Buckminster Fuller

Our contemporary world is very concerned with energy-efficiency. Sustainability. Affordable housing. So I found the Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Whitney especially timely! I didn't know anything about him beforehand, except that he had something to do with that "geodesic dome thing." As an individual raised in an environmentally conscious generation, I found that by reading his theories for the first time from my 2008 perspective was rather refreshing and poignant.

He was an American visionary who was determined to find sustainable solutions that would be as economically and materially efficient as possible. He reimagined how houses could be built and how cities could be designed in such a truly inventive and humanitarian manner. He based many of his structures on the tetrahedron, which he claimed was the the essential building block of nature.

Here is one of his famous geodesic domes. His greatest done was built for the US Pavilion in the Montreal Expo in 1967...


This is a model of his innovative Dymaxion House, which was designed to actually be shipped and assembled. Wonderfully thought out, but it never took off...


He even delved in cartography, striving to create a world map free of distortion...


Here's his three-wheeled energy-efficient Dymaxion Car that could hold 11 people...

Sex Lives of Animals

I secretly have been wanting a good excuse to visit the Museum of Sex, and their current exhibit on the Sex Lives of Animals was a perfect reason! It was a wildly interesting exhibit. Who knew that animals engage in oral sex, some creatures have multiple genders, or that there are necrophiliac birds! Here are some pictures of some of the sculptures in the exhibit...

There is something mildly disturbing about watching two fuzzy-cutesy panda bears going at it on video...and even stranger to learn the pandas are actually shown panda porn in order to help get them into the copulatin' mood.


My friends Nick and Peter took the exhibit very seriously.


These female chimps are engaged in the common practice of "gigi rubbing," a term which made us all giggle. (I never heard about homosexuality in the animal kingdom really before this exhibit...)


Behold...two smiling male dolphins! They look so innocent, but wait...one male is penetrating the blowhole of the other male! I'll never look at dolphins the same way again...

Kehinde Wiley @ Studio Museum Harlem

Oh, that Kehinde Wiley.

Not only is he technically flawless as a painter of portraits, but he's inventive, culturally conscious, timely, wields a diverse visual vocabulary, is widely acclaimed...AND he's only 31! The nerve. He's making the rest of us artists look bad! But I gotta hand it to the guy, I really respect what he does and I think his pieces have a lot of substance to them.

He's done this sort or portraiture in China previously, but for this show at the Studio Museum he moved to West Africa for his inspiration. He portrays his young black models in traditionally heroic poses in these large scale paintings. The colorful patterns interact with the figures beautifully, by reflecting in their skin tones or overlapping with the models themselves. This show made me all nostalgic for the bold colors and patterns of Ghana...and the beauty of the people who I got to know there. It all looked so familiar! Sigh...



This last piece here wasn't isn't in this particular show, but it's from a more famous series of his that you might find familiar...

Ewelina Ferruso @ Ad Hoc

When I was checking out the show 5 Identities 5 Destinations at Ad Hoc there was one artist who really stood out to me...Ewelina Ferruso. I was surprised to learn that she's new to the gallery world (like myself), this being her first real show. And she's a sweetie to boot! I found myself visually digesting each one of her paintings slowwwly, like I was working my way to the middle of a tootsie pop but in no rush to get there.

Her paintings are visually yummy, with complex textures and elaborate compulsive patterns...which ALWAYS appeal to me. Her imagery is about her childhood, imagination, and escape from the harsher aspects of reality. The polka dot giraffe inspired by an actual toy she still keeps in her studio, and the little girl in her paintings is a self portrait of herself as a child. Here are a couple pics I took at her show!

Jeff Koons & Comic Costumes @ The Met

You know...I don't really respect Jeff Koons. Because to me, he stands for a lot of things I hate about contemporary art. I don't like him. That being said...I do like his series of giant stainless steel sculptures and did want to see them on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Am I so easily seduced by shiny things? Apparently, yes.


Also at the Met right now is the exhibit Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. Some are real costumes (like from the film Iron Man) and others are pieces made by designers (like Dolce & Gabbana) who were inspired by comic culture. The mixture of originals and reimagined designs made for a very fun show. POW!

Louise Bourgeois @ Guggenheim

Louise Bourgeois is one of those artists I've always known but never really known. So I was excited to get to know her work better through her current show at the Guggenheim! As an artist, I really admire how absurdly prolific she is and how her work has evolved over the decades...she is 96 years old and is still making art! Text scrolled across one of her drawings poignantly sighs, "It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive." Here, here.

She's known best perhaps for her giant spider sculptures...

Her sculptures of organic soft forms imply landscapes, clouds, and of course fleshy ambiguous body parts. It's intimate and sexual, and was a reaction against the hard edged geometry of minimalism back in the day.

Her work later moved from large marble/ plaster/ latex sculptures to cells...they are these little enclosed rooms made from found and sculpted objects. Little domestic settings you peer into...the artifacts speaking of memory and vulnerability.

This quote was embroidered on a bedspread in one of her cell rooms...thanks, Louise.

Olafur Eliasson takes New York

Danish/ Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has taken over New York! First I saw his work at the MOMA...then at PS1...and now he has installed waterfalls along the East River of Manhattan! He must be a very busy man.

But I don't mind his unavoidable presence in New York this summer...because I really really love his work. Firstly...it's SIMPLE. His works are very much about nature and the basic elements of visual perception but his installations are simultaneously artificial. He's interested in patterns, shapes, colors, and the power found in nature. (Side note: As a glacier nut, I was overly gleeful to see his collections of glacier photographs.) He plays with light, water, and geometry as easily as I play with pencils.

Since they are installations, pictures can't quite do them justice. You have to lay underneath the massive rotating reflective foil disk for yourself. Or walk into a dark room with falling mist and just enough light so you see a rainbow against the blackness. Or stand in a room made of walls that are literally lit so that you are so fully enveloped in a single saturated color...so that you look like a tinted photograph. Sigh..you just have to visit them in person. But here are a few pictures!

One of his waterfalls up through the Summer along the East River...

An upside-down waterfall (the water moves up) at PS1...

Sculpture with planes of colored glass in front of a window at PS1...

His saturated yellow room and his mirror-sculpture-window-contraption at MOMA...

Rotating mirror that plays with the angles of the walls (It's hard to explain!) at MOMA...