Floor Space

On the eve of design’s most anticipated fairs of the year you can guarantee an art collaboration release is not too far behind. The rise of the artist collaboration within the worlds of utility and practicality, at least for the most part, has proved to be a successful formula providing consumers a veneer of the conceptual onto objets of the everyday.

The Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano launches this week and will showcase the best in furniture design and home styling from both Italy and around the world. Gothenburg-based Henzel Studio is one such exhibitor who will be presenting an exclusive collection of art rug editions in collaboration with leading contemporary artists. The Swedish luxury label has worked with twelve international artists on its ‘Volume #1’ collection. Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Marilyn Minter, Richard Prince and Juergen Teller are a few of the names who have defied conventional right-angle styles for more elaborate and curious compositions that will detract eyes from the wall firmly to the floor. 

Untitled, 2012 - Anselm Reyle

The abstract aesthetic of Anselm Reyle is a fine example of how successful an artwork can be translated through alternate media, particularly within the realm of interior design. Reyle’s Untitled, 2012 contribution to the collection is a replica of the artist’s gathered foil style imagery inspired by his series of paintings, which has been directly reworked in both design and structure onto a free-from monochrome rug, hand knotted in Himalayan and New Zealand wool and silk. The result is an almost three-dimensional effect of luminous folds in the pile that makes for a contemporary decorative statement. 

The Henzel Studio Collaborations series will debut in Milan at Superstudio Più before an official launch at Barneys New York Madison Avenue flagship during Frieze New York in May later this year. For more information about all the artists involved in the ‘Volume #1’ collection visit Henzel Studio.

Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano opens tomorrow and runs through to 13th April 2014 - click here for full details of exhibitors and events throughout the week.

Image courtesy of Henzel Studio

Picasso Baby: Art History?

Did Jay-Z break down the walls of years of 'white' cube supremacy in the Western art world in just six hours at Pace Gallery yesterday afternoon?

Jay-Z performing Picasso Baby with Marina Abramovic

After a social media explosion with curious commentators wanting to know who was who (namely performance artist, Marina Abramovic) at the music mogul's live Picasso Baby performance, Jerry Saltz, senior art critic from New York Magazine, writes a moment to moment account from his experience of the afternoon's rap-turous event in New York City that was witnessed by art world heavyweights, gallery directors and even Pablo Picasso's granddaughter. Having performed his latest hit to the gallery's electric audience on repeat for six hours, this was a little bit of history in the making. Time will tell however, amongst the art establishment, whether it was a little bit of history worthy of repeating. 

i looked up who the old white woman was in the jayz vine. now i understand that it's art. i love it
— Michael Hale (@dogboner) July 10, 2013

Here is a look at the art bombs Jay-Z drops in a lyrical mash-up of global cultural references in new single, Picasso Baby, from his latest album Magna Carta Holy Grail:

'Picasso Baby'

I just want a Picasso, in my casa
No, my castle
I'm a hassa, no I'm an asshole
I'm never satisfied, can't knock my hustle
I wanna Rothko, no I wanna brothel
No, I want a wife that fuck me like a prostitute
Let's make love on a million, in a dirty hotel
With the fan on the ceiling, all for the love of drug dealing
Marble Floors, gold Ceilings
Oh what a feeling - fuck it I want a billion
Jeff Koons balloons, I just wanna blow up
Condos in my condos, I wanna row of
Christie's with my missy, live at the MoMA
Bacons and turkey bacons, smell the aroma

Oh what a feeling
Picasso Baby, Ca Picasso baby
Ca ca ca Picasso Baby, Ca ca ca Picasso baby
Oh what a feeling

It ain't hard to tell
I'm the new Jean Michel
Surrounded by Warhols
My whole team ball
Twin Bugattis outside the Art Basel
I just wanna live life colossal
Leonardo Da Vinci flows
Riccardo Tisci Givenchy clothes
See me thrown at the Met
Vogue'ing on these niggas
Champagne on my breath, Yes
House like the Louvre or the Tate Modern
Because I be going ape at the auction
Oh what a feeling
Aw fuck it I want a trillion
Sleeping every night next to Mona Lisa
The modern day version
With better features
Yellow Basquiat in my kitchen corner
Go ahead lean on that shit Blue
You own it

