Author: Nolwenn Vigneron

Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The fifth issue explores how Hunter-Gatherer societies live in accordance with Nature and ephemeral elements.

Often one discovers ease and creativity in adapting to the perpetual flux of Nature – the shift of light densities from day to night, season to season; the affected air as the natural consequence of altitude, temperature, and vegetation inspired by nomadic values prevalent in hunter-gatherer societies, this issue reveals our instinctual habits in preconditioned light and air, and the experience of transition. Here, nights are celebrated in darkness (with just a little fire) and summers are spent in sweat with beasts roaring here and there…

publisher/editor/designer ~ charwei tsai
editors ~ kelly carmena, lesley ma, and sabrina shaffer
contributors ~ hisham bharoocha, mark borthwick, brian
chippendale, john giorno, fritz haeg, jungil hong, baptiste
ibar, mateo lópez, papabubble, rosario lópez parra,
thiago rocha pitta, cristina rodriguez, dana schutz, su-mei tse, and grigoris tsolakis.

cover ~ mark borthwick, joey an fin
copyright ~ lovely daze, summer 2008
printed in my beloved formosa

CONTRIBUTORS

HISHAM BHAROOCHA is an artist and musician born in Nidata, Japan, and is now based in New York. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. Hisham was part of the Providence based bands Lightning Bolt and Black Dice and currently formed a solo band, Soft Circle. He was one of the core organizers and drummers at Boredom 77 on July 7th, 2007 at Brooklyn Bridge Park. His artworks have been exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2005, 2006); John Connelly Presents, New York (2006); De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands (2007), and Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece (2007) and he recently co-curated a photo exhibition at Mountain Fold, New York (2008).

MARK BORTHWICK an some`time`s will shine….. last seen onna pilgrimage leav`in spain with donkey in hand, travel`in upon a journey opper`tune`ing no`where`s land introduce`ing tal`is`man`s lover`s hand inna gypsy`s land…

KELLY CARMENA lives and works in New York City.

BRIAN CHIPPENDALE stems from Providence RI, mixing time between drawing and playing drums in rock band Lightning Bolt and solo as Black Pus. In the spring he also spends a lot of time chasing leaks around with buckets before they hit him in the head. He is not growing any leeks this year.

JOHN GIORNO was born in 1936 in New York. He is a poet and performance artist. He founded the artist collective Giorno Poetry Systems and coined its mass communication experiment Dial-A-Poem. He was the prominent subject of Andy Warhol’s film, Sleep. Currently, he also works as an AIDS activist and fundraiser.

FRITZ HAEG like a system of crop rotation, the artist works between his architecture & design practice Fritz Haeg Studio (though the currently preferred clients are animals), the happenings & gatherings of Sundown Salon (now Sundown Schoolhouse), the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates) and his role as an educator. He has produced projects and exhibited works at the Tate Modern; the Whitney Museum of American Art; Mass MoCA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Wattis Institute; the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Maastricht; and the MAK Center, Los Angeles, among other institutions. His first book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, is published by Metropolis Books and distributed by D.A.P.

www.fritzhaeg.com

JUNGIL HONG aka “jhonni glug” must eat burdock to pull burdock from the ground.

BAPTISTE IBAR was born in France in 1977. He immigrated to the US at the age of seven and attended Rhode Island School of Design where he received a BFA in Painting in 2000.

In 2006, Baptiste completed a set of twelve paintings (the disasterology calendar) to be featured in Michel Gondry’s feature film, The Science of Sleep. Ibar’s paintings are the product of a visionary visual sensibility coupled with a Blakean conception of history. His works are in private collections worldwide.

www.baptisteibar.com

MATEO LOPEZ was born in 1978. He earned his degree in Fine Arts at Los Andes University in Bogotá. He has had solo exhibitions in Bogotá and Mexico City, and was recently awarded first prize at this year’s Cuenca Biennale in Ecuador. His work was recently shown at the MAMBA (Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires) as part of the exhibition Sincronias, and at Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation’s Interrogating Systems: 2008 Grants and Commissions Exhibition. Currently, he is also commissioned to work on a book of his works for the Triennal Poligrafica de San Juan, Puerto Rico.

LESLEY MA once studied hunter-gatherer societies and the human-animal relationship presented in children’s literature. She is glad that this issue of Lovely Daze made her think about that period of her life and knowing that the random knowledge she thought she would never use again is actually quite worth revisiting. This time through art.

PAPABUBBLE was born in Barcelona in 2003 and has since created candy-making homes in Tokyo, Amsterdam, and New York City.

www.papabubble.com

ROSARIO LOPEZ PARRA is an artist based in Bogotá and is currently a professor in sculpture at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She received an MFA in 1997 from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Her works have been exhibited at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Casas Riegner Gallery, Bogotá, Museum of Modern Art, Bogotá, and Galeria Nara Roesler, Sao Paulo.

www.rosariolopez.info

THIAGO ROCHA PITTA was born in 1980 in Tiradentes MG Brazil. He is now based in Rio de Janeiro where he has lived and worked since 1999. He began his formation as an artist in his childhood with his father who was also an artist, Fernando Pitta (1952-2006).

