5th-Annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest, Tuesday, December 7, The Bell House, Brooklyn

This just announced: the 5th-Annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest is scheduled (December 7th at the Bell House) and is seeking contestants! Eligible entries include (in the words of thepress release) "taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond..."

To add to the excitement, this year, our friend Mike Zohn--Obscura Antiques and Oddities co-proprietor, new reality show celebrity, and 2007's Carnivorous Nights champion will be a judge and speaker.

Full details follow; so enter away, and hope to see you there, either on stage or in the audience!

The Secret Science Club's 5th-Annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest
Date: Tuesday, December 7
Time: 8 PM
Location: The Bell House
(149 7th St., between 2nd and 3rd avenues in Gowanus, Brooklyn)

The The beasts are back!
Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and rogue geniuses!

Your stuffed squirrel got game? Got a beaver in your brownstone? Bring your beloved beast to the Bell House and enter it to win at the 5th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest.

Eligible for prizes: Taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond

Plus!
--Spectators are invited to cheer on their favorite specimens
--Groove to taxidermy-inspired tunes & video
--Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks!
--Prizes will be awarded by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts!

Entrants: Contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world!

Don't miss this beastly event on Tuesday, December 7, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn, p: 718.643.6510 Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th

More here. The image you see above is the Pope Mouse by Mouse Angel/Jeanie M. You can purchase your very own Pope Mouse--or Angel, or Punker Rocker, or Mousealope, or Hamlet (!) at The Morbid Anatomy Library; click here or email me here for details.

Image credit: The wonderful blog Crappy Taxidermy.

Strange Attractor Salon, Viktor Wynd Fine Art 7-31 January 2010

Friend and Morbid Anatomy ally Mark Pilkington, of Strange Attractor Press, has curated an exciting looking multi-sensory Strange Attractor-themed exhibition for Viktor Wynd Fine Art in London. The show goes on view today and runs only through the end of this month, and looks seriously not-to-be-missed!

More, from the Strange Attractor website:

Strange Attractor Salon
Viktor Wynd Fine Art (incorporating The Little Shoppe of Horrors)
11 Mare Street, London, UK, E8 4RP
7 and 31 January 2010.

The exhibition will gather together, for the first time, a selection of art and illustration from Strange Attractor’s contributors, friends, allies and inspirations.

Like our books and events the Salon will incorporate a wide range of media (painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, sound and video) from both trained and untrained artists. The assembled exhibitors all share Strange Attractor’s fascinations with inner space, craft, science (natural and unnatural) and the fantastic.

Confirmed contributing artists are:

Phil Baker * Joel Biroco * Richard Brown * Ossian Brown * John Coulthart * Rod Dickinson * Disinformation * English Heretic * Tessa Farmer * Blue Firth * Alison Gill * Doug Harvey * Josephine Harvatt * Ken Hollings * Stewart Home * Julian House * Ali Hutchinson * Alyssa Joye * Maud Larsson * Gary Lachman * Xtina Lamb * John Lundberg * Man From Uranus * Eleanor Morgan * Frances Morgan * Drew Mulholland * Bridget Nicholls * Oscillatorial Binnage * Katie Owens * Edwin Pouncey * Arik Roper * Gavin Semple * Martin Sexton * USURP * Robert Wallis * Catharyne Ward * Eric Wright *

You can find out more about the show here. Check out Mark's excellent Strange Attractor website by clicking here. Find out more about the lovely and intriguing Strange Attractor Journal (viewable at the Morbid Anatomy Library) by clicking here. For more on kindred spirit Viktor Wynd's many fascinating productions, check out his Last Tuesday Society by clicking here and his "Little Shoppe of Horrors" by clicking here.

Image from Bioephemera's post on the work of included artist Tessa Farmer and is captioned "Swarm (detail), mixed media, Tessa Farmer, 2004"

Zoe Beloff in New York City, January 18th and 19th

I have just been alerted to two upcoming presentations by Zoe Beloff, frequent Observatory contributer, personal friend, and friend of Morbid Anatomy. Her work is always interesting, informative, and thought provoking, and these presentations look particularly not-to-be-missed. Very much hope to see you at one or both of these events!

1) An Evening with Zoe Beloff at MOMA
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
January 18, 2010 7pm
11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019

Zoe Beloff will be discussing recent installations with an emphasis on her current exhibition "Dreamland: The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and its Circle 1926- 1972" at the Coney Island Museum. As part of the show, she will be screening all the Coney Island "Dream Films" and giving a little preview of new work. You can find out more about the event, which is part of the series "Modern Mondays" by clicking here.