I never stuck my cock in the fox's box but
Damned if I didn't open Pandora's box
They try to slander your man
On CNN and Fox
My Miranda don't stand a chance, with cops
Even my old fans like old man just stop
I could if I would but I can't
I'm hot, and you blow
I'm still the man to watch, Hublot
On my left hand or not
Soon I step out the booth
The cameras pops niggas is cool with it
Till the canons pop
Now my hand on the bible
On the stand got your man in a jam, again
Got my hands in cuffs
I'm like god damn enough
I put down the cans and they ran amok
My hairpin
Piece skin rupture spleens
Cracks rips go through cribs and other things
No sympathy for the king huh
Niggas even talk about your baby crazy
Eventually the pendulum swings
Don't forget America this how you made me
Come through with 'Ye mask on
Spray everything like SAMO
Though I won't scratch the Lambo
What's it gonna to take
For me to go
For y'all to see
I'm the modern day Pablo
Picasso baby

Oh what a feeling
Picasso Baby, Ca Picasso baby
Ca ca ca Picasso Baby, Ca ca ca Picasso baby
Oh what a feeling

Image & video courtesy of @cedar

Brooklyn Migration

Flamingo Parade, 2010 supported by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

Amidst last weekend’s Jubilee celebrations here in Great Britain, I was ecstatic to receive news from across the pond on Saturday morning from good friend and Space All Over-curator Anna Lise Jensen that my public art intervention Flamingo Parade has found a home at Red Shed Garden in the community of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York City which hosts a Community Support Agriculture organic food distribution programme as well as a platform for education on nutrition for schools within the community.

For regulars to this blog, many will know this has been a long time coming – conceived when I was living in Manhattan in early 2009 when I was given the opportunity to participate in the artist-community initiative A Lot of Possibilities, that has seen a group of international artists working towards integrating contemporary art around the Upper West Side and Manhattan Valley, Flamingo Parade was directly inspired by the Community Garden at West 104th Street, whose charming green character I looked down on from my apartment window.

With the support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2010, Flamingo Parade was realized into a 31 x 9ft vinyl banner in order for the original illustration, that had been created in situ a year before, to be installed into the urban landscape within the rare, yet determined, green spaces of New York City. 

I must say a big thank you to both Anna Lise and everyone at Red Green Shed for their enthusiasm for my work and for helping to install it last week - those of you who are stateside can now see Flamingo Parade in the garden from Skillman and Kingsland Avenues – nearest subway Graham Avenue on the L line. 

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Red Shed Garden

264 Skillman Avenue

Brooklyn, New York

11211

More images and updates are due to follow in the run up to the installation’s official launch and community gardeners’ event in late June - from the very latest from New York follow @JMVELARDI

You can also follow Flamingo Parade’s journey with an archive of news and images from my time in New York, the Upper West Side community garden to the streets of New Jersey, Bushwick and Williamsburg, across Massachusetts and the work's migration to Greenpoint, Brooklyn over the last two and half years. 

Find out more about the early stages of A Lot of Possibilities by Anna Lise at spaceallover.org to see all the contributing artists and projects around the Community Garden at West 104th Street.

Pages in Time

The polar opposite of stability must be the laborious act of moving home. When you have drugged your possessions as many times as I have, as if by magic that cardboard box suddenly transforms itself into a perfectly acceptable chest of drawers or side table and one surrenders, with little will left, to the cardboard-house-lifestyle that you have only just avoided or crossed over the street from when walking back home, albeit yours is under a roof. 
I have realised there are items that make the last-in and first-out from my mobile side table - a habitual hierarchy of sorts; my most cherished photo frames, a fedora that was gifted to me when I used to live in Chicago (if it’s made it this far, a house move is not going to stand in its crease-free way) a pair of highball glasses and a gin bottle (moving is thirsty work) and lastly, my Keith Haring tome. This is no paperback and as someone who is known for their packing etiquette – heavy items at the bottom – I find myself keeping this weighty publication for last and first out. Is it the grinning triclops on the cover? The graffiti characters that dance around the page edges? The instant gratification of turning through the five hundred-plus pages of the artist’s colourful career? Put simply, it’s everything and much more. It lives on top of my old school trunk and as I work at my desk on my computer, all three eyes on the cover burn a hole in the side of my head and invite me for much needed distraction into a world of prolific artistic expression - the deep end of the inspiration pool for anyone interested in the birth of public art, street culture and graphic allegory that was pioneered by Haring in the late-twentieth century.

