Eliana Willis

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    in Street Art

    “Lizard” by Pener in Olsztyn, Poland

    Street artist Pener recently shared his latest abstract mural which was just completed on the streets of Olsztyn in Poland.Pener has been one of Poland’s talented emerging artists working in abstract and deconstructive style. Pener’s mural is a masterpiece of detail and color. The artist has created a fluid composition with layers of deconstructed forms that seem to flow into each other. The linear details are impressive, holding together the constant movement and transparent shapes. The mural is a stunning example of Pener’s skill and talent.Bartek Świątecki’s aka Pener work mixes abstraction and traditional graffiti. High art and youth culture, modernism and skateboarding. His images are based around geometric groupings and angular forms which reference futuristic architectural design.Check out below for more images of Pener’s work. More

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    in Exhibitions

    Art Shines in Naples, Italy, This Summer. Here’s an Insider’s Guide to the Fabled City’s Attractions and Diversions

    Naples has undergone an artistic renaissance of late. Already home to ancient sites around Pompeii, not to mention the enchanting island of Capri, the southern Italian city has recently seen a remarkable transformation from sleepy port town into a premiere cultural destination—not unlike glorious Rome or fashionable Milan higher up the boot.
    Ambling through the vibrant city streets, one can feel Naples’s artistic regeneration at every turn. Galleries, museums, and art foundations have popped up everywhere, showcasing a wide range of artistic output, from Greek antiquities to contemporary abstraction.
    We’ve curated a list of places to see, stay, sip, and shop.

    SEE
    Amy Sillman, “Temporary Objects”Thomas Dane Gallery
    Installation view of Amy Sillman’s “Temporary Object.” Courtesy of Thomas Dane Gallery.
    Among the most recent newcomers to Naples is Thomas Dane Gallery. The British dealer’s eponymous outpost in Naples just opened with sweeping views of the bay. On view now is “Temporary Object,” a solo show of new works by Amy Sillman (through July 29). The process-based American painter’s canvases are on display alongside a series of intimate drawings, offering feasts of color and shape that are buoyantly Matisse-like in their rendering and emotion. Each painting in “Temporary Object” reflects a stage in the development of a work that is never revealed yet offers insight into how to read the painting, as if it were part of a film or storyboard. In this way, these palimpsestic works are akin to Naples and its own layered history.

    Mario Schifano, “Il Nuovo Imaginario (The New Imaginary)”Galleria d’Italia
    Installatino view of Mario Schifano’s “Il Nuovo Imaginario (The New Imaginary).” Courtesy of Galleria d’Italia
    More gestural paintings can be found at the Galleria d’Italia on Via Toledo, where artist Mario Schifano’s “Il Nuovo Imaginario (The New Imaginary) 1960–1990” runs through October 29. The survey presents over 50 works by one of Italy’s greatest postmodern artists. Some of them are reflective of his time as a restorer in Rome’s Museum of Etruscan Art and Archaeological Artifacts of Villa Giulia. Others hark back to his interest in Pop Art, which exploded after he visited the United States in 1963. The interest was short-lived and his desire to examine history through abstraction was rekindled, prompting him to look to Futurism—with its fervent movement, bold forms, and vibrant colors—for inspiration. The exhibition also presents, for the first time, a series of works from the 1970s called “Paesaggi TV (TV Landscapes)” that show Schifano’s attempts to present news and events on canvas.

