Alex Olson, Proposal 5, 2012
Oil on linen, 61 x 43 in.

Alex Olson in an interview on the Studio Sessions blog for the Walker’s exhibition Painter Painter:

The second quality is its extensive history. It’s impossible to make a mark at this point that doesn’t come with a historical referent, but this is actually a huge benefit. You can pull from art history’s enormous catalogue and build off of a past meaning, re-situating it in the present toward a different end. In doing so, it’s important to understand how a specific mark or idea functioned in the past versus now, and to consider what using it now would mean, but this creates even richer possibilities to choose from.

More interviews from the show are available here.

Boswell Bay, Alaska White Alice site, tropospheric scatter antenna and feeder

Before satellites were invented, the USAF used to send messages beyond the horizon by bouncing radio waves off the troposphere. These “White Alice” antennas were left around Alaska when the system was obsoleted by rockets.

Paul Sietsema, Untitled Mule, 2010
Ink and enamel on paper in artist’s frame, 16 x 12 1/2 inches

George Macunias, Stomach Anatomy Apron, 1967/1973
Silkscreened apron

Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Remy Zaugg
Architectural Design v.61 n.92 1991

Nicholas Gottlund, Make Ready
April 18 – May 1, 2013 at Karma

For each book on display, there is a companion piece. The works in this exhibition both extrapolate upon the bound book as well as transform their materials by means of folding, cutting, exposing and overprinting – all methods that are routinely used in the production of the book. Through the manipulation of the method, the material, the tool and the reference, attention is brought back to the detail. It is not the detail–ing as in the addition of embellishment or of a final once over, but the inherent palpable quality of process made evident.

Cover from the catalog to the 1975 Video Art show at the ICA. This show is the starting point for Primary Information’s tenure at the ICA as part of the Excursus series. Excursus brings artists and designers into the ICA archive for new programming and publications.

From the Tacuinum Sanitatis.

Stan VanDerBeek, Breathdeath, 1963
Animation Frame, Ink on paper, 12 3/4 x 9 1/4 in

Stan VanDerBeek, Untitled (Billboard Collage), 1978-1983
Animation frame / Collage on paper, 12 3/8 x 13 3/8 in

Anoka Faruqee, 2012P-46, 2012
Acrylic on linen on panel, 22½ × 20½ inches

Anoka Faruqee’s recent paintings of moire patterns are reminiscent of Bridget Riley and other 1960’s op artists, but her process, involving custom-made trowels that rake the paint like “sand in a Zen garden”, reference a physicality where others sought a flay perfection.

From an interview with Liena Vayzman in X-TRA:

Some clues about the process can be found in the finished works, but yes, I realize now that most viewers have no idea how these objects are made. At a certain point, I stopped taping the sides of the painting, in order to reveal the intense ooze of paint dripping from the gestural pulls, in contradiction to the glass smooth surfaces, as a way to let people into the messiness of the process. The peripheries are becoming more and more significant, because I want my paintings to be read, at least partially, as a residue of the performance of painting it.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any Thylacinidae content on this blog and, let’s be honest, we usually stick to the Thylacinus genus.

From this amazing blog Paleoillustration (“Mostly paleoart, but sometimes I post speculative biology too.”):

The murderous marsupial lion, from thylakos (pouch-lion), carnifex (murderer, tormentor, butcher) was a large, carnivorous marsupial mammal that lived in Australia from the early to late Pleistocene Era. Despite its name, it wasn’t part of the cat family, but was more closely related to wombats. it was one of the apex predators at its time, and probably fed on early man