Keith Haring - Rizzoli, 2008

Today sees the opening of the first exhibition that explores the artist’s early career in Keith Haring: 1978-1982 at the Brooklyn Museum. With over three hundred objects and works on paper, experimental videos and a rare presentation of Haring’s personal sketchbooks and journals, which encapsulate the everyday life that inspired the artist, the exhibition guarantees to be an exciting journey into the art scene, subcultures and politics of New York City in the early Eighties through the eyes of an energised nineteen year old artist. Haring’s focus on bringing his recognisable style out of his studio and onto the streets is an important shift in viewing art as well as its accessibility to a wider commercial audience which is of particular interest in respect to my own art practice. What has to be one of the best uses of social media to date, in conjunction with the exhibition, The Keith Haring Foundation has created a Tumblr site and is posting pages from the artist’s journals every day up to the closing of the show. Lists, photographs and sketches make up the intimate visuals that inspired a young Haring who was at the beginning of creating a vocabulary of signs and codes that he was later to become famous for. Like anyone who knows they have a good thing going for them, Haring writes in his Secret Code Book No. 138QT,

 “DANGER: keep out of reach of enemy agents and spies!!”

Thanks to the work of The Keith Haring Foundation, the late artist’s work is as provocative and relevant today as it was during his lifetime and continues to work on a number of contemporary collaborations and projects from the worlds of design and fashion - most recently Garage Magazine x Haring, Comme des Garçons Original x Haring and Colette x Case Scenario x Haring to name only a few - that attests to the graphic expression of the everyday into a symbolic legacy, page by page.  

Keith Haring

Written by Jeffrey Deitch and Julia Gruen

Edited by Suzanne Geiss

Published by Rizzoli, 2008

Keith Haring: 1978-1982

16th March - 8th July 2012
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, New York
11238-6052

Images courtesy of The Keith Haring Foundation

Christmas Wish

I first came across Partners & Spade in 2009 when I was living in New York - their East Village advertising studio is a fantastic space which curates a rolling exhibition of art and design - I was lucky to catch their celebrated collection of Lehman Brothers paraphernalia (Investment Of Taste, September 2010) in the wake of the insolvent firm. 

This week I received a brilliant email from the studio which I have to share with you all - while the streets of the world's financial capitals may be occupied with strikes and capitalist contempt, it is not to say that everyone's aspirational tendencies won't be making an appearance during the festive season. Partners & Spade make sure everyone get's their Christmas wish this year with their humorous It's The Thought That Counts initiative...

Visit Partners & Spade to view a selection of their over-priced products in their Storefront as well as information about their Studio services.

Partners & Spade

40 Great Jones

New York

10012

New York State Of Mind

Since the beginning of the month our eyes, our ears and our hearts have been invited to turn to New York City in preparation for the ten year anniversary of three numbers and a forward slash that can arguably claim to be one of the greatest visual and audible icons of the twenty-first century. The wealth of information that is stored on the web and press pages across the globe – from the minute-to-minute eyewitness accounts, to the intimate memories of those who were murdered, to the political data that form every fact, as well as fuel any conspiracy - is as daunting to digest as the time that has past since the world that I had known changed overnight on 11th September 2001.

As the saying goes, you will never forget where you were and what you were doing. It was a Tuesday afternoon and I was playing a game of inter-house rugby at secondary school when the first plane hit WTC 1 – by the time I got back to my house the rumours that a small private plane had crashed into a skyscraper were rectified by BBC’s breaking news coverage in our TV room that would normally have been blaring out MTV – it was quiet and the sight of both towers, hit by commercial jets and now burning like gigantic candle sticks, was nothing but amazing. No Hollywood film could recreate these scenes of reality that were so unfamiliar to our eye, this unimaginable, this degree of perversion. As the evening wore on, I noticed the silence around school and the silence in the sky – the westerly flight path to America from Heathrow that passed over the campus was bare due to the hundreds of planes that had been grounded. What proceeded was to be a new way of life instilled with insecurity and fear. I can still just about remember the days when smoking was allowed on planes; when I was able to pay a visit to the cockpit with my parents when we flew to America, the controls all lit up in technicolor and the pilot's view of the horizon so clear and bright. I remember sitting in the jump seat of a very full flight to London from Europe one summer - just the pilots and I - I will never forget that landing, a sight very few people witness or even have a peak at through the doors of the cockpit that are now sealed and protected – all moments in my early lifetime practically inconceivable today. I remember when security wherever you are didn't use to take the extreme precautions that are now standard procedure; when awareness towards another human being’s appearance and manner – and religion - was less ruthless of stereotype, and if you are a dark skinned Italian who had not shaved before going through airport security would not result in a full pat down and even one time, an invite into a full body RapiScan (one of many products created for a post-9/11 world).

