The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra + Moacir Santos

23/10/2014
Uncategorized

lincoln_jazz

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis perform the music of the late Moacir Santos, one of Brazil’s most important musicians and prolific composers. Santos’ work illuminated the soul of Brazil, creating a truly national music, which has been recorded extensively by hundreds of artists. Melding Afro-Latin influences with improvisation and jazz harmony helped make Santos a genuinely original voice in Brazilian music. Santos was orphaned at an early age, and taken in by a family who helped him take music lessons. He continued to learn the music of Brazil throughout his formative years, garnering an encyclopedic musical knowledge. As a respected educator, Santos mentored some of Brazil’s most established artists. Though late to receive proper international acclaim, Santos’ name continues to reach newfound celebrity among generations of Brazilian musicians and music fans worldwide. Joining the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for this performance is acclaimed Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, who has worked with YoYo Ma, Herbie Hancock, Sting, and more.

Free pre-concert discussion nightly, 7pm

Judith Lauand: Brazilian Modernist, 1950s-2000s curated by Aliza Edelman at Driscoll Babcock

23/10/2014
Uncategorized
Judith_Lauand_Concreto_88_Acervo_186_g_p_19570

CONCRETO 88, ACERVO 186, 1957, Gouache on paper, 13 ½ x 13 ½ inches;

“A painting is not explained. A painting is seen. Words are not substitutes for the direct vision of formal structure, of color relationships, of spaces, of plasticity . . . the organization of equal elements.” –Judith Lauand

DRISCOLL BABCOCK GALLERIES presents Judith Lauand: Brazilian Modernist, 1950s–2000s, the first New York solo exhibition of one of the most celebrated Brazilian artists of the postwar era. Curated by Dr. Aliza Edelman, this exhibition brings Lauand to the wider and long-overdue attention of North American viewers while examining a broader trajectory of her oeuvre. Lauand is renowned as the “Dama do concretismo,” or the “First Lady of Concretism,” for her modernist geometric abstractions that actively unhinge the rational and seemingly impersonal grid of Concretism. Her objective, mathematical, and precise constructions–primary components of Arte Concreta–introduced new geometries aligned with contemporary ideas on space, time, and matter. Lauand was the only female artist invited to join Grupo Ruptura, an artist group initially formed in São Paulo in 1952, and her successful demonstration of postwar Concretism led in the following decades to further experimentations, with figural and popular representation, assemblage, and optical color contrasts. Thus, Lauand successfully negotiated the development of Brazilian avant-garde tendencies after World War II–including the influence and reception of Pop art and New Figuration in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the political disruption initiated during the military dictatorship–continually buttressing Concretism’s critical ideas while formulating her own meaningful intersections with notions of rupture.

Lauand was a gallery monitor at the celebrated II Bienal de São Paulo in 1953-54, and subsequently had her first individual exhibition. She participated in significant group shows, including the III Bienal de São Paulo in 1955; the I Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta (1st National Exhibition of Concrete Art) in 1956; and the international retrospective on Concretism, Konkrete Kunst: 50 Jahre Entwicklung (Concrete Art: 50 Years of Development), organized by Max Bill in Zurich in 1960. Recipient of multiple prestigious awards and exhibitor in numerous editions of the Bienal de São Paulo as well as the Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, Lauand was the subject of a major retrospective, Judith Lauand: Experiências (Judith Lauand: Experiences), at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo in 2011.

This substantial exhibition brings together over thirty works by Lauand that span the critical periods of her career from the 1950s to 2007. Concreto 88, Acervo 186, 1957, a gouache on paper from her early groundbreaking body of work, readily evokes the photographically-inspired architectural facades in Geraldo de Barros’s Fotoformas (Photoforms), begun in 1948, a Brazilian vanguard and contemporary of Lauand. Here, Lauand employs horizontal bands across shifting chains to link positive and negative space, rupturing the Concrete grid with rhythmic motion and the perception of subtle contradictions.

To date, Lauand continues to explore her geometrical systems of the 1950s, now reworking her principle set of shapes and networks, evident, for example, in her late oil painting Sem título (Untitled), 2007, where the angles of the chevron appear to unhinge and erupt. Like Max Bill and Josef Albers, whose work from the late 1940s and 1950s had a significant impact on her, Lauand continually investigates the endless permutations of structure. The application of vibrant color further expands her vision of infinite constructions.

This survey is a much needed celebration in New York City of Lauand’s critical significance as a pioneer of modernism, an artist who cultivated her formative career in São Paulo alongside prolific debates and investigations into the critical definitions of the planar surface and abstraction. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated book by art historian Dr. Aliza Edelman, published by Driscoll Babcock Galleries, a seminal and necessary text honoring the artist’s prolific achievements in postwar abstraction, geometry, and feminism.

ABOUT ALIZA EDELMAN

Aliza Edelman, Ph.D., is a New York-based curator and art historian whose research and publications on the postwar Modern Woman have advanced gendered and transnational dialogues among artists, including her contribution to Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s (Newark Museum, NJ), as well as numerous studies and presentations on women, geometric abstraction, and Abstract Expressionism in the Americas.

Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond @ Brooklyn Museum

14/10/2014
Uncategorized

Paul Ramírez Jonas (Honduran American, b. 1965). The Commons, 2011. Cork, pushpins, notes contributed by the public, 153 x 128 x 64 in. (388.6 x 135.1 x 162.6 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Koenig & Clinton Gallery. © Paul Ramírez Jonas. Photo Paul Ramírez Jonas

October 3, 2014–January 4, 2015

Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, 5th Floor

Reflecting the rich creative diversity of Brooklyn, Crossing Brooklyn presents work by thirty-five Brooklyn-based artists or collectives. The exhibition and related programming take place in the galleries and on the grounds of the Museum, as well as off-site in the streets, waterways, and other public spaces of the borough.

Emphasizing artistic practices that engage with the world, the exhibition includes artists who aim to expand their focus and have an impact beyond the studio and the museum. The resulting work defies easy categorization, taking on diverse forms that include public and private action, the use of found or collected objects, and interactive and educational events, among others. Alongside the drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos, and performances on view are several site-specific works.