    “Alexander the Great and the East”National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN)
    Installation view of “Alexander the Great and the East.” Courtesy of MANN.
    The exuberant modern paintings of Schifano and Sillman make for a compelling contrast with the ancient works in “Alexander the Great and the East” (through August 28) at the National Archaeological Museum (MANN). The exhibition—which follows the announcement of MANN2, a new branch of the museum—offers a rich exploration of the Macedonian warrior’s cultural legacy. It was inspired by the restoration of the mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, one of the most famous from antiquity, depicting the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, between Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia.
    The show coincides with “Picasso and Antiquity” (through August 27), in the museum’s Farnese galleries, showcasing ancient sculptures excavated in Rome during the Renaissance alongside intimate works on paper by Pablo Picasso, who was profoundly influenced by the classical art museum.
    For a dose of contemporary art, head to the Morra Greco and the Fondazione Donnaregina (also known as Museo Madre), both of which are just down the street from MANN. Often collaborating, though separate institutions, each boasts works by blue-chip names including Richard Long, Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Olafur Eliasson, and Francesco Clemente.

    STAY
    Courtesy of Atelier Inès Arts & Suites, Naples.
    Among the plethora of new hotels that have recently opened in Naples, Atelier Inès Arts & Suites in the Vergini neighborhood offers the most intimate stay. Opened in 2021, the design-oriented hotel features just six distinctly themed rooms in a building that dates back to 1900, when it was the site of an open-air cinema and theater. The hotel also displays the work of artist Annibale Oste, from the 1960s on, in the rooms’ interiors.
    Another charming hotel is the Artemisia Duomo in the Centro Storico (historical center), just steps from the magical gardens of the Santa Chiara cloisters. Its eight rooms—in addition to four spa suites—are wonderfully named after the female protagonists of Neapolitan baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s oeuvre.
    Courtesy of Grand Hotel Vesuvio in Santa Lucia, Naples.
    For still more storied opulence, head to the Grand Hotel Vesuvio in Santa Lucia, where creatives such as Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky and Émile Zola are said to have stayed on their visits to Naples.

    SIP
    Courtesy of George restaurant, Naples.
    As the art scene of Naples has boomed, so too has its culinary hotspots. Michelin-starred George restaurant, on the roof garden of the Grand Hotel Parker, offers a classic Neapolitan dining experience. Chef Domenico Candela combines recipes from the Campania region of Italy with techniques he acquired in France—amid breathtaking views of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius.
    At local favorite Osteria della Mattonella, diners dine amid hand-painted, 18th-century walls with intricately painted tiles. Perfect for art lovers, just-launched Sustanza restaurant sits inside an Art Nouveau setting, across from the National Archaeological Museum, where chef Marco Ambrosino prepares southern Italian specialties accompanied with natural wines. 
     
    SHOP
    Naples, in fact all of Italy, is famed for its vintage shopping. Those wishing to partake in the national pastime should make haste to Oblomova, selling a browser’s paradise of vintage treasures, from handbags and jewelry to collectible crafts.
    Galleria Umberto, Naples. (Photo by: Michele Stanzione/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
    The more luxury-minded will want to head to the Chiaia District, especially Via Toledo, where all the top brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton have set up shop. Or head to Galleria Umberto, where you can peruse high-end Italian retail stores within a magnificent 19th-century neoclassical glass dome and surrounding arcade.

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  • 250 Shares199 Views

    in Exhibitions

    A New Show in Frankfurt Surveys How Famous Artists Explored the Power and Peril of Plastic. See the Works Here