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombia native who forever travels from place to place working as an artist and designer. She received a BFA in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and furthered her studies at Parsons School of Design. She is currently living in Miami Florida where she co-founded the art and design collective by_number.

DANA SCHUTZ was born in 1976 in Livonia, Michigan and received an MFA in 2002 from Columbia University. She has had solo exhibitions at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas. Her work has also been featured in exhibitions at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Hermitage, St Petersburg; the Royal Academy of Art, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

SABRINA SHAFFER is living the better part of this year at the beach where she spent her childhood summers. She hugs and kisses her mother everyday, misses her father and her brother Ryan while they are working overseas, and thinks of Charwei when collecting seashells.

www.otabo.com

www.christopherbevans.com

CHARWEI TSAI is caught romanticizing in Paris again today. (And the mice-free and light-flooding studio only enhances this old habit of hers.)

www.charwei.com

SU-MEI TSE is an artist based in Luxembourg. She uses various media (videos, photographs, installations, objects…) in function of the core idea she wants to express. Sound, rhythm, and music are also important components in her work, which are characterized by a placing in suspension, moments of silence, and an invitation to a degree of introspection. Su-Mei’s work has recently been exhibited at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, at Beaumontpublic in Luxembourg and MOCA Taipei with her friend Lee Mingwei. For 2009, she is preparing a show for Contemporary Art Center of Mito in Japan and working out a project for the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston. She is a big fan of Lovely Daze and is happy to participate in this current issue!

GRIGORIS TSOLAKIS was born in Greece in 1981 and raised in Belgium. He moved back to Greece in 2004 where he currently studies graphic design.

~ special thanks to aa, aaron, abby, alba + family, alessandra, alex h, ama, ana calle, angela l, angelita + family, anna j, aoi, baptiste, barbie, bebe, boris, brian c, cai+hh+studio, cat k, catalina, chris liu, cristina, dad, dimitrios, doggie, duke, dunbar, eugene, federico, fiona, fritz, gilles, godmother, grace, grandma, grigoris, heather, herve, hisham, irene, james, jason, jason b, jasper, jc, jean dl, jean-lou, jenn+richard, joanna c, john g, julia c, jung, keisuke, kelly, kelly ma, leif, leila, lesley, lili, linda, lots of aunts+uncles+cousins, lumi, mandy, mari, mark p, mateo, max, mika + howie, mingwei, mom, naoto, nicolas, nigel, pat, printed matter, rachel, rene, roni, ronnie, rosario, ryan s, sabrina + family, sarah, shunyi, sis, suhanya, su-mei, taka, terresa, thiago, tina, tony b, veronique, vicson, yonatan, yulin jie, and will shine. (to honor h-g egalitarian attitudes, names are listed alphabetically.)

Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The fourth issue explores the ways in which Numbers influence us as value systems such as time, distance, temperature, size, money, population, and religion.

There is an Arabian saying – Once you start counting, you can never stop. I say, spare me a moment where the clockmaker loses his fingers.

publisher/editor/designer ~ charwei tsai editors ~ kelly carmena, lesley ma, and sabrina shaffer contributors ~ vito acconci, cory arcangel, hisham bharoocha, james burke, crystal understanding, shilpa gupta, jennifer wen ma, yoko ono, cristina rodriguez, fiona ryan, max schumann, mika tajima, and joël tettamanti
cover ~ charwei tsai, étrangère,
2007 copyright ~ lovely daze, fall/winter 2007

CONTRIBUTORS

VITO ACCONCI is a Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based writer, artist, and architect. A poet of the New York School in the early and mid1960s, he moved toward performance, sound, and video work by the end of the decade. Positioning his own body as the simultaneous subject and object of the work, Acconci’s early videotapes took advantage of the medium’s self-reflexive potential in mediating his own and the viewer’s attention. Since the late ’70s, Acconci has designed architectural and installation works for public spaces.

www.acconci.com

CORY ARCANGEL is a computer artist whose work is concerned with technology’s relationship to culture and the creative process. He is also a founding member of BEIGE, a group of computer programmers and enthusiasts who recycle obsolete computers and video game systems to make art and music, and a member of RSG (Radical Software Group). Arcangel’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

HISHAM BHAROOCHA is an artist and musician born in Nidata, Japan, and is currently based in New York. He graduated from RISD in 1998. His work has been exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2005, 2006); John Connelly Presents, New York (2006); De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands (2007), and Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece (2007). Hisham was part of the Providence based bands Lightning Bolt and Black Dice and currently formed a solo band, Soft Circle.

