February 22
6 Notes
Studio Fridays on Artlog

Artlog featured my series “Studio Fridays.” Go check it out and hang out over there for a while—Artlog has great features on things that are happening, up coming, and worth checking out. For example:

Nick Cave is going to have these wild horselike creatures dancing through Grand Central station courtesy of Creative Time. 

NICE!
February 20
5 Notes

Lawrence Lessig Lectures: Aaron’s Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age

This moves me. 

February 16
149 Notes
David Shringley being david Shringley

David Shringley being david Shringley

February 15
42 Notes
Studio Friday: it lives on the floor. (at Illuminati Celebrity Dad Blogger Centre International)

Studio Friday: it lives on the floor. (at Illuminati Celebrity Dad Blogger Centre International)

February 11
31 Notes
LIKE Caulk and Acrylic on panel Nic*Rad  2013

LIKE

Caulk and Acrylic on panel

Nic*Rad 

2013

February 10
146 Notes
usemeth: art? fun times!

usemeth:

art?

fun times!

(via gnumblr)

February 8
11 Notes
Studio Fridays: Alt*Star.com disclaimer: this is eventually and loosely about art, and art markets, sorry, wow Ended up looking at Domain Name Wire for a while What a website It keeps up on the latest auction news and sales prices and other events For domain names The erogenous gray zone between cyber squatting and speculative domain name investing Seems vast and glib But if you know how to do it Well rock out with your cock out There are fat stacks in the domain name game In middle school there is an awkward lecture an underpaid and under appreciated Civics teacher has to give to American kids who are largely distracted by the impending doom of hard-ons and menstruation or the brutality of an emerging social order based on complex rites of passage, randomness, genetics, class, other systems, etc…  This lecture, though, is about Manifest Destiny A long time ago some very white post-English men spurred on by their righteous beliefs and ride or die attitudes removed some other skincolored people whose culture didn’t fit in with the Manifest lyfestyle from the property those people had fostered for centuries by killing them or screwing them through disingenuous contracts or even more fucked up things like protracted imprisonment, humiliation, or having to listen to this speech by president Andrew Jackson in 1829: Beyond the great River Mississippi, where apart of your nation has gone, your Father has provided a country large enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it. There your white brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it you and all your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be yours forever. According to this truer than life grade school plot: the native americans did not fully understand the concept of real estate How could a man claim to own the land? The land was permanent The man was temporary Nice   I don’t know if we can find similar propaganda or poetry when it comes to Domain Names I start to feel weirdly utilitarian and defensive of corporations or people like kevin spacey  when I hear about cyber squatting or disillusioned when I read about the very legal and classy sales by domain name guru Garry Chernoff selling Runners.com, SportGear.com, SportsGear.com  for $395,000 to Dick’s Sporting Goods (the most wonderfully named sporting goods store that exists) Way To Go Dicks!   Somewhere in here through the fog of  lateral thinking in the frost bitten shadows of an ice cold parable is a conceptual tie-in to name brand artists And art world auction prices run amuck    I’d like to explore it through a more literal essay Right after I die and come back as a guy  more interested in the importance of his legacy than the value of his life Cool legacy Bro   The unpacking of a secondary market by people making things for the primary market  is like folding your clothes  before having sex   The intellectual justification for this: at least I can leave with some dignity after getting screwed   :(   I was a high school virgin So I feel the need to point out that a lot of virginity pledges  are less like noble sacrifice and more like mutual disinterest between the pledger and the fuckers   see what I did there you disheartened virgins? in this metaphor the fuckers are Collectors heh fuckers   Now look here art makers, art likers, art haters, art workers, art writers, art bloggers, art dealers, art people, people people, human people, internet people, and nearly sentient computers: contradictory to popular legend the only bad thing about being an emperor is the inability to enjoy being naked in public Let’s not focus real outrage over rigged systems onto the shallows of fashion is what I’m saying More or Less 

Studio Fridays: Alt*Star.com

disclaimer: this is eventually and loosely about art, and art markets, sorry, wow

Ended up looking at Domain Name Wire for a while

What a website

It keeps up on the latest auction news and sales prices and other events

For domain names

The erogenous gray zone between cyber squatting and speculative domain name investing

Seems vast and glib

But if you know how to do it

Well rock out with your cock out

There are fat stacks in the domain name game

Read More

February 1
83 Notes
Studio Fridays: Tao Lin Edition Tao Lin’s book Tai Pei is coming out soon. I have been making some paintings of hamsters and if I ever finish them Tao is going to write some riffs about them I think. Tao makes a lot of things with MS Paint. I met Tao a few years ago when my friend Stephen Elliot invited him to read at one of my shows. Tao read an ~11 minute piece about finger fucking. People in the crowd looked genuinely shocked and uncomortable. I liked him immediately. After a zine party last year I walked with him for ~10 blocks trying to find a place for him to buy vegan ice cream. He knew where the place was and I didn’t. After ~8 blocks Tao said, ‘I wonder how long you would follow me before you gave up. I could keep walking for miles I think.’ He started laughing in a really joyful way and then he kept saying he was just kidding. I once saw Tao stand in his underwear while a pre recorded tape of his voice read a short story about sex and Nikola took close up shots of him. We were in Cindy Gallup’s black apartment. Everything was very warm. Need to finish more hamsters soon. 

