Museum News & Commentary

Walking into a good gallery and seeing new strong contemporary work can produce an almost hedonistic pleasure-not just visual but something more all encompassing. At Adair Margo’s last night I found that sort of joy in Fermin Gutierrez’s strange, dreamlike paintings. The elongated seemingly boneless figures luxuriating on divans, peering up at the sky, the presence of birds throughout all evoke another world. He told me he is a spectator of his own paintings. He is seized or struck by the image he needs to paint without fully understanding it. He said he believes an artist must be concerned with carefully and skillfully arranging colors, composition and space, but the idea of the image, of what he will paint is something which essentially smacks him in the head and he puts it down. Only later he said, will the secrets reveal themselves He is going to give a talk at the gallery on either the 20th or 21st.
Upstairs Susan Davidoff continues her exploration of structure imposed on nature. She points to a Chinese concept of Li as her inspiration. Perhaps these might be viewed as architectural designs for nature, landscapes with skeletal detail imposed. This is a continuation of her show at EPMA a number of years ago “Air Pressure”. In this she works with Rachelle Thiewes, who here has brooches and bracelets.

There is an excellent thought provoking interview in Glasstire with Michael Auping, chief curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth who is speaking about theircurrent show
“Declaring Space.”-david sokolec

This BBC video is called Scimitar Cat (Homotherium serum).

There will be an exhibition about sabre-toothed cats in the natural history museum in Leiden, the Netherlands.

It will be from 1 December till 6 January 2008.

Sabre-toothed cats arose several times during feline evolution. Not all species are closely related.

The exhibition is about Homotherium latidens. Until recently, scientists thought that species had become extinct 300,000 or 400,000 years ago.

However, in March 2000, a lower mandible was found in the North Sea. It was only 28,000 years old; so, it proved the older theory wrong. Then, during the Ice Age, the southern part of the North Sea was still land.

The world is truly an amazing, unfathomable place. Every day, scientists are learning more about the natural wonders it contains, and its complex and multi-faceted workings.

Similarly, I continue to be amazed every day at the stupidity* of the human race. Even though the “Creation Museum draws thousands” through its gilded doors, to hear “two angelic characters who declare, ‘God loves science!’”, I’m having a hard time coming up with a truly monstrous personal story about the sad state of humanity. I’m sure I’ve seen plenty, but apparently I’m blocking them all out.

So instead, I give you The Darwin Awards. Truly superhuman feats, worthy of banishment from the gene pool. Below, just one of the many Darwin Award arguments for why humans should NOT be considered a highly developed species:

(26 August 2006, Leicester, England) Darren’s death was a mystery. The 33-year-old was found slumped in the hallway of his house, bleeding from stab wounds to his chest. Police initially assumed that an assailant had attacked him, but they could find no supporting evidence. A year later, the inquest revealed why Darren can stake his claim to a place among the winners of the Darwin Award.

Darren had called a friend, but minutes after he hung up, rang back to ask for an ambulance. The front door was ajar, and Darren was found lying near a bloodstained lock-knife he had purchased whilst on holiday in Spain. Forensics investigators saw no indication of a struggle, and the coroner reported that the stab wounds seemed to be self-inflicted. However, Darren had shown no suicidal tendencies.

His wife, who was on holiday at the time of the incident, cleared up the mystery, and revealed why our subject will go down in history as a Darwin Award winner. As she was leaving for the holiday, she remembered Darren wondering whether his new jacket was ’stab-proof’.

That’s right. Darren had decided to find out if his jacket could withstand a knife attack. Did he choose to test his jacket while it was draped over the back of a chair? No, our man decided that the best approach would be to wear the garment and stab himself. Sadly, his choice of armor proved less resistant to a sharp blade than he had hoped.

The coroner reached a verdict of accidental death by ‘misadventure’.

*BlogFriday Word: Stupidity

« Previous Posts
Next Posts »

Categories

Blogroll

Powered by Technorati