JAMES BURKE was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He received a degree in Conservation Biology from the College of Santa Fe. He is an amateur myrmecologist and an avid handball player. For the past two years, he has been working on a project entitled The Fertile Hammock, a series of 48 drawings. Some of his most important influences include Don Hertzfeldt, Christian Marclay, and Jaromir Jagr. Between April and November 2007, James will be developing beekeeping programs in remote northern villages of Sierra Leone. He plans to spend his free time chasing the elusive tree pangolin and making drawings inspired by Dan Chaon’s short story called “Five Forgotten Instincts,” which he has read once a week for the past year.

KELLY CARMENA lives and works in New York City.

CRYSTAL UNDERSTANDING Hello! Crystal Understanding is a two-person band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The four-song #4 for Lovely Daze is their fourth EP. Their first full-length album, Hold the Gem was released in May 2007.

SHILPA GUPTA lives and works in Mumbai, India. She studied at Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai and since then has exhibited in international institutions such as Tate Modern, London, Liverpool Biennale; ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Bose Pacia Gallery, New York. Upcoming exhibitions include the 2007 Lyon Biennale, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and at Chicago Cultural Center. Gupta initiated the Aar Paar (a public art exchange project between India and Pakistan), as well as the Video Art Road Show (screenings of video art on streets in Mumbai and Delhi). She is also the recipient of the Transmediale 2004 Award in Berlin and the Leonardo Global Crossings Award in 2005.

www.flyinthe.net

JENNIFER WEN MA is currently looking for a web designer for her website. Please take a look at www.littlemeat.net and let her know if you or someone you know is interested in working on it.

LESLEY MA is thankful for the things she learned this summer: the stimulation of solitude, the sensation of figs, French (reprise), pesto, hummus, new friendships, simple pleasures, and generosity.

YOKO ONO is an artist working and living in New York. She earned a degree in philosophy from Tokyo’s Gakushuin University and in music at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Ono has embraced a wide range of media, defying traditional boundaries and creating new forms of artistic expression including language works, such as instruction pieces and scores, film and video, music, and performance art. Her most recent albums include: Yes, I am a Witch, and Open Your Box.

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian artist and designer who recently relocated to Miami after spending two years in New York. She received a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and Fashion Design at Parsons the New School for Design. She is currently focusing on developing her drawings.

FIONA RYAN is currently living in New York. She plans on making a lot of candy in the near future and hopes to find herself off the grid after that. She is excited by what she has found on the floor in foreign open-air markets and she was once paralyzed by a sea urchin. Few things frighten her more than the loss of survival and humor.

www.papabubble.com

SABRINA SHAFFER is overjoyed to be back in the city with friends, preparing for her initiation into The KDU, and eagerly awaiting Charwei’s return to New York.

www.otabo.com

www.christopherbevans.com

MAX SCHUMANN is an art worker who lives and works in New York City. He has been working at Printed Matter since 1989 where he is Associate Director. Schumann is currently represented by Taxter and Spengemann.

MIKA TAJIMA was born in 1975 in Los Angeles, California, and currently lives and works in New York. Mika received her dual B.A. degree in Fine Art and East Asian Studies at Bryn Mawr College in 1997. She later attended Columbia University School of the Arts and received her MFA in 2003. Since then she has been exhibiting widely at institutions such as the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art (New York, NY), United Bamboo (Tokyo, Japan), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI), Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo, Norway), PS1 Contemporary Art Center (LIC, NY), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), among many others.

www.mikatajima.com

JOËL TETTAMANTI is a Swiss photographer, traveler, and observer. He travels to places as far away and remote as Greenland and Lesotho or high up into the mountains. He is the one who sees, what others will only realize once his images appear on magazine pages or gallery walls.

www.tettamanti.ch

CHARWEI TSAI misses the East Village, her dear NYC friends, and Colombian lindas. But all the traveling helps to tame the artist’s ego and brings new curiosities such as mushroom hunting and chicken slaughtering. Another humbling event is that due to her family’s lack of creativity, their one-year-old puppy’s name is still “Go-go,” which means “doggie” in Mandarin. She hopes not to forget how to ride the pink bike when she returns to strolling in Thompkin’s Square in the fall!

www.charwei.com

~ special thanks to grandma, mom, dad, sis, keisuke, godmother, lots of aunts&uncles&cousins. sabrina, lesley, kelly, grigoris, tina, sarah, ama, angelita, ana calle, cristina, maria, catalina, barbie, bebe, irene, ronnie+duke+jason+eugene+ryan+gang, fabrizio, yulin jie, jc, mingwei, su-mei, jean-lou, kelly ma, shilpa, aude, andy, yoko, vito, ned, studio, cory, joël, jason, chris liu, yonatan, alex, shunyi, nigel, adam, danny, leif, pat, nat, max, hisham, naoto, linda, vicson, rene, aa, max, julian, justin, rachel, james, fiona, cat, dunbar, aaron, sunny, crystal understanding, printed matter, mika + howie, dimitrios, bettina, victoria, jenn+richard, johanna, xin zhen, amy, ekovaruhuset, cai+studio, taipei lai lai sheraton, doggie, and of course, most of all, and again, all the lovely contributors!

