Check out the ‘trailer’ for this year’s Ideas City 2013 Festival (featuring some work by Luca Vitale and Junko Shimizu…both of whom contributed to Blacklist’s Ray Ban spot a while back). Happy to see them working on some nice new work for such a great festival and organization. This year’s festival sounds really promising with some great installations and public projects, definitely worth checking out if you are in NYC on Mat 1-4. We’ll likely have a bit of coverage here as well.

The Artist in the Shower.

So I found out a week or so ago that George W. Bush is a painter. I thought to myself ‘Ha! I’d like to see those..’ and lo and behold, the internet delivered in spades. I disagree with Jerry Saltz that these are good or even interesting paintings outside of the fact that they were painted by an incredibly divisive Preseident but thought I’d curate a little selection for you anyways, just because they are real weird. My four favorites are here (the first of which is above), all the titles are my own. Enjoy!

Hairy dog with dirty beard and ball.

What appears to be a mini horse in a windy field. The pathos runs deep.

A voyeuristic glimpse at two golfers clad in black and white. The metaphor speaks for itself in this one.

Feliz Gonzalez Torres and Rudolf Stingel in ’1993…’

Someone asked me once, ‘If you could go back to any time period, when would it be?’. I half jokingly said I’d like to go back to those couple of years right before Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ came out, in the thick of Riot Grrrl and all of the DIY culture that was happening. The more I though about it, that is my honest answer, I’d like to be in my mid 20s in the early 90s. That burgeoning, just barely pre-internet community that presaged our contemporary fascination with the concepts of local, community driven, and artisanal. The New Museum’s current show ’1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star’ is not quite that but it is the best I can get right now. All of the work in the show comes from the aforementioned time period, socially and politically charged and dripping with sincerity. The whole show is worth checking out, with standout work from Janine Antoni, Paul McCarthy, Art Club 2000, and Lutz Bacher but, if for nothing else, go for the third floor. A combination of Felix Gonzalez Torres, Rudolf Stingle carpeting, and Kristin Oppenheim audio is completely heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. It is fair to say that nothing captures the temperament of the time period better than this room. New York has been cold and rainy, do yourself a favor and spend the day with this show.

As with most of the advertising, music, and film community, part of our crew is in Texas this week for South By Southwest. I’m sure it is a great time, so if you are reading this and also are not there, I sympathize and if you ARE there, I’m jealous. Anyways, consider this post our repository for Andrew and Måns’ Texan communique, you should see a theme emerge.  

Vandalism.

Some kind of temporary SXSW poster with Blacklist.

Guy with nouveau rickshaw and Blacklist.

On the heels of CRCR’s piece for Deezer, WIZZprod/Quad has another amazing work from Flying V, the titles for Havas Worldwide Paris. The simple animation and stylish, ornate typographic treatments play off one another really well to create a super dynamic piece. Great work dudes!