While writing a feature for Dazed about Bernadette Corporation I started getting super interested in Colin de Land - who ran American Fine Arts where some of the collective met. I wish people like this still existed in the art world but I'm not sure if they do. Or if they do they are few and far between (and a little less like Jim Jarmusch characters). He died in 2003. Powerhouse did a book about him a few years later which I'm sure is going to end up on my bookshelf. There's a cancer foundation named in his and his wife's honour for the NYC visual artists world - which considering the American health system is a nice idea.
A reluctant interviewee
talking about his start (towards the end of this weird Dutch 80s film thing)
Top Image: Colin de Land at the beach ca 1980, Photographer unknown. Colin de Land collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian institution
1) Imageatlas.org Taryn Simon and Aaron Schwartz's fascinating site of search engines around the world. Type in a word, name, term and see how the images that come up vary between Syria, Brazil, North Korea, India, USA and the rest. Its almost changed my entire opinion of Simon's work.
I hung a work he gave me in my room a week ago alongside Jayson Musson and David Noonan which makes me very happy. Definitely one of the best people working with abstraction at the moment.
3) Connan Mockasin especially Its Choade My Dear. I can't stop watching this video. I think I've listened to this 8 times today.
I'm off for an attempted non art non work related holiday.... Perhaps I should have a sound art away message in the vein of this. French Riviera gallery have started a regular series of sound art commissions for the gallery answer phone. Entitled "Please wait while we contact your bank #2" if you ring +44(0)20 7729 8000between August 1-31 you can hear the latest work from Sebastiaan Schlicher: 'Amerikan Teenager - Nellcôte 1942 - 1972 (2012)'