While acknowledging Brooklyn’s heightened profile,Crossing Brooklyn presents a multigenerational picture that recognizes the borough’s long-established role as a creative center. Other themes explored in the exhibition include history and memory, place and geography, community, nostalgia, exchange, ephemerality, and politics, both local and remote.

For a full list of the artists included in the exhibition, please see the press release.

Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond is organized by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, and Rujeko Hockley, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum. A catalogue including a roundtable conversation among several longtime Brooklyn artists accompanies the exhibition.

Support for this exhibition is provided by Lambent Foundation, Sotheby’s, TerraCRG, and Brooklyn Brewery.

Sothebys logo

TerraCRG logo

Brooklyn Brewery logo

Additional support provided by Hildemarie and Alex Ladouceur.

Media sponsor
Northside Media Group

Eric Fischl: ‘What America wants is artists who are doing very expensive toys’ by Tim Adams

14/10/2014
Uncategorized

lá no site do the guardian / the observer

The American painter who broke through in the 1980s with disturbingly voyeuristic scenes of suburban life turns his gaze to the cynical world of the international art fair

Art Fair Booth #4 The Price from the forthcoming exhibition by Eric Fischl.
Art Fair Booth #4 The Price from the forthcoming exhibition by Eric Fischl. Photograph: Gary Mamay/Courtesy the artist/Victoria Miro, London and Mary Boone Gallery

‘I’d always avoided art fairs like the plague,” Eric Fischl is telling me in his studio on Long Island, New York, surrounded on all sides by his own larger-than-life paintings of art fairs. “Now I have been I still think they are the plague,” he says. “It’s like every single reason for art to exist does not exist in those places.”

Fischl, perhaps the best narrative painter of his American generation, is 66. He remembers how the plague spread. It was subtle at first. One biennial led to another. There was a sudden rash of Expos. It was one of those things that friends thought would be a fad, he suggests, but after the millennium dotcom crash and the collapse of the art market, the pandemic spread as the art world panicked and desperately tried to resuscitate itself as an asset class.

There are now 50 or more international shows, from Dubai to Shanghai to São Paulo, one for every week of the year, following the money, flogging product. Fischl steered clear of all of them for a long while, but finally went to the shiniest of the lot, Art Basel Miami Beach, a couple of years ago, at the request of New Yorker magazine, for an interview. He became grimly fascinated by the spectacle, took a camera with him there and subsequently to Frieze New York, and to the fair in Southampton up the road from his home in Sag Harbor, Great Gatsby country.

Fischl then made Photoshop collages of his hundreds of photos, creating scenes that might have happened. He gestures to the fabulous painting behind me. “The big sneakers here are from a show of Claes Oldenburg’s. The guy with his back to us was a guard at that show. She on the left was from an art fair at Southampton. That guy was from Miami. I mix and match. Same crowd, different clothes. But always the same experience.”

An exhibition of Fischl’s art-show paintings (priced between £200,000 and £400,000) will open at the Victoria Miro Gallery, in London, this week, to coincide with the Frieze art fair. He hopes that people can go to Frieze and then come to his show and see what they looked like at Frieze.

If you have never been to Frieze, his paintings capture much of its dead-eyed atmosphere, its comic and dispiriting juxtapositions. In Fischl’s Art Fair: Booth #4 The Price, a distracted crowd of buyers cluster around an amorphous Ken Price sculpture, not looking. Behind them, an enormous intimate self-portrait by Joan Semmel goes unremarked. “The big collectors do this kind of speed-dating thing,” Fischl says. “They try to get in and out before anyone buys what they are after and certainly before the hoi polloi gets to look. And then you’ve got people who are just there for the social scene. So you have people texting or not paying any attention at all. It is as if the art is not there, or that they think it has no effect on them. But when you stop the moment you can see this weird world that is taking place. They are being regarded and judged by the work itself in some ways.”

In my experience, I suggest, Frieze provides exactly the enervating experience of a Saturday afternoon at Brent Cross shopping mall, except some of the stuff on sale is priced in the millions. Wealth becomes the spectacle, not art.

“If you start with the premise,” Fischl says, “and I know it is a romantic and naive premise, but I none the less think it is true, that artists are looking for love, and they are expressing love in their commitment to what they have made. An art fair is designed so they never get any in return.” He speaks languidly and laughs broadly. “Love is complicated, obviously. But the reason artists do what they do on some level is to say: ‘Don’t look at me, look at this thing I made and you will know the true me.’”

Fischl himself developed that particular faith as a young painter in the 1970s when he started to try to express himself on canvas, first at CalArts, the Disney-funded art college outside Los Angeles, and later in Nova Scotia, where he took a teaching job and met his wife, the celebrated landscape artist April Gornik, and finally in New York. In a world of abstract expressionism and conceptualism he became part of that endangered species, a figurative painter, a storyteller. Despite this self-imposed handicap, by 1985 Andy Warhol was describing Fischl in his diary as “the hot new top artist”; he was the subject of a long Vanity Fairprofile entitled “Bad Boy of Brilliance” which compared him favourably to celebrity artist peers such as Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat; and his paintings were suddenly selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To understand how Fischl found himself at the centre of that world, a version of which he now satirises 30 years on, you have to understand where he came from. The paintings that made Fischl’s name were drawn from an adolescence spent up the road from where he now lives, in a town called Port Washington. His father went into New York City every day selling promotional films to corporations in the days before video. His mother, spirited and beautiful, was also an out-of-control alcoholic, the “unspeakable” open secret that Fischl, his brother and two sisters did all they could to contain in their suburban idyll.

Fischl’s early paintings exhibited a disturbing kind of voyeurism, in scenes that might have been written by John Cheever or John Updike. The two defining paintings of that period — Bad Boy, which depicts a young boy standing before a woman, perhaps his mother, sprawled naked on a bed, while he feels for her handbag; and Sleepwalker, in which a teenager masturbates in a paddling pool, bathed in Edward Hopper light – were representative of the uncertain boundaries, the disquieting taboos, that became his constant theme.

