shu and joe

Images have surfaced from an underground fashion scene in East Germany in the early 80′s. Considered a lifeless, drab and highly policed country at the time, the photos of the period show a different style of life.

Congrats to Jordan on picking up the 09 Frieze Cartier Award.

Jordan Wolfson, Untitled, 2007

A retrospective of the little-known Japanese artist just ended at the Exile Gallery in Berlin. From the press release:

Kazuko Miyamoto (born 1942) left Japan for New York in 1964. In 1969, she met the artist Sol LeWitt, with whom she engaged in a life-long creative and conceptual dialogue. The exhibition String and Thread begins with a particular period in the 1970’s when Miyamoto created a series of ephemeral constructions using only nails and string. Based on existing conceptual drawings and vintage photographs Miyamoto will re-create and re-interpret two of these String pieces specifically for this exhibition.

Central to her work has always been the notion of the line as a link between two points. In Miyamoto’s artistic career this line has evolved from being part of a geometric grid towards a more organically shaped object. In recent years Miyamoto explored elements of dance and performance based on ideas of improvisational music. String And Thread will show Miyamoto’s creative process through the decades and, with the inclusion of Wall Drawing 815, pay tribute and homage to Sol LeWitt.

Exile Edition 05/1: Woman in Snow, Photograph of Performance in upstate NY, 1978. Printed 2009, Edition of 25

Untitled, String Construction, Installation at 597 Broadway, New York, 1978

String Construction around a Cylinder of my Height, Painted Wood, String and Nails, 1975 (Installation at A.I.R.Gallery, NY. In photo: Kazuko Miyamoto)

Archway to Cellar, String Construction, Installation at A.I.R. Gallery, 1978 (in photo: Kazuko Miyamoto)

I’m a fan of what Andrew Blauvelt calls “relational design.” Not such a fan of the term, however. I’d prefer aleatoric design. There’s a nice example of the sort of work that I think this term describes well in Marc Alcock’s portfolio.

Photos © Marc Alcock

Vorspannkino is the title of an exhibition of 54 film title opening at KW in Berlin on February 7. The opening titles are often my favorite part of a film, so I’ve no doubt that this exhibition will feature some great work. The opening invite is adapted from Barbarella and describes the film’s title sequence as follows: “A stunning beauty weightlessly floating through space. As she gradually unveils words emerge and descend, covering her body like fig leaves. At the climax of this intro Barbarella delightfully floats before our eyes in paradisiacal nudity.”

To get people interested in the Bundesliga, fashionable “outfits” were created to inspire fans to dress in support of their local teams. We just like the dancing.

Aoyama cemetery, Tokyo.

032c will present the “first-ever exhibition of Helmut Lang’s digitized fashion archive. Of the 10,000 items of Lang’s design that have been photographed and archived over the past four years, 3,000 were selected to be included in a video documenting his work in fashion, spanning a period of nearly two decades – and, simultaneously, embodying his creative role at the crossroads of fashion and art.”

Interesting fact: Helmut Lang currently lives in Long Island.

There have been several welcomed additions to Berlin’s retail offerings in the past couple of weeks. One is the Image Mouvement video art space and DVD shop on Oranienbergerstrasse; another is the international magazine boutique Do You Read Me? Their website features highlights from current issues of some of the magazines they stock (and employs a familiar blog template).

Andrea Zittel delivered a lecture at Portland State University while we were in town. We stopped by hoping to have a listen, but the meagre lecture hall was filled to capacity and the doorways blocked with overflow attendees. PORT blog was kind enough to post a portion of the talk online: