LOVING BEATRICE

I've always had a soft spot for the French artist Currado Malaspina. His work is so unapologetically self-indulgent that one can hardly find fault with his conceptual solipsism.

He has apparently fallen in love with Dante - or more specifically, with Beatrice Portinari. His latest project, the illumination of the Commedia in three lushly ornamented artist books, is truly a tour-de-force. Though I can appreciate his brave commitment to the easily accessible Inferno and the more difficult Puragtorio, his treatment of Paradiso is almost creepy in its obsessions.

Malaspina's Beatrice is no longer Dante's conduit to the divine. She is more of a living, sweaty seductress who has sternly lured the poet into her heavenly domain only to ravish and reward him for his decades long devotion.

 

Medievalists would no doubt take issue with this interpretation but Currado has never been inhibited by his ignorance.

LOS ANGELES

I rarely visit Los Angeles but when I do, I'm always struck by the anarchy of its urban aesthetic. I'm aware of the clichés, reinforced by Hollywood, of vapidity, self-indulgence and flaccid individualism, but I see little evidence of that. Instead I'm awed by its unremitting diversity. Nowhere in the United States is there so much savage, asynchronous untethered activity.

I find myself walking down streets punished with incandescent sunlight, and stopping to sketch the lengthening shadows of the ubiquitous palms. 

 

DRAWING ON THIN BROWN SHEETS OF PACKING PAPER

Every time I ordered something from some art supply store or second-hand bookshop or hardware emporium or haberdashery, it always arrived with an excess of brown butcher paper crumpled in the corners of the cardboard boxes. Cheap fragile musty paper crammed along the hinges and stuffed inside like a Thanksgiving turkey. 

I was loathe to throw it out so I saved them. I folded each tattered sheet, smoothing them the best I could and folded them along their perforated seams.

Twelve months of ordering things online. Twelve months of crumpled brown butcher paper.

I must have accumulated hundreds of these wasteful shards of cheap smooth crappy paper.

I suppose I should stop ordering so many things online.

Now it seems like the time is right to draw on them.

For some reason I find myself drawing images of my former professor and mentor David Schoffman. I never actually saw him shirtless.

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTING EARNEST

Mitchell Inoya is a New York artist that deserves more exposure. 

Lean Back, Handmade paint on parchment, Mitchell Inoya, 2012

He represents the type of artist that is all too common these days. He is both a microcosm and a fun-house reflection of the twisted cult of calculated insincerity.

He's been on the scene, albeit on the margins, for over two decades and if you haven't yet heard of him it's not entirely his fault. He is a tireless self-promoter and a constant presence on social media.

I recently stumbled upon an old episode of Timmy Black's bizarre podcast, The Lives of Contemporary Artists where Mitch featured prominently. 

Listen and lament.

CAMERA SHY

Komal Gilboa

Komal Gilboa prefers not to be photographed. The Sri Lankan artist is known for her lyrical abstractions and believes her work should be judged on their own merits. By all accounts, Komal is quite attractive and her reticence in front of the camera has only intensified the myths surrounding her great beauty.



Komal Gilboa, Sense of Guardare, 2017


As the featured artists in Timmy Black's podcast, "Timmy Black Presents: The Lives of Contemporary Artists" Gilboa now will receive the exposure she truly merits.

Maybe now she'll let someone take her picture.

Technology & Art: Strange Bedwetters

This is an important document!!! 

Please review with the proper degree of scrutiny.

The balance of Western Civilization may be at stake!

The Paper(less) Trail

Dmitry Roch. Notebook 163.2a Brooklyn

One can learn a lot about the inner workings of an artist's mind by studying their most intimate and private documents. Typically one must wait till the artist dies in order to gain access to their private papers. Fortunately for us, Dmitry Roch, one of the founding members of The Plausible Deniability Project™, has donated his vast archive to the Bibliothèque nationale de Faucon-sur-Glave.

Below is a list of links to some of the many projects of PDP™

Podcast 

The Podcast, Timmy Black Presents: The Lives of Contemporary Artists can be found on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Anchor and various other platforms.

Websites

Paintings (Schoffman) 

Currado Malaspina  

Video

YouTube channel 

Literature

Currado Malaspina’s author page on AMAZON  

Currado’s essays published on ThriveGlobal 

Instagram

Instagram 1 – (the art collective PDP™)  

Instagram 2 – (Currado Malaspina)  

Instagram 3 – (also Currado Malaspina)  

Instagram 4 – (Dahlia Danton)  

Instagram 5 – (Spark Boon) 

Instagram 6 – (Timmy Black)  

Blogs

 Blog 1 – (about Schoffman, written by Currado Malaspina)  

Blog 2 – (about Currado Malaspina, written by David Schoffman)  

Blog 3 – (about Dahlia Danton, written by Danton)  

Blog 4 – (about Faun Roberts, written by Orestia Shestov)  

Blog 5 – (by Sofia Lagrimar)  

Blog 6 – (by Clement Digby) 

Blog 7 – (about Micah Carpentier by his nephew, Ezra)  

Blog 8 – (about Micah Carpentier by another nephew, Roberto)  

Blog 9 – (another one about Schoffman by Currado Malaspina)  

Blog 10 – (by Spark Boon)  

Blog 11 – (another one by Spark Boon)   

Blog 12 – (Spark Boon’s drawings)  

Blog 13 – (about Boris Lemon, written by Boris Lemon)  

Blog 14 – (another one about Currado Malaspina, written by Schoffman)  

Blog 15 – (Horoscopes from 2016, by Yoyota)

You can find short stories by David Schoffman, Spark Boon, Sophia Lagrimar, Currado Malaspina and Dahlia Danton on Short-Édition - https://short-edition.com/en/