Wieden+Kennedy New York – W+K NYC Blog » Art

Jen Bekman

Michelle — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:45:24 +0000

I really like Jen Bekman. She’s a gallery owner that has three cool things going on: A cute little gallery on Spring Street near the Bowery, a website called 20 x 200 that sells affordable art online (for as low as $20 a print) and a competition called Hey Hot Shot for up and coming photographers.

I trekked to the gallery recently on a 90+ degree day and was not disappointed. There was a group exhibition called Land Use Survey that featured artists’ interpretations of people’s relationships with the landscape. It’s running until August 15th.

It was a great high/low mix with paintings, drawings and photographs of all ranges, featuring up and coming artists and real established ones as well.

Some standouts, in my opinion:

Indian Beach Surf, Oregon, 2009 by Ian Baguskas – A hazy, dreamy, timeless photo of an Oregon beach

Mint + Magnolia by Brad Moore – A crunchy, vibrant photo of lush shrubbery

Greyfield #2 and #4 by Michelle Muldrow – Painterly takes on today’s mundane American retail landscape

Dusk, Cumberland Farms, Provincetown, 1976 by Joel Meyerowitz – The palette and vibe of 1976 frozen in time in this great slice of life photograph

Placed Places by William Wegman – Okay this was my favorite, best seen in person. William Wegman of dog photo fame has done a series of oil paintings where he attached vintage postcards to wood and then extended the postcard image by painting in his rendition of the rest of the scene. It’s extremely cool and I’m not doing it justice by describing it here.

On the way back to the office I stopped for an excellent falafel and mint lemonade at Hoomoos Asli on Kenmare between Broome & Spring. Yum!

Do not play this.

phil — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:19:13 +0000

i told you not to play it. enjoy singing this over and over again. forever.

Dear W+K Tokyo…

phil — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:23:55 +0000

please send us some zombie meat.

thanks.

Pomp + Circumstance Bested By Talent

superlau — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:17:36 +0000

I am not going to use this space to rain down insults on Lady Gaga. I admire her dedication to heels, and some of her songs are very catchy. And she celebrated the McQueen claw shoe, which I would love to use as a super-chic door stopper (It’s my birthday next week, if anyone has thousands to spare).

Actually, this pretty amazing quote from Joanna Newsom captures how I feel about Gaga:
“I may have contradicted myself. My problem isn’t actually with Lady Gaga. But there’s not much in her music to distinguish it from other glossy, formulaic pop. She just happens to wear slightly weirder outfits than Britney Spears. But they’re not that weird – they’re mostly just skimpy. She’s fully marketing her body/sexuality; she’s just doing it while wearing, like, a ‘fierce’ telephone hair-hat. Her sexuality has no scuzziness, no frank raunchiness, in the way that, say, Peaches, or even Grace Jones, have — she’s Arty Spice! And, meanwhile, she seems to take herself so oddly seriously, the way she talks about her music in the third person, like she’s Brecht or something. She just makes me miss Cyndi Lauper.”

OK, so I am drizzling some insults. Maybe. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was how so much of pop music today is swathed in glitter, with no real substance beneath. It’s all costume and lighting and set design, without any consideration for the music. On this note – I discovered this video of Sinéad O’Connor from the 1989 Grammy’s. And although she seems to be singing over a pre-recorded track (different times, people), this performance is so much more powerful, amazing and bold than anything I’ve seen anyone do all year. So raw! So beautifully un-choreographed! I think she has a t-shirt hanging from her jeans! Bravo! There is not enough tin foil or latex leggings in the world to make a performance this awesome.

Screw artifice. Less is more, people. When you have the talent to back it up.

You Get What You Ask For…

superlau — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:59:20 +0000

I saw a post on Columbia-born (now NY-based) artist Juanita Cardenas on the crazysexycool (or, inspiring, awesome and brave) ‘We Love You So’ blog. I was intrigued. There was fuchsia. I scrolled.

And then I saw this:

This is a page from Juanita’s sketchbook. It is joy personified. It is bold. It is bright. It makes me want to twirl in a perfect skirt that I do not own, but often dream of (when I am not dreaming of meatballs or Superchunk playing my wedding or Stephen Merritt writing a 70th love song about me or Jon Hamm dropping his trench coat over a puddle so I can cross the street).

I decided to email Juanita and ask her about her work and where she sells. And you know what? She wrote back. Within the day. Turns out, she didn’t even know about the ‘We Love You So’ blog post. She was really excited. She’s out of the country, but we’re going to try to meet up when she returns.

The moral of this story: Ask, even when you think things are impossible. You never know what might happen. Oh, and always think about what bands you’d want to play at your wedding. It’s a fun game to imagine your wedding as the new All Tomorrow’s Parties.