2) Zoe Beloff presents at Light Industry: Obedience
Light Industry in Brooklyn
January 19, 2010 7.30pm
220 36th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue), 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
Tickets - $7, available at door

Obedience, Stanley Milgram, 16mm, 1962, 45 mins
Folie à Deux, National Film Board of Canada, 16mm, 1952, 15 mins
Motion Studies Application, 16mm, ca. 1950, 15 mins
Presented by Zoe Beloff

Obedience documents the infamous "Milgram experiment" conducted at Yale University in 1962, created to evaluate an everyday person's deference to authority within institutional structures. Psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a scenario in which individuals were made to think they were administering electric shocks to an unseen subject, with a researcher asking them to increase the voltage levels despite the loud cries of pain that seemed to come from the other room. Milgram saw his test, conducted mere months after Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, as a way to understand the environments that made genocide possible.

Tonight, artist Zoe Beloff pairs Obedience with two earlier works dealing with psycho-social control: Folie à Deux andMotion Studies Application. The former, one of a series of films on various psychological maladies produced by the National Film Board of Canada in the 1950s, presents an interview with a young woman and her immigrant mother afflicted by shared delusions that manifest when the two are together. The latter is an industrial film purporting to present ways to increase efficiency in the workplace: explaining, for instance, a means to fold cardboard boxes more quickly. In stark contrast to the nostalgic whimsy typically associated with old educational films, Folie à Deux andMotion Studies Application play as infernal dreams of systemic power and sources of surprising, unintended pathos.

"The concept of 'motion studies' is central to cinema itself. Without the desire to analyze human motion, there would be no cinematic apparatus. But the history of motion studies is freighted with ideology. Its inventor Étienne-Jules Marey was paid by the French Government to figure out the most efficient method for soldiers to march, while his protégé Albert Londe analyzed the gait of hysterical patients. From the beginning, the productive body promoted by Taylorism was always shadowed by its double, the body riven by psychic breakdown. We see this in Motion Studies Applicationand especially Folie à Deux, where unproductive patients, confined to the asylum, understand with paranoid lucidity that the institution is everywhere, monitoring them always. Obedience stands as a conscious critique of these earlier industrial films, co-opting their form only to subvert them and reveal their fascist underpinnings." - ZB

You can find directions to Light Industry and more about their screenings here.

More information on the MOMA show is available here; you can find out more about the Light Industries screening, and get directions, by clicking here. More about her exhibition "Dreamland: The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and its Circle 1926- 1972," on view at the Coney Island Museum until March 21st of this year, by clicking here. Click here to visit Zoe's website and find out more about her work.

Image: Still from the film Obedience, 1962

"Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love," Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

The Mori Art Museum of Tokyo, in conjunction with the incomparable Wellcome Collection of London, has just launched a really incredible sounding exhibition entitled "Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love."

The show, I am told, was inspired by the Wellcome's groundbreaking "Medicine Man" exhibition (more on that here), and "Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love" appears to be as fascinating and provocative as its muse. Consisting of over 100 pieces of medical curiosa from the Wellcome Collection augmented by contemporary and ancient artworks--including works by Leonardo da Vinci and Damien Hirst--"the exhibition presents an integrated vision of medicine and the arts, science and beauty" while examining "the human body as the meeting place of science (medicine) and art."

The show is up until February 28th of this year. Looks like one not to miss, if you are in the Tokyo area of have some post-holiday money to burn on international travel.

Wish I lived in Tokyo.

More on the show, from the Mori Museum website:

For most human beings their own body represents both the most familiar and most unknown of worlds. From ancient times humans have sought to unravel the secret mechanisms of the body, developing in the process a wealth of medical expertise. At the same time we have seen our own bodies as vessels for the representation of ideals of beauty, and long sought to depict our bodies in paintings and drawings. Leonardo da Vinci, who went so far as to dissect human bodies in order to make more accurate depictions of them, is perhaps the single creator whose output best embodies the integration of the scientific and artistic aspects of the body.

This exhibition, with its theme of "the human body as the meeting place of science (medicine) and art," was made possible with the cooperation of the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest independent charity funding research into human health. Consisting of around 150 valuable medical artifacts from the Wellcome Collection and around 30 works of old Japanese and contemporary art, the exhibition presents an integrated vision of medicine and the arts, science and beauty. The show is a unique attempt to reconsider the science's role in health and happiness and also the meaning of human life and death. A highlight of the exhibition is three anatomical sketches by Leonardo da Vinci from the Royal Collection, owned by Queen Elizabeth II.

You can find out more about the show on the Mori Museum website by clicking here. All images from Boing Boing's excellent write-up of the exhibition, which you can read by clicking here. You can visit the Wellcome Collection website by clicking here. And thanks to all of you who sent me links about this exhibition!

