On a door

The door of a graffiti-covered building in soho swung open to reveal a scantily clad woman.

The Kills

Kills = The best $20 I've ever spent. Also, Alison Mosshart is gorgeous.

I went to see the Kills at the Theatre of the Living Arts in Philadelphia on Friday. They're possibly the most badass band around these days. This is the second concert of theirs' that I've seen, and they have an encore routine where they essential have hardcore sex on stage. Hey, recession times call for bargains; everyone wants their money's worth.

JFK

First Gallery Exhibition

The Kitao Gallery at Swarthmore College will be showing some of my works.
Dates TBD but after May 5th
Will announce the opening here

Crystal

Photo series on crystal
In counterclockwise order
I used crystal and mirrors.

China circa 1990

My father the frontiersman in China circa 1990
I absolutely love how the color palette of his clothing matches the barren Chinese landscape.

Giovanna

She is so incredibly captivating.
The sartorialist always features her (on the right), but I have no idea who she is.

painting happens

Tao of painting
Acrylic, India ink, latex enamel, and holy ash on canvas

part of some sort of series:
thelady

Hubert de Givenchy

Givenchy and Hepburn

It's Spring!

Faces

In high quality finally. Thanks to a friend equipped with a digital camera.

From Khyyam's Rubaiyat:

bar chehreh-ye gol shabnam -e nawruz khoshast
dar taraf-e chaman ru-ye delafruz khoshast
az dey ke gozasht har che guni khosh nist
khosh bash o zeday magu ke emruz khoshast

On the flower's face, the spring dew looks happy
On the side of the meadow, the loving heart looks happy
During the winter time how unhappy they were
Be happy! O don't look back to the winter, today looks happy

Rough translation because my Farsi isn't great. Nawruz is the Iranian new year, but happens during the spring time (vernal equinox I believe). Dey is the 10th month, which I translated as the winter to emphasize the contrast. I also added the punctuation because it doesn't exist in Farsi. Anyway, I love this poem and how it captures the mood of spring.

Guayasamín

My friend introduced me to Ecuadorean artist Oswaldo Guayasamín. I saw some similarities between his style and mine (though mine is in a very nascent and amateurish stage). His work in a few words - very poignant and passionate.

Audrey Hepburn

Via the impossible cool.

Artist Statement

So very unexpectedly, I was selected as a featured artist for a publication at Swarthmore. I'm really excited and writing my 'artist statement' describing my work. The two paintings featured are Faces and Smiling Buddha. Here's a draft:

I paint whenever I feel the need to do. I stopped writing in my diary several months ago, I started painting instead. Each piece that I make is like a diary entry, a time stamp. I feel like I have a lot trapped subconsciously that I'm not entirely sure how to understand, interpret, or express in my daily activity. Painting allows me to bring these subconscious emotions out. I start whenever I feel inspired, which can be at odd times, and I strictly work from imagination. As I paint, I try not to control the direction of the work; it's constantly changing and evolving. Until I'm finished, I have no idea how the work will look. My goal is to let the painting paint itself. Once I'm done with a piece, I step back and analyze it to understand my state of mind at that point.

Looking at 'Faces', I see an expression of duality. The face on the right is docile, while the one on the left is angry. You can also see this in how some of the strokes are soft an blend together, while others are very discrete, linear, jagged even. It's also black and white. The basic idea is that the two faces are coming out of the same initial substance. I think this painting represents the face that I show to the outside world, contrasted with face inside, that's struggling with a lot of difficulties and reacting to them with anger and passion.

'Smiling Buddha' is similar to an extent - the 'smile' is not really a smile; it's an expression of power. I am taking Patterns of Asian Religions and I wanted to explore the idea of relic creation. In certain Buddhist cultures, the painting or 'opening' of the Buddha's eyes gives life, power, and deifies a Buddha painting or sculpture. I wanted to experience that. The whole painting is about taking a piece of paper and some colors and putting them together to make something powerful. I think that's why I am struck by it when I look at it. It's as if the Buddha gazes right through me. When I think I'm being really pretentious, I look at the painting and think, who am I kidding?

My therapist says that she wants me to be in relationship where the the picture paints itself. That's what I'm looking for in life, for all the pieces to fall into place without my trying to control them.

Heels

First Friday
F.U.E.L.
249 Arch Street
Philadelphia

Lady

End

Beginning

Rome

Political graffiti from Rome





*These photos have nothing to do with my personal political inclinations. They are posted only for aesthetic purposes.

Smiling Buddha

Acrylic latex enamel

Heads

Acrylic, Charcoal
still wish i had a better camera.

this is a better image than the previous one.

Ustad Amir Khan

One of the most amazing Hindustani classical singers of the 20th century.

