Sporting Obama

I've never worn a candidate on my chest -- well, at least not in public; no hearts on my sleeve. There was that time, I'll admit, when I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Clintonmania (for Bill, not Hillary) was so infectious that I bought a t-shirt from the Clinton Library Store -- a jersey-type T, with a big number 42 on it. Truth is though, that I was more excited about the design of the Clinton Library than anything else at that moment. Then there was the time when I was on the verge of buying a sticker that said: "Bush stay out of my bush." But then I thought: no -- that's just not my style. Generally, I stay out of the sticker, button, and t-shirt battles -- It's too alfalfa-sprouting-hippy-like to fill my car with flower-power, or wear shirts that say: "war is not healthy for children and other living things." Perhaps I've been a cynic...

Until now -- this morning I woke up, went straight to Barack Obama's official site ( http://www.barackobama.com/index.php ) and I bought myself a T-shirt -- a khaki affair of a thing imprinted with the face of the man I hope will be our future president. This says quite a bit: it says the cynic in me is hopeful; the cynic in me is excited...the cynic in me is dying.

Harmony and Dissonance

If you haven't made it out to the the MAM (Miami Art Museum) for the Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller show, called "The Killing Machine & Other Stories," I would recommend it. It's over on January 20 -- and what I especially suggest is that you don't miss out on the branch of the show that takes place at the Freedom Tower. For more info: here is the MAM's website: http://www.miamiartmuseum.org/exhibitions-07-10-21-cardiff.asp

Also, here is a short, personal tale of my experience at the show -- hopefully, it'll make you want to go and see/hear/experience it, it sure moved the hell out of me.

Janet Cardiff's 40 part Motet @ The Freedom Tower

Near the edge of Downtown Miami there stands a Spanish-style Tower, casting its orange shadow of history over us. Once the headquarters of a newspaper – Miami News and Metropolis -- it later became the processing center for endless Cuban Immigrants fleeing Castro’s regime. It is from this period, between 1962 – 1974, that the tower gained its lofty name: The Freedom Tower.

My grandfather was one of the many Cubans that filtered through the tower, and so the other day, when he found out there was an art exhibit there, he told me to come along. The tower, after a period of disrepair, was bought and fixed, and now holds its corridors clear and strong to bear the weight of whatever kind of art its curators choose to make live inside it. These days, Janet Cardiff and her Partner George Bures Miller, show an installation piece there – it’s called 40 part motet and, at first sight, its just a room where, at the center, there are forty tall-standing speakers forming a broad circle around two sitting, museum-style benches. And then the music starts.

During our visit, when the music started, moved towards the center of the room, within the realm of the speakers. I go to sit, but Papan (my grandfather) says he prefers to stand. “I am a man that stands,” he says. The music that begins its quiet haunt is a 16th century choral piece by Thomas Tallis. Cardiff recorded an English cathedral choir – giving each of the boys (or young men) that composed the choir an individual mic, so that she could later transfer each of their voices into one of the speakers…

...And here we are, listening. Papan stands in the center of the space and all of a sudden I see his hand come to his brow, as the music makes the rounds around him. Sometimes several voices join and sometimes the voices are disparate, single, and solitary. Sometimes their high pitch is a screech and sometimes the choral blessing of divinity takes hold. My grandfather starts to sob…I go to him and hold him in my arms, his bony 84- year old shoulder fits in the cup of my hand. There are no muscles supporting it, except the ones that are in my own, younger hand…His face reddens with tears and I want him to stop crying, but he doesn’t want that, he wants to cry and cry, allowing himself to be moved by the gentle, rough, and furtive voices around him.

Mapping

The name of this mixed-media piece is "Area of Loss" -- it's by an artist named Francesca Berrini, represented by Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art in San Francisco, CA. It's a piece I bought during Basel at The Bridge Art Fair, and which I wanted to share with you all -- because I think her work is particularly pertinent right now. What she does: she takes old atlases and cuts pieces out of them, re-arranging them and creating new countries and rules. Here, for instance, there is a great "area of loss" in the middle of the sea and amid invented land masses, reminiscent of bodies lost at war and taken in by the tide. Or, perhaps this "area of loss" is a failed attempt at claiming the sea itself. There are other pieces in Berrini's series where she points out areas that are "beautiful" or simply that one area is point "A" and another point "B". These small fictive maps (they are about 7 X 5 inches) are important now, considering our own American perspective on the world -- perhaps she is trying to point out the ridiculous efforts of neo-colonialism and empire in a global world, while at the same time paradoxically revelling in similar ideas of claim and creation. There is a play on both Utopia and a world gone wrong in these, just as there is something both fascinating and preposterous about map-making, which points to our strengths and weaknesses as human beings -- and which she seems to have tapped into with these pieces.

Designer Days

...So, Basel Miami Beach is over. And with it has gone a sweep of design days, sprinkled with visions for those among us who like our occasional dose of visual saturation. There's plenty to say about what sold, what didn't, who got their big break, who didn't...and so on and so forth. But there's also a good deal to say about the things that surrounded us this weekend. I mean everything: from the pristine mosaics at CIFO to the bottles we drank from. Take for a moment, a stroll through Sushi Samba's GINZATROPICALIA: Graffiti gone global (which went on all weekend). Here, the neo-urban paint-can scrawl took over the walls, but paint wasn't the only pigment on the palate -- there was also the Canton Ginger Mojito which left a soft zing in your mouth -- fresh and sweet. It's a nice twist on the Cuban-style Mojito and I give Kudos to whoever decided to bring East and West together here, appropriately. But also, and here's the point: Kudos on the design and marketing of this brand -- it's elegant and sexy and it's just right. http://domainedecanton.com/home.html

Consider this an invitation to chime in -- tell us what you saw (and not necessarily on walls) that's worth a bit of art-talk.

Today's Pick

My Favorite Artist of the Day: Kamrooz Aram -- Find him at NADA...at the 5BE gallery (Oliver Kamm)