P. S. If anyone wants to see the amazing catalogue for this exhibition, you are invited to come visit it (and me) at the Morbid Anatomy Library.

Image credits, top to bottom:
1) Three Tibetan Anatomical Figures; c. 1800; watercolour and black ink on white linen; Wellcome Library
2) Walter Schels; Life before Death - Elmira Sang Bastian, 14th January 2004/23rd March 2004; photography
3) E. Muller; Set of 50 Artificial Glass Eyes; 1900-1940 / Liverpool, England; glass, wood, velvet, leatherette; Science Museum, London

Walton Ford at Paul Kasmin Gallery, NYC

Walton Ford has long been one of my favorite artists. He is even more one of my favorite artists after hearing him speak about his work last week at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. I appreciated Ford's large-scale, iconic, natural history illustration-inspired paintings on a whole new level after hearing his engaging accounts of their specific historical inspirations and his own artistic process. His book Pancha Tantra--which I purchased and had signed that evening--is a deluxe, over-sized, exquisite object in its own rights, fitting the work it celebrates; better yet, the back section of the book reprints many of Ford's stranger-than-fiction historical sources.

Over the weekend, I paid a visit to his current exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea; Ford told me that this was his best show yet, and I heartily agree. This show closes December 23th; I encourage all that are able to check out these ambitions, enormous, inspiring works in person before the show closes.

You can get full details on the exhibition here. You can purchase a copy of his book Pancha Tantra on Amazon by clicking here; You can also come visit my copy at The Morbid Anatomy Library (click here) any time. You can visit the website for the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences by clicking here. And special thanks to Lord Whimsy for bringing this lecture to my attention!

Images, top to bottom:
1) The Island, 2009; watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper; Panel 1: 95 1/2 x 36 inches, Panel 2: 95 1/2 x 60 inches, Panel 3: 95 1/2 x 36 inches
2) The Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London-3 December 1830, 2009
watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper; 60 x 119 1/2 inches
3) Borodino, 2009; watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper; 60 x 119 1/2 inches

Tomorrow Night at Observatory: "LIVING in SIM" by Justine Cooper

Just a quick reminder: tomorrow night at Observatory, former American Museum of Natural History Artist in Residence Justine Cooper will give a presentation about her new body of work; full details below.

Hope to see you there!

LIVING in SIM
Date: Thursday, December 3rd
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
An illustrated lecture by former AMNH Artist in Residence Justine Cooper about her new body of work

The exploding field of medical simulation inspired Justine Cooper’s Living in Sim project. Her mixed-reality artwork includes a website, online social media, photography, video and installation to explore the complexities present in the current health care environment and online social media. The project is an outcome of her artist-in-residency at the Center for Medical Simulation in Cambridge, MA from 2008-2009 along with visits to many East Coast simulation centers.
Cooper will be showing images she has taken in her journeys through many of these medical simulation centers, including images of simulations in progress, the sites where medical simulation is being utilized, mannequins she has met along the way and the characters she created for them beyond their roles as patient simulators.

The gallery show is up through the end of the year at
Daneyal Mahmood Gallery
511 West 25th Street 3fl
New York, NY 10011
T-Sa 11-6
website http://livinginsim.com

Bio: Sydney born, New York based artist Justine Cooper investigates the intersections between culture, science and medicine. She has been artist-in-residence at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Australian Key Center for Microscopy and Microanalysis. She is best known for creating the (fictional) lifestyle drug, HAVIDOL (http://havidol.com). Her work has been internationally recognized and exhibited including at The New Museum, New York; The Singapore Museum of Art; Netherlands Institute for Media Art, George Pompidou Centre, Paris; and the International Center of Photography, New York. She credits her interest in making work in science and medical institutions to the fact she grew up as the daughter of two veterinarians. As a child she lived in the back rooms of their veterinary clinic, observing and sometime assisting in examinations and surgeries.

For directions to Observatory, click here. To find out more about Justine's work, click here.

"Tragic Beauties," Barbara Abel

I just stumbled upon these lovely and uncanny photographs of early 20th century shop-window mannequins by Barbara Abel. Part of a series she calls "Tragic Beauties," the photos were taken in a a "dimly lit mannequin warehouse in downtown Detroit, [where] they sat, covered in plastic for decades, until a few years ago when they were sold to collectors."

Lovely, wonderful things; can't help but wonder--and not without envy--who are the lucky collectors who ended up with them?