Lovely Daze Issue #3: When I Am Alone, Everything Is So Surreal, revisits André Breton’s almost-century-old Surrealist Manifesto* with a collection of artists’ writings and artworks.

*In the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, Breton defined the term surrealism as: Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Publisher/Editor/Designer ~ Charwei Tsai
Editors ~ Kelly Carmena, Lesley Ma,
and Sabrina Shaffer
Contributors ~ Rita Ackermann, AA Bronson,
Santiago Cucullu, David Kennedy-Cutler,
Andrea Galvani, N.s. Harsha, Federico Herrero,
James Hoff, Jungil Hong, Lee Mingwei,
Justin Lowe, Jean-Lou Majerus,
Cristina Rodriguez, Julian Seidl,
Eyeam Soreel, and Su-mei Tse
Cover ~ Andrea Galvani,
la morte di un’immagine #5, 2005
copyright ~ lovely daze, fall 2006

CONTRIBUTORS

RITA ACKERMANN was born in Budapest. She immigrated to the US for an education in pop in 1991 and has lived and worked in New York since.

AA BRONSON lived and worked as one of the three artists of General Idea from 1969 through 1994 when his two partners died. He now lives and works as a solo artist in New York City, and also as the Director of Printed Matter, Inc., an artists’ bookstore.

www.aabronson.com

KELLY CARMENA was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and now lives in New York City.

SANTIAGO CUCULLU was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and currently lives in Milwaukee. Recent solo exhibitions include a new project at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Group exhibitions include: the 2006 Singapore Biennale, the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

DAVID KENNEDY-CUTLER was born in Sandgate, Vermont in 1979. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

www.niceandfitgallery.com

ANDREA GALVANI was born in Verona in 1973 and currently lives and works in Bologna and Milan, Italy. He has participated in many exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including his recent retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Monfalcone, Gorizia, Italy.

N.S. HARSHA was born in 1969 and currently lives and works in Mysore, India. Recent exhibitions include Singapore Biennale; The Artist Lives and Works at The House of World Cultures, Berlin in 2006; Indian Summer at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris in 2005; Another Passage to India at Ethnography Museum, Geneva, Switzerland; Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India at Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, Asia Society, and Queens Museum of Art, New York, USA in 2004.

FEDERICO HERRERO was born in 1978 in San José, Costa Rica where he currently lives and works. He studied painting at Pratt Institute, New York from 1997-1998. He has exhibited at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice in 2006; Aichi EXPO in Japan in 2005; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist in 2002; and 49th Venice Biennale, curated by Harald Szeemann, where he received the young artist’s prize in 2001.

JAMES HOFF is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, New York.

JUNGIL HONG was born in Seoul, Korea. Jung’s favorite pastime was sneaking into a peanut field and eating raw peanuts from the ground. In 1986, the Hong family moved to suburban New Jersey, where they spent weekends fishing in a murky canal next to Highway 1. Jung currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, watching Hawks on temple tops and waiting patiently for DJ Jazzy Jess’ mixtape.

LEE MINGWEI was born in Taiwan and currently lives in New York City and San Francisco. Lee was raised in a dual Buddhist-Catholic background. As a child, he spent his summers at a Chan (the Chinese ancestor of Zen) monastery where he learned the simple power of concentrating on daily activities. Lee eventually moved to the US and attended a Benedictine high school in California. He earned a BFA in Textile Arts from the California College of Arts in 1993, and an MFA in New Genre Public Art from Yale University in 1997.

www.leemingwei.com

JUSTIN LOWE was born in 1976 and currently lives and works in New York City. He received a MFA from Columbia University in 2004 and a BFA from Hampshire College in 2000. Solo exhibitions include Helter Swelter at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York, 2006; Collecting Pictures in the Brain Hotel at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, 2005; and Waterfall at The Wrong Gallery, New York, 2004.

LESLEY MA is fascinated, distracted, and inspired by Texas.

JEAN-LOU MAJEURS is a teacher based in Luxembourg. He leads an educational program at the Luxembourg penitentiaries. He has a passion for 20th-century furniture design as well as for the arts. He often works in close collaboration with Su-Mei Tse.

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian artist and designer living in New York City. She received a BFA in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and recently finished a year of Fashion Design at Parsons New School of Design. She is currently designing textile prints, working on her drawings during her free time, and preparing for her third illustrated travel book project in India and Bhutan.

JULIAN SEIDL lives and works in New York. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2000 in Art and Photography. Selected exhibitions include: On The Beach at Printed Matter, and The Image-World at the International Center of Photography in New York.

