Photographer/director RYAN McGINLEY has produced the most beautiful tribute to this year’s winter OLYMPICS yet with his new short film “The Lightness of Being an Olympian,” and photo essay, “The Highlifers” commissioned by the NY TIMES.

Shaun Gladwell gets a firsthand lesson in the art of war…

Australian experimental film director and Supertouch buddy SHAUN GLADWELL has just returned from a tour in Afghanistan as an official “War Artist” drawing inspiration for a new body of work from the action on the front lines. Of particular interest to Gladwell were the experiences of the individual fighters, whose emotional states informed his experience: “I wasn’t interested in photographing sensitive material, in terms of the technology or weapons,” he informed THE ART NEWSPAPER. “My interest was really the experience of the soldier as a thinking and feeling subject. I’m interested in how bodies move through space and the capacity of bodies to perform in certain situations. Particularly how it relates to landscape. These are issues I’m always interested in. That informed the way I was dealing with that experience in Afghanistan. But I didn’t try and direct anything.”

SHAUN GLADWELL ON LIFE IN AFGHANISTAN
The Australian artist’s three-week sojourn with troops will form basis of new work
By Elizabeth Fortescue | The Art Newspaper

SYDNEY. Shaun Gladwell, the Australian multimedia artist who represented his country at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and who has just returned from being an official war artist in Afghan istan, told The Art Newspaper that his experiences were “inspirational” and will inform his next body of work.

Gladwell was speaking on his return from Oruzgan province, where he lived and worked for three weeks alongside Aus tralian soldiers in October 2009. He says he will spend the next six months in his Sydney studio, working to “digest” his experiences while in the field. “I’m cherishing [the trip], and starting to analyse what’s taken place at this particular time,” he said.

Before settling back into his studio to work with the raw photo graphs and moving images he shot in Afghanistan, Gladwell returned to Venice to pack up his Biennale work—a video series titled MADDESTMAXIMVS—Planet & Stars Sequence, 2009, set partly in the Australian outback. Gladwell said it had been a long-held ambition to undertake a tour of duty with Australian fighting forces, stemming from the stories his father had told him about being a soldier in the Vietnam War. Click HERE to continue reading…

Creating SHEPARD FAIREY’s new TREK MADONE racing cycle for LANCE ARMSTRONG’s run in this month’s GIRO D’ITALIA was no easy task. Luckily, Trek artist SHANE SIEDSCHLAG is nice with a blade and a decal sheet…

When pressed about Shep’s new bike in Rome today, Lance told an AP reporter: “I’m a fan of his artwork. I collect his artwork. The bike that he did for this race I think is pretty stunning.”

Supertouch buddies DALEK and MIKE GIANT took over GALERIE MAGDA DANYSZ with their dazzling eponymous joint show that opened its doors last week…

Unfortunately for the frighteningly stagnant LA art scene most of the great shows of the last few years have been by non-LA artists. Luckily for LA, we get a regular stream of good shows by non-LA artists to keep us happy. The most recent of said exhibitions is by LA-born, but NYC-based painter KEHINDE WILEY whose new collection of figurative masterworks “The World Stage: Brazil” opened this weekend to a packed house at Culver City art hotspot ROBERTS & TILTON GALLERY. Choosing his subjects for this series from the notorious favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Wiley asked each to assume the pose of a local sculptural work on display in the city as a means of interpreting the country’s storied colonial history through the images of some of its most vibrant modern inhabitants. The results, as always with KW, were staggering and this new collection of grandiose portraits is exactly the shot in the arm the Southland needs to help kickoff the 2009 gallery season with a fresh breath of colorful optimism. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Just when the innovation level of the vinyl toy market hit an all-time low alongside the economy, MARK RYDEN and TAKASHI MURAKAMI have unveiled killer new signature figures to inject some much-needed vitality into the genre. Coming soon from LONG GONE JOHN’s secretive NECESSARIES TOY FOUNDATION is the first vinyl toy from master painter MARK RYDEN. Long ignoring the world of toys—and rightly so—Ryden has finally teamed up with his most avid art stalker to release this diminutive version of his multi-eyeballed pink totem pole that originally appeared in (and derives its title from) the painting “YHWH,” that first appeared in his 2004 “Wondertoonel” show. With an expected release date of Summer 2009, young art goths in search of this Holy Grail best start camping out at your neighborhood toy stores now. Meanwhile, Takashi Murakami’s “Inochi” figure, produced by Japanese toy giants MEDICOM and based on the artist’s character who has appeared in a series of hilarious and surreal Japanese TV Commercials and as a life-sized sculpture in his traveling “© Murakami” art show, has just hit shelves as part of a new exhibition at the artist’s own KAIKAI KIKI gallery in Tokyo. With doors open to the public on Saturday, The show made available five Inochi figures in as many different colored outfits in an edition of 200 pieces each that retailed for a whopping $1,500 USD. In the words of Murakami’s camp: “Fashioned with an astounding attention to detail, the Inochi action figure is a small-scale replica of the original sculpture, created by world renowned toy manufacturer Medicom Toy. Like its larger counterpart, which was subject to over six years of work before reaching completion, the action figure has been in planning for nearly three years. The result features a level of perfection that exceeds that of a mere toy and accords it the status of a work of art. The figure also comes with costuming, in the form of Inochi’s school uniform and rucksack, both of which are removable. Each figure will be available with costumes in 5 colors, identical to those worn by the original, and also as a special set of 5.” Read the rest of this entry »