More on the "Tragic Beauties" here. Via, again, the fantastic Wurzeltod, who seemed to have found them on the Marieaunet Blog, from which I sourced the above images. Please click in images to see larger, more-detailed versions.

'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die,' Umberto Eco Guest Curator at the Louvre!

The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order... And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries...We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die. --Umberto Eco, on his current guest-curated Louvre exhibition “Mille e tre," Spiegel, 2009

It has just come to my attention that Umberto Eco has guest curated an exhibition at The Louvre in Paris. Entitled “Mille e tre" or "The Infinity of Lists," the exhibition is on view in the prints and drawings section of the Louvre from November 7th 2009 until February 8, 2010 and will includes poetry, text, multi-media projects, and artworks selected by Eco to illustrate his chosen theme.

To my knowledge, this is Eco's first officially curated exhibition, though fans of his books On Beauty and On Ugliness already know him to possess an idiosyncratic and sensitive curatational mind. For those of us unable to make it out to view the exhibition in person, Rizzoli has kindly produced a lavish exhibition catalog to add to the already rich oeuvre of Eco's multi-disciplinary, highly-illustrated forays into philosophy and theory.

More on the exhibition, from the Louvre's website:

Having extended an invitation to Umberto Eco, who chose to work on a theme described as “The Infinity of Lists”, the Louvre presents an exhibition of ancient and contemporary graphic works, as well as around 20 multidisciplinary events in the auditorium and the rooms of the museum.

The exhibition “Mille e tre” traces the evolution of the concept of a list through history and examines how its meaning changes with the passage of time: from its ancient use in funerary traditions to its present-day use in everyday life, via the creative processes of contemporary artists, the list is a vehicle for cultural codes and the bearer of different messages.

Read the entire Spiegel interview with Eco--which contains many more pithy and insightful comments than the one I included above--by clicking here. More about the exhibition can be found on the Louvre exhibitions webpage by clicking here. Purchase the exhibition catalog, published by Rizzoli, here. You can see more about his other illustrated volumes by clicking here. Via Metafilter.

Zoe Beloff in London

Zoe Beloff--personal friend, friend of Morbid Anatomy and Observatory, and one of my favorite contemporary artists--has a few wonderful sounding art-pieces showing in London over the next few months. If you are based in or near London, I highly recommend you take this opportunity to check out her work in person; Her work is lovely, multi-layered, fascinating, and seriously not to be missed.

Here is a bit about her work, from her artist's statement:

Zoe Beloff is an artist who is particularly fascinated by attempts to graphically manifest the unconscious processes of the mind. She is particularly adept at dreaming her way into the past. Zoe’s work has been exhibited internationally. Venues include: The Whitney Museum, MoMA, The Freud Dream Museum (St Petersburg), Pacific Film Archives and the Pompidou Center.

And here are the full details of her upcoming London events:

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-1972
An illustrated lecture and screening by Zoe Beloff
November 18th, 2009 - 7pm - 8:30
The Freud Museum 20 Maresfield Gardens London NW3 5SX
Freud Museum: http://www.freud.org.uk
More here.

To celebrate the centennial of Freud’s visit to the great amusement parks of Coney Island, prior to his visit to Clark University in 1909, artist Zoe Beloff resurrected the forgotten world of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, along with the visionary ideas of its founder Albert Grass, for an exhibition at the Coney Island Museum in New York.

Here she will present an overview of the work of the Society, which might best be described as an urban legend. The members, working people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. Beloff will discuss the Sunday lectures, plans to rebuild the “Dreamland Amusement Park” according to Freud’s ideas of dream formation, the controversy over the lost "Sigmund Freud" figure at the World in Wax Musée and will screen a number of the “Dream Films” in which members of the society recreated their dreams on film in an unapologetic and playful exploration of their inner lives.

The Magic Show
28th through 31 January
Opening 27 January 7pm to 9pm
The Quad
http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/
Market Place,Cathedral Quarter
DerbyDE1 3AS

Premiere of new Hayward Touring exhibition curated by Jonathan Allen and Sally O’Reilly, organised in collaboration with QUAD, Derby. Magic, like art, thrives in the gaps between truth, half truths and lies. ‘Magic Show’ considers how contemporary artists adopt the perception-shifting ploys of theatrical magic, to summon wonderment while also exploring questions of creative agency and the power of suggestion.

Magic Show artists: Jonathan Allen, Archive (Anne Walsh & Chris Kubick), Zoe Beloff, Ansuman Biswas & Jem Finer, Joan Brossa, Rick Buckley, Brian Catling, Center for Tactical Magic, Jackie & Denise Chapwoman, Tom Friedman, Brian Griffiths, Colin Guillemet, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Susan Hiller, Alexandra Hopf, Janice Kerbel, Christian Jankowski, Annika Lundgren, Juan Muñoz, Bruce Nauman, Ian Saville, Ariel Schlesinger, Suzanne Treister and Sinta Werner.