SABRINA SHAFFER is preparing for her return to (and Charwei’s departure from) New York City.

www.otabo.com

EYEAM SOREEL is a poet, an artist, and a critic based in Urk. His work has received wide international acclaim and he has exhibited and “exposed himself” as he prefers to call it- in some of the world’s leading galleries. His last massive show, Nueva Galería Difusión, in October 2002, Bogotá, was controversially shut down by Colombian authorities after failing a supposed health inspection. “Soreel might be the last true artist to understand that in order to make the inner the outer, matter must be modified”, as Colombian author Juan Carlos Donado has said about Soreel’s work. “In what seems to be the last attempt to truly address the issue of representation (Vorstellen), Soreel immerses the spectator in a network of references that aim to underscore what I have otherwise referred to as pathology,” stated philosopher Roy Ben Shai has recently stated in the journal Cinemaesthetics (No. 17, Spring/Summer 2006). Notwithstanding the anathema cast upon him by the artistic community –his last conference in New York ended when the audience booed Soreel off the stage for his notion of Bedford Design/Entertainment – the artist has decided to publish yet one more time.

CHARWEI TSAI enjoys riding her bike around Thompkin’s Square Park where friendly neighbors and cute dogs hang out. She now looks forward to joining her first artist’s residency in Paris on New Year’s Day in 2007. And though she does not enjoy bread and cheese so much and prefers authentic Taiwanese beef noodle soup,  (especially from Lai Lai where she hangs out exclusively) she will stick faithfully to her fortuneteller’s words and remain confident that 2007 will be another amazing one.

www.charwei.com

SU-MEI TSE is an artist based in Luxembourg and Paris. She uses various media (videos, photographs, installations, objects…) in function of the core idea she wants to express. Sound, rhythm, and music are also important components in her work, which are characterized by a placing in suspension, moments of silence, and an invitation to a degree of introspection. Su-Mei’s work has recently been exhibited at Peter Blum Gallery, PS1 in New York, Albion Gallery in London, and at Casino, Forum d’Art Contemporain in Luxembourg.

~ special thanks to grandma, mom, dad, sis, keisuke, lots of aunts&uncles&cousins. sabrina, lesley, kelly, tina, sarah, ama, cristina, angelita, grigoris, faustina, terresa, marat, bebe, irene, ronnie+duke+ jason+eugene+ryan+johan+gang, lewis, juan carlos, ana maria, maria, fabrizio, yulin jie, mingwei, su-mei, jean-lou, susan, aude, andy, yoko, jason, chris liu, yonatan, alex, shunyi, nigel, adam, danny, leif, pat, and max chen. howie, whitney at altria, rita, lizzi, julien, hisham, jorge, lansing-dreiden, dan, aa, max, julian, justin, rachel, james, cat, printed matter, dimitrios, dave, nice&fit, andrea, cai+studio, federico, santi, harsha, sb2006 staff, jung, the artists’ galleries, taipei lai lai sheraton, and of course, most of all, and again, all the contributors!

Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The second issue, “Take A Stroll,” inspired by presocratic philosophers, takes a fleet away from daily routines through earth, water, and air.

Publisher/Editor/Designer ~ Charwei Tsai
Editors ~ Kelly Carmena, Lesley Ma, and Sabrina Shaffer
Copyright ~ Lovely Daze, Spring 2006

CONTRIBUTORS

AZRA AKšAMIJA is an artist and architect based in Cambridge, USA. Since the fall of 2004, she has been affiliated with MIT as a Ph.D. student in the Department for History Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture (AKPIA). She graduated from the Technical University Graz, Austria in 2001, and received her M.Arch from Princeton University, USA in 2004. Her work has been widely published and exhibited in venues such as the Generali Foundation Vienna (2002), Biennial de Valencia (2003), Graz Biennial of Media and Architecture (2003), Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (2003), and Liverpool Biennial (2004).

http://web.mit.edu/azra/www/Research.htm

JESSE ALEXANDER is co-founder of CrumleyAlexander creative agency and the sole proprietor of JeromeJerome silk scarves. His works have been exhibited at Bergdorf Goodman, Printed Matter, Gavin Brown, the nac in Portland, Youngblood Gallery in Atlanta, Saltworks in Atlanta, and a nondescript venue in Los Angeles.

DIMITRIOS ANTONITSIS was born in 1966, in Athens, Greece. He had solo exhibitions in New York, Athens, Italy, and Germany. He is a keen observer of the most insane pockets of society and himself. According to his personal trainer ‘he is the ultimate modern man, tormented by the painful awareness that his pleasures are finite, but his needs infinite.’ Every summer he curates an international art show at the old school on the island of Hydra, his favorite place on Earth.

AARON BENNETT is an art teacher in Cambridge, MA. He recommends Finn Comforts as the best overall walking shoes. They’re totally worth the money.

THE BREAD&PUPPET THEATER was founded in 1963 on New York City’s Lower East Side by Silesian-born sculptor and choreographer Peter Schumann. After a four-year residency at Goddard College, the Theater moved to their permanent home on a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont in 1974. Until 1998, an annual performance known as Our Domestic Resurrection Circus was held at the farm in late August, drawing crowds of up to 40,000. Now the Theater produces a lively ongoing summer season from June through the end of August with the help of an internship company. During the rest of the year, The Bread&Puppet Theater tours its indoor shows and massive outdoor spectacles in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. Their pageants have a broad theme-oriented appeal to large non-elite audiences. They address social, political, and environmental issues, or simply the common urgencies of our lives.

www.breadandpuppet.org

KELLY CARMENA made another rock cake today.