    Plastic was once seen as a major advancement for humanity thanks to its low-cost versatility—now, it feels like our undoing. Even as disturbing headlines warn us that plastic is now in our water, our air, and our bodies, we remain locked in an uncomfortable reliance on this potentially toxic, manmade material. We may fantasize about a zero-waste future, but the world’s consumption of single-use plastics is only growing.
    When artists first started experimenting with plastic shortly after its invention in the 1950s, however, the mood was one of excitement. The highly flexible, inexpensive material represented a world of new possibilities: it could be bent, cut, poured, or inflated, and came transparent or in any number of brilliant colors. It also carried associations of modernity and mass consumption that made it a quintessential symbol of its time.
    A new thematic show at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, titled “Plastic World,” features the work of more than 50 artists—including James Rosenquist, Eva Hesse, and Christo—in a major survey of the many ways in which plastic has been used over the years, as well as how its associations have evolved.
    Installation view of “Plastic World” at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2023. Photo: Norbert Miguletz.
    More than 100 works are made from media as diverse as acrylic, silicon, vinyl, styrofoam polyurethane, polyester, PVC, 3D printing and discarded objects, but each was made possible thanks to the cultural ubiquity of plastic. Among the international movements spotlighted are Pop art, Arte Povera, Minimalism, Finish Fetish, Nouveau Réalisme, conceptualism and the urgent eco-critical works of a younger generation.
    “What has now turned out to be an enormous burden for the environment denotes a huge enrichment for art as well as for architecture and design,” said the show’s curator Dr. Martina Weinhart. “A look at the extremely rich history of plastic as a material opens up a narrative full of ambivalences: of a future-oriented innovative ability and of seductive-seeming objects; of damaging effects, but also the question of new approaches to dealing with this material, which is here to stay.”
    Check out works from the exhibition below.
    Otto Piene, Anemones: An Air Aquarium (1976, new production 2023). Photo: Norbert Miguletz.
    Pascale Marthine Tayou, L’arbre à palabres (2023). Photo: Norbert Miguletz.
    Nicola L., Women Sofa (1968). Photo: © Design Museum Brussels.
    Installation view of James Rosenquist, Forest Ranger (1967). Photo: Norbert Miguletz.
    Installation view of César, Expansion works (1977). Photo: Norbert Miguletz.
    Gino Marotta, Eden Artificiale (1967-1973). Photo: © 2021 Marino Colucci, courtesy Erica Ravenna Gallery, Rome, Work of Art.
    Installation view of Pınar Yoldaş, An Ecosystem of Excess (2014/2023). Photo: Norbert Miguletz
    Exhibition view of “Plastic World: at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2023. Photo: Norbert Miguletz.
    César, Expansion à la boite d’oeufs (1970). Photo: © SBJ / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023.
    Christo & Jeanne Claude, Look (c.1965). Photo: ©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023.
    “Plastic World” is on view at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Römerberg, Frankfurt, through October 1.
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    in Exhibitions

    Artist Sterling Wells Built a Floating Studio in Order to Paint the View From L.A.’s Ballona Creek. Then the City Demolished It

