry We Lied by a band called
Blood Orange. We decided to find out more about the band, so we
contacted Devonté Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion–who turned out to be
more than just the front man.

Who are you and what’s your background?

My name is Devonté Hynes and I am from London, but I’ve lived in New
York for the last 2 years.

Can you tell me a little bit about the band members?

It’s just me! I write and record everything myself in my bedroom. If
I’m feeling adventurous, I record in my living room. It usually
depends on whether or not I’m editing a video to go along with the
song. I sometimes do that just so I get a feeling and/or vision for
it.

Who are the influences for Blood Orange?

Jo Hisaishi in parts–the Oriental side of things. Other more aesthetic
approaches come from Rick Derringer-era Cyndi Lauper, Oingo Boingo,
Prefab Sprout and Billy Idol. But I wanted something that sounded like
a gang mentality, around the idea of being young and vulnerable.
People grouping together to toughen up is something I kept thinking
about whilst working on these songs.

How would you describe your music?

Hmm, I don’t know. I have a tendency to lie when people ask me because
I’m usually too embarrassed to say what I think, or am trying to
portray. It either always sounds stupid or arrogant…. See above, ha
ha.

Any upcoming shows? Is there an album on the way?

Tomorrow night actually, I’m playing Glasslands in Brooklyn for Class
Actress record release on Terrible Records. Chris and Ethan have been
very supportive of me. Even though I’m not on their label, they’ve
always treated me like their own. Their foster own.

Tell us  bit about the video. It’s a bit unusual for a music video.
The video was actually the second edit of footage to this song that I
worked on. But I’m glad I did it again. It’s just a basic tale of Josh
Brolin skateboarding then getting the crap beaten out of him.

Blood orange is playing Saturday, February 6th at Glasslands.

For more info visit http://www.glasslands.com or
http://www.myspace.com/bloodorangeforever

BESPOKEN

by Magnus Berger / February 4th, 2010

The most original invitation so far for New York fashion week was sent to us by British menswear designer Bespoken.

http://bespokenclothiers.com/

WYATT HOUGH

by Alastair McKimm / February 1st, 2010

WHEN DID YOU FIRST BECOME INTERESTED IN FASHION?

There was never really a moment when I discovered fashion or design,
it all sort of evolved. I was always in art classes as a kid and then
theater and dance, where I became interested in costume design.
Everything kind of merged into one and took off. Although, I remember
I started paying attention because I loved the Gucci Fall 2003
campaign.

WHAT IS YOUR DESIGN BACKGROUND?

I attended three colleges, Maryland College of Art, Parsons New York
and Parsons Paris.

WHERE DO YOU SEEK INSPIRATION?

It really depends, sometimes I try to start from a conceptual
standpoint but it can also be just as simple as a book.  I think it’s
important to be personal but keep some humor. For example, some
inspirations have ranged from Oscar Wilde poetry to Disney cartoons.

WHAT ARE YOUR OPINIONS ON ORIGINALITY IN FASHION DESIGN?

It’s a tricky line.  I remember my first year painting class, my
teacher said that if you liked what someone next to you was doing,
steal it! because no matter how you try it will never turn out the
same, and that’s the beauty. Some of the best self taught artists
started by copying the masters, but in fashion crowds are so quick to
jump on a reference or accuse an individual of copying.  I think the
most important thing is that the intention behind the design is
genuine.

DO YOU RELATE YOUR LIFE EXPERIENCES TO YOUR DESIGN WORK?

I think it’s hard not to. I think I’m extremely sensitive to my
surroundings and when looking back I can notice how it shaped the
result. I try to continue to draw and paint because it’s easier to
work out personal things, there needs to be a some kind of line drawn
when designing clothing because the goal is to have someone want to
wear it, even if it’s very small.

WHAT WAS THE LAST ART SHOW YOU WENT TO?

I just went to the contemporary museum in Montreal, but the last
exhibition I saw that I really loved was the Francis Bacon
retrospective

WHAT WAS THE LAST TRACK YOU LISTENED TO?

Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

WHAT WAS THE LAST GIG YOU WENT TO?

Deer Tick at Bowery Ballroom.

WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU WATCHED?