Though the band technically still has four living, breathing members, Metallica has been dead and gone for years. Luckily, stepping in to fill that monstrous gap is Atlanta-based MASTODON whose hybrid hard rock/metal sound is every bit as heavy (and members as hairy) as the name. Released last week, the band’s fourth album (following 2006’s  incredibly epic “Blood Mountain”) “Crack The Skye” is a brutally gorgeous seven-track ticket to heaven via a long and twisted road through czarist Russian Hell. Continuing the band’s penchant for thematic content, the new disc focuses on they mythical life of Rasputin, whose existence the Mastodonians embellish with an array of compulsory metal mythology. The record’s story arc is perhaps best described by the band’s guitarist Bill Kelliher:

“There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem. They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin’s body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin’s body through the crack in the sky(e) and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it’s too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way.”

When questioned about the archaic spelling of the word Skye in the disc’s title, Dailor went on to explain that “Crack the Skye” is also meant as an homage to his sister, Skye Dailor, who committed suicide at age 14: “My sister passed away when I was a teenager and it was awful, and there’s no better way to pay tribute to a lost loved one than having an opportunity to be in a group with my friends and we make art together. Her name was Skye, so Crack the Skye means a lot of different things. For me personally, it means the moment of being told you lost someone dear to you, [that moment] is enough to crack the sky.”

As a bonus for fans who still BUY music, the iTunes version of “Crack the Skye” comes with the to-die-for bonus of an instrumental version of the entire disc that plays like a full-fledged metal symphony in seven parts. Touring across the US now, and throughout Europe this summer with (unfortunately) Metallica, the prehistoric rockers should be considered a must-see for even the most jaded live music fan.

Read the NYTimes review of “Crack the Skye” HERE.

Mastodon were the first Western band to ever record the kazak national anthem…

LANCE ARMSTRONG IS A SHOW-STOPPER IN HOLLYWOOD
By Diane Pucin, LA Times, March 8, 2009

“Ben Stiller did the introductions and newly hot artist Shepard Fairey did a mural, but Lance Armstrong was the star Saturday night at the Ricardo Montalban Theater in Hollywood.

As part of his cycling comeback, Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner, has made clear that he is riding not only to win more races but also to raise more money for his cancer charity, the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
Armstrong is flying Sunday to Europe in advance of the third race in his comeback journey, the Milan-San Remo Classic. But on Saturday, Armstrong rode 2.2 miles with about 700 recreational cyclists and then spoke to an enthusiastic audience of art and cycling lovers.

Fairey has gained recent attention for his creation of the Barack Obama “Hope” image, and there was a Fairey-created mural celebrating Armstrong’s cycling comeback and cancer-fighting commitment painted on the side of the theater.

Stiller introduced Armstrong by making a joke about how when the two of them walk down the street, people stop to marvel at Armstrong’s ability to inspire awe because of his cycling accomplishments after recovering from cancer, and then they stare at Stiller and say, “Thunder, man,” because of Stiller’s starring appearance in the less-than-esoteric movie comedy “Tropic Thunder.”

More than 20 artists have created works that will be displayed beginning July 16 at the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris and will be sold with the proceeds going to Armstrong’s foundation. Besides Fairey, other notable artists participating in this fundraiser include Tom Sachs, Eric White, Marc Newson, Os Gemeos and Taryn Simon.” Click HERE to continue reading…

Read more “Stages” show coverage at THE EXAMINER, FOX BUSINESS