Woman and Man

Birthday present for a friend
Still working on it
I really need to get a better camera
I use the iphone

Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade was a Romanian scholar who helped develop the modern, secular academic discipline of religious study. His book The Sacred and The Profane is by far one of the most interesting and interestingly-written works that I have read in a while. It is impossibly confusing, but there's something really pleasurable in trying to tease out the meaning of its meandering, anecdotal text. He also happens to be one of those old school stylish guys that any young pseudo-intellectual would want to grown to be / look like.

!

Ink

Vintage Model

Vintage being a commonly used euphemism for "old" in the fashion world...

The Sartorialist's Florence subject is also the new lookbook model for Turkish designer Umit Benan's awesome fall winter collection recently shown at Pitti Uomo.

Umit Benan:

"Surfaces that appear to be rough, giving a hint of street wear, actually shield the soft underside of a duffel coat or a cashmere and wool cardigan. Showing the pieces mixed casually with jeans or a washed cotton short, or more formally with dressy clothes, Benan has captured, in humble proportions and thoughtful mixes, the spirit of the post-show-off era."
The International Herald Tribune





Wrapped in Florence:

Messing Around

I'm drawing or painting every day now, trying out different techniques, and using art as my daily diary entry. Here I was experimenting with some textural elements, the emphasis is on flatness. Once again charcoal and India ink on newsprint

Faces

Charcoal and India Ink on Newsprint

I'm starting to paint again, and finding it to be a great release.
I try to express my emotions, conscious or subconscious, through art. Whatever I make is a representation of my state of mind at the time of painting. It's more a time stamp than anything. Looking back at my work at some point in the future, I want to be able to understand myself better, to get a more complete picture of who I am (was).

Yohji Yamamoto

Fall 2009

This guy wandered on to the runway while picking up his morning paper and baguette (I guess they tend to do that in Italy). I really like Yamamoto because his collections are totally reflective of his personal style. He puts what he wears on the runway, which I respect in terms of creative expression.

Kim Simonsson

"white girl with tousled hair blows a big bubble of bubblegum made of silvered glass"

Nancy Margolis Gallery
523 West 25th Street, Chelsea

Helmut Newton

I see Helmut Newton as the originator of art-porn or porn-chic (no, not Terry Richardson).
Christie's recently had an auction of a private collection with 16 photos by HN. Virtually all of them fetched a huge premium over their estimates. I guess that would make Helmut Newton way more profitable than the S&P 500

Bergstrøm over Paris went for an incredible 6 times what it was initally valued at:



And the priciest of the lot, Sie Kommen, Paris (Naked and Dressed) went for 60k more than the upper end of its estimate - a full 33%.



Other shots:

Central Park West




Tied-up Torso, Ramatuelle




Elsa Peretti in a 'Bunny Costume'



Christie's sale 2113 - Photographs from the collection of Gert Elfering

Lehmann Maupin

I recently visited the Lehmann Maupin Gallery on 201 Christie St. Even though it is a small space with a limited collection, it has some very cool work and represents well-known artists like Juergen Teller. I really liked Mr.'s 35-minute short film "Nobody Dies," which can be succinctly summarized as a sexually frustrated, older geek's attempt to bring anime out of animation. Well, what does that mean? I was going to elaborate, but Cool Hunting's description is pretty much on the money:

" ... about a group of adolescent Japanese girls who partake in a paintball riddled war game of capture-the-flag.

Carefully toeing the line between perversion and commentary, the film is a continuation of the artist's investigation into the Otaku subculture and its fetishization of kawaii, or cuteness. Roughly half the film documents the everyday lives of these young girls while the second act features the group costumed in neon camo-garb (also designed by Mr.) and taking their game a little too literally. Throughout the film, the camera lingers suggestively on the girls, like the eyes of a shut-in comic geek, making for an altogether uncomfortable viewing. Which is likely the point."

Shots of adolescent (looking) girls in tight-fitting neon costumery and sexualized situations left me feeling a little repulsed and slightly surreal (can you feel surreal?); but on the whole the film was very interesting.

Upstairs were Tracey Emin's neon words: "Her Soft Lips Touched mine And Every Thing Became Hard." I lingered thinking about what that meant to me. At first, 'hard' seemed to mean complicated, difficult, painful; but after a few minutes 'hard' felt grey, jagged, bleak, cracking like dried clay - I pictured kissing someone who turned into stone and crumbled as the world collapsed around me. I then strolled grey, debris-filled streets alone with a blank expression. It was very alarming. 

I also liked this painting:

Unfortunately I don't know the title or artist. Maybe I'll call the gallery to find out. To me it was like rubber-band man trying to break out of his plasticky, insanity-inducing, two-dimensional world - in other words: the life of a floundering, bourgeois, pseudo-intellectual philosophe in 21st century society.

www.lehmannmaupin.com