ALEX DODGE is a New York-based artist working in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He recently had his first solo exhibition at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in Williamsburg. His work concerns the fragility and transitory nature of personal experience, working in a wide range of materials and processes. His works are in numerous private collections in the US and Europe. He co-curated the exhibition “Greater Brooklyn” with Glen Baldridge at CRG Gallery in New York, a show devoted to unrepresented artists living and working in Brooklyn.

www.alexdodge.com

JUAN CARLOS DONADO is a Colombian writer.

SARAH DUNBAR is a student at MIT’s School of Architecture. Before coming to MIT, she collaborated with Logan Billingham on an art and music project, Cat Pants – channeling the feline mind for all to appreciate.

MAX GLEASON graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 with a BFA in sculpture. For the past three years, he has worked in New York City in the film and television industry, both in art departments and post-production capacities. He continues to work as a painter and video artist at his studio in Williamsburg. His paintings, sculptures, and video works have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Boston, and Atlanta.

www.maxgleason.com

BUTT JOHNSON does not exist. If he did, however, he might spend his days playing Nintendo on his computer and his nights listening to books on tape. He would also probably live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

www.buttjohnson.com

AUDE JOMINI is a Swiss artist who relocated to the US in 1993. She lived in Boca Raton, Florida, before attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Aude has participated in group exhibitions in West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Providence, Brooklyn, and New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work utilizes the American built environment as a starting point; to create alternate constructions within the pictorial plane; or to denounce and emphasize certain social issues arising in the spaces and landscapes inhabited.

PALI KASHI is an artist living, working, and showing in New York. She has always had a deep yearning sensation to become a gypsy.

IAN KAZANOWSKI is an Architect. Born in 1979 in the United States, currently a resident of Brooklyn, NY. His drawings are his tools to create large-scale constructed works. His work focuses on the conceptual gradation of visual interests and occupational needs.

CATALINA LEóN was born in Buenos Aires in April, 1981. She started painting in 1998, but just for a short time. She really started in 2001 and spent some time in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon Fine Arts School, IUNA in 2002 where a very close friend of hers, Mariana López, became her teacher. In 2003, she was selected to participate in the Workshop Programa de Talleres para las Artes Visuales CCRRojas – UBA / Kuitca, a grant for young visual artists, and studied with Guillermo Kuitca for two years. She currently lives and works in Buenos Aires.

MARIANA LóPEZ is an Argentinean painter who lives and works in Buenos Aires. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2005 and had solo shows in Argentina and recently in New York.

LESLEY MA looks forward to the LD2 launch, her next brunch, and working on her own zine this summer. She misses chitchatting with Charwei at the studio.

ZOë MENDELSON creates drawn and painted dreamscapes occurring on walls, inside antique furniture, and museum-style cabinets. With conflicting roots in children’s illustration, botanical and erotic drawing, her dislocated narratives play off intimations of desire with sensations of disgust and discomfort. She has exhibited widely in Europe, with recent solo shows at Galerie Schleicher + Lange, Paris (2004, 2006), Rokeby, London (2005); Millais Gallery, Southampton (2005); Mogadishni, Copenhagen (2006) and Galerie Kapinos, Berlin (2006). Zoë teaches at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design and lives in London.

www.zoemendelson.co.uk

PAPER RAD is based in Easthampton, MA, and Pittsburgh, PA. They make music, cartoons, installations, and comics, and often take their show on the road. They recently finished a book called BJ and Da Dogz, and they have a website with many cool files called “www.paperrad.org.”

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian designer/artist living in New York. She received her BFA in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently extending her studies in fashion design at the Parsons School of Design. As long as she can remember, she has obsessively kept journals and sketchbooks to record everything from people to places to ideas.

SABRINA SHAFFER continues to contribute (and greatly enjoys the conversation resulting from) her adverse evaluations of Charwei.

www.otabo.com

CHARWEI TSAI’s apartment in the East Village is still very messy even though she has a lot of time on her hands now. But the artist has a good life and looks forward to her next exhibitions on the island of Hydra in Greece where Leonard Cohen hangs out and at Singapore’s first Biennale. Her fortuneteller says that 2006 is an even luckier year than 2005. It is a little hard to believe, but it seems to be true indeed.

www.charwei.com

SU-MEI TSE is an artist based in Luxembourg and Paris. She uses different media (videos, photographs, installations, objects…) the function of the core idea she wants to express. Sound, rhythm, and music are also important components in her work, which is characterized by a placing in suspension, moments of silence, and an invitation to a degree of introspection. Su-Mei’s work has been exhibited at the 50th Venice Biennial, at the Sao Paolo Biennial, at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Casino, Forum d’Art Contemporain in Luxembourg, and BMoCA in Kinmen, Taiwan.

