More from Regina Célia Pinto

Paintings

Neste vídeo há uma grande delicadeza, uma fragilidade,
que não deve levar a pensar que essa peça de Regina Pinto
é de alguma forma ocasional ou menos artística.
Em vez disso, esse é o trabalho de um artista maduro,
sem nada a provar, e com a enorme liberdade que isso traz.
Um estudo de todo o corpo de seu trabalho evidencia
amplamente tudo isso e mostra quão profundamente
consistente e coerente ele se apresenta.
Poder-se-ia ainda acrescentar o quanto ele nos emociona,
o quanto é estranho e muito bonito.

There’s a delicacy, a fragility, about this piece
that shouldn’t lead one to think that Regina Célia Pinto’s
work is in any way casual or artless.
Rather, this is the work of a mature artist with
nothing to prove and the enormous freedom that brings.
A study of the whole body of her work
amply bears this out.
It shows just how consistent and deeply considered
it is and, one should add, how affecting, how strange
and how very beautiful.

Toby Tatum –The Golden Age

the golden age
The Golden Age (2011, 181MB, 5:34 min)

We’ve posted Toby Tatum’s work
before and it’s work with a definite charge to it and ambitious too.

I think this piece is more wholly successful than its predecessor but I’m still not totally convinced.
It’s something to do with the aim of conjuring a very precise & particular
dream-world which strikes me as an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of approach,
in that the tiniest false note disrupts the sought for spell.
Therefore Tatum creates a very high bar indeed for himself and his performers.

If one compares similarly oneiric work by Cocteau, Lynch or Hadžihalilović,
however dense and rich the atmosphere gets, there is variation with humour
or banality preparing us for more poetry to come and somehow too, framing it,
setting it off.
That sounds more critical that I want to be for this is, in every respect, a
very nicely realised and haunting piece.

Next week, or the week after, we’ll post an interview with Tatum about his work.

Will Goss – Sonnet by William Shakespeare

sonnet
Sonnet by William Shakespeare (2011, 64 MB, 2:31 min)

“Here is a video I made a few months ago.
It’s a recitation of Shakespeare’s #135th sonnet.
In the background are Dexter Dalwood’s paintings,
which are collaged from other famous paintings.
The piece engages ideas of appropriation and identity.”
A beauty by Will Goss.

Another from Ruth Catlow

as i looked up
travel images unseen (2011, 156MB, 6:01 min)

‘5 video clips taken on a simple video camera, through a window on a coach to the
plane from Istanbul and arriving in London by train. Selected by and stitched, unseen
by the creator who will never watch the video, ever.’

The gentlest conceptualism & quite, quite lovely too.
There’s something about knowing the premise that leaves one
very open – one could say innoculates one – to its formal consequences –
here a looseness which somehow gently stretches time, makes it grainier
but conversely sharpens our attention, perhaps to make up for the
maker’s own vow of abstention.
One more in the series to come.

MGM 1975


Jack Goldstein – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1975, 16.2MB, 2:10)

An endlessly cyclical Hollywood, summed up in two minutes,
over thirty years ago. Still relevant and all too real.

Aī-Hz – My Miwoo

My Miwoo
My Miwoo [Tai Chi Weekend Control] (2007, 24.6MB, 50 secs)

Aī-Hz, real name Michael Renassia,
is a French visual performer living and working in Tokyo.
His site contains possibly my favourite biographical nugget ever:

‘He is using compositing software in a diverted way, and real-time mixing
instruments with the aim to create a noisy/pop universe…’

Now, who could possibly object to that?
This piece is rather lovely – the thing that totally makes it for me
is the epiphanic moment at the end when the music/animation stops &
the person appears ..there’s a haunting sense of time suspended..
So, for me, 10/10 for visuals.
I am pretty bored ,though, with the by-the-yard avant-dance music
that accompanies so much work of this kind..it’s not bad
or anything, just pedestrian…

Jerome Hill

Film Portrait
Film Portrait (1972, 31MB, 11:45 min.)

Cartomancienne
La Cartomancienne (1932, 13MB, 12 min.)

This is a memoir and the last film made by artist and filmmaker Jerome Hill.

I also found ‘La Cartomancienne’, one of his earliest film experiments.

By Mica

Brian Kim Stefans – Difficult Beauty

vex1
Vex #1 (2006, 29.1MB, 2:08 min.)

vex5
Vex #5 (2006, 25.9MB, 1:09 min.)

ferrari dogs
Ferrari Dogs (2006, 25.9MB, 1:09 min.)

You know sometimes how when you first look at a work
you can’t process it immediately, it seems jumbled – wrong
& you’re tempted to dismiss it.
Then you live with it awhile & suddenly it leaps into focus &
you realise you’re in the presence of something much richer
& more rewarding than the things which did immediately fall into place?
Do you know that feeling?
Well, that’s how I felt as I prepared this post.
The work, by the artist & poet Brian Kim Stefans, snuck up
on me & then hit me over the head.
Furthermore, there’s still a puzzling quality to it all, for me:
the Ferrari Dogs piece seems like work of a different category
to the vex pieces somehow ( as does Manchurian Rainman on
the site. Check it. Now – what is that all about?)
Anyway – I’ll take mystery over glibness anyday – I look forward to more.

Semiotics of a Kitchen


Martha Rosler – Semiotics of a Kitchen (1975, 18.3MB, 6:29)

An A-Z look at the tools of a kitchen, of domesticity,
of the self in the midst of frustrated ennui.
Historically significant feminist performance art that reminds us,
“When the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.”
Rosler is one of my favorites.

Santiago Sierra – NO, Global Tour

NOGlobalTour
NO, Global Tour trailer (2010, 21 MB, 3:11 min)

Team Gallery, Lisson Gallery , Galería Helga de Alvear & Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani,
in association with Artprojx Cinema, present the UK premiere of NO, Global Tour,
2010 by Santiago Sierra.
The 120 minute film consists of the manufacture and transportation of two monumental sculptures
in the form of the word “NO”, travelling through different territories on a flatbed truck.
The NO, GLOBAL TOUR has resulted in a feature film that documents the passage of this
large NO through various world cities.
A monumental sculpture – unchanged both in its form and immediate meaning – that gradually
assumes a complex semantic load during a journey full of eventualities, accidents, and unexpected events.