• Portland, Oregon

    On vacation (barely). The conference is a lot of time and mental work. The food here is excellent. Favorite restaurants so far:

    Carafe – more elegant setting for Florent-like food. We’ve eaten lunch there every day so far.

    Veritable Quandary – great bar menu, had scallops wrapped in bacon on top of corn (me) and grilled pizza with heirloom tomatoes (James) for dinner the first night. We had great wild salmon there last night for dinner.

    Park Kitchen – sort of like Savoy’s food. Fresh ingredients, brilliant execution. We had a chilled cucumber and almond soup with bits of house-cured salmon on top. It was one of the best soups I have ever eaten.

    The raw ingredients chefs have to work here are excellent: heirloom tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, mushrooms, lamb, etc.

    Great wines we’ve had: Jezebel white (a blend of Pinot Gris and others), Pinot Noir from Argyle, Belles Soeurs and Brick House, late harvest Gewurtztraminer (dessert wine) from Andrew Rich.

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  • Nice homosexuals against the queers

    Have you heard? Margaret Cho got kicked out of a gay event (she was supposed to be the headliner) during the Democratic convention in Boston because they were afraid she might offend some Republicans.

    It reminds me of a scene in a Madeline Olnek play I mentioned earlier on bloggy.

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  • Watch What We Say

    See this post from Joy Garnett on what Schroeder Romero is presenting in honor of the RNC convention. It looks like a great show!

    We finally met Joy in person tonight at Foxy Production‘s opening for the Infinite Fill show. It was a bit crowded and hot to appreciate everything there, but the show looked wonderful. It works as a big black and white installation quite effectively. As James said, like almost everything the very generous Cory Arcangel arranges, it’s more about other people than himself.

    While we’re on the subject of art, don’t miss the White Box show of work by Julia Scher that James wrote about last night,

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  • Mark Dixon sketchbook

    mark-dixon-draw_2_july.jpg

    Mark Dixon, charcoal drawing

    I just added Mark Dixon’s sketchbook blog to my list of links.

    I like the fact that he puts up images of works, in progress and finished.

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  • 3 Chelsea group shows

    We visited three worthy groups shows in Chelsea at their openings last Thursday. Go see them — not all art is mindless in the summer!

    Capsule has a big group show titled And one for Grandma. It was about 100 degrees inside at the opening, but we saw enough to notice several things, including a wall painting by [can’t remember, nothing on the site], the photograph on the invitation by Christine Callahan, and some great drawings by Andrew Guenther. I like his work, especially the fact that there is a big variety of work ranging from sculpture to drawings to installations.

    Florence Lynch has a show, minimalpop, curated by Petra Bungert of CCNOA (Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art) Brussels. It includes sculpture by John Beech, whom we finally met at the opening. We have one of his rotating paintings.

    My favorite work in the show titled The day after I destroyed the women, I wished I had not destroyed them at Oliver Kamm 5BE (curated by Lital Mehr) doesn’t photograph well, so I won’t put it up. It’s The Birds and The Bees by Aaron Wexler. It’s an amazing painting-like work created from cut paper mounted on wood. Go by and see it, and ask to see his other works in the back. Other work includes sculpture and installation by Agata Oleksiak (with dancers wearing some at the opening) and paintings by Tom Meacham. Tom is also in the current group show at Nicole Klagsbrun.

    Also, don’t forget that White Box has a new show (and opening) beginning each Wednesday, 6-8pm, through September 1.

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    UPDATED: In the comments, Jeffrey Chiedo from Capsule tells me the wall drawing was by Jen Kim.

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  • Times are crazy!

    Check out Matt Stoller‘s brief essay up right now in the right column of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee homepage. It’s good.

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  • Leader of Iraq, summary executions, etc.

    Yes, you thought I was talking about Saddam Hussein. I’m talking about Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq.

    Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

    They say the prisoners – handcuffed and blindfolded – were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city’s south-western suburbs.

    …

    One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.

    Of course, we have to rely on a newspaper in Australia to tell us these things. As John Stewart said on Larry King, the U.S. media and the government are a single organism.

    [Via Eschaton and Blogging of the President]

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  • Jackie Gendel

    I mentioned seeing some of her new work at Jessica Murray Projects back in June. The gallery sent me an image of one of the works. It’s hard to get a good feel for it from the image, but here goes:

    jackie-gendel-untitled-red.jpg

    Jackie Gendel
    Untitled (Red), 2004
    oil and wax on panel
    48 x 60

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  • Sex Tourism

    Two quotes for your Friday afternoon reading:

    Today (I like the bit about the corrupt US-backed regime):

    TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) – President Bush accused Cuba’s Fidel Castro on Friday of welcoming sex tourism and contributing to a global problem of human trafficking, as he courted Cuban voters in Florida, a pivotal state in the election.

    “The regime of Fidel Castro has turned Cuba into a major destination for sex tourism,” Bush said, adding that the Cuban president “welcomes sex tourism” as a source of hard currency for his government.

    Addressing a conference on human trafficking, Bush quoted Castro as saying that prostitutes in Havana were the cleanest and best educated in the world.

    Bush said that comment was evidence that Havana was encouraging sex tourism. Castro praised Cuban prostitutes for having a college education in a documentary interview by the U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone.

    Cuba’s government, born of a revolution against a corrupt U.S.-backed dictatorship that allowed Mafia-run gaming and prostitution to thrive in Havana in the 1950’s, strongly denies tolerating sex tourism. Police have cracked down on the trade.

    November 25, 2003:

    HOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) — Neil Bush, younger brother of President Bush, detailed lucrative business deals and admitted to engaging in sex romps with women in Asia in a deposition taken in March as part of his divorce from now ex-wife Sharon Bush.

    ….

    The Bush divorce, completed in April after 23 years of marriage, was prompted in part by Bush’s relationship with another woman. He admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

    The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

    “Mr. Bush, you have to admit it’s a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her,” Brown said.

    “It was very unusual,” Bush said.

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  • “Moving Party” benefit at Champion Fine Art

    Want to pick up a great piece of art for $100, while attending a party at one of the coolest Williamsburg galleries? If you can’t swing $100, pay $25 for just the party. Food and drink are supplied by Brooklyn Breweries and our favorite Williamsburg Restaurant, Relish.

    On Sunday, Champion Fine Art is having a party to help pay for their relocation to Los Angeles. The web site has more details.

    Even by the standards of Williamsburg, Champion is one of the least commercial and most artist-driven spaces out there. It’s not a permanent gallery, but a two year exhibition series of artist-curated group shows. The twenty exhibitions, titled numerically in descending order, have been in New York so far, and are about to move to Los Angeles. Each is accompanied by a gallery-produced catalog in an edition of one hundred.

    I believe the last show will be a “closing party” touching on the various exhibitions of the two year period.

    Images of their exhibitions will be up soon. I’m still working on the web site!

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