Studio Fridays: Tao Lin Edition

Tao Lin’s book Tai Pei is coming out soon.

I have been making some paintings of hamsters and if I ever finish them Tao is going to write some riffs about them I think. Tao makes a lot of things with MS Paint. 

I met Tao a few years ago when my friend Stephen Elliot invited him to read at one of my shows. Tao read an ~11 minute piece about finger fucking. People in the crowd looked genuinely shocked and uncomortable. I liked him immediately.

After a zine party last year I walked with him for ~10 blocks trying to find a place for him to buy vegan ice cream. He knew where the place was and I didn’t. After ~8 blocks Tao said, ‘I wonder how long you would follow me before you gave up. I could keep walking for miles I think.’ He started laughing in a really joyful way and then he kept saying he was just kidding.

I once saw Tao stand in his underwear while a pre recorded tape of his voice read a short story about sex and Nikola took close up shots of him. We were in Cindy Gallup’s black apartment. Everything was very warm.

Need to finish more hamsters soon. 

January 31
81 Notes
Me Meme, 2013, Nic*Rad Some good advice for painters: Painting is generally a selfish, material pursuit that leaves most of its practitioners world weary, isolated, unhinged, impoverished.  Real painting does that. Not the kind where you are trying to flatter someone who likes to be looked at in longform. Painting to express yourself is madness. You might start to think of this feeling as a good place to draw inspiration from. You might spend your whole life in this problematic recursion. To break free you’ll have to find a subject without a voice or become that subject and view your own life as a symbol you’re consciously exploiting. If you think too long about that self exploitation you’ll slip back into your misery-as-fuel circle of doom.  Anyway, that’s too highminded to be helpful. It also seems bleak, although a lot of artists I know thrive on negative pleasure- on converting their frustration into kinetic energy. The difference between the eternally depressed and the cheerful or hopeful seems predisposed, maybe genetic, or formed at an unfairly early age in life. I didn’t come here to tell you that you’re doomed. Here is some more practical advice:  Make a lot of dumb paintings and awful paintings that you know are dumb and awful and learn the unique ways that you do dumb and awful. Conquer your failures by forming bruises, calluses, lumps, pathologies… Paint your scars. Be a humble fool. Admire Wile E Coyote.   Ignore received wisdom. Learn by fucking up. How lucky you are to have any time at all in this sacred space, with these sacred tools. How lucky you are to have any flesh on those sacred bones. Painting is an insane thing to do with your time- were you hoping for transcendence, or maybe just transference? You are going to do it though. You are going to exercise willful ignorance to make a counterpoint: I don’t think, therefore I’m not. It’s as least as dumb as anything else you might do here on this little spinning rock, hurtling. Well aren’t we all miserable, uniquely. In this moment, on this canvas, stay humble you fool- know that for the time you’ve given to this simple act of defiance, the universe is jealous of you.

Me Meme, 2013, Nic*Rad

Some good advice for painters:

Painting is generally a selfish, material pursuit that leaves most of its practitioners world weary, isolated, unhinged, impoverished.  Real painting does that. Not the kind where you are trying to flatter someone who likes to be looked at in longform. Painting to express yourself is madness. You might start to think of this feeling as a good place to draw inspiration from. You might spend your whole life in this problematic recursion. To break free you’ll have to find a subject without a voice or become that subject and view your own life as a symbol you’re consciously exploiting. If you think too long about that self exploitation you’ll slip back into your misery-as-fuel circle of doom. 

Anyway, that’s too highminded to be helpful. It also seems bleak, although a lot of artists I know thrive on negative pleasure- on converting their frustration into kinetic energy. The difference between the eternally depressed and the cheerful or hopeful seems predisposed, maybe genetic, or formed at an unfairly early age in life. I didn’t come here to tell you that you’re doomed. Here is some more practical advice: 

Make a lot of dumb paintings and awful paintings that you know are dumb and awful and learn the unique ways that you do dumb and awful. Conquer your failures by forming bruises, calluses, lumps, pathologies… Paint your scars. Be a humble fool. Admire Wile E Coyote.  

Ignore received wisdom. Learn by fucking up. How lucky you are to have any time at all in this sacred space, with these sacred tools. How lucky you are to have any flesh on those sacred bones. Painting is an insane thing to do with your time- were you hoping for transcendence, or maybe just transference? You are going to do it though. You are going to exercise willful ignorance to make a counterpoint: I don’t think, therefore I’m not. It’s as least as dumb as anything else you might do here on this little spinning rock, hurtling. Well aren’t we all miserable, uniquely. In this moment, on this canvas, stay humble you fool- know that for the time you’ve given to this simple act of defiance, the universe is jealous of you.

