Tuesday, July 31, 2007

two boys named kim

boy #1: kim keever. well actually he's a middle-aged man. i discovered him at feigen gallery where my friend graham parks is represented (his work is great too. checkit). kim #1 is a photographer, but like lori nix his photos are of 3D settings which he manipulates to portray elements of nature that look ravaged and mystical as if they were plucked straight out of a tolkien novel. his method is intense. he builds his sets within large glass tanks which he fills with water upon completion and sprinkles sand or various powders to emulate different weather effects while he photographs them (darren aranofsky used a similar concept for his movie The Fountain). the visual impact is stunning, like epic turn-of-the-century landscape paintings, but he purposefully leaves evidence of his process by retaining imperfections like build up on the glass or floating debris in the water and equally participates them in the image as a whole.

boy #2: kim cogan. i've been really into finding younger representational painters lately. i guess i'm sick of seeing the same chewed up and regurgitated graphic work and have been creaming all over rich gooey oil paint goodness. i can't even remember how i found this guy but his paintings are amazing. his style is nothing we haven't already been upset about a million times, a perfect balance of abstract gestures that produce crisp, vivd images (cough cough die! kanevsky die! cough), but his recent paintings of buildings and cityscapes (SF) so perfectly captures the full spectrum of emotions one experiences through the immense brick and mortar guardians of any city as well as their little friends tucked away on corners and alleyways - it's awe, abandonment, nostalgia and lonliness wrapped up in one. woohoo, and guess what? he be a cornrean kimchi-muncher like me.

first shots from contax




















i have a fancy film scanning machine at home but scanned these one-hour kodak prints onto my work scanner which produces quality that's a smidge better than if i had rubbed alcohol on them and slapped em onto my computer screen! go figure. the lowlight shots from this canamaera are awesome. my canon digi would never be able to catch this clearly even with image stabilizer. as my trusty kentucky captain would say... dang dawg.

Friday, July 27, 2007

look at what i got...

do not be alarmed! it's 35 mm. as in film. as in not digital. as in i have to get it developed and printed in order to review what lame pictures i took last night cause i really don't remember much of what happened last night. i was gonna get a yashica, but nicholas haggard, my top-of-the-line photo consultant said, "don't be stupid. the contax is the best point and shoot in the galaxy. meat is murder." how can one argue with that?

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

richard sweeney

this is like some kind of "beautiful mind" bullshit isn't it? look here for the most immaculate objects i've ever seen made out of paper. architectural and/yet/or organic by nature, if you look closely you'll see that they are fairly simple contructions that stand on a platform of visual complexity. yeah, but how do you even come up with that, right? pretty disgusting. it's almost as bad as this asshole i found on liza's page... almost.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

stoney coney island

i ventured to coney island on saturday to see tapper and we are scientists play at the siren music festival (please read their website. it is the funniest). i was late... completely missed them. so i ate a hot dog and watched MIA behind 472 sweaty hipsters wearing a lot of bright plastic accessories. she was fantastic, but the whole time i was being attacked by rival gangs of mullets and hair extensions as i rollerskated on empty water bottles and cans, so it was kinda hard to enjoy the show with the usual bout of energy and GT's. danny and nate were not happy. i think it was cause they were forced into a vertical spooning position, which sounds kinda cute, but might have been a little awkward for them. as a last ditch effort we tried to see some band called cursive. wow. sto-ho-ner-ville!! the girl next to me, i swear to god, was no more than 16, with braces, and had gone thru her 4th individually wrapped bar of "marshmallow crispy rice treat" that, as you can only imagine was being chewed with the grossest voracity between the sticky metalfest in her mouth, between sips of her beer that she was drinking thru a straw from a poland springs water bottle which, undoubtedly, she'd been transporting in her backpack for the past 7 hours. it was amazing!! truly a spectacle unlike any. i've never felt so old. fortunately, the day was beautiful beyond words which produced some pleasant pictures, and, if anything, those kids left us feeling really grateful we weren't at that wonderful place in our lives anymore.

Friday, July 20, 2007

pictobrowser.com

this nifty little program let's me put a full set from flickr onto my dear little blog. how cool. what's that? oh. yeah. i have too much time on my hands. shhh... watch thai-rean wedding pics.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

herbert baglione

new image art gallery in l.a. has been a standard of fresh artist representation for quite some time now. their days of showcasing totally offbeat art are long gone and replaced by group shows from the staples of up-and-coming's and their lesser known like, but once in a while i come across an artist on their site that makes me stop and google incessently... herbert baglione. part hayao miyazaki, part os gemeos, this brazilian's work exudes fantastical observations of the darker sides of life and the imagination with a comical, not ironic, twist. his website, unfortunately, seems geared more towards appealing to commercial clients, and it's hard to find a solid collection of his work in one place, but that might be because he's just all over the place himself - magazine illustrations, street art, typography, murals, posters, even pillows... honestly, i actually only like about 50% of his work, but those few i must admit i am devastatingly smitten by...

Friday, July 13, 2007

oh, did i forget to mention? i went to thailand...

luke and louisa (lukouisa) got hitched. homies from san francisco, los angeles, new york, and shanghai congregated in thailand for one week to celebrate with plentiful pizzazz. theeee funnest ever...

Thursday, July 12, 2007

lori nix, part deux

i just found a neat little video about her on cool hunting. (hey, she lives in the bk!) i also noticed that the opening image is of a tricycle with red streamers... just like mine. i knew we were meant to be friends... or mortal enemies???

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

look who's back...

i will finish this. it will happen...

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

bff art show in paris

hey hey hey the little tricycle i drew for bicycle film festival's art show opened at colette on monday july 2nd and will be up til the end of the month, uh, in case anyone happens to be in paris? does anyone besides david and my mom even read this shit?

check out the details on the colette website under visit, gallery.