Fischl depicted the fallout of early 1960s America at war with inhibition, and deeply troubled by that fact. In his recent memoir, also entitled Bad Boy, he recalls a youth in which his parents talked openly about their sex life and “lounged around their bedroom – where we’d visit after dinner to watch TV – completely naked”. When his mother was drinking, which was often, “her whole face seemed pinched and pulled back. Her artificial expression, a Kabuki-like mask, reminded me of a terrifying drag queen. It was impossible to predict what she might do… ”

Impossible, that was, until the day, not long after he had started art school, when Fischl was called to say his mother was critically ill in hospital after driving her car into a tree, an act of suicide. Fischl got back home just before she died and was overwhelmed by the fact he had “not been strong enough, smart enough” to save her from herself. He subsequently became a painter of what had been “unspeakable” because, he wrote, on “some level I wanted to make her life good”. What did he mean by that?

“It was a thing my therapist spent many years trying to get me past,” he says. “The tragedy of her life was that she was creative and intelligent and stimulating, and if she had channelled that in a different way she could have been amazing. She tried art but she lacked the stubbornness to do it. She couldn’t get past the self-critical thing we all have and she would destroy it or fuck it up or not finish it. When she killed herself, I felt I was making art for her. I thought I could make her pain less by succeeding at this thing where she had failed. Which of course makes it pretty hard to own your own success… ”

It took him many years of messing about with abstraction, and other strategies, to realise he had to confront those experiences head on.

“I actually found it harder to paint a specific chair in a scene than to paint the woman passed out on the floor. Somehow the woman passed out on the floor could have been any woman. The chair became something closer to my particular experience. The first brave step was doing that.”

Eric Fischl with one of his art-fair paintings.
Eric Fischl with one of his art-fair paintings. Photograph: Ralph Gibson

Did it feel liberating?

“It was empowering ultimately,” he says. “I suppose if I had gotten crushed by the critical reception the way I feared when I started to make these paintings I wouldn’t have continued. When the pictures were embraced, however, I went further and further into it.” The breakthrough was Sleepwalker. “I started to try to paint in a representational manner,” Fischl says, “and it was a stretch because I had never been trained that way. My drawing skills were iffy. Trying to render flesh. I was learning in this painting and people tried to persuade me off it. I was being told: ‘You have to find a way of making it look more contemporary.’ I went through a thousand possible ways to do that but it was always everybody else’s idea. In the end I was left with myself. That is something that all artists ultimately have to find: the thing that they can do that doesn’t look like art.”

It seems strange to be talking to a contemporary artist about emotional authenticity, about representation, and about the influence of Degas and Manet rather than Warhol and Joseph Beuys. “There are two kinds of painter, if you like,” Fischl says at one point. “One is somebody like Hopper who creates an image that burns on your retina and you never forget it. You can see it, walk away and still see it. [With] the other kind you are caught up in the authenticity of the energy. The believable moment. Jackson Pollock, you are right there with him. I am essentially the Hopper artist trying to create a frozen moment. The truth about how it actually was.”

Despite that commitment, or because of it, Fischl found himself co-opted into the wild and whirling art world of 1980s New York – his first experience of the milieu he has lately been documenting. Warhol visited his studio, and offered his blessing. “He sought out youth, he was always curious about what was going on,” Fischl recalls. “Most of the artists we admired wanted to be outside society looking in. Warhol wanted to be right at the centre of high society and still be radical. It was as if he wanted to infect it from the inside out.”

Looking back on what quickly became a frenzy of parties and gallery openings and cocaine and booze and money – which had little to do with his original change-the-world ambitions for his art – Fischl admits it was nevertheless “all incredibly exciting. It was like a spinning world, it had real centrifugal force. Traditional art magazines couldn’t keep up so the dailies took their place. Artist’s photographs were appearing in the arts and entertainment pages next to those of rock stars and film stars. It was like a wave had picked us up.”

Fischl was beached not long after just as surely. After one bender too many, after the opening of a solo New York show, and a near car crash, he knew he had to remove himself from the centrifugal world he found himself in. He has a sense that he inherited his mother’s addictive gene, and that he had welcomed the self-destructive aspect of it in some way “in order to survive it, to prove it could be done”. With premonitions of an art world about to finally sell its soul he packed up his studio in New York, moved with April Gornik the two hours out here – following an artists’ path trodden by Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and others — and swapped his previous narcotic highs for more life-affirming ones.

Fischl counts Steve Martin and John McEnroe among his closest friends. After McEnroe opened a gallery in New York on his retirement, Fischl tutored him in art history in return for tennis lessons. He plays most days, sometimes with McEnroe himself, and likes to make connections between his game and his work (“both are performed in a rectangle, and are about gesture and reach and executing an intention, resistance”). He and Gornik bought some land and built their beautiful, brutal 10,000 sq ft minimalist home on the edge of a salt marsh, complete with matching studios. They moved in on millennium eve and Fischl entered what he calls, with a laugh, “his long mid-career period”.

From this vantage, Fischl believes himself to be an outsider to the kind of world he describes in his art-show paintings. His work has continued to sell – his record for a single picture was the $1.9m paid for his paintingDaddy’s Girl in 2006 – and he has moved on from adolescent angst to document and interpret the worlds he now inhabits. He has cast, for example, his unnerving eye over the plutocrats at play in St Tropez as well as the Hamptons.

He is surprised at the way his career has gone. “I had this idea that I was making work that would be shown in museums but that nobody would really want to live with,” he says. “I mean who the fuck wants to wake up and have breakfast with somebody jerking off in a pool? I overestimated museums, though. They were the ones that wanted to put up warning signs in front of the work, whereas the private sector bought it. I would have liked it to be more a public art.”

That particular frustration has crystallised recently around two projects, which were the real cause of his decision to turn his painter’s eye to the art world itself. Both projects were made in response to what he saw as the fracture in US culture after 9/11, and the inability of the art world to address it.

Victoria Falls, 2013 by Eric Fischl.
Victoria Falls, 2013 by Eric Fischl. Photograph: Courtesy the artist/Victoria Miro, London and Mary Boone Gallery

In 2002 Fischl, who has been working more and more in sculpture since he moved to Long Island, made a public statue, Tumbling Woman, which was to be a permanent fixture at the Rockefeller centre in New York. The life-size bronze sculpture – he has a smaller version outside his studio – shows a human figure apparently in free fall, just above the ground, as if in suspended animation.