Reflecting Absence by Michael Arad at the 9/11 National Memorial

The attacks on the United States of America were social and cultural attacks that have had global consequences affecting the everyday that has adopted a subconscious paranoia for generations past and where “war on terror” slips off the tongue as easily as the daily death count of civilians and soldiers in the war-torn Middle East witnessed by children of the new Millennium. 

This weekend the people of New York will reminisce beyond the landmark date, on what will be yet another year since their city was violently attacked, while the rest of the world dissects the past decade from the capturing and death of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Osama Bin Laden this year; questions will be asked about capitalism and religion and of the lessons that have been learned by both the East and West, if any, through a plethora of social media outlets that were not even around in 2001 – a sign of the times that may have magnified a greater real-time hysteria that was so well documented during this year’s horrific Japan tsunami.

What is certain is the fact New York will not allow to be defined by the terrorism on 9/11, it’s heart far from broken, hurt and still healing, but not broken.

Reflecting Absence by Michael Arad will be officially inaugurated on 11th September at the the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, Manhattan, New York City.

In London, After 9/11 – an eight metre tall sculpture fashioned from steel girders from the World Trade Centre wreckage - by artist and New York native, Miya Ando has been installed in ‘The American Ground’ of Battersea Park, Wandsworth, South London.

Living The High Line

Cloud, FriendsWithYou

For those of you in the Big Apple, head to the High Line this weekend and discover the kid in you at the colour and stripes extravangaza that is Rainbow City.

Created to celebrate the opening of phase two of Manhattan's elevated park (East Coast Recap: Garden EditionOctober 2009), AOL's AOL Artists programme invited Miami-based art collective FriendsWithYou to create an interactive sculpture park on the newly refurbished section of the elevated freight rail structure that extends from West 20th Street to West 30th Street on the Lower West Side.

A forty-piece installation of inflatables, design work and a pop-up shop designed by HWKN consume the sixteen-thousand square foot space that makes it the perfect go-to this summer in the heart of Chelsea - click here for more details, updates and visiting information.

Rainbow City runs from June 8th - July 5th 2011

10th Avenue & West 30th Street

New York 10001

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Buddy, FriendsWithYou

Images courtesy of FriendsWithYou & AOL Inc

Modern Primitives

Unlike the appalling demonstrations that hit London's finest retailers this past weekend, including British institution Fortnum & Mason - their one hundred and fifty year old flagship store on Piccadilly was defaced and occupied by extremist protestors during the Trades Union Congress march all in the name of "freedom of speech" apparently - across the pond, New Yorkers were admiring (as opposed to their assaulting colonisers in arms) the window displays on Fifth Avenue.

Italian luxury goods house, Fendi transformed their window display into a live performance of art and design in collaboration between architects Aranda/Lasch and Fendi's very own leather craftsmen, Ester di Sarno. The luxurious production line of work tables, coloured leather swatches and specialist tools led to diamond-shaped sculptures that were leather-clad and pieced together by the architectural duo and displayed for all to see at the flagship premises. The atelier-cum-gallery offered an insight of the craft of luxury with the high culture of live performance for the passersby.

The project, titled Modern Primitives ironically could have described what was going on across the Atlantic.

Ester di Sarno

Aranda/Lasch

Images courtesy of Fendi

The Luxury Channel: Art In The City

I am very excited to say that I have contributed to this month's Luxury Channel Magazine for their New York Issue. You can read my article Art in the City here - highlights from the article for the rest of March include the exhibition, Mental States, by American painter George Condo at New Museum as well as the Public Art Fund's launch of their Spring 2011 programme. While the much anticipated commission, The Andy Monument, which will be installed in Union Square by New York-based artist Rob Pruitt, is not due until the end of the month, Empire, by London-based artist (and ex-Slade tutor) Eva Rothschild opened during Armory Week last week at the entry point of Doric C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park.

The twenty-foot high steel sculpture imitates like a portal into the park - decorated with varying densities of red, green and black stripes. While the crawling arches act as a contemporary intervention amongst the dense trees that line the parameter of the park, it also illustrates the awareness between natural and urban space and the perception of the Central Park within the built-up concrete landscape of Manhattan.