JORDAN WOLFSON was born in New York City on October 9th, 1980. He currently lives and works in both NYC and Berlin Germany. Recent exhibitions include the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Kunsthalle Zurich, Yvon Lambert Paris, and Uncertain States of America at the Astrup Fernely Museum of Modern Art.

www.jordanwolfson.org

ANDREW JEFFREY WRIGHT is a current and founding member of Philadelphia’s Space 1026 art space. He has a BFA in animation.

DIEGO YTURBE is an artist based in Mexico. After a long stroll around the world, he left his rigid and structured civil engineering background to explore the lawless world of art. His last work was about the hospitality that he received throughout his journey and it was exhibited at Mas Arte Contemporaneo, México City. Diego and the visual artist, Guillermo Roel, are co-founders of an experimental art center in Oaxaca, México, called “estudio 11011.” Diego is currently working on the construction of a winery at Valle de Guadalupe in Baja, California. He is not pouring concrete anymore but is sculpting a thousand square meters of experimental land walls.

Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The first issue, “a day in New York when nothing happens,” is divided into three sections based on the different mental states that make up the artists’ day: dream, reality, and daze.

Prompted by my experience living and working for the Arts in New York, Lovely Daze is the synthesis of two opposing mentalities.

The first sprouted from a joint discovery with a like-minded friend, Kelly, of a fruition of life outside of the commonly accepted notions of accomplishment and productivity. Together, we came to an empirical understanding of the subjectivity of success, and the artlessness of slaving to attain such intangible subjectivity. Both unemployed at the time, we indulged in a mentality devoted to the wonderment of our ever-present state of vitality and the goodness of those around us. The esoteric bliss that we invented led to the naming of the publication and the theme of this inaugural issue.

The second polarizing mindset, which instigated the realization of this publication, is derived from my current employed life working for an ambitious and established artist. Encouraged to produce as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and constantly being recognized or criticized for the level of my contribution to what is believed to be the greater good, (namely the contemporary art world), I am driven to become more conscious of an exoteric life outside of familiar habits and faces.

My cumulative experience, of both being an artist and working for an artist, merged two conflicting perspectives and gave rise to the goal of Lovely Daze: To provide a platform for young artists to present, firsthand, their writings and art. Rather than resorting to the prevalent trend of encouraging young artists to shock with the hopes of instant recognition, the publication aspires to explore conversely how their theories substantiate their practice, and their thoughts corporealize through writing and making art.

The selection of works is based on the artists’ ability to develop their creative practices integrally in the areas of techniques, aesthetics, and concepts… and admittedly, it is also based on my personal admiration.

Charwei Tsai
Publisher/Editor/Designer ~ Charwei Tsai
Editors ~ Kelly Carmena, Lesley Ma, and Sabrina Shaffer
Copyright ~ Lovely Daze, Autumn 2005

CONTRIBUTORS

JESSE ALEXANDER runs very fast and he runs Overtime and understands the design studio, Crumley Alexander creative agency, and Jerome Jerome apparel line all from his home in Brooklyn. He had contributed to publications including Knit Knit and Arktip and exhibited at Bergdorf Goodman, Printed Matter, Gavin Brown, the nac in Portland, Youngblood Gallery in Atlanta, and a nondescript venue in Los Angeles.

CORY ARCANGEL is a computer artist whose work is concerned with technology’s relationship to culture and the creative process. He is a founding member of BEIGE, a group of computer programmers and enthusiasts who recycle obsolete computers and video game systems to make art and music, and a member of RSG (Radical Software Group). Cory’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

www.beigerecords.com

AARON BENNETT is a musician/artist/art teacher. He is the lead singer of the band, Crystal Understanding, and is considering joining the MIT Spouse Club. Aaron loves cats.

KELLY CARMENA made rock cake today.

LYNNE CHAN is an artist living in New York. Her character JJ Chinois is a media and performance-based project whose highlights include performances at Kathy’s Nut Hut in Milwaukee, and the Cacti and Succulent Society of Tulsa.

JULIA CHIANG currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She has exhibited in New York and abroad and has been an artist-in-residence in Beijing, The Henry Street Settlement, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is currently one of The Creative Center’s artists-in-residence at Mount Sinai Hospital.

BRIAN CRUMLEY was born in Guam. Living in New York for ten years, he is a self-taught visual contortionist, bending his will around abstractions of form and function, testing the limits of his ability in a prolific variety of creative outlets. Flying high on the winds, floating in the water, and rolling through grasses, on a familiar journey to the unknown.

www.crumleynewyork.com

FLAVIA DA RIN is an Argentinean artist who lives and works in Buenos Aires. Fla studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredon Fine Arts School (IUNA) and attended the Guillermo Kuitca`s Workshop Programa de Talleres para las Artes Visuales CCRRojas – UBA / Kuitca, a grant for young visual artists from 2003 to 2005.

JUAN DONADO is a Colombian writer.

SARAH DUNBAR is an artist/designer/architect currently pursuing a master’s degree in architecture at MIT. She is also the lead singer of the band, Cat Pants.

