by Jessica Loudis on March 8, 2010
Among these, a personal favorite was John Reynold’s “1001 Nights,” a DIY-style staircase whose 1,001 cardboard cubes featured lines from the Scheherazade collection on one side, and excerpts from Robert Fisk’s “The Great War for Civilisation” on the other. (One block read “The land of the Persians” on one side, and “The Green Zone” on the other). In an inadvertent act of irony, the piece was only several booths away from Reed Seifer’s “Spray to Forget”: a performance-cum-design project that hawked “a beneficial editor for one’s consciousness” at the unbeatable price of $25 a bottle. Surprisingly, “Spray to Forget” wasn’t the exhibition’s lone conceptual work, either: at Cape Town’s Michael Stevenson gallery, free manicures were offered to anybody in need; and later in the afternoon, a small brass band took up residency next to the aforementioned cow.
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by Jessica Loudis on January 21, 2010
The ads, which are plastered all over downtown Manhattan, feature large block text paired with images of people doing defiantly stupid things. In addition to angering elephants, Dieselites start bonfires on beaches, don traffic cones as hats, and have an inexplicable proclivity for mooning cameras. Accompanying text boldly celebrates the cult of stupid with cryptic, tautological phrases: “You can’t outsmart stupid,” “smart had one good idea and that idea was stupid,” and of course, the eponymous urging: “Be stupid.” (If French Connection is any indication, a line of “Be Stupid” t-shirts would be a big hit among wealthy Euro-hipsters). True to form, slogans require that viewers don’t think too hard, instead channeling the energy of a drunken frat boy rallying a crowd before leaping off a roof.
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