January 25
7 Notes

Mega Mega Upload by Jillian Mayer

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29 Notes
Bro Poets Not that long ago I was writing a sort of love poem to James Franco and performing it as a monologue. The worst part was explaining what made it ‘performance art’ to anyone who had heard about it but hadn’t read it or seen it. Telling James Franco about it was interesting. He was wearing a blonde wig and getting ready to ‘do a rap’ with Kalup Linzy- this was a couple of years ago- for some reason we were all at Sundance in Park City. There is not an eloquent way to unravel the threads that lead to that odd tapestry.  Here is a poem by James Franco about president Obama. What makes it a poem? It’s a guy thinking about his own life, making some word groups to express those thoughts. Fuck you, it’s a poem. Don’t bring quality into this you dicks. Here’s some hater solvent: “When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people.” -_Why The Lucky Stiff The odd project of considering James Franco the human guy and James Franco the media construct from many angles is over for me. But the tropes and themes are vibrant, worthy, ferocious, and as mortally damning as the ‘art industrial complex’ itself.  If you’re trying to figure out my tone in this opening, so am I. “I’m an optimist, and that’s what I like most about you.’ - Crispin Best ** I was talking to an improv performer recently who described his method as ‘high percentage tennis.’ He explained that he was looking to make statements on stage that were very likely to be understood and volleyed back- both by his scene partners and by the audience.  Sure, he could try to blaze a forehand down the line to impress everyone with his wit- but it would ruin the game. The occasional flight of brilliance was fine- but the steady and the rhythmic was essential. In this idea of a game structure, winning is accomplished by the group. Winning is keeping the ball in play- and knowing the right moment to collectively set up a powerful conclusion amongst dividuals. Losing is the result of an individual reaching too far, or not listening, or changing directions too abruptly and retreating into their own game.  Zero-sum art competitions exist, but I can’t say the results are very inspiring: Art Prize, Work of Art, Artists Wanted… It’s helpful to understand the ‘goal of art’ through a different set of rules.  ** More people feel comfortable discussing Celebrity than poetry or performance art. It’s higher percentage tennis. That’s not a deep insight, but it’s a cause of a lot of blustering for people who think of their work as ‘enlightenment’ and not ‘entertainment.’  Enlightenment is the serious business of excavating observable and ‘objective’ truth from the murk of sentiment and mysticism.  There are probably some requisites though if you want to talk about yourself as furthering the project of enlightenment ‘in this day and age.’ Probably you are going to have to accept a monk like anonymity. Probably you are going to have to specialize in theoretical physics, neurology, technology, international copyright law, etc, more, things I don’t even know that I don’t even know about…  Otherwise you are likely in the entertainment industry.  BRB, BETTER LEARN HOW TO PARTY. ** Entertainment is often enlightening. That was a false dichotomy I just set up a minute ago. I like to create dichotomies and then act all bichotomous with those di’s and get them di’s real jealz. Yo di’s, the world ain’t that simple. Bichotomous Rex. I like to play high percentage tennis with my self. I like when art work sells. Nothing quite like being jerked off by the invisible hand of the market.  This was fun. Remember when it almost got all serious up in this TUMBLR. Nah let’s party party party. See you next week bbs.

Bro Poets

Not that long ago I was writing a sort of love poem to James Franco and performing it as a monologue. The worst part was explaining what made it ‘performance art’ to anyone who had heard about it but hadn’t read it or seen it. Telling James Franco about it was interesting. He was wearing a blonde wig and getting ready to ‘do a rap’ with Kalup Linzy- this was a couple of years ago- for some reason we were all at Sundance in Park City. There is not an eloquent way to unravel the threads that lead to that odd tapestry. 

Read More

January 24
29 Notes
For this and many other reasons I love hanging out at @acmestudios

For this and many other reasons I love hanging out at @acmestudios

January 19
31 Notes
If You See Nothing, Say Nothing (see previous)

If You See Nothing, Say Nothing

(see previous)

January 18
9 Notes
Studio Fridays Here’s an old painting of Nick Denton, Gawker impresario, overlayed with some new stuff. I’ve been playing a lot with repurposing works and styles that I’ve abandoned. Feel like we’re all living in the annals of our own sloppy archeology.  Here’s some artists I thought about this week: David Humphrey  Carrol Dunham  The Clayton Brothers  David Salle idk, just really feeling that pomo eye punch right now

Studio Fridays

Here’s an old painting of Nick Denton, Gawker impresario, overlayed with some new stuff.

I’ve been playing a lot with repurposing works and styles that I’ve abandoned. Feel like we’re all living in the annals of our own sloppy archeology. 

Here’s some artists I thought about this week:

  • David Humphrey 
  • Carrol Dunham 
  • The Clayton Brothers 
  • David Salle

idk, just really feeling that pomo eye punch right now

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41 Notes
Studio Fridays

Studio Fridays