Damien Hirst must be used to getting all sort of good and bad criticism by now and although he has got simultaneous show all over the world right now and therefore is regarded as a major player in modern art, I can’t help to think that his latest spots series does not deserve all the fuss currently going about it.
What best to describe how I feel that this street art piece “lazy”. No need to say more.
Photo by Laurence Billiet
Seen on Vandalog
Having two sisters, Barbie dolls have been in sight most of my childhood and seemed anything but wild individuals. But maybe my sisters had a secret, a can’t tell story about these dolls.
I know there was such a story now thanks to Hollywood Tyler Shield’s collaborative work with Emma Roberts, The Scream 4 star, which gets out there what is really going on in the life of this iconic figure that is Barbie.
I knew she never liked Ken.
See more photos after the jump. Courtesy of Tyler Shields
In “Poo
h… and Other Sh*t,” Robert Brandenburg brings “hijacked” art to Gallery 1988 in Venice Beach, CA.
As a self-taught artist from Ohio, Brandenburg brings an expansive perspective to viewers. Born in 1954, he paints contemporary works that offer a light repose from the mundane.
His versatile style allows him to incorporate renderings into a variety of works on a variety of mediums. Less art than humor, he creates an entertaining interlude and encourages viewers to recreate everyday scenes in a less than ordinary manner.
Renamed The Bird, Brandenburg alters a metal sign from 1956 used to advertise the Ford Thunderbird. In the original a couple speeds away in the automobile, waving to onlookers. In the re-mastered version, the passenger extends her middl
e finger to the people standing by. From metal to cardboard, In Mammy Cakes Brandenburg alters a Hostess Cupcake box from a chocolate frosted vanilla cupcake to a white mouthed image mirroring minstrel shows that ran in America from the 1830’s into the mid-1900’s. During these often severely racist performances, white men painted themselves in black face.
To compliment his images, Brandenburg includes brief bios and explanations into the life of his creations. One of his works, Hannah Lecter, features a young girl on a greeting card. Originally, she was eating a tasty piece of chocolate but Brandenburg coated the original snack with a dripping red acrylic paint to make it appear as if she indulges in human flesh. The title and corresponding story names her as Hannibal Lecter’s love child. He also alters several Norman Rockwell paintings depicting the ‘ideal’ family life of 1940’s America including one from Rockwell’s “Four Freedom” series entitled Freedom from Want. 
Brandenburg redubs it Freedom from Stress and replaces the original turkey with a glass pipe, beers, and whiskey explaining, “experience suggests that the happy family is going to need a little more than turkey to keep things running smoothly for the rest of the day.”
Brandenburg brings a fresh look to “normal” images by incorporating himself into a variety of mediums at his new solo exhibition. By redesigning iconic images, he urges society to reexamine omnipresent sights that do not always reflect truth.
“Pooh… and Other Sh*t” hijacked art by Robert Brandenburg at Gallery 1988 Venice
Dates: January 7 – 28, 2011
Hours: Wed – Sun: 11AM – 6PM
This work is the result of an exploration into the area of masculinity and social stereotypes. As a documentary photographic essay the work opens the doors to a lesser-seen area of society in an attempt to challenge pre-existing British stereotypes surrounding male identity and firearms.
Our aim is to aim is to survive focuses on Blackpool Pistol and Rifle Club: it’s physicality as a space, the people who use it and the inter-relationship between the two. These images are bound together through their formal presentation yet each image contains a strong individual presence in many cases confirming expectations but in others, interestingly confounding and challenging both the preconceived ideas attached to firearms and Shooting Clubs.
The Blackpool Pistol and Rifle club as been running since 1948 and is a typical example of what you would find in many shooting clubs throughout the United Kingdom. After a 1997 firearms amendment outlawed all but muzzle loading and single shot pistols, the membership to these clubs dwindled. As with many things within contemporary society the unfashionable quickly becomes lost and the
traditions of old soon turn to nostalgia. The walls of this club speak of a time gone; the faux wooden panels and the photographs proudly displayed offer an insight into “the good old days”. However they spoke as much about an acceptance of their fate as it offered a reminder into the past. The unfashionable has already become nostalgic whilst still in existence. To emphasize the idea of ever shifting social opinions I have offered a critique on the normative opinions associated masculinity and firearms by mixing the past and present contained within each frame.
Throughout the work the viewer is encouraged to draw off there own pre-existing opinions before eventually having these opinions subverted. By using masculinity as a focal point, symbolic links are drawn between the continually changing view of masculinity and the decline in popularity of those things that
do not fit within today’s society.”
““an acceptance that photography at the least can capture the present and the visible, he (Coekin) adds an understanding that what we know of the present what we know, and don’t know, of the past and the future”
David Campany on Chris Coekin’s piece Knock Three Times.
Words from Brian J Morrison
See more on Brian J Morrison website
Look at any painting by David Spiller and it is almost impossible not to smile. Light-heartedly optimistic, he uses Pop culture as part of a broader celebration to ‘make the painting live’.
Beaux Arts is pleased to present an upcoming solo show with 25 new works in which Spiller starts to move away from bold unabashed col- our towards a more reflective and elusive style of painting.
He has certainly not lost the magic. His works hit you like a wave of bright sincerity at a time when complexity in art – in an art world that all too often values the shocking and the nihilistic above all else – has become the end-goal. In whichever case, as Edward Lucie-Smith wrote in 2004, ‘These are good paintings – but they are also fun. How often nowadays do we have real fun in an art gallery?’
Spiller’s work has received a huge following and is exhibited constantly throughout Europe and the US.
Words from Beaux Arts
22 Cork Street | London | W1S 3NA
25 January to 18 February 2012
