Solo exhibition: “WEIGHT LIFTING AND TOTEMS”

November 25 – December 26, 2009
opening on Tuesday November 24 at 6pm !

Palais de L’Athénée
rue de l’Athénée 2 – 1205 Genève
www.athenee.ch

?????????? by ?????????? amongst others…

Slavonic Empress of the Blues

Born in the days of smallpox,
She sang the sharp Cyrillic blues—

Learned in the days of steam and press,
She sang the name-changing blues:

To the steel basin, the laundry twine,
The new hot dog and Brooklyn’s bridge—

Roll on, Kominsky, roll on.

Donkey cello rooster bed
The night the candles burned upside down

Leaving her row house, her suitcase, her pearl—
Seeing highways’ dark mint whirl—

She sang the prickly blues:
But that’s not all:

Stove pipes, wooden rain barrels—
Armless men with brown apples—

By order of the King:
Village ploughed,

Inherit a sad ending—
She sang, too, the nameless blues.

Roll on, Kominsky, roll on.

Images by little Swiss me in huge Konzerthaus Berlin and poem by dear American Derek Webster.

more insanities
this time by painter Glenn Brown, whom I discovered in 2003 at the Frieze art fair and never stopped to like since.

Some beautiful images on our friend Pia’s Blog

Check out SB contributor Diamanda Galas’ tour dates in Europe!

November 24:

Pallas Theater, Athens (Greece)
Ta Filia Sou Einai Fotia

November 27:
Archa Theatre, Prague (Czech Republic)

December 15:
Aula Magna, Rome University La Sapienza, Rome (Italy)

Photograph © Austin Young

Allison Schulnik’s work (which I only got the chance to see on the internet)(and right after Berlin’s 20th Mauerfall anniversary night) is about not believing in the separation between worlds. In other words, my approach of it might be a little influenced by the context I currently live in (but only a little).

If we consider that painting is all about the tension between image and material, I’d say that Schulnik wants to use it as a trap between the purely imaginary and the purely physical (even though, again, I’ve never seen it for real). The question would be, then: Where do we make those distinctions?
I will not try any answer today, but however, the space that truly interests me here is the simultaneous layering of many points of view. This morning (morning?), Schulnik confirms that, on a larger scale, hierarchies are always revealed to be subjective. In this way of thinking, both societies and dreams exist in the same space, which is ultimately nature and beautiful.

Besides, his paintings are totally flirting with psychic injury and trauma, aka the site of brutal contact between the fantasy and the real… the interruption of the dream.

And now I will go back to it for a while.

Thank you Thomas Koenig for introducing me to Schulnik!

Also… Check out Allison Schulnik’s interview by Ryan Christian for fecal face dot com!