Zero to One-Eighty » artist

Harry, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret

Adrian Cooke — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:20:19 +0000

One of the fancy yarns

This is Jenny, wearing her stuff

Agent Cooper: “Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just… let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Or an amazing scarf from Jenny Fields Fiber on Etsy.”

Update: see also…

Black carbon earth

Sometimes I wonder…

Adrian Cooke — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:42:42 +0000

More greatness from Chris Piascik. This is from a comic strip called BANG! that Chris made a while back and has just uploaded to Internet for your enjoyment. I love Chris’s creatures. These illustrations range from stories to doodles to posters and iconic t-shirt designs. Here’s another example, just for Hallowe’en, though this is from back in June, or this one from early October. Check it out.

Meet James Ensor

Adrian Cooke — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:16:04 +0000

After a trip to Café Select yesterday…

…we met James Ensor at the MoMA:

Raise a glass and sit and stare. Understand the man.

The exhibition runs until September 21.

Pills

Adrian Cooke — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:00:18 +0000

Patrick Moberg strikes again.

Feeding on illustration

Adrian Cooke — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:59:07 +0000

Detail from Ninja Turtle? and Fly Birdies

I get daily drawings by RSS thanks to Chris Piascik and Vaughn Fender. Röck.

Jackson

Adrian Cooke — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:55:00 +0000

A Jackson Pollock tribute, by Elena.

They Came From The North

Adrian Cooke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:52:44 +0000

The Knife. Image: Elin Berge.

It’s indulgent to say this about a stack of CDs, but I really needed to find The Knife. I’d first read about the Swedish siblings’ 2003 album Deep Cuts in a Pitchfork review and it had stuck with me so well that it was one of the few records fresh in my mind each time I stepped into a record store. Looked in vain for a while, whenever I passed the Ks. A few weeks ago I finally found their first album (The Knife, 2001) at Cutler’s Records—and then I really did need more. Since technology makes it possible to double-click new stuff from a warehouse into your home I now have all three albums, including 2006′s Silent Shout.

I consider this kind of music electropop, but it’s different from the other artists I’ve given the label to (e.g. Goldfrapp, Röyksopp, The Sugarcubes, White Town) and it took a while to feel they belonged there. The Knife takes this genre to a foreboding, shadowy place and although some of their loops and melodies achieve the velvety deliciousness of their contemporaries, the general tenor of The Knife keeps you on more of an edge (sorry, I had to say that). This effect is as much in the lyrics as in their sound. The Knife’s themes are oedipal (“I’m in love with your brother, yes I am, but maybe I shouldn’t ask for his name”), anxious (“She does it all the time, making mistakes and then I’ll ease her mind”), politically challenging (“Is it medicine or social skill?”) and socially disturbing (“I took a cab there to hold her, I took a plane there to feel what she felt—you make me like charity, instead of paying enough taxes.”)

The Knife’s aesthetics are sinister and foreboding, like if Autechre turned to pop and started writing words. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer appear masked and distorted in photographs, and their sonics and imagery evoke artists like Aphex Twin and Chris Cunningham. There’s a hardness in here, both technical and emotional, that you wouldn’t expect in electropop, a brittle theme that contrasts with the subdued incantations and rounded synth sounds more distinctive of the genre. You can’t chill out to The Knife. But you won’t be able to relegate them to the background. Even their quietest tracks will wind their way back into your consciousness, like when someone turns off the TV and you suddenly hear the silence.

Edited to add: Karin Dreijer Andersson’s voice was driving Elena crazy yesterday because she was sure she had heard it before. Today she found the answer: Dreijer Andersson is the singer in Röyksopp’s amazing “What Else is There?.” (The floating woman is model Marianne Schröder. Dreijer is the figure at the table about two-thirds of the way through the video.)

Banksy strikes again

Adrian Cooke — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 15:01:49 +0000

Pickaxed phone booth by Banksy

Has Banksy been hanging out with Christo and Jeanne-Claude? His latest piece appeared in Soho Square one morning earlier this month: a pickaxed BT telephone booth, bent double and bleeding. Banksy’s political signals are usually easier to decode than this (check out his web site for some fine examples), but my guess is that he’s not a huge fan of mobile phones. While he has previously favoured the “public-wall-as-canvas” aesthetic, the phone booth installation takes his work into the 3D realm (something of a trend amongst spray-can artists perhaps?). It’s no wrapped Reichstag or Central Park Gates, but then neither were those pieces any pickaxed phone booth… Now there’s an artistic collaboration I’d love to see. Perhaps they could start ~~collecting people~~ creating likenesses of people who like to keep their mobiles on speakerphone (you know, to improve everyone else’s reception?), and then wrap them up somewhere central and go to town on them with gardening equipment. Just a thought. Then again, maybe it’s not cell phones at all. Could be that Banksy’s just not a David Tennant fan.

Via UnBeige.