Earth in flux

Hey want to see something beautiful and terrifying at the same time? Edward Burtynsky’s Oil series is on view at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler on W. 24th St. in Chelsea until November 28. These c-prints blew me away.

Foreign Policy has a nice photo essay with some images from the same collection also on view at D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery.

Homodoption

From Findings section in February 2009 issue of Harper’s Magazine:

Givers and takers

From The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde:

Leviticus records the Lord’s instructions to Moses: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me.” Likewise, we are sojourners with our gifts, not their owners; even our creations–especially our creations–do not belong to us. As Gary Snyder says, “You get a good poem and you don’t know where it came from. ‘Did I say that?’ And so all you feel is: you feel humility and you feel gratitude.” Spiritually, you can’t be much poorer than gifted.

Textual landscapes

The Textual Landscapes: Real and Imagined group exhibit at Bryce Wolkowitz is worth a visit. At the very least, this stuff is eye-catching with a bunch of crazy video shit and LED. The show runs until October 31.

Ben Rubin, Lolita 6 (installation view), 2009, acrylic and color LEDs

Airan Kang, 109 Lighting Books (detail), 2009, LED lighting books and plastic cases

Ben Rubin, Shakespeare Machine Study No. 1-4 (detail), 2009, White LEDs, aluminum and electronics

All images from Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Relevance made an impression

From “Reading Lost Illusions“ by Benjamin Kunkel at Salon.com:

When you’re a novelist, or want to be one, and instead of staying at home to nurture your genius, you’re chasing some romantic prospect, or drinking too much with your friends, or writing another book review, it’s never entirely clear whether you are wasting your time, or whether, in fact, you are investing in so many treasury bonds to be paid out in the form of mature works. It could be that ostensible distraction is really just a diversified portfolio of experience. A novelist has to write about humans, and it doesn’t much expand your knowledge of the human to do the things you should.

I look back on my first years in New York and wish I’d worked harder. I also look back and wish I’d gone out dancing far more often, and spent more money on concerts and plays.

I read articles like this, written by successful people like him, and it gives me a great excuse to party really hard. And then I check my bank account, dream forlornly about sushi dinners and vacations to Europe and end up sitting back on the couch.

Wolfgang amadeus awesome

This album is so rad. At a time when media distribution and consumption has become so fragmented, the cohesion of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is refreshing. It puts the “album” back in “album.”