You can find out more about these upcoming events, and about Zoe's work in general, by clicking here.

Zoe Leonard on the Uncanny Allure of Wax Anatomical Models

“I first saw a picture of the anatomical wax model of a woman with pearls in a guidebook on Vienna. She struck a chord in me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She seemed to contain all I wanted to say at that moment, about feeling gutted, displayed. Caught as an object of desire and horror at the same time. She also seemed relevant to me in terms of medical history, a gaping example of sexism in medicine. The perversity of those pearls, that long blond hair. I went on with this work even though it is gory and depressing because the images seem to reveal so much.”--Zoe Leonard, Journal of Contemporary Art

You can read the whole article--which investigates the use and meaning of wax anatomical models in the work of contemporary artist Zoe Leonard--by clicking here.

Images from original post; Top: "Anatomical Model of a Woman’s Head Crying", 1993 , © Zoe Leonard; Bottom: "Wax Anatomical Model (Shot Crooked from Above)", 1990, © Zoe Leonard

Calling all Collectors and Taxidermists! The 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest--Sunday, November 15, 2009! Brooklyn, New York!

I just received a call for entries for the upcoming 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest, hosted by the Secret Science Club. This year's contest will take place at Brooklyn's Bell House at 7:30 PM on Sunday, November 15. Entries can take the form of, in the words of the call-f0r-entries, "taxidermy (homemade, purchased, found), preserved and jarred specimens, skeletons, skulls, gaffs… and beyond." But--they are quick to note--"Wet specimens must remain in their jars."

To give you a sense of what you're in store for should you choose to attend (or, better yet, enter!), above you will find some photos from the 2007 installment of the contest, featuring Mike Zohn--co-proprietor of Morbid Anatomy's favorite store, Obscura Antiques and Oddities--and his grand prize winning piece, a Victorian "Polar Bear" Shadowbox (top 2 images).

Following are the full details for the contest. I will absolutely be in attendance, and plan to cover the event for the Morbid Anatomy. Hope very much to see you there, as competitors or in the audience!

The 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest!!
Hosted by the Secret Science Club @ the Bell House
Sunday, November 15, 2009, 7:30 pm, $4

• Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and other rogue geniuses! Enter your taxidermy to win!

• Show off your beloved moose head, stuffed albino squirrel, sinuous snake skeletons, jarred sea slugs, and other specimens. Compete for prizes and glory!

• The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury, co-founder of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, and Dorian Devins, WFMU DJ and Secret Science Club co-curator

• Prizes for best stuffed creature, most interesting biological oddity, and more!

• Don’t miss the feral taxidermy talk by beast mistress Melissa Milgrom, author of the forthcoming book, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy

• Plus:

◦ Groove to taxidermy-inspired tunes and video

◦ Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks!

Contest Rules
The contest is open to taxidermy (homemade, purchased, found), preserved and jarred specimens, skeletons, skulls, gaffs… and beyond. (Note: Wet specimens must remain in their jars.)

Entrants: Please contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register, and arrive at 7 pm on the night of the contest to log in your beast or specimen. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world!

Spectators are invited to cheer their favorite specimens.

Where: The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues), Gowanus, Brooklyn. p: 718.643.6510 Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th

When: Sunday 11/15/09. Doors and pre-show at 7:30 pm. Taxidermy talk at 8 pm. Contest at 8:30 pm!

Cover: $4 (waived for entrants)

Contest Background: The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest is hosted by the Secret Science Club, an organization dedicated to exploring scientific discoveries and potent potables. The contest was started in 2005 by Secret Science Club co-curators Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson to shamelessly promote their taxidermy-inspired book Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger. The event has since taken on a life of its own, with first-year winners Andrew Templar and Jim Carden—co-owners of the Bell House—now providing a permanent home for this beastly annual smack-down.

To learn more, visit the Secret Science Club at http://secretscienceclub.blogspot.com

You can find out more about the contest by clicking here. Information about the Bell House can be found here. All of the above photos were taken by Eric Harvey Brown (Flickr handle "Dogseat;" click here to see his Flickr photostream) who also, coincidentally, took the fantastic photos for the Time Out New York piece on the Morbid Anatomy Library (click here.) For more about the 2007 taxidermy contest, you can visit the original Morbid Anatomy post by clicking here.

