07/18/2010 03:51:50 PM 
Stefan told us a story about his attempt to make a film about happiness and the journey he's been on to discover it and its secrets. This journey has taken him to remote parts of Indonesia and even happiness industry conferences. His basic conclusion is that there's nothing really that's going to make us happier than anything else; weather and wealth included. The secret lies in human's ability and willingness to adapt to circumstances.
However, despite his conclusion, Stefan has managed to carve out a unique space for himself, one that most creatives would envy. He tends to avoid corporate working choosing only to do the most interesting, creative, worthy and potentially happiness inducing projects there are out there.
His work has tended to focus primarily on the worlds of music, art, non-profits and public works. One great project was an assignment from an artist's widow to make her deceased husband famous, his solution started with a uniquely designed book of the artist's work, which caught everyone's attention and led to a documentary special about the artist on German television.
One of his most intriguing projects was an art assignment in Amsterdam, where he used the grid of a public square and 250,000 coins to make a statement about obsession.
Posted by Ed Cotton
06/07/2010 02:22:42 PM
In their time, Hatch Show practically invented the poster and created art like objects for some of the legends of the music world and more recently their craft has been demanded by the likes of CNN, grocery stores and wineries.
Hatch Show seems right for today- a time when most things aren't made, they are digitally replicated and the only thing the human operator's hand touches is a key board. The place is real and raw, in a way it's a shrine to the old school world of craft and manufacturing. At Hatch Show you see people happy in their jobs, working things out with their hands and tinkering with machines that are decades old. It's a powerful reminder of the power of human-powered craft.
Hatch Show was one of the stops on the recent road trip and images from the studio can be seen here.
Posted by Ed Cotton
05/10/2010 03:59:34 PM
Created by the collective, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, the film is a mash-up of YouTube clips and various news clips and accompanied by a narrative that examines the concept of America in the third person, as a long lost friend or former lover.
It's one example of art directly turning in to look at the current state of America, a theme that comes up a number of times at the exhibition.
We Like America and America Likes Us from Bruce High Quality Foundation on Vimeo.
Posted by Ed Cotton
02/04/2010 11:15:00 AM
Now, thanks to the efforts of SFMOMA and others a retrospective of his work can be seen in the US.
It's work that on the surface challenges the conventions of painting, but more than that, uses art to provoke discussion about history and culture.
At first glance, it's hard to take in the work. The color palette is muted and depressed, there seems to be an artificial barrier between the canvas and the viewer, it's like he doesn't want you to get close.
There's one series of paintings of banal objects that are out of focus, blurred so that they look like fragments of our memories, but many of these have deeper stories behind them (that's Tuymans style); a body lying innocently on a couch turns out to be a murder victim, the portrait of a man that seems very ordinary, is in fact, a a cancer sufferer.
At its core, Tuymans best work deals with politics and history. There are two series that deal with World War 2; one with concentration camps and the other the broader theme of Nazism.
While many of these WW 2 paintings here are difficult to view, often being minimal and sparse, they all have deeper stories to tell, but when viewed as a series, complete an arc.
In his architect series about Nazi Germany, there's a painting from a photo of Albert Speer on skis and a blurred out portrait of Himmler which render these key protagonists dangerously harmless and innocent.
The work that explores the Belgian colonization of the Congo is perhaps the most impressive. It highlights the key motifs of the story by isolating the key players and covering the assassination of a leader and the exploitation of resources. It's also art that caused a political response, this series was first shown at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and caused ripples that forced the Belgian government to admit their role in assassination of the Congolese leader.
American isn't spared as he explores the country post 9/11 with paintings that include a portrait of Condoleezza Rice and what appears to be a falling World Trade Center, but in reality is simply another demolition. Tuymans is telling us how we've all been manipulated by media repetition.
In a world where new, bright digital media is the "thing", Tuymans shows us that painting still has a potent role to play. He's using his art to challenge and warn us about the power of the diversity of media images that surround us. He's asking that constantly question ourselves to find deeper meaning in these images.
Posted by Ed Cotton
01/26/2010 10:24:52 AM
It's an interesting montage of imagery, that has less to do with film and more to do with a load of random and messed up stills, so it was interesting to read that Schofield's inspiration happened to be the internet.
"While looking around for ideas for music videos I find myself on a lot of found-photo websites like ffffound.com or Tumblr pages. I find the lack of context so interesting and I have a huge folder of these random photos. I've done other videos that have been inspired by one photo or another and I always thought it would be great to make a video where it's just like flipping through this folder where every scene is a different image. So something like the pancake astronaut is basically a recreation of a Photoshop that somebody did."
For years, the Internet, was mainly text based, but we are seeing a huge shift over to visuals increasing bandwidth sharing sites cropping up everywhere.
While it started with photography, it's now moved to include illustration, but more than that, it's increasingly about people building upon each others ideas, sharing visual jokes, etc.
It seems we gaining a new level of visual literacy as we become bombarded by more and more images that are increasingly subverted and played with.
Schofield's video clearly points to this and doubtless we will see more takes on this emerging space over time.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/30/2009 03:52:32 PM
Fast Fourier Transform from peter menich on Vimeo.
Posted by Ed Cotton