jkordy – Page 6 – The Collected Somewhat

Vanderlei Lopes

A lot of more conceptual art suffers in the materials department, the focus is more on the concept, and while pains are usually taken in the execution the materials are usually simple crude everyday and sometimes lack the texture and weightiness of a more studied form-focused piece. Not so with Vanderlei Lopes – I just love what he is doing here. The pieces are arresting, concept aware, but the focus is on the materials – maybe not even the focus but the texture and weightiness of more traditional sculpture is very much there. Beautiful and arresting to look at.

The pieces I chose are both cast in bronze with patina but his works in polished bronze are also beautiful – please take a moment to explore all of his work.

Lucy Knisley

Lucy Knisley (Nice-ly) is my new favorite Graphic Novelist. I had the pleasure of reading through three of her books.

Age of License was the first book I read. It was a pretty good read. I enjoyed the subject matter — travel. But I didn’t fully connect fully with the book or its drawing style for some reason despite the fact that I usually love travel books. My favorite part was when she visits Angoulême famed for its own love of comics and their authors because I would probably share Lucy’s excitement in being there.

Displacement I read this book next. I liked it even better. Lucy goes on a cruise (which can be trying in the best of times! see DFW’s take on it) but she takes things to a whole other level by going on this adventure with her very geriatric grandparents. Hilarity, well more like poignant resignation and frustration ensues! My favorite part however were the flashbacks to her grandfather’s wartime journal entries ( I could read a whole illustrated graphic novel of just her grandpa’s experiences! hint hint)

Relish This was the last one I read and it was by far my favorite, perhaps it was the subject matter. Being a foodie myself, I could really appreciate another foodie’s journey through life plus the book is littered with detailed cutely illustrated recipes throughout. This one really hit it home for me – a coming of age story, a foodie romp through farm to table, city life AND country living, awesome recipes and a lightness throughout but once again grounded by its poignancy of family life and a life lived.

Fallen Astronaut

I had no idea there was any art on the moon, I was thrilled to find out about Fallen Astronaut. I guess you could almost call it a site-specific installation, but it certainly is an open air gallery with a fine piece of commemorative minimal sculpture – remembering all those who have died in service of this cause. It seems a poignant and touching tribute, and a very exciting discovery for me. There is some controversy surrounding the art – but it’s exciting to think of a piece of art in the far reaches of the cosmos.

Erdal Inci

See more of this amazing work here

Ads – NYC Players
aka Richard Maxwell

I think I would have to label this a misplaced experiment. The New York Times called it “a video installation in a modern-art museum” and I unfortunately I agree. As someone surrounded by digital technology which is lacking exactly the live component I crave and enjoy in seeing a performance, I was severely disappointed by this “performance.”

As an experiment in the live arts I understand the things Maxwell was going for… exploring what performance means, what live means, playing with technology available, but ultimatley it was not enjoyable or interesting to me. Still it was great to see Maxwell using his trademark tropes in a new setting.

Quote

Knowledge is sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

— Elon Musk

JUXTAPOSE (a couple of videos)

Conchita Wurst

Viktoria Modesta

Geek Sublime – Virkam Chandra

This book is hard to pin down, and because of that it suffers a bit. It would seem that not a lot of readers possess the unique qualities and experiences that form the foundation of the theories touched upon in this book. Authors (of Novels), authors (of code) a.k.a. programmers, and people with a deep historical knowledge of indian culture and mythology.

The author possesses all three in spades, he is an indian novelist who coded on the side to make ends meet. He is very smart and seems a good novelist and probably coder too. His writing is eloquent enough to cover all three of the seemingly disparate topics, he makes a case that perhaps they are not so disparate after all — but it still seems despite the authors best efforts that there isn’t an audience for this all encompassing thesis.

Still I applaud the effort – there are some gems in there – even if for me it didn’t quite come together, and it seemed to be in need of some editing (by an outside editor, is this self-published?) in the middle to rein it all in a bit. I hope the author found some peace in putting his thoughts and theories to paper, and I appreciate him letting us in on the workings of the mind which can get messy with flashes of brilliance.

P.S. I also suspect as it did me that the title can mislead, even though the book is non-fiction the title is applied more like a work of fiction – meaning the poetic lyricism is more important than the literal meaning and I suspect geek is such a loaded/coded word right now that readers might be doubly surprised by the literary tone on the inside.

Through the Language Glass – Guy Deutscher

Wow this book goes there and back. Apparently the premise that language shapes your thinking, worldview, possibilities is quite widespread, quite old and apparently utterly untrue.

At least that is what Guy Deutscher would have you believe towards the beginning of the book but by the end he comes full-circle and acknowledges that indeed it can color your thinking – it just doesn’t limit your thinking like some cultural theorists would have you believe in the 17 and 1800’s, they would use it support their “theories” about “less evolved” cultures and things like that.

The book starts out with the bizarre color associations in Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad what with his wine-colored sheep and green colored eyebrows. What to make of that? And it ends with an interesting language and culture of the Guugu Yimithirr which does not have “egocentric” coordinate concepts such as Left or Right, instead it only uses “geographic” coordinates so that speakers must always be aware of North and South no matter if they are in a room without windows or jumping out of a sinking boat in shark infested waters – they will always know which cardinal direction they swam to escape and their children always know which direction the tv was facing because Punch might have been to the West of Judy.

For someone who takes painstaking pains to back up his theories with evidence – the final pages of the book go into some wild hyperbole and flights of fancy and in fact the ending chapters somewhat unravel as if the author ran out of time or grant money or perhaps missed his children and just wrote some stuff to get the damn thing finished.

Overall I learned some stuff – but it wasn’t the book on language I was hoping for. And the author’s final revelation that naming things in a particular language is what actually carves up reality for us and not how reality is indeed divided, he presents as the ultimate revelation. Unfortunately buddhist monks have known about this for years.

Mayumi Terada

Beautiful, minimal, haunting photographs by Mayumi Terada that are actually not what the appear – they are mintature dollhouse sized diorama sculptures photographed. See all of her work at James Hyman Gallery.