Fritz Kahn "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) Animation and Installation

I just received an email from Henning Lederer--an animator and digital artist--in which he detailed an art installation he recently produced based on Fritz Kahn's "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) poster of 1927. Above is a clip of one of the animations he created for the installation, as well as view of the installation. Here is what Lederer had to say about the project:

The intertwining of science, culture, art and technology
From the moment on that I got to know Kahn’s poster “Man as Industrial Palace” in 2006, I had the idea to animate this complex and strange way of explaining the functions of a body. I wanted to continue Fritz Kahn’s act of replacing a biological with a technological structure by transferring this depiction with the help of motion graphics and animation. In addition to the moving images, as a framework, I had the idea to create a cabinet for this work including a mixture of old and new technology. This new version of the “Industrial Palace“ is an interactive installation for the audience to interact with - and by this to explore the different cycles of this human machinery.

This project was produced within the MA Digital Arts Course at the Norwich University College of Arts. It took me about 6 months to complete all the different parts including the interaction and interactive device, the spatial solution, research and theory, and of course the animation.

Right now, I am back in Germany. On the one hand, I am trying to publish the two main MA projects and make people aware of them, on the other hand, I will continue working as a freelancer starting in Germany but with the main aim to give it a try in London.

Thanks, Henning, for sending this along!

You can find out more about Henning's project by clicking here. You can see more of his work by clicking here. Click here to see the wonderful poster that inspired it all.

Scott Graeber Exhibition Opening, RePop, Brooklyn TONIGHT!

Tonight--Friday October 2nd--RePop in Brooklyn will be hosting an art opening for artist Scott Graeber, whose artworks deal with anatomical imagery and explore issues of mortality. The exhibition will feature his frescos and several anatomical casts (as seen above), as well as a selection of actual jarred specimens. The show will be held at RePop, at 68 Washington Ave, from 7:30 to 11, Brooklyn, accessible from the G train. The show will be up until November 1.

Following is more about Graeber's work, from his artist's statement:

Since the age of eighteen every job that I have had has centered around death and the disassembly of the human body. Over twenty years of such work has pushed me into a permanent melancholy. My art, however, has flourished under these circumstances, even as the rest of my life (and body) gradually dissolves.

Out of desperation I turned to art. I made three-dimensional collage works that were labeled as perverted or grotesque. After a number of group and solo shows this mode of working ceased to satisfy me, and I began a study of fine art. Several years of figurative study have brought me to a point where I am satisfied that I can translate my ideas to clay or canvas.

Recently I read an article about sperm whales and learned that the whales are gouged and disfigured about their heads by the food they eat (giant squid) and from goring each other with their teeth in sex spats. For weeks I have walked around looking at everyone as an assemblage of wounds, as if the battles of their lives were scars wrapped around their faces. Every maneuver of avoidance, every slight glance, wringing of wrists, all evidence of failed loves, of lovers consumed.

Art is the high point of a society. Without it, we are nothing. Nothing, that is, but a collection of scars and defects waiting to be re-cycled. Its our art allows us to transcend this darkness. It lives beyond us on our temple walls, books, tapestries and in the dreams of our descendants. When its creator is forgotten, art proves its true magic. It lives on even as we do not.

This opening is sure to be amazing. I would be there if I could! Hope you can make it!

More on RePop--including directions--and the opening can be found here.

Yinka Shonibare, Brooklyn Museum, Through September 20th

The Guillotine. The Grand Tour. Tableaux Vivant. The Masked Ball. The 1880s. Colonialism. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Oscar Wilde. Revisionist History. Spectacle on a Grand Scale.

If you have a chance to see the seriously epic and thought provoking Yinka Shonibare exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art before it comes down next Sunday, I simply cannot recommend it more highly.

From the website:

June 26–September 20, 2009
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor
Period Rooms, 4th Floor
Robert E. Blum Gallery, 1st Floor

This exhibition is a major midcareer survey of work by the UK-based Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE. Shonibare’s artwork explores contemporary African identity and its relationship to European colonialism through painting, sculpture, installation, and moving image. Shonibare is best known for his work with visual symbols, especially the richly patterned Dutch wax fabric produced in Europe for a West African market that he uses in a wide range of applications. His tableaux of headless mannequins costumed in this fabric evoke themes of history and its legacy for future generations. Through these works he explores the complex web of interactions, both economic and racial, that reveal inequalities between the dominant and colonized cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa. A site-specific installation created for this presentation titled Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play will be on view in several of the Museum’s period rooms.

Another site-specific installation, Party Time—Re-Imagine America: A Centennial Commission by Yinka Shonibare MBE, will be on view at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, from July 1, 2009, to January 3, 2010, in the dining room of the museum’s 1885 Ballantine House.

