shows... vilma gold,,, white cube,,,, victoria miro,,,,,,, whitechapel
interesting show at vilma's,, a German guy and some funny stuff in the back which looked quite naff/crafty,, kind of cool,, it was good to see the vilma crew who are all over the moon at mark tichener's turner prize nomination,, i think he's got a good shot at it,, rebecca warren is also a great artist,,, the other 2 are fair to middling.... it was literally crazy when i left vilma's coz i couldn't walk 10 metres down the road without seeing someone i knew (i was also joined by matt from vilma,, and who was also having to stop every five paces to meet and greet,,, imagine actually living in the east end,, you'd never make it to the shops!),,,, anyway finally made it to white cube which i wanted to see,, ,franz ackermann, i quite liked it,,, not sure if he really needs the architectural bits in his work,, there just fine being abstract,, i know the architectural bits are what it's all about,, but still,,,,,,,, then i crawled up to vicky miro's,, which was totally great,, i'd heard bad things,, so my expectations were low,,, but i personally think it was a fantastic show,, tal r rocks,,,, i saw a good talk he did not so long ago,, and he was going on about nazi signs and all that and how he didn't know where it was going to lead his work,,,,, but you can see it now in some of the abstraction,,, plus a few more things,,,,,,, very mysterious with all the locations etc,,, i was thinking maybe it was all to do with nazism somehow,, but there was so much other stuff going on,, that was probably just one line of thought...... you can also see why tal and jonathan messe are good mates,, they must feed off each other's paint tubes....
Francis Picabia, Sotileza, 1928. Courtesy Scottish National Gallery and the Whitechapel Art Gallery
after that i ended up at the Whitechapel,, which was kind of interesting,,,, it's this outsider art show,, and they've included insider artists as well who are under the influence...... i'm not totally into the show as a whole,, but there are quite a few great bits in there that make it worth a visit..... i like going round the east end and then ending up at the Whitechapel,,, good or bad,, at least you get to see something substantial....
Saturday.... a bit of meditation.....
Sunday eve...... African music at the royal festival hall with saskia... we went for the free thing which was really great,, then we, oh fuck it,, let go to the paying gig to,, but it wasn't quite as good as the free thing... typical! there was this old African drum player at the free gig (band name??),, anyway,, he was so rocking,, just this old African guy,, but he was pulling out these rhythms, like,, just wild,,, he was like lee scratch perry.. then after the gig ended,, he just kept going,, having the time of his life,, and the audience were loving it,, that guy was controlling it.
Thursday..
yesterday was fun. i started out having to show dj spooky and stella vine round the new re-hang.... some threesome we made. i'd never met stella before and she seemed really cool,,i got the feeling under normal circumstances she might have come across as,,,,,, let's say slightly eccentric,,,,, the presence of dj spooky is a pretty awe-inspiring thing,,, however i think both stella and i were like,,,, oh my god,, this guy is some kind of freakish genius workaholic walking art theory book, who's constantly coming out with all the coolest of cool projects he's just done.... it really is amazing... walking round the gallery for two hours was also a total pleasure,, actually,, it felt like being in one of those tv shows,, where celeb's walk around a gallery and say clever things,,, all we were missing was the camera crew and we would have been there.. in the end stella chose a balthus painting to talk about and spooky a robert morris sculpture...
so after that i had to dash over to the arts council for the bi-weekly curatorial seminars i go to.. i was running late,, so jumped a cab,, when i got in i said "can you do it in four minutes?" which the driver thought was extremely amusing.... anyway,, matthew collings and tom morton were leading the discussion on curating which was very, very interesting,, matt in particular really made it glow,,, i know he was a fan of david sylvester,, i think he's our going to be our generation's version,,, yesterday someone was saying he's a bit too easy or non-theoretical or something,, which is just bullshit,, i think matt is brilliant,, he says clever things which everyone can understand, what more do you want? not very clever things which no one can understand or be bothered to read?
then after that a few of us from the seminar went over to the ica for the new show,,, it was a total pain in the ass because it was raining and there was a queue outside,,, then when you got inside,, there was another fucking queue to see the poxy show! there was no way i was going to do that,, so i had a quick look at the work upstairs,, none of which was any good,, then split down to the south london gallery,, where the second part of the ica show was taking place,, i got there just as it was closing,, so only had a very brief look,,, it looked like there was an interesting little video piece,, i didn't catch the artist's name,, and francis upritchard's work looked ok,, but i wasn't sure about the rugs they were placed on,, so over all the ica-south london gallery collaboration was a bit of a let down... i'll go back and have a proper look at a later point though..... the invite was for the show was good though,,, but that came through the door...
Cedar Lewisohn
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