SOFTlab was invited by curators Christina Vasallo and Adam Henry to the show System:System, opening this coming Friday at 21 Monitor Street in Brooklyn. The show, in the words of the curators:
A failing economy has decided the recent fate of 21 Monitor Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Formerly a nun’s convent, the grand three-story house now stands uninhabited due to the declining membership of St. Cecilia parish and its sister school. Rather than let the building fall into disrepair the parish has found ways to breathe new life into it through a rotating schedule of film shoots, screenings, dance performances, and art exhibitions.

So many thanks to Brandt Graves and Carrie McKnelly for the invaluable help putting the show together.

Read more info on the show here.

A few more images, courtesy of Alan Tansey, after the jump below.

We were invited to the group show “Overlap” at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, opening tonight.

From the press release:
Art and architecture are often portrayed as distinct, even opposing fields, though they share many material and conceptual practices. The invited artists and architecturally trained designers share common interests in generating forms, pattern, and geometries through tactile material processes -whether hand crafted or through the use of computational technology. They often incorporate an awareness of codes or conceptual layers in their work as well as new generative methods and modes of production. The intent of OVERLAP was to begin with these commonalities, and provide space for indefinable qualities to emerge, hinting at something new.

Read the full release here.

I made it last night to the WILDCHILD show at the Bridge Gallery. The work on display is absolutely fantastic and the opening was quite a succes.
Take a look at a few pics of the show below.

This evening is the opening of the show Wild Child in the Bridge Gallery down in the LES. The show is curated by Bridge Gallery + Peter Macapia. SOFTlab made the exhibition’s site, featuring a cellular war between East Coast and West Coast. Check it out here.

The list of people include:
THEVERYMANY,
Kokkugia,
KolMac,
SOFTlab,
Emergent,
Aranda/Lasch,
p-a-t-t-e-r-n-s

among others.

http://www.morenewmath.com

This past weekend Mara and I made it to the Storm King Art Center in upstate. The center is a 500 acre estate with an incredible collection of large format art, from Noguchi’s to Calder’s to Serra’s… among many many more. It is WELL worth the trip.

More pics coming up soon.

We made it on Thursday to the opening of the show Darkness Descends: Scandinavian Art Now curated by Christina Vassallo. Our friend Marius Watz had three of his pieces in the show and performed with/vs Alexander Rishaug. His responsive visuals were absolutely stunning.

View more images and short clips after the jump.

SOFTlab worked with Marius on the laser etching and mounting of the pieces.

Gabe pointed me to Christoph Niemann’s lego constructs of New York, they’re just awesome.

View the rest in his NYT blog here.

You can also read the thread on his bathroom tile saga from his blog here.

The French magazine Stiletto asked SOFTlab to work on a project for their December edition of the magazine. The theme was Utopia.

As architects, this is of course a pretty loaded theme. We were given free reign but the theme had to incorporate 6 different pairs of stiletto shoes/boots, part of course of the overall theme of the magazine itself. The city was thought of as a pattern, and as a bow and counterpoint to Superstudio, it is a distorted, continuous grid that is both landscape and infrastructure, city and world, nature and artifice.

The shoes then, became the towers that break the pattern. Fashion as a liberator you might say?

The team were:
Mike Szivos, Jose Gonzalez, Jason McGee, Masami Ueki and Anjas Maroef.

A couple more images below.

Looking through my pictures of the past visit to P.S.1, I found this picture of one of the greatest pieces currently on display. I can’t really remember the artist’s name (nor the piece’s name for that matter) but its simplicity, its economy of means and its in-your-face-ness are what make it completely astounding to walk through. It’s in the second floor, so if you have a chance to visit the museum, don’t miss it.

Gabe pointed me to these incredible videos by Teargas and Plateglass. The songs are even more beautiful than the visuals. Heavy stuff, yet beautiful.

Visit their site here.

View the other vids after the jump.

A very interesting article on J Todd Anderson, the guy who storyboards each and everyone of The Cohen Brother’s movies.

Read it here.

via [ben fry's website]

Today was the opening for Cooper Union’s end of year show. I got to walk around the architecture and art shows and saw a lot of beautiful models, some great drawings, and a few fun/smart pieces of art.
The one above was one of my favorites: a hand crank break dancer + MC Hammer zoetrope. Can’t beat it.

See images of some interesting projects on view after the jump.

Gabe just pointed me to this amazing stop-motion-painting-on-walls video from Buenos Aires. Absolutely incredible.
Take a look at some of their other work here.

Last Friday I made it to the Guggenheim’s final “First Fridays” of the season. I had been waiting to visit the Cai Guo-Qiang exhibit “I want to believe” in order to check it out during the party, although I was dying to see the exhibit.

The parties themselves are pretty fun, although they’ve become so popular they just get insanely packed and therefore the fun ratio vs. the annoying ratio gets shifted towards the annoying side. After 1 hour in there it is just impossible to move…

I’m still writing my take on the show, but, here are the images for now… I’ll complete this later on.

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[flv:iwanttobelieve3.flv iwanttobelieve1.jpg 480 640]

Update:
Here are some random images from last night’s presentations

abalos y herreros

cabinet magazine, this presentation totally rocked… doodles from presidents, a cabinet library. Awesome

Cabinetland

Maria Cornejo’s sketch for one of her draped garments. Very much like what Paul Poiret was doing over 100 years ago.

The show at The Brooklyn Museum is absolutely amazing. The exhibit, which is separated in two floors, is very extensive and the quality of the paintings/sculptures/videos etc is just incredible.

As usual, I’ll rant about the museum’s ‘tight-assness’ about taking pictures inside -does Murukami care?…- these guys were truly gestapo style, yelling and running towards people with cameras to get them to stop. That’s what they’re being paid for I guess, but it’s an idiotic policy nonetheless. Makes me wonder if Gagosian has anything to do with it.

Don’t miss the transformer girl in the first level (hard to miss, it takes the main central space) , the short clips in the lower level (anyone knows the name of the little fella?) and the large canvas-tiny DOB blue painting.

View some lousy pics after the jump

Also, don’t miss this circus video of the opening from the NYT…

Read the CBC article here.

I’m working on some initial thoughts after the jump, I’ll finalize that posting later on.

Having worked with a few artists for the past couple of years, I have to admit that this strikes me as a fairly idiotic thing. Not the fact that someone would die for art or the idea of the project itself (displays of death to make us think, etc etc). What is idiotic is thinking – as a volunteer- that dying for art itself will in some way bring a new layer of meaning or debate into the art world. Art, in my mind, has to be understood mainly in economical terms. I think very few people would still believe in art as a means for changing the world. I’m not trying to be cynic at all, nor do I have an immeasurable faith in capitalism (I don’t), but pretending to think that there is a higher purpose in this type of endeavors seems to me both naive and irresponsible at the same time. Here is where my experience with artists comes into play. I have seen their discourses or ideas for a specific project shift almost as quickly as stock does. I’m not saying either that ideas are unmovable and that they should remain static. They’re not, they elastic things that shrink, change and grow with time and events, but when the conceptual basis for projects or a body of work. And when the change happens, it is steered towards one single target: more $$.
And for the record, I’m not talking of “boulevard artists”, I’m talking based on my experience with fairly established artists which, from the outside, were indeed artists, with actual careers and, had I never collaborated with them, might still be naive enough to respect them or the art.

I’ll continue to clean up this rant later on, but I’m just going to post it

via [archinect]