Friday: Japan Party at Lenny's

Left: Show flyer by Sir Fred Gear

Lenny's Bar is putting on a "Japan Party!" this Friday night. Music by Sonen, Modern Society, and Judi Chicago with some live video by Bean Summer. Apparently, people are going to dress in wacky costumes and jam out.

And there will be paintings. Unfortunately, I'm completely drawing a blank as to who these people are:
Sir Fred Gear
Ross Green
K C Reeves
Gudrun Stone
Jennifer Blount

I know Gudrun Stone was in the mixed tape show over at MINT; I just can't remember which pieces were his. (I wonder if Saint knows about this Japan show...)

The flyer promises "urban art" of the "Japanese-inspired" variety. I'm not sure what that means, but it could be interesting. The image is simple enough: a cloudburst of repeating Japanese characters, mori (森) and hayashi (林). The two characters, which translate loosely to "forest" and "grove," are themselves repetitions of the pictograph for "tree." Just look closer and you'll see the little bastards. So, as a whole, the cluster suggests something like "trees in a forest," or if you prefer a more poetic English phrase, You can't see the forest for the trees.

Sounds a little too Zen - like that damn tree falling in the woods. Let's see how it turns out.

*

FALSE is

Above: Boom, by Chris Lawson
Below: Article preview by Karen Tauches; design by Dosa Kim

Art and activism: FALSE Magazine is a nonprofit publication dedicated to grassroots movements in art and politics in the Atlanta area. The goal of the magazine isn't to make art into something political. In this age of cable TV, anyone who devotes time to creating or appreciating art - local art - has accomplished an extraordinary feat. Participating is already a political act.

By that same token, this latest issue explores themes of local space and urban development. Evan Scheider's piece turns a book review into an entertaining, meditative look at the Atlanta landscape. It's a discussion with Jason Deck, one of the founders of a preschool co-op in Cabbage Town. The article becomes a kind of simulated dialog with author and city planner Christopher Alexander.

Also, check out Misty Harper's interview with mixed-media artist Christopher Lawson (images below). And Ben Grad's piece on a School of the Americas anti-war protest (check Ben's blog here). My own submissions are on page 18: mini interviews with Mary Clare DeReull, Kemp Mooney, and Tom Zarilli.

Check us out around town and look out for our event next month at New Street:

New Street Gallery
Thurs. March 20
Featuring original work by Dosa Kim and Chris Lawson

**

Chris Lawson

FALSE locations

Above: FALSE cover image by Dosa Kim.

Copies of FALSE Magazine are carried via bike, car, and by foot to the following spots in Metro Atlanta:

Candler Park
Dr Bombay’s
Gato Bisco
Candler Park Market
Half Moon Records
Composition Gallery

Castleberry Hill
Get This Gallery
Tilt Coffee Bar
Krause Gallery
Marcia Wood Gallery
Romo Gallery
Hause Studio

Decatur
Java Monkey
New Street Gallery
Foundation One Gallery
Alcove Gallery
Wordsmith Books
Kavarna
Boswell Gallery
Sycamore Gallery
Agnes Scott Dalton Gallery

Kirkwood
Rabbit Hole Gallery
No Brakes Bike Shop
Lake Claire Land Trust

East Atlanta Village
Bound To Be Read
Sabra Gallery
Sopo Bike Co-Op

Grant Park / MLK / Fourth Ward
Eyedrum Gallery
MINT Gallery
Stone Soup Kitchen

Inman Park
Whitespace Gallery
Inman Perk
11:11 Teahouse
Dad's Garage
Radial Cafe

Cabbage Town
Carrol Street Cafe
Park Grounds
Little’s Cabbagetown Market

Little Five Points
Aurora Coffee
Sevananda
Outback Bikes
Acapella Books
Java Lords

The Highlands
Soul Vegetarian
San Francisco Coffee I & II
Aurora Coffee II
Surin Of Thailand

Midtown
Beep Beep Gallery
Midtown Art Cinema
Guillotine Post
Outwrite Books
Apache Café
EATS

West End / Georgia Tech
The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
Octane Coffee Bar
Art Space International

Much love.

**

Luv Beer

For the weekend: Green's Package on Ponce has Duck-Rabbit! It goes on sale starting today. Duck-Rabbit is a high grav craft beer from North Carolina. It's not one of those fancy Belgian brews, but their porter is delicious. Yes!

Luv on Valentine's.

*

TRANSactions

“When I went into advertising, I wanted to airbrush naked people on ice for a whiskey commercial, but they wouldn’t let me do that.” - Vik Muniz¹

Marble sculptures, porcelain ornaments from Napoleon’s court, some vaginal flowers by Georgia O’Keefe: that’s what I expected when I walked into the High Museum this week. Although the museum’s current headliner is an exhibition dedicated to O’Keefe and several of her female contemporaries, don’t be fooled. There’s a wholly different reason to drop by the High.

