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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Roger Water’s lavish production of The Wall came to Los Angeles over the weekend and, as luck would have it, Os Gêmeos happened to also be in town working on a private commission for a movie star with impeccable taste. “We didn’t plan it,” said Octavio Pandolfo, one half of The Twins whose recent show, “Miss You” at PRISM, offered a dazzling labyrinth of their vivid characters and magical realism. “We didn’t even know The Wall was here, but we wouldn’t miss it!” Octavio pulls on his respirator mask, grabs a can of spray paint between his feet and pitches in the air like a soccer ball. He scrambles up a piece of scaffolding and joins his brother Gustavo on the eastern side of The Pig.
Antidote for a Worrisome World Photos by Silke Tudor and Jessica Louise.
Hi-Fructose writer Silke Tudor gives us a report from the opening of Todd Schorr's solo show Neverlasting Miracles opening at the Merry Karnowski Gallery. A keen throng of art lovers braved split pea-sized hail and St. Patrick’s Day drivers to reach the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in West Hollywood on Saturday night. Behind this tall darkened doorway, a side-show barker offered ballyhoo to a little kid eating cotton candy; a gelatinous swamp monster stalked oblivious teenage lovers; Yosemite Sam emerged like smoke from a magic genie’s lamp; the Big Bad Wolf threatened to slit Porky Pig’s neck; and Peter Pan reconsidered the Fountain of Youth in which Ponce de Leon sat transformed from a pooh-stained skeleton into a cigar-smoking baby with five o’clock shadow. This is Neverlasting Miracles, the much anticipated new offering from pop surrealist Todd Schorr.
Marianne Magne should be the hero in an H.P. Lovecraft story: A bold beautiful French explorer who is able to reach between the folds of our common human experience, wrestle with the creatures she finds there, and drag their haunting images from just beyond the fringe. Using cibachrome, a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process which Magne transfers to aluminum and manipulates, a frozen television frame reveals a man locked in the torment of an eternal underworld; a photograph of a beautiful young woman is scarcely but poignantly recognizable as her soft tissue gives way to a crouching spirit of only slightly malevolent mien. Human forms seem to emerge from the textures of rust, charcoal, and dusky light, only to be reabsorbed. Abstraction becomes refraction and though the effect is beautiful and unshakeable, it is often quite dark. - Silke Tudor