“9/11 was so profoundly shocking – that we could be that vulnerable, that powerless,” Fischl says. “And it was combined with something really freaky: 3,000 people died and there were no bodies. How do you process the mourning? It was like a surreal disappearance. The only way we knew how horrific it had been was in the images of the people who jumped out the windows, that they would choose to die that way. Right away though, the media self-censored and got rid of those images. I thought that was wrong.”

When Fischl’s simple human sculpture was unveiled, there was an outcry. A New York Post columnist suggested it was a cruel and self-serving image and accused him of “riding on the backs of those who had suffered grief and loss in an effort to revive a moribund career”. After that he became public enemy number one.

Who fought his corner?

“Nobody. My dealer tried to protect me a bit from the hysteria. Friends in the press said I should let it drop. The guy who owned Rockefeller Centre, a big art patron in the city, removed the sculpture. He told me he was getting bomb threats and he couldn’t take the risk.” Fischl laughs bleakly. “I told him: ‘No one is going to bomb you over a statue.’ But that is the world we live in.”

Nearly a decade later, in another effort to use art to help communities come together around an idea of America, he laid plans for a touring art show, a basis for a national conversation called “Now and Here”. The idea was to have the nation’s leading artists and poets and musicians make a travelling event that would offer an alternative to the tribal and polarised nature of political debate. “We have been screaming and yelling at each other for years. Still are. I believed art could provide images as a starting point for dialogue. I thought the hard part would be getting the artists with these huge international reputations to get together and think about the same thing at the same moment for once,” Fischl says. “But of course it turned out to be the opposite. The artists were easily persuaded but the money – we tried for funding from corporations and billionaires – never was.”

Fischl was told again that his idea was just a careerist strategy, as if that was the only reason any artist might do anything. “Instead of any grown-up conversation, what we have instead, what America apparently wants, is artists who are doing very expensive toys,” he says. “Jeff Koons is a good example. What kind of culture expresses itself only in childlike behaviour? Shit jokes and childish humour – and is greeted with huge popularity.”

Fischl’s art-show paintings, for all their cool comic appeal, were made to portray the emptiness of that compact. “That world has just become a celebration of money-making,” Fischl says. “I went to a fair a few weeks ago and in the middle of this thing was a De Kooning painting. I thought ‘Wow!’ It turned out it was in a booth for a real estate company. They had this De Kooning for sale as well as the $40m homes. You could buy the house and get the painting for an extra $5m or whatever. The barriers have collapsed between the commercial and the art world. It is not irony – it is just cynicism. The work is not intended to have you look and think twice, which is what irony does. It’s cynical in that they couldn’t give a shit whether you get it or you don’t get it.”

Some of the people in his paintings are clearly recognisable, though he is not interested in putting names to faces. Has he had any response?

“I did have one experience where a girl in one of the paintings saw it at the New York Frieze show and called me the next day to say she believed she was in my painting. She was really thrilled of course. The thing is we don’t see ourselves as characters – so I think people will look and not always see themselves. And anyway, 10 years from now no one will know any people in it.”

Does he believe that all those who recognise themselves as faces in the art crowd see it as a form of flattery?

“I don’t really care, to be honest,” he says. “For me it is more like an admission that this is my world and this is what it looks like.”

Eric Fischl: Art Fair Paintings is at Victoria Miro, London, from Tuesday until 19 December at the Victoria Miro gallery, 16 Wharf Road, London N1

entrevista com GREG CAZ

10/10/2014
Uncategorized

grande entrevista com o grande GREG CAZ que eu achei lá no site DUST & GROOVES.

The mad scientist of Brazilian beats reveals his deep cuts and love for the girls, language, and music of Brazil.

I first met Greg when he was spinning at Miss Favela, A Brazilian bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 

He played all the non classic Brazilian tunes you might not think of, when it comes to Brazilian music. not even one touch of Samba. instead, I was shaking my head to some raw bass lines with fuzzy psychedelic guitars, and of course the oh so sexy Portuguese language.

One of the things I like about NYC (and maybe the U.S. in general) is the richness and diversity of the art scene, specially when it comes to music and its roots. so many DJ’s, such a long history of music making, and the abundant of vinyl that was pressed (and still being pressed) and collected thru time, just makes this place a heaven to any one who consume music. you could enjoy a night of Brazilian soul, or some west African funk, or maybe some 60’s Boogaloo? or perhaps you are into 60 Psych rock played only from 45’s? or maybe you wanna get specific on that organ sound? I bet you could find the right gig for you happening somewhere. that’s why I love America, beside the fact that suddenly, I can charge all my U.S. electronic devices I bought in the past and used in Israel, without any adapter. yes, that’s a very convenient reason.

anyways,
back to Greg.

I biked to his house in the Queens, in a cloudy and windy afternoon. the day started out with a beautiful sun, and I thought that I would have the perfect light coming thru his windows. but, god had some other plans, and I arrived to his place in a semi frozen condition and cloudy skies.
A medium sized apartment, living room, piles of records on the floor, a hidden kitchen, more records on some racks in the living room, bedroom with a double bed, more records everywhere, a walk in storage room, filled with records and other collectible stuff (like the whole Wax Poetics magazine catalog).

I’m still in the bedroom, trying to find a place to put my feet without stepping on a record. a stereo machine with a record player just beside the bed. you gotta be fast to flip that record when needed.

records everywhere! the first thing that came to my mind was, is there any order in this setup? I popped this question to Greg, and he immediately started to explain me about the logic. this is here, this is there, but after a while he got confused. ohh, maybe this is that, and that is this. The mad scientist always has his own order in the great chaos. that was also the case with Greg.

so here it is, Greg Caz, 37, Queens, NY. The mad scientist of Brazilian beats (and other stuff of course).
Hit that player button to listen to Greg’s compilation “Baile Funk 2 Agora é Moda”

http://www.divshare.com/flash/playlist?myId=6452470-cc5

Q: What prompted you to start collecting?
A: Since the day I was born, I’ve been around people with sizable record collections, starting with my dad, uncles, cousins…it wasn’t till later I realized there was any other way to be!

Q: What age did you start?
A: At conception….literally!

Q: What was your first album?
A: First I remember, around age 3, was “Abbey Road.” The “Wattstax” concert soundtrack was a really early one too.