    For years, artist Sterling Wells has made the urban waterways of Los Angeles an extension of his studio, drawn to the interplay of nature and the manmade, marine life and the detritus that inevitably collects in these oft-overlooked corners of the city.
    “I’ve never wanted to just paint seamless nature,” Wells told Artnet News. “I always want there to be the contrast between the soft fluid marks of nature and the hard edges and geometric shapes of architecture and graphic design.”
    Last month, in pursuit of that vision, Wells was out on Ballona Creek in Playa Vista on the city’s West Side. He was hard at work finishing the construction of a somewhat ramshackle floating studio where he planned to create work for his current solo show, “A New Flood,” at Los Angeles’s Night Gallery. Then, he heard the helicopter overhead.
    Local news outlet FOX 11 had caught wind of the unusual vessel floating in the waterway thanks to Reddit, and a reporter was coming to investigate concerns that the art project was a homeless encampment.
    Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    “I got a book from the library about how to build homemade house boats. The base has these beams in a grid that are supported by rain barrels that kind of act as pontoons. I bought them from this Mediterranean import company in Gardena and they’re actually barrels for pepperoncini,” Wells said. “I had been building it for three weeks, and had just brought all of my stuff there to start painting.”
    The goal was to use the raft to store his art supplies, but also to anchor in a fixed position so Wells could capture a single view over multiple days as the weather and water conditions changed.
    The watercraft also had bird blinds, to help the artist observe the local water fowl without disturbing them. And yes, he probably would have slept there sometimes, to help avoid the 40- to 90-minute drive back home to Highland Park, 15 miles away.
    Sterling Wells’s sketches of the raft and its bird blinds. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    They say no publicity is bad publicity, but the news story caught the eye of government officials. The next morning, officials from L.A. County Public Works arrived, damaged the raft pulling it out of the water, and forced Wells to apply for a permit for his waterborne studio. (The exhibition’s title is taken from the subject line of the city’s emailed response to Wells’s application, which read “A New flood—access Permit has been CREATED.”)
    Unfortunately, however, the city put the kibosh on the project. Wells never got a concrete reason why, but he suspects an angry local—who claimed to own the property and disapproved of the raft—played a role.
    “In one of my last conversations with L.A. County Public Works, I was told that according to the county code, people are not allowed to be in the flood control channel. I said, ‘you know, I’ve been painting at the site for a long time with no problem. Why can’t I just continue doing what I’ve been doing?’” Wells recalled. “And she said, ‘well, we weren’t paying attention to you—but now that we are, you’re not allowed to be there.’”
    Sterling Wells’s worksite in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Nevertheless, the artist continued to create on site sans barge, transporting it to the gallery, where it is now the centerpiece of his solo show. (The hope is to eventually have a permit approved and get it back on the water.)
    “The drama with the raft kind of was a big distraction from my actual paintings,” Wells said.
    To finish the body of work in time for the opening, Wells got a nearby motel room for five nights, wading into Ballona Creek each day to paint.
    Sterling Wells’s raft on view in “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    “I chose this site because it’s neglected and unmaintained. It’s not a nature preserve that’s cleaned up. There’s a bird’s nest right next to drifts of litter and garbage, and there’s dead birds and the seagull that has a fishing lure stuck in its leg,” he said. “I like painting the trash—the water bottles and accumulation of things that are floating by. Old bicycles and shopping carts and all these things that are on the bottom of the creek that are covered in barnacles and mussels.”
    The resulting works are Well’s largest paintings to date, painted not only en plein air, but while standing in the contaminated waterway. Each one captures the view of the surrounding salt marsh, but also peering into the shallows.
    Sterling Wells’s sketches of his worksite in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    “They’re about the transition of looking down at the water where it’s transparent, to looking across the water as it becomes an opaque surface. I’m looking through the water, at light hitting objects at the bottom of the creek, at light hitting the surface of the water, and at things floating inside the water column,” Wells said.
    That includes both the litter and the aquatic life that flows in and out of the creek with the ebb and flow of the rising and falling waters.
    “I got really into the tide and the marine ecosystem. It’s two miles from the ocean, and there’s kelp and seaweed and crabs and mussels and birds,” the artist added.
    With the raft out of commission, Wells worked instead with the smaller floating easels he had previously built using plastic bottles and milk jugs.
    A Sterling Wells painting being created on a floating easel in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    “To paint from observation, your head has to stay in the same position. And so the floating easel allowed me to work large, moving the paper around my body and up and down into the water,” Wells explained. “But getting these pieces of paper to stay upright out in the middle of the water in the wind is incredibly challenging. I mean, everything’s constantly blowing over and floating away.”
    Through that process, the creek becomes not only the subject of the work, but a physical part of the painting. The artist even mixes his watercolor pigment powders with the creek waters, allowing the process to manifest itself on the page as mud and algae splash onto the surface.
    “It’s depicting water,” Wells said, “but it also is water.”
    See more photos of the exhibition and the artist at work below.
    Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Sterling Wells working in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Sterling Wells’s worksite in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles. Photo by Nik Massey, courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Installation view of “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    Sterling Wells’s raft on view in “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
    “Sterling Wells: A New Flood” is on view at Night Gallery, 2050 Imperial Street, Los Angeles, California, through September 9.
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  • 63 Shares169 Views

    in Street Art

    Alexis Diaz in Holyoke, Massachusetts

    Alexis Diaz painted a new mural in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a 40x36ft wall dedicated to all Puerto Ricans and Latinos living outside their homeland.According to the 2010 census, Holyoke had the largest Puerto Rican population, per capita, of any city in the United States outside of Puerto Rico. From a combination of agricultural programs instituted by the US Department of Labor, Puerto Ricans began settling in the city in the mid-1950s, and many arrived during the wave of Puerto Rican immigration to the northeastern United States in the 1980s.Alexis: “They leave behind their families, friends and part of their history to look for a better future. In their luggage they carry all their culture, pride and traditions to create a new home and a community proud of their roots.” Take a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More

