Céline Guichard just sent over some new images to share. She lives and works in Angoulême, France where she has participated in various exhibitions and artist residencies. Her new monograph, De L’ Amour was recently published in a limited edtion by Strane Dizioni, and she is currently working on a new graphic novel.
I asked about her process and influences and this was her reply (translated from French):
My pictures always born of a first stage of simple design, mostly in pen and ink, on very white paper. Then I reworked my drawings in photoshop, collage, color, filters …
I rarely draw from nature. I have in my head a bank of images and forms that I transcribed so distorted and it is precisely this transcription, these deformations, which interest me. I like the asymmetry and imbalance, the monstrous, grotesque …
When you asked me about my tastes, I mention Toshio Saeki, the canvas “Mr and Mrs Andrews’ by Thomas Gainsboroug, the “Caprichos” by Goya and Lucien Freud, which have in common have nothing to do with my world vision. But my real references are made in literature, film and personal. I draw on my memories of childhood in the countryside, in my obsession for the human and animal biology, the abnormality, the world of dream, transgression …
“…a labyrinthine, Kafka-esque halfworld of chambers and baroque, macabre characters, all connected by a central staircase.”
Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of L’Ange, it managed to stay off my Cinema of the Weird radar for decades. The emergence on DVD of Patrick Bokanowkski’s extraordinary feature film should go some way towards raising its profile among those who know that cinema as an artform doesn’t begin or end with Hollywood. Anyone excited by the early work of David Lynch, or the hermetic visions of the Brothers Quay, needs to see this.
Available via mail order (PayPal accepted) from British Animation Awards who also have an additional disc for sale, Bokanowski: Short Films/Courts metrages.
“A 2001 produced under the same conditions as Eraserhead”—Cahiers du Cinema
“A prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique. That its elements are not constructed in a traditional way should not be a barrier to those who wish to cross the bridge to what Jean-Luc Godard proposed as the real story of the cinema—real in the sense of being made of images and sounds rather than texts and illustrations.”— Keith Griffiths, film producer
“Magisterial images seething in the amber of transcendent soundscapes. Drink in these films through eyes and ears.”—The Brothers Quay
August 1– HARKISHAN SURJEET
Indian communist leader, prisoner, independence fighter.
August 1, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Southern California: Laughter Day.
*Ghana: Homowo, or “Hooting at Hunger,” in which the Ga people feast and mock famine.
*Lammas, a Druid Harvest Feast. First-baked bread of new harvest blessed, effigies of corn spirit, called maiden corn, carried in procession.
ALSO ON AUGUST 1 IN HISTORY…
1744 — Naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck born, Bazentin-le-Petit, France.
1819 — American novelist Herman Melville born, New York City.
1916 — Indian communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet born, Jalandhar, Punjab.
1942 — Grateful Dead ‘Captain Trips’ Jerry Garcia born, San Francisco, California.
1983 — U.S. resumes making chemical weapons after 14-year suspension.
Perhaps we needed a publication like Showpaper to gather all of the evidence on one page, but we can sense it just by keeping our ears peeled when wandering around the industrial waterfront of North Brooklyn at night: more and more young people in New York are taking the city’s musical culture into their own hands, booking the artists they want to see in buildings that condo developers never cared about anyway and eschewing the institutionalized age discrimination that keeps people who can’t drink away from live music. And the increased police crackdown on semi-legal concert venues (founded, apparently, on completely wrongheaded suspicions of weapon and drug possession, in addition to under-age drinking) doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone. New all-ages performances spaces still seem to be cropping up every month, sometimes attracting critical masses in the hundreds, and upstart show promoters looking to realize their unique artistic visions are practically ubiquitous. We might even call it a new chapter in the city’s cultural history if some of the people who built it with their own hands were willing and able to articulate it as such–and to explain how it might cohere as a generational worldview. With Brooklyn curator Todd Pendu, founder of the first large-scale festival devoted exclusively to grassroots cultural production in New York, we may very well have our man.
Due to the high demand for tickets for our sold-out Muppet History 101 + Muppet Music Moments double feature at 8pm tonight, we’ve added a second show — of Muppet History 101 only — tonight at midnight!