Q: Initial interest in music? did you get influence from your family?
A: Again, my dad playing jazz and Brazilian records on his powerful 70’s Hi-Fi system all the time. Also, my hippie soul brother uncle Alix (RIP) giving me rock and soul records, starting with the ones I mentioned above.

Q: Any particular musical instruments?
A: I was obsessed with two drummers in my childhood: Art Blakey and Ringo Starr. So for a while I took lessons cause I wanted to be them.

Q: Why music?
A: What else is there? :)

Q: Why vinyl?
A: Cause that was always the format, holding the covers, going through my dad’s and uncles’ shelves, looking at them and feeling like these big beautiful things held the secrets of the universe….which they did. And the feeling growing up of walking into a RECORD store and seeing them all displayed, shiny and new, well….only sex is comparable, and maybe not even!! (now I understand the proximity of the stereo to the bed. E.P.)

Q: How many LPs?
A: I’d say around 10,000 or so, but it fluctuates….

Q: 45s?
A: Far less, but I’ve got a few goodies…

Q: You are an expert in Brazilian Beats. How did you start with it? When?
A: See above. Again, I grew up around people like my dad for whom people like Elis Regina and Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento were just common knowledge. All my life, if I saw somebody with records like those, I knew this person understood the finer things in music and life.

Q: Do you go to Brazil to get inspiration? Collect records?
A: Both, and see my friends, and hang out with beautiful girls whose language (Portuguese) I speak beyond fluently.

Q: Do you travel to find records? where? how often?
A: I’m ALWAYS on the lookout for records, no matter where I am….especially anytime I travel somewhere. “Hmmm….what can I find here that I can’t find near me?”

Q: How do you organize the collection?
A: Roughly, alphabetically according to genre, although not really, since different gigs of different genres on different nights mean that I end up with piles and stacks everywhere, although I’m pretty good at finding any given record when needed….most of the time.

Q: Have you ever battled for a rare record? what happened?
A: Not really…..maybe times in Brazil or somewhere when I had to plead, negotiate, cajole, etc. But “battle”? Maybe not. I used to be an expert at eBay sniping, though…..

Q: Tell me a crazy story over a certain record
A: A few years ago I bot an original copy of Can’s “Ege Bamyasi” at the WFMU fair in New York. Eight bucks, great deal! And when I got home and pulled it out of the sleeve, a bunch of bags of coke fell out :)

Q: What’s your partners’ reaction to this obsession?
A: Intrigued, amused, fascinated….but I would say that relationships are HELL on record collections. Women usually have a threshold of tolerance for this “beautiful sickness” that no matter what they say initially, they eventually pass and then you have to get rid of them to make space for their shoes, ha ha ha…..

Q: Any numbers on that price tag?
A: I have ones worth at least several hundred that I managed to get without actually having to spend that much. I never spent more than about a hundred or so, several times, nothing too outrageous.

Q: What part of your monthly budget do you spend on records?
A: Historically, way too much. Lately, not a lot, it’s been a bit tight and rent comes first, so I’ve been really into dollar records these days!

Q: Names of stores, trade shows, flea markets, thrift shops? record conventions?
A: Not too many left these days unfortunately! Academy Records (where I worked for several years), Tompkins Square Books And Records (RIP), Chelsea Flea Market (RIP), Second Coming Records (RIP), Kim’s on St. Marks (RIP) (this is getting depressing), WFMU Record Fair (once a year where it used to be twice), Dusty Groove, my guys Carlinhos and Tony Hits in São Paulo, Notting Hill Record Exchange in London, your mom’s record collection :D

Q: List 5 rarest 45’s or LPs
A: I don’t know what counts as “rare” anymore these days. Got a great Hungarian funk-rock record by a band named Skorpio recently. Wilson Simonal’s Mexico-only “Mexico 70″ LP. “Zeca Do Trombone & Roberto Sax” (1976) is pretty freaking rare, as is “Edson Frederico e a Transa” (1975). Eugene McDaniels’ “Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse” (1971). All these are “rare,” but “rarest”? Music means so much more to me than whatever the going eBay cost is…..

Q: If a record label would ask you for the perfect compilation of your favorite genre. What would be the 10 top songs? Would you like to publish it on my blog?
A: Impossible. One mix could never capture it…..

Q: What do you do for a living?
A: Lately, mostly DJing (not easy, I’m telling you!!). I’ve been a music retail buyer, journalist, a number of things, but these days just focus on the DJ work.

Q: You have a Brazilian beat night. Where & when?
A: At Black Betty, every Sunday night, 366 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg. Also every Wednesday at Nublu, 62 Ave. C.

Q: So, you make it for a living. what do you listen to when you’re home? Just for joy. Is it different from the music you play on gigs?
A: YES, I listen to music at home, A LOT, and most of it is stuff that drunk partygoers in a club at night could never ever ever understand, sadly…..even if you played it to them in the daytime!!!!

Q: is there an album / 45 that you are trying to find, unsuccessfully?
A: My list is ongoing, and I know them when I see them. I cast my net wide, so specifics are kind of besides the point. I’d like to find a huge stash of cheap original UK 70s pressings on the Vertigo label, for one…..

Q: Do you have any favorite album cover?
A: Listen man, you have to understand that in dealing with people like me, who have long ago crossed the limit that “normal” people stop at in relation to the absorption and understanding of music, questions like “favorite album/artist/genre/label/cover/etc” are utter BULLSHIT. People less consumed with music can easily give you those answers, but me (and those of my tribe) simply cannot, and that’s just the way it is……

Q: Any particular painters/ photographers/ illustrators?
A: Here’s one I can think of: Reid Miles, who did the classic Blue Note covers and designs….

Q: Dirtiest, sexiest , filthiest album cover you know or own?
A: This one makes me laugh. Big Black – “Songs About Fucking” It’s hilarious! Don’t even care so much for the record, just love that cover. I always thought “Thank You Baby” by The Stylistics has a really tastefully sexy cover shot by Si Chi Ko.

Well folks, I hope you learned a thing or two. I know I did. first of, Greg is a funny guy, and honest, and has a pretty “in your face” attitude. I like it and appreciate it. sorry for the bullshit questions, and thanks for the straight answers.

here are some of the stuff that was playing while we were shooting photos, straight from the Caz academy for advanced non-bullshit music. read & learn:

MARCOS VALLE “Garra” (Odeon/EMI, 1971)

The best album by one of my all-time favorite artists, and sheer pop perfection. The songwriting, arrangements, production values, the whole flow of it….sheer delight. Shades of Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach, Paul McCartney, soul music, film soundtrack scores and (needless to say) the whole Jobim/bossa heritage he so proudly carries. The title track by itself is two minutes and 58 seconds of heaven I will NEVER tire of hearing all the time.

BIRGIT LYSTAGER “Ready To Meet You” (Artist, 1970)

A Danish pop gem that sounds like what would happen if Astrud Gilberto, Karen Carpenter and Joni Mitchell were combined and put in the studio with Burt Bacharach (him again!). Intelligent, complex songs, breathtaking arrangements, accompaniment from some of Copenhagen’s finest jazz musicians, and if all that weren’t enough, the lovely Birgit goes the extra mile and poses nude on the beautiful gatefold sleeve! This one was incredibly difficult to get a hold of, as you can imagine…..

EARL COLEMAN & THE LATIN LOVE-IN (Worthy, 1967)

Great Latin soul/boogaloo record out of Brooklyn, a tough local band of young Latino players led by an African-American pianist. Super-rare and well worth the search. Lots of fun, as titles like “Sex Drive In D Major” and “Hippy Heaven” suggest!
and I would add… is that Karem Abdoul Jabaar on the cover? (E)

TODD RUNDGREN “Todd” (Bearsville, 1974)

Endlessly fascinating double-LP opus from one of my enduring heroes, the great Todd! Recorded over the summer of 1973 (but only released six months later), this brilliant album goes from electronic experiments far ahead of their time to pounding rockers to perfect pop to spacy philosophical ruminations to Todd’s trademark impish sense of humor. Coming off several huge radio hits with a mainstream audience expecting more of same, this (and its immediate predecessor “A Wizard, A True Star,” perhaps even more of a masterpiece) was too brave and individualistic by far, and Mr. Rundgren forfeited his chance to be a bigger superstar than contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen or Elton John. To compensate, though, his enormous (and still growing!) body of work is a vast garden of delights that is still being discovered and influencing bands like Daft Punk and Hot Chip among many others.
CRAVO & CANELA “Preço De Cada Um” (Pesquisa, 1977)

One of the most mysteriously rare albums in the Brazilian collecting game, and a warm, lovely, grooving example of MPB in the mid-to-late 70s, before the 80s ruined everything. Solid four-piece band fronted by two lovely female vocalists, great material ranging from vintage Noel Rosa to latter-day originals by special guest Sivuca, all delivered with expertise and conviction. Special thanks to the Japanese for FINALLY making this record available again, however briefly!

VAMPYROS LESBOS Soundtrack (Motel Records)

Late 60s German soundtrack from a series of soft-porn films starring the late Soledad Miranda, alternately creepy, groovy, Gothic, funky, and definitely mysterious. This reissue is wonderfully annotated with a cool poster, and the hole in the center of the vinyl is placed in a very, ummm….”strategic” place (I’ll say no more!!!).


BOBBY HUTCHERSON “Happenings” (Blue Note, 1966)

Hard to pick a favorite Hutch LP, and in fact there are several I like even better than this one, but it has a great cover. But having said that, this is a PHENOMENALLY great album and recognized as one of his great classics. Great quartet session with Herbie Hancock, beautifully turned out and with great performances from all involved. Includes the first-ever cover version of the Hancock modern jazz standard “Maiden Voyage.”

*** If you wanna participate in this project, please email me at: dustandgrooves@gmail.com

many more to come…
Eilon

Galaxias no Canal Brasil

01/10/2014
Uncategorized

 

Os livros podem mudar a vida de uma pessoa? Essa é a principal questão levantada pelo documentário dirigido por Fabiano Maciel. As lentes apresentam projetos que incentivam o hábito de ler em regiões periféricas do país. O longa-metragem é fruto do edital lançado pela RioFilme em parceria com o Canal Brasil, que assina a coprodução com a República Pureza.

O filme dá início à saga literária através dos depoimentos de Luis Amorim, um açougueiro brasiliense responsável por também “disseminar” a leitura entre clientes e funcionários. A partir daí, conhecemos outros personagens interessantes, como o borracheiro mineiro Marcos Túlio; os agentes culturais Kcal Gomes, de Pernambuco, e Márcia Licá, de São Paulo; e Otávio Jr., fundador da biblioteca comunitária do Morro do Alemão, no Rio de Janeiro.

Dentre os depoimentos, ganha destaque a história de Evando dos Santos e sua mulher, Maria José. Alfabetizado durante a fase adulta, ele é o responsável por um acervo de mais de 57 mil livros alocados em sua própria casa, enquanto a esposa revela estar saturada com o excesso de “letras” ao redor.

As narrativas são costuradas por relatos de personalidades já reconhecidas no ambiente literário, como o ensaísta José Miguel Wisnik; o roteirista Marçal Aquino; o artista plástico Nuno Ramos; a crítica Maria Rita Kehl; o escritor Luiz Ruffato e o cronista norte-americano Gay Talese, dentre outros.

Quarta, dia 01/10, às 22h e quinta, dia 02/10, às 19h.

álbum, postal e sampler – vik muniz @ nara roesler, rio

10/09/2014
Uncategorized

texto que escrevi para a exposição Álbum, de Vik Muniz que inaugurou ontem na Galeria Nara Roesler, Rio de Janeiro.

vik_muniz_album_nara_roesler

Há uma ótima loja de queijos na First Avenue, à qual eu vou com uma frequência razoável, o suficiente para notar que a pessoa atrás do balcão nunca expõe um queijo sem antes cortar um oitavo dele. Quando perguntei por que ele fazia isso, ele respondeu bruscamente: “É óbvio… Se eu não cortar, ele não se parece um queijo.” 
Vik Muniz (Extrato do texto “Surface Tension”, originalmente publicado em Parkett, No. 46, 1996)