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants…2

LUCHA LOCO

by Aimee Walleston / February 1st, 2010

For those who (like yours truly) spent their childhoods dressed in Spiderman Underoos watching professional wrestling on television, the spectacle of a fabulous person battling another fabulous person remains strangely alluring. Since the days of Roman gladiators fighting in the Colosseum, highly stylized violence (with an electrifying wardrobe) has provided unparalleled mimetic entertainment to the maddening crowd—a psychic release of one’s own violent tension through projection. Perhaps this is because professional wrestling, as an artistic form, rivals opera in its ability to truly translate the pain and misery of the world through the lenses of artifice, glamour, tragedy, revenge and redemption. On the heels of 2008’s acclaimed filmic ode to the sport of uncelebrated aesthetes (The Wrestler), comes Lucha Loco, a photography book that celebrates Mexico’s own WWF, the Lucha Libre. The luchadores are a well-known group of masked wrestlers whose vibrant costuming takes the idea of the masked superhero and amps it up to a psychedelic meltdown. Featured in Lucha Loco are the contemporary stars of the show, photographed by Malcolm Venville, who also directed the thug-wild film 44” Inch Chest (now playing). The studio portraits represent the warriors only in mask, as their identities—in true Luche Libre fashion—must always be kept a secret.

LUCHA LOCO will release in March at rizzoliusa.com

GALLERY GIRLS

by Jonathan Shia / January 24th, 2010

Every gallery has a Gallery Girl. They sit in their white cubes, answering the phones and making copies, catering to the inflated egos of their bosses, clients, and artists. Mary Blakemore, who knows from experience, began chronicling their goings-on in October 2008 in her photographic comic strip “Gallery Girls,” which Blakemore says is “a fantasy about minimum-wage glamour in New York more than it is a parody or a commentary.” Her characters, a collection of overeducated gallery girls in their early 20s who work at the fictitious Cecilia West Gallery, are portrayed by her charismatic friends in various states of dress-up. “I give everyone general ideas for comics I want to make and then photograph everyone acting them out,” she explains. “The images always come out better and different than I imagined. Later I construct a narrative based on them.” The Girls’ mundane tasks—sorting receipts from Basel, finding peacocks for artists, arranging conference calls—will be familiar to denizens of the art world, who will also find in the Girls’ drinking, partying, and self-medicating—and, vitally, their solipsism—thinly veiled jabs at a world built on image.

http://ceceliawestgallery.com/

COMPASSION

by Aimee Walleston / December 8th, 2009

Living forever at the crossroads of Canadian and amazing, artist and curator AA Bronson is New York’s answer to a conceptual art soothsayer and savior. Originally a member of the art collective General Idea, Bronson’s practice has always pushed the boundaries of art to its spacial and spiritual limits, and continues to do so. While other people are staging outlaw art exhibitions in salon-style environments and disused commercial spaces, Bronson is currently exhibiting an immaculate collection of artworks—by Marina Abramović, Bas Jan Ader and Scott Treleaven, among others, and themed around the idea of “Compassion”—in a seminary. The visually astounding Union Theological Seminary, to be exact. Created in conjunction with the newly-formed Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice, the show will be on view until December 19^th. Here we speak to Bronson about the organization and the show’s premise.

Aimee Walleston: Your practice, both as an artist and a curator, has often been linked to creating and distributing art beyond the confines of the museum or gallery space. Why did you decide to have this show at the seminary?

AA Bronson: I began studying at Union Theological Seminary a little over a year ago. For the last years, Union, like many seminaries, has been very shut off from the world, and almost no one I know has seen the inside of this quite amazing complex. As much as anything, the exhibition was a way to open Union’s doors, and get people moving through the spaces, to give some awareness of what is there, both architecturally and in terms of its resources, such as the extraordinary library. At the same time, I wanted to bring people’s awareness to the ways in which art addresses “spiritual” issues. None of the artists in the exhibition would be considered out of the usual in the Chelsea art world, but by framing their work in the context of the word “compassion”, and a “pilgrimage” through a seminary, other aspects of the work begin to leak out, the work is enriched by the context, and vice versa.

AW: Can you explain a bit about the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice, and your involvement with it?

AB: Union is known for its involvement with social justice issues, and all seminaries include some relation to the arts in their program. However, I noted that nobody at the seminary had any idea of the massive amount of activity, especially amongst younger artists, in the contemporary art world related to social justice. Creative Time’s recent summit, “Revolutions in Social Practice” is a case in point. I proposed to the President of Union that we should found the Institute of Art, Religion, and Social Justice to facilitate some sort of conversation between the worlds of art and religion and she immediately agreed, making me the Artistic Director. At the moment we have only two projects, the exhibition “compassion,” and a series of dinners in which we bring together artists and theologians for mutual benefit.

AW: Spirituality is not something broadly discussed in artistic practice anymore. Your interests have often involved shamanism and less organized methods of spiritual practice. How do you see organized religion in regard to contemporary art practice?

