February is way cooler than January. Yeah, it is freezing, but it is the shortest month and it comes just after everyone has done their New Year exercise-binging and swearing off carbs and alcoholic and all that, which means it is time to eat chocolate. Today is the first day of Chocolate and I, a week-long festival with workshops that cover everything from how and where chocolate is sourced to the best way to make chocolate fondue. Participants include Bespoke Chocolates, MarieBelle, Madecasse, Bond St. Chocolates and Fine & Raw. For the finale, Anne Apparu of the18threstaurant (if you don’t know what that is, google it ) will be creating one of her art-meets-food dinners, on the 14th. Translation: it’s cold, eat chocolate. Yum.
Kudos Ignatius Reilly an’ all dem down deh in da Bayou.
This Long Century has made another update to their collection contributions. A collaboration between Georgina Lim, Stefan Pietsch, Jason Evans and Kate Sennert, the site now features five more contributers. The recent update includes work by Gerard Malanga, Lesley Vance (pictured above) and Ari Marcopoulos.
I’m a travellin’ man
Movin’ through places, space and time
Gotta lotta things i got to do
But God willin’ I’m comin’ back to you
Mos Def probably didn’t have Henry Rollins in mind when he wrote the lyrics to his ‘Travellin’ Man,’ but they still fit the writer/rocker/DJ/activist like a glove. Rollins really is the constant traveler, driven by an insatiable hunger to go out and see new places, meet new people and to find out what makes the world tick. So to name his latest, globe-trotting spoken tour, “The Frequent Flyer Tour” seems only justified. Whereas the old punk Rollins, while still playing with Black Flag, with his aggressive in your face attitude and his overbearing behavior, might not have appealed, nor was he ever meant to appeal to a wider audience, he is now one of the smartest and wittiest performers to be seen on stages all over the world and loved by many–A raconteur in its true meaning.
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Detail of a collage by participating artist Derek Gores
Operating on a template similar to their wildly successful grass roots get-out-the-vote campaign during the run up to the ‘08 election, ManifestEquality is a progressive public art project aimed at raising awareness about the discrepancy in social rights for the LGBT community in America. A call for entries centered on the themes of Love, Equality, Justice, Civil Rights, Unity and Respect, has gone out across the land, and in two weeks a panel of judges including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Vogue editor Lisa Love, Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin and artists Ed Ruscha and Shepard Fairey will convene in Los Angeles to choose 30 winners to be on display for the event which runs from March 3rd to 7th.
Be a part of this incredible event. Manifest Equality for all.
Originally intended as a kind of pop-up-shop assemblage of graphic artists and architects, gathering together on a job to job basis, Commune has followed is own innate rhythms to become one of the hippest and most respected design firms working today. Their top-to-bottom build-out and decor of the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs was among the most talked about in years and their retail space for Opening Ceremony in Tokyo is no less impressive. As the opening date for their retail space at the Standard Hotel in New York approaches we take a minute to appreciate this innovative collective.
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Swedish design team Sandberg & Timonen have created a series of concert t-shirts for a group of fashion’s most revered style icons which they’ll be showing at Paris’ Brachfeld Gallery. Made for those who can still remember the first fashion show they snuck into, or for those who are still doing it, the label is offering shirts with prints of icons from Miuccia Parada to Haider Ackrmann to Alber Elbaz, in distressed black cotton with white prints each in a limited edition of eight. The proceeds benefit Medecins Sans Frontiéres‘ efforts in Haiti.
Opening Reception, Thursday February 4, 7-10 pm
Brachfeld Gallery, 78 rue des Archives, 75003 Paris
Leslie Vance, Untitled (10), 2009, oil on linen, 17 x 15 inches
Seated in front of the gargantuan Julian Schnabel painting Hope from 1982 Francesco Bonami, co-curator of the 75th Whitney Biennial, says, “We wanted to mark a moment in time. We didn’t look for a theme. But we wanted less macho, less bombastic art. Less imperial art.” Then, pointing to the canvas behind him, says, “Not this.”
After the laughter dies down he continues, “It says it is from an anonymous donor–I don’t know if he is ashamed he bought it or what, but it does mark a moment in time. When I came to New York it was ‘82 and this was it and we thought it was forever. Themes change, there are fluctuations.”
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