Visita ao ateliê do Brooklyn – Na antessala do ateliê, o verso do chassi da Mona Lisa repousa no canto; ao lado, uma pequena foto do próprio Vik sozinho no Louvre segurando o original de Leonardo da Vinci. Sobre um pedestal branco há outra Mona Lisa, a obra chama-se Souvenir Gioconda, do artista italiano Fabio Viale. É uma escultura que parece feita de pequenas bolinhas de isopor, mas, na verdade, foi toda esculpida em um único bloco de mármore. Passo os olhos pelos livros da enorme estante e separo os que falam sobre a obra de Vik. No pequenino Natura Pictrix – Interviews and Essays on Photography descubro o texto “Mirrors; Or, How to steal a masterpiece” em que Vik descreve uma fila sem fim de pessoas com câmeras coladas ao rosto, tirando fotos da Mona Lisa de Leonardo. “Como num teste oftalmológico, cada fotografia vai avaliar a relação entre o fotógrafo e o objeto. Centenas de milhares de fotografias são feitas aqui todo o ano e, de fato, o objeto sorri diferentemente em cada uma delas. Por causa do reflexo do vidro protetor, é impossível fotografar a Mona Lisa sem se fotografar a si mesmo. Uma impossibilidade que acaba criando a forma mais bizarra de autorretrato.”

Erika abre a porta do ateliê e me deparo com pilhas de fotos espalhadas pelo chão e sobre as mesas. São milhares de fotos de álbuns de família e cartões postais que Vik vem comprando nos últimos anos em leilões online. Um bebê sorridente, a escola, a sala de aula, uma criança de calça curta, a primeira comunhão, o acampamento, a namoradinha, a casa, o carro novo, uma mulher sentada num canhão, outra observando a paisagem, um pescador com vara e peixe. Por um instante todas as famílias me parecem iguais. Todo álbum se parece com o próximo. O ritmo da vida daquelas pessoas era lento.

Penso na comunicação entre os homens por meio de imagens e nas ideias de Décio Pignatari. No desaparecimento da foto de papel, na desmaterialização da imagem e do som. Na minha coleção de CDs que não tocam mais, lojas de discos desaparecendo pelo planeta, a volta da onda do vinil, o colecionador Zero Freitas e sua obsessão. As livrarias fechando suas portas, o fim do livro, do jornal, da revista. As redes sociais. Tudo hoje é informação digital o tempo todo. Tudo vai desaparecer. Os objetos/coisas já falam entre si. A vida é veloz.

Vik entra pelo Skype e começamos uma conversa. As fotos estavam indo para o lixo e, agora, cada uma delas será digitalizada e catalogada num banco de dados de acordo com suas características e procedência. Depois, numa pequena folha de papel, centenas de pedaços de fotos são colados como num mosaico, reconstruindo as imagens que caminhavam para o desaparecimento. É um trabalho manual, Vik gasta quase 30 dias para construir cada imagem, organizando pacientemente áreas de cor no plano. Nas paredes do ateliê estão as 11 grandes fotos da exposição. São imagens ao mesmo tempo toscas e doces, atraentes e agressivas. “A colagem não é impecavelmente realizada, há uma mão brasileira por trás, os chineses certamente fariam melhor”, diz Vik. A menina da banda do colégio, o bondinho, o homem no camelo, o Coliseu, o casal abraçado, duas girafas, a bicicleta nova, o pescador, a mulher no deserto, a Estátua da Liberdade, a praia. Tudo está carregado de afeto. O álbum e o postal. Dois momentos da história da fotografia onde imagens invadiram a vida das pessoas de forma contundente. Num álbum, a família organizava sua história, documentava seus momentos, depositava sentimentos. No postal, comunicávamos nosso deslocamento no espaço (cheguei), a conquista de um território (estou aqui) e também sentimentos (sinto saudades).

O nascimento da obra de Vik se dá simultaneamente à popularização do sampler na música pop, eletrônica e hip hop dos 80/90. O sampler é um gravador eletrônico que armazena trechos de áudio para serem reproduzidos e/ou reprocessados, criando novas e complexas melodias, padrões rítmicos ou efeitos. Volto para casa ouvindo Paul’s Boutique dos Beastie Boys, 3 Feet High and Rising do De La Soul e Endtroducing do Dj Shadow (o primeiro disco inteiramente feito com pedaços de outras músicas). Imagens e sons invadem a cabeça. As fotos do álbum de Vik são quebradas, feitas de pequenas partes. Fragmentos de informação vibrando na superfície. Colcha de retalhos digitais. Um jogo de cortar e colar em que a leitura da imagem se dá por meio da parte e do todo. Cut and paste.

Penso na folha e na floresta. Na conexão direta entre a obra de Vik e o pop de Warhol. Não há antropofagia no sampler de Vik, ele procura seus iguais no arquivo da cultura, captura e gera um novo elemento no acúmulo das coisas do mundo. Lembro do último encontro com o médico dos meus olhos e ele explicando “quem vê é o cérebro, o olho recebe a luz que se transforma em impulso elétrico, que é levado para o cérebro pelo nervo ótico e lá vira imagem.” Ao recriar imagens com as quais temos enorme intimidade, Vik nos joga dentro delas. Agora eu também sou um pedaço. Uma pequena parte. Todos somos iguais e diferentes.

Raul Mourão, setembro de 2014

Arnaldo Antunes @ Laura Marsiaj

29/08/2014
Uncategorized

arnaldo_antunes_laura_marsiaj

Arnaldo Antunes: O INTERNO EXTERIOR

4 de setembro de 2014 › 11 de outubro de 2014

Galeria

Arnaldo Antunes

Fotografando letras, palavras e frases soltas em diversas cidades, desde o início dos anos 90, Arnaldo foi compondo um vocabulário a partir do qual criou verdadeiros enredos analógicos, para expressar questões interiores com dizeres tirados do mundo exterior.

As fotos foram animadas em stop motion e, além de se alternarem em diversos ritmos, associam-se em ocorrências simultâneas sempre diversas.

A curadoria é de Daniel Rangel.

Carlito Carvalhosa @ NARA ROESLER SP

27/08/2014
Uncategorized

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Carlito Carvalhosa faz sua primeira individual na Galeria Nara Roesler a partir de 30 de agosto, trazendo uma megainstalação concebida especialmente para o espaço da galeria.