Tickets will be available at the box office from 7:30pm onwards, on our website starting now…
an⋅i⋅ma /ˈænəmə/ –noun
1. soul; life.
2. (in the psychology of C. G. Jung)
a. the inner personality that is turned toward the unconscious of the individual (contrasted with persona).
b. the feminine principle, esp. as present in men (contrasted with animus).
ANIMATED ANIMA is an exhibition of artwork by Cadence Pearson and Lucinda Trask, two artists who explore the undefined area between your physical body and the anima. The opening reception will feature a performance installation by Genevieve Belleveau of the Queen Frostine Ice Cream Girls and live music by the soulful experimental folk duo Bow Ribbons.
Opening August 1st, 8PM – Music at 10PM PERFECT WAVE GALLERY
184 West St. #2 / Brooklyn, NY 11222 Free admission
On view through August 7th, 4-9PM and by appointment.
July 31– PRIMO LEVI
Italian-born chemist, Auschwitz survivor, writer… suicide?
JULY 31, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Always Live Better Than Yester Day.
ALSO ON JULY 31 IN HISTORY…
1777 — Marquis de Lafayette commissioned major general in Continental Army.
781 — Earliest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji, Japan.
1703 — Writer Daniel Defoe, pilloried for seditious libel, is pelted with flowers.
1919 — Auschwitz survivor, chemist, writer Primo Levi born, Turin, Italy.
1944 — Antoine de Saint-Exupery disappears on flight over southern France.
1957 — Non-commercial radio pioneer Lewis Hill dies, Duncans Mills, California.
2006 — Cuban jefe Fidel Castro cedes state power to brother Raul.
“A rare exhibition of nearly half a century of Ed Sanders’ glyph-poems produced between 1962 and 2009 will be on display at The Arm from July 10 through July 31.
“Gallery hours will be Wednesday to Sunday from Noon to 6PM until the end of the month.
“Building on a long history of utilizing a highly visible language that continues into the present, Sanders’s glyph-poems fuse image with text, and image as text. Political, personal, ephemeral, historical, uncanny, and humorous— the glyph-poems on display at The Arm appear in several different mediums, including original drawings, collages, mimeographed pages from Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts (1962-’65), plus a number of collages, and an artist’s book. Over 200 Glyph-works will be featured in the show.
“In addition, Glyphs 1962-2009 will feature new letterpress prints and a limited edition catalogue produced on location at The Arm.
“Edward Sanders is a poet, historian and musician. He is at work, since 1998, on a 9-volume America, a History in Verse. The first five volumes, tracing the history of the 20th century, have been completed and published in a fully indexed CD format, over 2,000 pages in length, by Blake Route Press.
“Another recent writing project is Poems For New Orleans, a book and CD on the history of that great city, and its tribulations during and after hurricane Katrina. He has been granted a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in verse, an American Book Award for his collected poems, and other awards for his writing.
“The Fugs have recently completed a CD, Be Free, The Fugs Final CD (Part I), featuring 14 new tunes. Be Free will be released in late summer.
“Two of Sanders’ books, The Family and Tales of Beatnik Glory, are under option to be made into movies.
“His selected poems, 1986-2008, Let’s Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War will be published by Coffee House Press in the fall of 2009.
“He lives in Woodstock, New York with his wife, the essayist and painter Miriam Sanders, and both are active in environmental and other social issues.
“Sanders will perform a section of America, the 17th Century, tracing the voyage of Henry Hudson up the Hudson River in 1609, at the Byrdcliffe Art Colony in Woodstockon August 8, as part of the 400th anniversary celebration of Hudson’s discoveries.”
Deep-space excursions that reveal the dark matter of pop culture, absurdist mythologies that transcend into tear jerking dramas…all can be found in Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite.
This forthcoming show at Synchronicity Space opens on July 31st with a video screening including 19 unique artists. 2-D and 3-D artifacts from the videos will accompany the screening and be on display throughout August. Those looking to travel through a black hole and keep your boots on: look no further. Curated by Ben Bigelow
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yrQf5X3uvI
Opening Friday, July 31st at 7PM, with video screenings from 9-10PM Synchronicity Space
4306 Melrose / Los Angeles 90029 Free
Arthur Magazine 