Bloodshedding pieces of black-and-white happiness.
The unfair balance of the picture.

The wider picture. The bloody wider picture always giving it the color that wasn’t there in the first place.
Notice: the wider picture is never the first place. It comes as we back up, until we are nowhere to be found, impressed by the relation of the Thing with that wide horizon, that swift encompassing of the Other into the Thing.

The unfair balance of the picture. Nothing should ever be framed. Frames should be prohibited, forcing us into oblivion, into focusing on the End nearest us. Who knows how many Santa Clauses are necessary?

The unfair balance of the picture.

The pictures are by, in order of appearance, Diane Arbus, Miko?aj Chylak, Diane Arbus, Fischli & Weiss.

Bloodshedding pieces of black-and-white happiness.
The unfair balance of the picture.

The wider picture. The bloody wider picture always giving it the color that wasn’t there in the first place.
Notice: the wider picture is never the first place. It comes as we back up, until we are nowhere to be found, impressed by the relation of the Thing with that wide horizon, that swift encompassing of the Other into the Thing.

The unfair balance of the picture. Nothing should ever be framed. Frames should be prohibited, forcing us into oblivion, into focusing on the End nearest us. Who knows how many Santa Clauses are necessary?

The unfair balance of the picture.

The pictures are by, in order of appearance, Diane Arbus, Miko?aj Chylak, Diane Arbus, Fischli & Weiss.

Video directed by Takafumi Tsuchiya (TAKCOM).

Two pictures from the Visit series (2007/8) by Filip Berendt.
The idea is so simple and to the point that it is irritating. Berendt put an ad in a newspaper saying he wants to make installations in people’s homes out of the things he finds there and take pictures of them. Some people answered. He went to their homes, and, well, did what he said he would do.
The series won him the Sittcomm award last year.

I love the CRA$H jewellery collection by Super Fertile because it’s impossible to wear. Poor people can’t afford it. Rich people would never dare.
So who is it for?
For us, of course.

(via)

Remember Al Magnus?

Nadja Bournonville, A Form of Protection (2008)

What I like most are the hands.
And the neck.
It’s tense. See the two lines suavely drawing their way into the chest. And the hands, a pianist’s hands, playing out their protagonism, exploring the absent look to shine, and yet tense, they remain, maybe, it’s what they hold, and not who?

(via)

To see the following video you should enlarge it (double-click once playing).

The above is a compilation of works by the Swiss artist Zimoun.

1. Funny, one keeps telling oneself, enough of the minimal already, somehow feeling that less is a bore should be embraced, and the outrageously overflowing art of the recent years – appreciated and encouraged. And then, something like this appears, and it’s irresistible. We’ve seen things from this universe before, also on this blog, and yet, the simplicity, yes, the damn purity takes over again.

2. I had a chance, recently, to visit several large factories. There were wonders there that could probably match most of the things on this video. Yet there was one thing they couldn’t do: be useless. It’s the sheer uselessness of it that gives it the power. We are not attached to anything but the thing. Art as the thing-that-cannot-be-used? Not necessarily, not in some purist sense. Great industrial design is to be cherished. And yet, there is a level of insanity here, of out-of-this-world-ness, that takes us to an exotic land, allowing for the silliest and most delicious connections to be made.

3. Luxury requires waste. A truly luxurious lifestyle is one where perfectly good things get wasted, as if to outplay their natural use and dying away. The true master of luxury seems to be saying her opulence is so great, the very perseverence of things is no match – they lose their original function and only exist to the extent they are participating in this out-of-this-world-ness of luxury.
You know what I’m aiming at? Here’s the hypothesis:

4. This, this minimalist joyful pleasure-making, is the true luxury. Not the apparent richness of the new complexities. In the world of useless purity, everything only serves the joy of simple aesthetic pleasure. More complex works are not quite like that – they have an inner game to play. The elements enter a dialogue, start relations and societies, with their conflicts and functions and disruptions. Here, there is only the ping of a shot of pleasure. This engine moves nothing. It is here to make me smile (or bring inspiration, or scare) – and I turn it off as soon as I have. And don’t be mistaken – if I had one of those and got bored with and could afford it, it would go to waste.

4a. Ah, you might say, but the truly great art is one we don’t get bored with. Possibly. Yet how often do we actually go back to contemplate (not just think about or admire or analyze) a work of contemporary “minimalist” art? Does it mean it’s because it’s not that great? What if it’s about something else? What if it is an element of luxury, a game we play with ourselves, to feel the exquisite taste of the sophisticated dish, and then to ditch it as soon as we’re fed up? It wouldn’t be a question of bluff, of fakeness, of shallowness. It would be a question of use. Of why we crave it, this new. Of how we make it useful after all.

David Foldvari, Wrestler

(via)

Gabriel Cornelius von Max, Monkeys as Judges of Art (1840)

(I’m the small one watching the work, the one in the middle, whose profile can be seen behind the bent knee)