VICSON GUEVARA is a graphic designer born in the Philippines, raised in Taiwan, and now lives in New York. He studied fine arts at UC Berkeley. He can’t live without his IPod and his dog, Tyson.

RONALD GERBER lives in Leipzig, Germany. His goal is to uncover the beliefs, realities, and truths that lie behind the masquerades that people show. For him, producing art is the best way to pursue this research.

MAX GLEASON graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 with a BFA in sculpture. For the past three years, he has worked in New York City in the film and television industry, both in art departments and post-production capacities. He continues to work as a painter and video artist at his studio in Williamsburg. His paintings, sculptures, and video works have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Boston, and Atlanta.

www.maxgleason.com

PATRICK HENRY is a 25-year-old artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. He creates emotive, representational drawings based on his experience touring with punk bands during the past three years. His experience with raw youth culture contributes to the bold, animalistic mark-making and imagery necessary to portray the complexities of being a kid in America.

BAPTISTE IBAR was born in France in 1977. He immigrated to the US at the age of seven in 1984. Attended Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in Painting in 2000. His paintings are in private collections ranging from Mexico City to New York to Paris. In 2005, Baptiste completed a set of twelve paintings to be featured in Michel Gondry’s upcoming film, The Science of Sleep.

www.baptisteibar.com

JAPANTHER is a four-year-old terror of a lo-fi rock group. Recent work with Dan Graham and his Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty puppet rock opera inspired them to make their own punk puppet opera. The resulting Dump The Body In Rikki Lake features eleven-foot puppets by Dan Luce, drawings by Devin Flynn, UFO and Sadu 907, video by Elisabeth Arkhipoff, lighting by Eugene Tsai, and puppeteering by Ken Berman and Sarah Frechette.

www.japanther.com

AUDE JOMINI is a Swiss artist who relocated to the US in 1993. She lived in Boca Raton, Florida, before attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Aude has participated in group exhibitions in West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Providence, Brooklyn, and New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work utilizes the American built environment as a starting point; to create alternate constructions within the pictorial plane; or to denounce and emphasize certain social issues arising in the spaces and landscapes inhabited.

DANNY KOHLER was born in Washington D.C. and raised along the east coast of the US. He received a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2002. He currently lives and works in Atlanta where he supplements his income as a master cheesemonger.

JUSTIN LOWE received an MFA from Columbia University in 2004 and a BFA from Hampshire College in 2000. He currently lives and works in New York. Selected exhibitions include Collecting Pictures in the Brain Hotel at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Dwellings at the Brooklyn Public Library, Passage, and Greater New York at PS1.

LESLEY MA studied the history of science at Harvard University and received her MA in museum studies at New York University. She finds pleasure in all things ephemeral.

LILIANE PHUNG is a French-Vietnamese painter who works and lives in Paris. She graduated from L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 2005 and her selected exhibitions include J’en Rêve at Fondation Cartier and The Carpenter Show at Galerie Alain le Gaillard in Paris.

BRADLEY PITTS is an artist with two degrees in aerospace engineering. He grew up in Manhattan and currently lives in Brooklyn. In January 2006 he will move to Amsterdam to start a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie.

www.bradleypitts.info

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian designer/artist living in New York. She received her BFA in industrial design from Rhode Island School of Design and is currently extending her studies in fashion design at Parsons School of Art.

JULIAN SEIDL lives and works in New York. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2000 in art and photography. Selected exhibitions include On The Beach at Printed Matter, and The Image-World at the International Center of Photography in New York.

SABRINA SHAFFER is a Taiwanese-American shoemaker and writer, whose main contributions are her criticisms of Charwei.

www.otabo.com

CHARWEI TSAI is a Taiwanese artist living in a messy apartment in New York. Formerly acclaimed for her impressionable sense of lethargy and implausible presence of an absent mind, while producing Lovely Daze, Charwei officially became a self-inspired workaholic. Her first and only exhibit happily debuted at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2005 (a very lucky year).

www.charwei.com

SETH WEIDER is an illustrator/artist and to the publisher’s knowledge, works and lives in Maine. Seth has not been seen or heard of since 2002. In fact, he remains to be the only contributor unaware of this publication due to a failure to be contacted via email. However, his benign personality is assumed not to get the publication into any sort of copyright trouble.

JIA ZHANG was born in Beijing. Jia likes to leave places and things behind and find things that are left behind. She doesn’t like to own things except for memories and a song to play in her head.

Special thanks to grandma, mom, dad, sis, kesuke, aunts + lots of cousins. tina, sarah, ama, bebe, angelita, sofia, bobo, ronnie+duke+gang, yulin, leif, andrew, chris liu, jason, yonatan, alex, shunyi, ad, ido, lewis, danielle, naoto, kris, rene, tsuyoshi, johnathan, ganden, henry the cat, printed matter + max, cai studio, yng, p.s.1, fondation cartier and obviously, all the contributors.