  • 63 Shares149 Views

    in Street Art

    Sophie Mess in Laon, France

    Here’s a new amazing mural painted by Sophie Mess in Laon, France during the Urban Art Festival organized by Christian Guemy, aka C215. A gigantic floral composition of about 15mt x 10mt built on a 5-storey residential building. Sophie’s mural joins 16 other monumental frescoes brought together to create an exceptional event, which enriched the walls in the Champagne and Montreuil districts. At the same time, an indoor exhibition, presenting the richness and different facets of the urban arts can be discovered in the cloister and exhibition hall of the Saint-Martin Abbey.Sophie’s stunning mural communicates the usual willingness to flourish and express the truest and most colorful version of ourselves. Her vibrant botanical-inspired artwork radiates energy and life, resonating with a deep connection to nature, capturing its essence through bold color, intricate detail, and imaginative perspective. Take a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More

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    in Exhibitions

    Architects Herzog & de Meuron, the Design Duo Behind Tate Modern and Scores of Other Museums, Are Themselves the Subject of a New Exhibition

    Celebrated for their iconic structures such as London’s Tate Modern, Beijing’s National Stadium (also known as the Bird’s Nest), Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, and San Francisco’s De Young Museum, the duo of Herzog & de Meuron are comfortably ensconced at the vanguard of contemporary design. The Swiss architects, who were awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2001, have pushed forward the architectural avant-garde through deconstructivist designs and innovative use of materials and geometries.
    Founded by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in Basel over 40 years ago, the architectural practice is now a sprawling international enterprise with five senior partners and over 600 employees working on (mostly, but not exclusively) large-scale projects—museums, hospitals, skyscrapers, and arenas—in nearly every corner of the globe. 
    Herzog & de Meuron, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Photo © Iwan Baan. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
    Now, the Royal Academy of Arts in London will house an exhibition showcasing their most ambitious projects. Launching July 14, and in close collaboration with the architects, the exhibition unfolds in three distinct galleries. The first gallery brings a large portion of their “Kabinett”—an open storage and research area—from Basel to London. Around 400 objects, ranging from scale models to photographs and even augmented reality experiences, will be displayed on wood shelves for visitors to peruse.
    Herzog & de Meuron, extension of the Stadtcasino Basel. Photo © Ruedi Walti. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
    Research material from the duo’s better known projects are highlighted in this first gallery. For Tate Modern, Herzog & de Meuron repurposed the Bankside Power Station into a kind of vertical city. Their Elbphilharmonie project in Hamburg was informed by three archetypal spaces: the ancient Greek amphitheater, a sports arena, and a modern festival tent. The National Stadium in Beijing—conceived as a large public art sculpture—marked their first collaboration with artist Ai Weiwei, while the Lincoln Road project saw the architects reinvent an ordinary parking garage in Miami as open-air retail spaces and residences.
    The second gallery space assumes the form of a screening room. A central screen presents an edit of a new film, Rehab, created by filmmakers Bêka & Lemoine. It offers an intimate look at the daily life of their groundbreaking REHAB Clinic for Neurorehabilitation and Paraplegiology in Basel from the perspective of patients undergoing treatment, charting patients’ interactions with the structure at various stages of recovery.
    Herzog & de Meuron, REHAB Basel. Photo © Katalin Deér. Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.
    The third and final space focuses on a real project currently in development, the Universitäts-Kinderspital Zürich (University Children’s Hospital in Zurich), which came out of a competition in 2012 to redefine hospital architecture and healing spaces. The main feature of this room is an augmented reality mock-up of a patient’s room, rendered at full scale, delivering a near-tangible recreation of a humanized hospital environment. Visitors can virtually step inside a hospital room and observe 360-degree views of the streets, gardens, and public spaces ahead of the hospital’s completion in 2024.
    “Herzog & de Meuron” is on view at the Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1S 3ET, from July 14 to October 15, 2023.

