Month: January 2010

Cody Critcheloe–SSION “BOY”

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Javier Peres is very pleased to present “BOY”, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition by Cody Critcheloe – SSION (B. Kentucky USA. Lives and work in Kansas City, MO). “BOY” brings together nine separately shot but jointly conceived music videos for SSION’s 2007 record Fool’s Gold.

First things first! It’s SSION, pronounced “shun,” as in mission, fission, ambition-all apt words to describe the gesamtkunstwerk that is Cody Critcheloe and the queer punk/performance/art band he invented ten years back as a high school student in Lewisport, Kentucky. In the time since then, SSION has released 4 full-length records, toured extensively through the United States, and enjoyed cult status among fans and music writers who have lauded Critcheloe as everything from Out magazine’s Hottest Artist of the Year to “Prince’s love child” to the “one true master” of “high-concept sleaze pop.” Critcheloe’s songs are catchy, not abstract, and his visuals and live shows are crafted to appeal to more than an art-going crowd. SSION could easily cross over to become a pop phenomenon-a potentiality (or prophecy) which, in a stroke of self-reflexive genius, Critcheloe has already written into the narrative arc of his work to date. The story of SSION is a raucous, louched up, camp parody of Critcheloe’s own life, in which a small-town punk kid hooked on doughnuts and pizza follows his dreams with razor focus to emerge as a svelte, smoky-eyed pop star embraced by adoring crowds. And here, it seems, is the catch. While the annals of art and film give us plenty of examples to draw on for theorizing the artist’s alter ego, the image-obsessed dandy, the high-camp auteur, and the concept band, the discourse is less prescribed for an artist and musician who straddles all of these genres while aspiring to create work that actually is pop in the broadest and most populist sense of the word.

SSION’s first feature-length film, BOY, affords a fresh opportunity to consider the band’s work in the context of popular media and within the discourses of contemporary art. To situate the work this way is to necessarily highlight a degree of fluidity, criticality and complexity in the work that far exceeds the typical coming-of-age movie or arena concert experience.

— Stacy Switzer, Artistic Director, Grand Arts, Kansas City, Mo., 2009

Peres Projects

To The Road Less Travelled – Wishing You Love and Happiness and Curiosity Forever

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To The Road Less Travelled – Wishing You Love and Happiness and Curiosity Forever

A group exhibition featuring: HuskMitNavn (DK), Søren Behncke (DK), Pica Pica (BE), Jesper Dalgaard (DK)Andrew Sendor (US), Benji Whalen (US), Michael Dumontier (CAN), Asger Carlsen (DK), Shane Bradford (UK), Mike Mills (US), Troels Carlsen (DK), Jes Brinch (DK), DearRainDrop (US), Graham Hudson (UK), Misha Hollenbach (AUS), Neil Farber (US), Michael Rytz (DK), Mads Lynnerup (DK), Lora Fosberg (US), Rory McBeth (UK), Clayton Brothers (US), Michael Swaney (CAN), Brian Montuori (US), Johannes Hinriksson (IS), Michelle Blade (US) and Jakob Boeskov (DK/IS).

Opening day: Friday January 15. 2010. From 17.00 – 22.00

Exhibition period: January 16. – February 13. 2010.

The title of the exhibition is lifted from a hand written inscription in an edition of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’. The full inscription reads like this:

“Laurabelle and Nicolas – to the road less travelled – wishing you love and happiness and curiosity forever- with love, Annie xx”

Jesper Elg: “I actually never saw the inscription myself. It is sealed in paint forever in one of Shane Bradford’s dipped book works. I guess this fact made me even more intrigued and curious about the work. And that feeling is exactly what this exhibition celebrates; curiosity forever. Curiosity as a question mark when too many people agree or disagree. Curiosity as in turning your GPS off and letting gut and chance roam. Curiosity as to what art is or could be. Curiosity as to exploring limits and boundaries. Curiosity as in transgressing limits and boundaries. Curiosity as in meeting the world again. Curiosity as to what will happen when I stick my finger in there. Curiosity as to what are being built in there. All the questions you are not supposed to ask, but hopefully do.”