A obra consiste na suspensão de antigos postes de luz de madeira atravessando o espaço expositivo, mesclados a peças de vidro espalhadas pelo chão. Em alguns pontos, os troncos cruzam as paredes, que ajudam a sustentá-los no ar; em outros, são as intersecções entre dois ou mais deles que os mantêm no alto.

Na sala principal figuram os grandes artefatos de madeira, acompanhados de copos e lâmpadas fluorescentes, aqui acoplados ao fundo da sala. É como se o chão tivesse sido suspenso para a parede. Esse espaço expositivo inclui ainda cerca de 16 desenhos de pequenas dimensões criados como um “entalhe” na tinta azul. Na parte dianteira da galeria, a vitrine é tomada pelos copos e lâmpadas, dessa vez no chão e “atravessando” o vidro rumo à rua.

o conceito por trás da obra

Atravessando o cubo branco, os postes – peças inutilizadas de mobiliário urbano – são ressignificadas e ressignificam o local em que se inserem. Trazem para dentro da galeria o universo cotidiano constituído por elementos que são ao mesmo tempo natureza (toras de madeira) e ação humana (postes de luz). Em seu estado de suspensão no ambiente, que conserva e evidencia atos de propósito estético, esses troncos parecem eternizar o movimento pelo qual a cultura evolui do princípio selvagem para a complexidade do conglomerado criado pelo ser humano.

Tudo na instalação leva à percepção da atividade humana. Inclusive sua montagem, que não só mantém nos troncos os antigos anéis de metal da extremidade como também deixa visíveis as grandes porcas e parafusos que prendem as braçadeiras das junções. A matéria parece não sofrer ação da gravidade. A galeria passa então a ser a guardiã da suspensão no tempo e no espaço da natureza convertida em cultura. E nisso se configura seu caráter de arte: na articulação dos dois pólos que constituem o ser humano e na impressão de eternização do transitório.

Os copos e as lâmpadas espalhados pelo chão emprestam uma sensação de fragilidade à aparência da queda iminente, mas encenada de forma estática, como se pudessem se quebrar a qualquer momento. A ação da matéria natural (o tronco de madeira) se sobrepõe à cultura (o vidro trabalhado pelo homem), mostrando a suscetibilidade desta.

Como define o historiador da arte Lorenzo Mammi, “certamente, o paradoxo da imobilidade do transitório não é próprio apenas do trabalho de Carvalhosa, mas de toda a arte, se não de toda forma. Toda formalização é um ato de soberba, natural é desfazer-se. Mas nas obras de Carvalhosa a questão parece adquirir uma inquietude mais intensa, que a torna central. Não há muitos trabalhos de outros artistas em que fique tão evidente que formalizar é estancar uma matéria que escoa, estabelecer um corte horizontal numa descida lenta, mas impossível de se deter para sempre. O trabalho de Carlito Carvalhosa fala da convivência desconfortável de tempo e eternidade.”

Marcos Chaves @ Nara Roesler, Rio

26/08/2014
Uncategorized

marcos_chaves_academia

Para marcar a abertura do novo espaço no Rio, o carioca Marcos Chaves concebeu duas instalações que homenageiam a sua cidade natal. A primeira – inspirada nas academias de ginástica construídas ao ar livre, criadas de forma espontânea e gerenciadas em modelo de cooperativa – traz esculturas construídas com cimento, tubos de ferros, madeira e tirantes. 

Batizada de Academia – terminologia utilizada em todo o mundo para definir as instituições dedicadas à cultura e ao pensamento, mas que no Brasil é mais comumente usada para designar ginásios de educação física –, a obra reverencia os habitantes que, com criatividade e senso de coletividade, usufruem da paisagem e da vida ao livre da cidade, dividindo de maneira saudável o bem estar físico. Na abertura da mostra, sediada no térreo da casa, o artista apresentará uma performance¸ em que personagens cariocas farão séries de treino físico com os objetos da instalação.

“As duas instituições mais respeitadas no Rio de Janeiro são as escolas e as academias… de samba e de ginástica, respectivamente”, brinca o artista. 

O artista também apresenta a série inédita de fotografias Sugar Loafer, uma espécie de crônica concebida a partir de cenas cotidianas da cidade que dividem sempre um ‘personagem’ em comum: o Pão de Açúcar. Como um flâneur contemporâneo, aparelhado com uma câmera e uma bicicleta, o artista capturou em seus percursos imagens bem humoradas, ora surreais, ora com rigor geométrico, de situações tipicamente cariocas.

Rodrigo Braga @ SESC Belenzinho

26/08/2014
Uncategorized

rodrigo braga agricultura da imagem

“Faço Tucunarés flutuarem, aves se acumularem, peixes virarem minerais ou vegetais, troco habitats, construo esconderijos, manipulo fogos e animais” – frase do artista Rodrigo Braga, que a partir do dia 3 de setembro irá inaugurar sua maior exposição individual, “Agricultura da imagem”, no Sesc Belenzinho.

Com idealização do ICCo e realização do Sesc, a mostra reúne obras produzidas nos últimos cinco anos deste “fotógrafo agricultor”, que semeia e constrói suas imagens a partir de ideias previamente desenvolvidas. “Rodrigo possui olhos e metodologia de um pesquisador de campo. Porém, sua prática artística desloca elementos naturais de seu formato e sentidos originais”, afirma Daniel Rangel, curador da mostra e diretor artístico do ICCo. “Agricultura da imagem” reúne 30 fotografias, três vídeos e um espaço intitulado “gabinete-instalação” – que possui desenhos, livros, mapas e objetos relacionados ao processo do artista.

Todas as obras foram realizadas em três estados brasileiros visceralmente conectados à vida do artista: Amazonas, Pernambuco e Rio de Janeiro. Rodrigo explorou a visualidade, biomas e culturas da floresta amazônica, praias e semiáridos pernambucanos e mata atlântica carioca para criar imagens e ações que serão apresentadas pela primeira vez ao público.

Agricultura da imagem
Abertura para convidados: 3 de setembro
Visitação: 4 de setembro a 30 de novembro de 2014
Terça a sábado, das 10 às 21h | domingo e feriados, das 10h às 19h30
Local: Sesc Belenzinho – R.Padre Adelino, 1000, São Paulo, SP