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    in Exhibitions

    What I’m Looking at: Chryssa’s Sizzling Tribute to Times Square, the MyPillow Guy’s Office Paintings, and Other Things at the Edge of Art

    “What I’m Looking at” is a monthly column where I digest art worth seeing, writings worth consuming, and other tidbits. Below, thoughts from the first weeks of July 2023.

    Chryssa Gets Her Day
    I only really knew the name of Greek-born sculptor Chryssa (1933-2013) before this big show dedicated to her New York output, currently at the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea (co-created with the Menil Collection in Houston, and on view through July 22, 2023). What fun to get a full sense of her! In the 1950s and ’60s, Chryssa breathed in New York’s energy, and breathed it out as art. She took inspiration from material that evoked the swirling, information-dense urban environment: newspapers, typography, neon signs. Then she stripped away their information-conveying function, distilling and abstracting their forms into reliefs and sculptures that become mysterious, austere, transfixing.
    Her act of going by the mononymn “Chryssa” itself mirrors her procedure of subtraction and abstraction: adding to a signifier’s evocative power by stripping it down and making it mysterious. It also suggests a certain swagger. The sculpture that probably best incarnates this appetite is her magnum opus, on tour here from the Buffalo AKG Art Museum collection: a 10-by-10 hulk called The Gates to Times Square (1964–66). It is a glorious abstracted “A,” in sizzling blue neon. It wants to stun you as a distilled version of the grandeur of New York’s commercial center, while also conveying the mystery of an altar of secret texts held just out of reach.
    Chryssa, Five Variations on the Ampersand (1966) in “Chryssa and New York” at Dia. Photo by Ben Davis.
    Chryssa, Classified (1960). Photo by Ben Davis.
    Chryssa, Cycladic Movement (n.d.) and Letter “T” (1959). Photo by Ben Davis.

    The Berlin Scene
    The tightly packed one-room show dedicated to Warhol superstar Brigid Berlin does contain things you’d call art, ranging from Berlin’s raucous “tit prints” (made by dipping her breasts in paint and smooshing them on paper) to the needlepoints of lurid New York Post covers from her latter days. But “The Heaviest” at Vito Schnabel (on view through August 18), organized by Alison M. Gingeras, is really more akin to immersing yourself in a full “Brigid Berlin” exhibit at a museum of Downtown history.
    Along with the art, you get letters and pictures from her childhood as a rebellious heiress (her dad was CEO of the Hearst Corp.); newspaper articles about her as the flamboyant character that she still was in her post-Factory life; a video made with Warhol and Larry Poons documenting her breast-based art-making practice accompanied by her own gregarious, self-mocking commentary.
    It’s actually fitting that the show runs together Berlin’s art and material about her as a character, in a way. Berlin didn’t really seem to distinguish art-making from living an interesting life. This is probably best represented by her copious Polaroids of characters who lurked around the Factory, and in her recordings—which you can listen to at the gallery—of her constant phone calls with intimates and associates.
    The show’s a fascinating look at a life. As to the art as art, I’m of two minds, I guess. On the one hand, it does feel to me that Berlin’s output mainly depends on your interest in a certain form of micro-celebrity. But then this kind of self-mythologizing persona does feel very contemporary, with its indulgent eclecticism, its defensive bravado, and its melancholy undertones.
    Brigid Berlin material in “The Heaviest.” Photo by Ben Davis.
    Four of Brigid Berlin’s “Tit Prints” in “The Heaviest.” Photo by Ben Davis.
    A Brigid Berlin Polaroid of Dennis Hopper in “The Heaviest.” Photo by Ben Davis.
    Sampler by Brigid Berlin in “The Heaviest.” Photo by Ben Davis.