For more exhibitions, events, and spectacles of interest around the world, visit the still-under-development Morbid Anatomy Events Calendar, by clicking here. To find out more about the exhibition, click here. Click here to view and/or purchase exhibition catalog from the new Morbid Anatomy Bookstore (all proceeds go to new Morbid Anatomy Library acquisitions).

Image, From Brooklyn Museum of Art Website: Yinka Shonibare MBE (b. United Kingdom, 1962). How to Blow Up Two Heads at Once (Ladies), 2006. Two life-size fiberglass mannequins, two guns, Dutch wax printed cotton, shoes, leather riding boots, plinth 63 x 96 1/2 x 48 in.; each figure 63 x 61 x 48 in. Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Museum purchase, WellesleyCollege Friends of Art. Image courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and James Cohan Gallery, New York. © the artist. Photo: Stephen White

Observatory "On Clouds" Art Opening, This Friday, September 18, from 7 to 10, Brooklyn, NY

If you're not doing anything this Friday night, why not join us at the opening party for Observatory's first art exhibition? Full details below; for directions, click here. The event is free and open to the public; hope to see you there!

Opening Party for On Clouds, An art exhibition organized by James Walsh
Friday, September 18, from 7 to 10
Exhibition open: Friday, September 18 through Sunday, November 15, 2009
543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215
Free and open to the public
Wine will be served

Observatory is proud to announce our first gallery exhibition, On Clouds, organized by James Walsh, opening Friday, September 18, from 7 to 10.

With prints and photographs by James Walsh in the gallery, and an evening program of projections, performances, poetry, and other events by various artists throughout the run of the show.

Clouds have long been the object of scientific study and artistic depiction. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the emerging science of meteorology allowed the fleeting and apparently formless clouds to be closely observed, categorized, and recorded. At this same time, in England and Germany, painters and poets also began to look more intently at clouds. While insisting on artifice and inspiration over mere recording, they increasingly sought to give their work a sense of greater realism and emotional power by focusing on the careful observation and accurate depiction of the natural world. The worlds of science and art were much closer then, with artists and scientists meeting in society and following each others’ work, and this allowed a shared culture to develop. At its best, detached observation was allied with emotional projection, and imagination was grounded and enriched by careful, systematic recording, all in the service of what they called natural philosophy and we would call natural history.

In this exhibition, James Walsh will present three bodies of work that trace this blending of science and art in the depiction of clouds from the early 1800s to the early 1900s.

The video Constable’s Clouds (8 min., 2009) looks at the English landscape painter John Constable and the period from 1819 to 1822 when, departing from the traditions of landscape painting and assuming the role of artist-as-scientist, he painted the clouds and sky alone. He summarized his attitude during these years when he said in a lecture “Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?” On Wednesday, October 21 at 8pm, this video will be projected along with the work of other artists in a program of lectures, video, and performance.

So please, come help us celebrate the first of many Observatory exhibitions! More information can be found here. We very much hope to see you there.

Image: video still from James Walsh, Constable's Clouds, 8 min., 2009

George Krause, "Saints and Martyrs" Series, 1963-Present

I just stumbled up a really magnificent photo series by Texas-based artist, photographer, and teacher George Krause. Called "Saints and Martyrs," it was apparently begun in 1963 while he was in Mexico shooting a story on amateur boxing for Sports Illustrated. The series is a moody and haunting exploration of the anonymously-produced and stirringly beautiful saints and martyrs--many of them made of wax, resplendent on velvet cushions beneath old glass--which fill the churches of Italy, Mexico, and Central America.

More about the series, from his website:

"Saints and Martyrs pays homage to the anonymous artisans who fashioned the statues...These sculptures transcend most folk art," (Krause) says. 'They are not conceptually motivated. The sculptor felt the suffering, and it allowed him to create something beyond himself and beyond the repetitive forms usually handed down among folk artists. I am responding to the artisan's passion and his unique vision."
George Krause, A Retrospective, Anne W. Tucker

All images are from George Krause's "Saints and Martyrs" set on his Flickr page; you can see more of this series (which I highly recommend! There were far too many wonderful images to include here) by clicking here; click 0n images to see much larger versions. You can visit his webpage by clicking here.

Via Fantomatic via Outrepart.

"Dormitorium: Film Decors by the Quay Brothers," Exhibition," Parsons, NYC

Last night I went to check out the wonderful "Dormitorium: Film Decors by the Quay Brothers" exhibition at Parsons, which features miniature sets, props, and characters constructed by the Quay Brothers' and used as source material for their unforgettable and highly influential stop-motion animated films. These "décors" (in the exhibition's parlance) are presented as static silent narrative worlds; it is as if you had peeked into each tiny space mid-shoot, characters and props all in their place, just waiting to be brought to life by the film-maker's art.