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With The Plaza just around the corner, what better way to view high art than from this luxurious New York institution?Follow The Luxury Channel Magazine for more in the best of art, culture and travel from around the globe!

George Condo: Mental States

Until 5th August 2011

New Museum

235 Bowery

New York City 10002

Eva Rothschild: Empire

Until 28th August 2011

Doris C. Freedman Plaza

Central Park, New York City

ART Cribs

Money Maker - Jeffrey Deitch

"Celebrity has become, for better or for worse, an art form" states Jeffrey Deitch, Director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, in a recent interview with online luxury lifestyle resource, NOWNESS. I last reported on Deitch at the very beginning of the year after the announcement of his appointment as Director at MOCA, where he was to leave the contemporary art scene of Manhattan which he shaped with great success with his SoHo gallery Deitch Projects and take his assets - and address book - to the West Coast. It was hoped Deitch would reinvent the financially-troubled museum and create a scene in the City of Angels akin to his accomplishments as a collector, consultant and dealer of some of the world's most important contemporary and modern art activity. 
If this film is anything to go by, it looks like Deitch has settled into his new life very well as he gives NOWNESS a tour of his "movie star house" in the hills of Los Feliz. You would be forgiven if you thought this was from an episode of MTV's Cribs - the Hip hop soundtrack and punchy camera shots may be absent but the tour possesses all the Cribs-credentials: the swooping driveway shot of the Spanish revival house that has been previously owned by actor, Cary Grant (tick); Deitch explaining his plans for a party room (tick) while he describes some of his art collection on the walls (tick), followed by a tour of his bedroom (tick). OK, so this episode is missing the default, "and this is where the magic happens", but we are invited to see Jesus in our eye lids thanks to his painting by Aaron Young, and maybe that works just as well for Mr. Deitch! Speaking about celebrity culture in reference to Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Gilbert and George, Deitch is clearly fascinated when the worlds of art and entertainment meet (see my entry, Cover Girls) and there is no better place than in Hollywood to feed his interest with MOCA as his platform. This is an insightful view into the private and professional world of Jeffrey Deitch making himself part of the celebrity culture that he is hoping will drive the art market on the West Coast. In true celebrity fashion, Deitch doesn't give everything away and leaves us asking the most critical question of all... what's in your fridge?

Billboards At Gavin Brown

Gavin Brown New York are displaying a series of billboards by artists, Mark Leckey, Richard Prince and Joe Bradley on the façade of their Chelsea premises. I particularly like Prince's contribution that adds the perfect dose of humour to the New York landscape.

Billboards -

Mark Leckey

Richard Prince

Joe Bradley

Gavin Brown's enterprise

620 Greenwich Street

New York, NY, 10014

Flamingoes Fly Stateside

I can finally announce that my animation, Flamingo Parade (2010), has been selected for the 6th Annual PIXEL POPS! exhibit, Urban Realities in Newark, New Jersey, USA. As part of the 35 selected short films, Flamingo Parade - which animates the elements of the original repeat pattern that was produced in 2009 while I was living in New York - will be screened every Wednesday throughout the month of October in several locations around the New York metropolitan area and will be projected like digital billboards onto the urban landscape to be made accessible to a wider audience and incite interaction with incidental viewers from the respective local communities

Starting on Wednesday the 6th October at 7pm, the schedule below details the neighbourhood areas with precise locations being released between 24-48 hours in advance of each screening:

October 6th - Newark, New Jersey

October 13th - Williamsburg, New York

October 20th - Bushwick, New York

October 27th - Jersey City, New Jersey

This is a great opportunity to see my inspiration from my time at the Community Garden at West 104th Street in Manhattan back in 2009, realised within these public spaces beyond the Manhattan Valley. For the new visitors to my blog click here to learn more about my work with Space All Over at WinterSpace and the artist-community initiative, A Lot of Possibilities, curated by Anna Lise Jensen, who is working towards integrating contemporary art within the context of these green sites around Manhattan. For those of you who are not stateside, below is a sample of Flamingo Parade - make sure to visit jonathanvelardi.blogspot.com for more details and updates about the scheduled screenings and visit PIXEL POPS! for information about this annual event as well as a statement from curators, Jeanne Brasile and Hiroshi Kumagai.