    Fun With Shirts
    I wandered, basically at random, into Fierman gallery to find a one-weekend-only display of Nora Griffin’s paint-on-vintage-tee-shirt art show. Griffin, a maker of wonky abstract paintings, deploys her groovy, whirling colors to various New York-themed vintage tees, all hailing from the pre-9/11 era, bringing a sense of a vanished era of the city into alignment with an approachable kind of thrift-shop creativity. The effect was to make you feel like you had time traveled momentarily to a simpler, sunnier, nicer scene, and one that you could walk away with a piece of.
    You missed the show, but the shirts have their own Instagram—so join the 1999 NYC Tee club while you can.
    Installation view of Nora Griffin’s “1999 NYC TEE” show at Fierman. Photo by Ben Davis.
    A Nora Griffin tee. Photo by Ben Davis.

    Threadbare
    As to things to read… I guess the art world is embracing Threads, according to Annie Armstrong’s piece on the Whitney’s gushy foray into the new social media network. So we have to deal with Threads. And I’ll say that Kate Lindsay’s post about the Threads experiment for the Embedded newsletter about internet culture is the best thing I’ve read on it.
    Pungently titled “Threads Is a Mecca of Millennial Brain Rot,” it sums up my experience of Meta’s new social media platform, and of social media altogether right now—everything feels like different flavors of desperate:
    When I first opened the app, I expected to see an early-Twitter copycat. Instead, I was met with a feed of users parroting robotic and emoji-laden prompts, the same four jokes about being “unhinged,” and, of course, a car giveaway from Mr. Beast. Given the opportunity to build the social media culture we say we’ve been missing, we immediately resorted to posting the worst clichés from today’s internet. Is this post from a person, or a brand? Because they’re both employing the same hokey syntax to post empty engagement-bait. 
    This behavior says something about how we view social media now. It’s not for connection, but performance. It seems that many of the people who rushed to download this app did so to get in early on a rush for potential new followers, and in so doing, adopted digital personas that bear no resemblance to how a single human talks in real life. After years of being subliminally nudged towards this behavior through algorithm changes on other platforms, when given the opportunity to do something different on Threads, we came running back to the bland platitudes and low-hanging fruit we’ve been conditioned to rely on for engagement.
    I feel it would be better just to admit that this form of communication has failed than to try to get back to some imaginary “good” version of it. But that’s me, and that’s probably not going to happen.
    Screenshot of a Threads post from the Whitney Museum using Allen Frame, Cady Noland, phone booth, NYC (1981) as a meme.

    The MyPillow Guy’s Art
    Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, Inc.—known around the web as the “MyPillow Guy”—is selling off his company’s stuff on K-Bid Online Auctions to raise money, having wasted his empire’s actual and reputational capital on trying to overturn the 2020 election. So of course, I went to check if there was any art. And there is, sort of.
    It’s a lot of framed images of plants and green landscapes and such. If you have a suburban bathroom to decorate, you have a week to place your bids.
    I do love this still-life, below, presented with no info on what you are looking at but with the accompanying detail shot of the signature to show the authenticity of whatever that is. I’ve always wanted to own a… “ufiloojp[??]”
    It really is like owning a piece of history: Offering random, blurry details to prove something is real is kind of what Lindell is known for now.
    Screenshot of an artwork being sold in the “My Pillow Surplus Industrial Equipment” sale on K-Bid Online Auctions.
    Screenshot of an artwork being sold in the “My Pillow Surplus Industrial Equipment” sale on K-Bid Online Auctions.

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