This makes perfect sense. Curiosity is a key component of life in all its grit and glory. Closely related to courage, stupidity, lust and intelligence it is dangerous and vital, wise and senseless. It can push you into darkness and turn on the light. It can send you down dodgy paths and make you take wrong turns. But it also paves the way for triumph. It can create and destroy. It makes heroes and losers. And can lead to both magnificent mistakes and great thoughts. It made Odysseus stray, but perhaps it also led him back on track. Scientists, artists and prying people in general keep venturing into the unknown instead of resting on given truths that promises them a comfortable life in this life and the supposed next. Paradise was lost. But Freedom was given.

The exhibition features works from 25 very diverse international artists working in different media spanning from painting, mixed media and drawing over sculpture to video. Some are old friends of V1: the prolific Rory MacBeth, the fluorescent rebels Dearraindrop, the influential Clayton Brothers, the Icelandic Brahman Johannes Hinriksson, the devilishly detailed Troels Carlsen and the artistic sniper Jakob Boeskov. And others are new friends: the deliciously quirky Michael Dumontier, the visual wordsmith Lora Fosberg and Mike Mills whose monocle we love to see the world through. Some have kept us curious for years; others have just caught our attention. But all works are projections of our wish to know, see and hear more – and our hope to feel lost and found at the same time.

We can’t think of a more appropriate way of opening the doors to a new decade, than by celebrating curiosity in contemporary art. Jump into the reverse boat and dance around the colorful totems. Marvel at constructions we will never be able to find harmony in and sympathize with the dog whose position some of us envy and other of us fear. Leave the brush hanging and let the fat man find his own – and others – death. Bike next to the exotic beauty in familiar settings and read all the lost signals.

V1

Troels Carlsen

Dear Rain Drop

Husk Mit Navn

Asger Carlsen

Andrew Sendor

Benji Whalen

Pablo Bronstein

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Chisenhale Gallery presents a new performance by London-based artist Pablo Bronstein. For one-night only, Bronstein will stage an installation exploring the relationship between social behaviour, architecture and ornament.

Bronstein’s drawings, paintings, installations, films and performances are underpinned by his references to architectural styles and motifs from the Baroque to the Postmodern period. While his architectural interventions play with notions of power and economy as they are manifested in architectural form, his performances, often working with groups of dancers, delineate both physical and social spaces through gesture and choreographed movement.

Pablo Bronstein (b. 1977, Buenos Aires) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibition include Pablo Bronstein at the Met, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (both 2009); Palaces of Turin, Franco Noero, Turin; and Paternoster Square, Herald Street, London (both 2008). Recent group exhibitions include Characters, Figures and Signs: Choreography as ‘Doing’ and ‘Saying’, Tate Modern, London; Blinding the Ears: Action, Behaviour, Performance, Instant Theatre in Turin, Artissima (both 2009).

Pablo Bronstein’s project is part of Chisenhale Gallery’s Interim programme – a series of event-based projects, including expanded cinema, spoken word and music performances, hosted within or commissioned for Chisenhale Gallery’s unique gallery space and taking place in between exhibitions.

Admission to the event is free. No booking required.

Chisenhale Gallery

Herald St

THE SWEDED SESSION @ KRETS

KRETS presents
THE SWEDED SESSION

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The Session is a group of eight international artists and designers, based in Amsterdam, that makes a thematic, interdisciplinary fanzine since September 2007. The Session does not work with a standard form or a recurrent basic theme, but produces on the basis of a regular process; per session, (usually) one of the eight determines the theme. This person is also responsible for the editing, the design and the production. Per session a number of guests are invited.

For this edition The Session will be working around the theme ‘Sweded’, referring to the Gondry movie ‘Be Kind Rewind’, in which the main characters start recreating films using themselves as actors and cheap special effects, calling it ‘a sweded film’.

The Sweded Session can be an imitation, a copy, a paraphrase, a re-make, a new-make, a re-enactment of something (anything) already existing. It can also deal with the direct association with Sweden since the Session is leaving Amsterdam for Malmö for a week; any direct involvement/interpretation of Sweden itself would consequently become something ‘sweded’. The Sweded Session will be executed during the week at KRETS in Malmo and The Session will invite local artists to participate and contribute with works, resulting in a publication and an exhibition.

Krets
The Session
Monicatormell