"Dormitorium" is much more than just a collection of props and artifacts; instead, the "décors" you see on view here are something of a revelation, leading one to a greater understanding and appreciation of the Quay Brother's artistry. Having the luxury of time to study these décors in their static state allows the viewer to see things impossible to grasp amidst the thrust and drive of the films; namely, the obsessive and beautiful detail in the source materials. The more one looks, the more one comes to realize that this attention to detail and minutia is what gives the Quay's work so much of its character and mise en scène--at least as much as their lurchy, atmospheric, uncanny stop-motion animation technique. Details such as exquisite and varied typography and calligraphy, a judicious application of dust and grime, the seductively hand-made feel of the materials, and wall hangings, hidden figures, archaic signage and other easy-to-miss details adorning the spaces; of these elements is the Quay's compelling and absorbing universe composed.

In a nice installation decision, also on view in the exhibition are the films themselves, allowing the viewer to go from the décors to the films and back again, encouraging insights into the ways in which the Brothers expertly use cinematic techniques, selective and shifting focus, and obscured views to bring their static miniature worlds to vivid and uncanny life, imbuing them with a sense of depth and abundance of space so at odds with scale and scope of the sets.

More about the exhibition, from Parson's website:

"Dormitorium" explores the macabre fantasy world of twin brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay through the highly detailed miniature sets of their influential stop-motion animations. "Dormitorium", which originated at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, represents the first time the décors of the London-based Quays have been exhibited in N. America. The Brothers have built a cult following with their dark, moody films, which are heavily influenced by Eastern European film, literature, and music and often feature disassembled dolls and no spoken dialogue. The exhibition combines rarely seen, collaboratively designed miniature décors from some of their most prominent works, as well as continuous screenings of excerpts from several of the films.

The exhibition will be on view until Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at Parson School of Design's Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery; you can find out more by clicking here. I highly highly recommend you pay it a visit, whether you are already a Quay Brothers fan or not!

All photos* are mine, taken at the exhibition; you can see more by clicking here. You can view some of the Quay Brothers' films on You Tube by clicking here; better yet, buy yourself the film collection "Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers" and watch the entire 2-DVD collection in fine quality at home; click here to purchase from the Morbid Anatomy Bookstore (all proceeds benefit the Morbid Anatomy Library).

*Images: Top 2 images from set for Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles; Next 2 images from set for The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer, bottom image from set for The Calligrapher.

June Glasson, Ink on Paper, 21 C

I just stumbled upon the rather wonderful artwork of contemporary artist June Glasson. You can view her "Foulest of Shapes" series--all ink-on-paper drawings--by clicking here; The above images are all drawn from that series.

Found via the ever-revelatory Wurzeltod Tumblr; Click here to see more.

"Melancholy," Mike Robinson

"Melancholy," by Mike Robinson, 2003. Quarter Plate daguerreotype of a dress mannequin circa 1917 with skull. Created in collaboration with Spring Hurlbut and created for exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

You can see more of Mike Robinson's work here. Image sourced from here and originally found here.

"Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain"

While in London a few weeks ago, I found the time to check out a small but intriguing exhibition at the Tate Britain. Entitled "Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain," the exhibition focuses on recent Tate acquisitions that pivot around the central theme of classification and taxonomy, and features the work of Damien Hirst, Mark Dion, and Jake and Dinos Chapman. More about the show, from the Tate website:

Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain
How we see the world is how we understand it. Things are seen in relationship to other things and actions. Connections are made, naming takes place and meaning is formulated. We all engage with the world around us in diverse ways, both actively and passively.

The meanings and names given to things are not fixed, but instead fluid. We classify and catalogue but over time these categories and attendant meanings change, as does the importance they hold for us. The medieval world view, or cosmology, bears little relationship to the way we understand our place in the world today.

The works in this exhibition are drawn from Tate Collection. They adopt various forms, suggest diverse types of interpretation and provide a means of suggesting how the different types and arrangements of material culture inform our daily life. The exhibition also makes explicit the museum's role in collecting, classifying and displaying objects. It reveals how the arrangements of objects feed into museum systems of classification and interpretation bringing a sort of order to the world.

You can find out more, see more images, and watch a video about the exhibition by clicking here. But better yet, visit it in person, if possible. A small but lively and engaging exhibition.

Images, from Tate website: Top: Mark Dion, "Tate Thames Dig" 1999; Mixed media, installation; Bottom: Damien Hirst, "Forms Without Life" 1991: MDF cabinet, melamine, wood, steel, glass and sea shells, installation