TRANSactions is a diverse cross section of contemporary work from Latin America and by Latino artists living in the U.S. The Last Supper (above) is a chromogenic print of Vik Muniz’s original. He made it out of melted chocolate and wire. Irreverent and yet so exquisite, somehow the parody still shines with a kind of warm, informal piety. Muniz has a knack for unorthodox materials. He even made a chocolate Jackson Pollock.

Video, sculpture, paint… the types of media represented ran the gamut. Gabriel Kuri’s Untitled is a tapestry fashioned in the image of a Wal-Mart receipt from Mexico. It’s a bit mesmerizing. Over nine feet tall and woven by hand, the piece painstakingly documents globalization in progress. A receipt - one of today’s most mundane, disposable items. Somehow the machine process has turned in reverse: human hands mimic the product of a computer.

If for no other reason, TRANSactions worth a visit to pay homage to Ana Mendieta. Mendieta fell to her death in 1984, under curious circumstances. Her seaside compositions, spattered occasionally with a volcanic, sanguine red, highlight the invisibility that women can feel in society. The image is also a tribute to the Minoan priestess.

For such an institutional venue, I was pretty satisfied. TRANSactions is definitely one of the better shows that’s come through the High.

Both shows, TRANSactions and Georgia O'Keefe and the Women of Stieglitz Circle, run from Feb 9 to May 4.

¹From a hilarious artist talk by Muniz posted here. Just wait through the foolish advertisements; the guy is pretty smart.

***

TRANSactions, etc.

Above:
Hugo Crosthwaite (a show flyer)
Ana Mendieta
Gabriel Kuri
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Hugo Crosthwaite

The two panoramic paintings above are actually very large. The one by Ovalle, called Paternity Test, is based on a DNA scan.

Also at the High, Georgia O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle. The show includes Pamela Coleman Smith, who illustrated the original Rider-Waite Tarot. (Some nifty thumbnails here. Java script is magic.) The High doesn't have her Tarot paintings, but there's a display case that seems to draw a lot of attention from middle aged hippie women. I also noticed that neither exhibit had an audio tour. Maybe later in the month?

*

Art Papers Auction: Locals?

Above:
Robert Sherer
John Folsom
Danny Campbell
Kate Crosby
Matt Haffner
Allison Rentz

Artists with whom I have little to no familiarity - all billed as Atlanta artists at the auction. I've got to admit, Sherer's Daddy's Little Fascist freaking cracks me up. And the next to last piece, the graffiti photo by Haffner, was apparently part of some installation?

If you've heard anything, care to clue me in?

*

Art Papers Auction

Mason Murer last Saturday. As I walked by this painting, a drunken lady cornered me with about 8 minutes' worth of comments. She looked like she could have been someone's trophy wife 10 years ago. I'm sure she had good intentions - a nice gal, really. I said the piece reminded me of Henry Darger's Vivian girls. Of course, Darger's girls had penises...

Jennifer Jones schmoozing with other Atlanta artists and being a social butterfly in general. I couldn't stop laughing. This cat here was pretty jolly. More fun pics on Jennifer's blog. As usual, I lacked the fashion sense of most of the males in the room. For better or worse.

I wonder what this would have been like hanging at Beep Beep? Subverted expectations, societal norms, the idea of a "boy toy." True, it's a little obvious. I was thinking about Local Ephemera's comments last week. In what ways can we be critical about pop culture in addition to celebrating it?

**

The auction had a staggering variety of works: a couple of interesting abstracts, a lot of sleek photos, and a handful of works by better-known locals. Mason Murer is enormous after all. But it was just that deliberate sense of "quantity" that really took hold. The quality wasn't bad, but I wasn't really floored by anything I could see through the crowd. On the other hand, the energy in the room stayed high as auctions were closing left and right.

I'd go again.

**

If you haven't voted yet,

I promise the internet can wait. Seriously.

I'm abstaining from checking primary coverage until the official throw down tonight. In local political news, on the other hand, there may be a bipartisan coup this week to unseat the GA Speaker of the House, Glenn Richardson.

A true egomaniac, Richardson has turned the statehouse into a high school drama:

- In 2008, Richardson threw out Peachcare, a health plan for kids, based on ridiculous (and false) arguments;
- He had an affair with a lobbyist from Atlanta Gas Light
- He stalled the legislature for days over a senseless bull match with the Governor, a fellow Republican (they did this two years in a row); and
- He wants to pass a suspicious sales tax sleight-of-hand called the GREAT Plan. (No joke. That's the legal name, caps and all.)

Below: a spoof image from Creative Loafing's "10 Plagues of Georgia"

*