AB: Organized religion does not interest me, per se. And at any rate, who is to say what is “organized” and what is not. Religion exists in so many hybridized forms today, and even the most conservative Roman Catholic is liable to be studying yoga on the side. Union is a non-denominational Christian seminary that is making rapid strides toward becoming multi-faith. Two of the professors are both Christian and Buddhist, and there is a number of Buddhist students, many Unitarians, a Quaker or two, and even an occasional agnostic. My own background is in Tibetan Buddhism, which I practiced for fourteen years; and, yes, I am also interested in shamanism and spiritualism, as well as voodoo and other African diaspora religions. The exhibition includes both Hindu and Buddhist forms, although the majority of the works are more “spiritual” than they are religious. I think that the intersection between art and religion can be seen through the lens of social justice, and social justice is a theme that is occupying many young artists today, especially the more radical collaborative practices, such as LTTR, Red76, or the Center for Tactical Magic.

AW: For whatever reason, compassion seems to be a tall order to ask of people. In relation to images that are meant to evoke compassion, like war images, where do you think contemporary art stands? And how does compassion relate to passion?

AB: Compassion has always been and will always be a tall order. As the world becomes more complex and more difficult, I see an increasing interest in compassion rather than a decrease. Alfredo Jaar’s Rwanda works, for example, address genocide in sometimes very explicit forms, while Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace projects come at compassion from the opposite direction. The popularity of the Dalai Lama, whose primary message is compassion, speaks to our need in today’s world. As for passion, that is a more complex question. The word comes from the Latin for suffer or endure, but the Passion of Christ is clearly not what you are referring to here!

Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway at 121st Street

Chrysanne Stathacos
Rose Mandala Mirror (three reflections for HHDL), 2006
Glass, mirror, roses
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, New York

VOLCANO CHOIR

by Magnus Berger / December 1st, 2009

Every once in a while you come across something that needs to be shared. I’ve had Volcano Choir’s “Unmap” (released by JagJaguwar) on repeat for quite a while now and felt it might be time to let go and share it with you. The album is a collaboration between the members of Collection of Bees and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.

Completely lacking conventional structure, the album feels like a celebration of music itself rather than a thought-out set of songs performed by a group of musicians. Imagine a bunch of great friends going to a remote house in the countryside in the fall. Without pretense, and just for their love of music, they spontaneously record some songs that weren’t written beforehand. Adding layer after layer of passion and memories, it’s like an exercise in intimacy. And then they leave this recorded document like a message in a bottle, for us to discover at a later time.

Of course, I’m just making this all up and have no idea how this came about, but I think you’ll know what I mean when you hear it.

Photography by Cameron Witti

K.Z.O.

by Alastair McKimm / November 30th, 2009

Raised in Southern California, menswear designer Joel Knörnschild has put his passport into heavy rotation, residing in Florence, where he studied art, Innsbruck, Austia, and Tokyo, among other places. Joel named his clothing line, K.Z.O., after his expat Japanese grandfather, Kazuo Iwasaki. The conceptual conceit behind his collections is equally reverent, reinterpreting the narrative logic and dramatic mood of film and music into clothing that has the same here, there and everywhere sophistication of its creator. Here, we speak to Joel about his take on contemporary fashion.

Alastair McKimm: When did you first become interested in fashion?

Joel Knörnschild: I think that fashion and the creative spirit go hand-in-glove.  There isn’t one exact moment that I can say was a monumental “light-bulb” experience….Well, maybe the time I got in trouble days shy of my 16^th birthday by the department of labor for working a job as quality assurance under-age at a sewing contractor in Los Angeles.  That may qualify as a defining moment…

AM: What is your design background?

JK: Growing up in the mist of Southern California’s fashion surfwear business.  I can remember working for my Dad in the late ‘80s in the production room for a $1 an hour.  Where were you then Department of Labor?  Also found the happy medium of creating environments and working with bands by directing music videos for musicians in the US and Japan.

AM: What is your opinion on originality in fashion?

JK: The possibilities of originality in fashion design are endless; the designer’s point-of-view is the engine of a specific brand or fashion house. I look at what Jun Takahashi from Undercover is doing. He does a pant that in its most basic form has two legs, but is also has a really strong point of view.  I see Jun in every piece he creates.

AM: What was the last track you listened to?

JK: Department of Eagles “No One Does it Like You,” Beach House “Master of None,” and Neil Young “Cripple Creek Ferry.”

AM: What was the last gig you went to?

JK: Grizzly Bear with Beach House at the Palladium and Daniel Lanois playing with Brian Blade at the Troubadour.

AM: What was the last film you watched?

JK: Where the Wild Things Are. It was melancholy but I loved the social dynamic of the monsters and “King” Max.  Like Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along?” The scene where Max is poking his head through the miniature world created by Carol was mind-blowing.