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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Jukebox Babe/Peres Projects

Lazy K - Jukebox Babe from BPotucek on Vimeo.

I'll be in La next week for the Ssion showing at Peres Projects! See you there!

SSION
"BOY"
Peres Projects, Los Angeles
January 16 – April 3, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 16, 2010, 6pm – 9pm

Press Release:

Javier Peres is very pleased to present "BOY", the first Los Angeles solo exhibition by Cody Critcheloe – SSION (B. Kentucky USA. Lives and work in Kansas City, MO). "BOY" brings together nine separately shot but jointly conceived music videos for SSION's 2007 record Fool's Gold.

First things first! It's SSION, pronounced "shun," as in mission, fission, ambition-all apt words to describe the gesamtkunstwerk that is Cody Critcheloe and the queer punk/performance/art band he invented ten years back as a high school student in Lewisport, Kentucky. In the time since then, SSION has released 4 full-length records, toured extensively through the United States, and enjoyed cult status among fans and music writers who have lauded Critcheloe as everything from Out magazine's Hottest Artist of the Year to "Prince's love child" to the "one true master" of "high-concept sleaze pop." Critcheloe's songs are catchy, not abstract, and his visuals and live shows are crafted to appeal to more than an art-going crowd. SSION could easily cross over to become a pop phenomenon-a potentiality (or prophecy) which, in a stroke of self-reflexive genius, Critcheloe has already written into the narrative arc of his work to date. The story of SSION is a raucous, louched up, camp parody of Critcheloe's own life, in which a small-town punk kid hooked on doughnuts and pizza follows his dreams with razor focus to emerge as a svelte, smoky-eyed pop star embraced by adoring crowds. And here, it seems, is the catch. While the annals of art and film give us plenty of examples to draw on for theorizing the artist's alter ego, the image-obsessed dandy, the high-camp auteur, and the concept band, the discourse is less prescribed for an artist and musician who straddles all of these genres while aspiring to create work that actually is pop in the broadest and most populist sense of the word.

SSION's first feature-length film, BOY, affords a fresh opportunity to consider the band's work in the context of popular media and within the discourses of contemporary art. To situate the work this way is to necessarily highlight a degree of fluidity, criticality and complexity in the work that far exceeds the typical coming-of-age movie or arena concert experience.

-- Stacy Switzer, Artistic Director, Grand Arts, Kansas City, Mo., 2009

"BOY" will be on view at Peres Projects (2766 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034) through April 3, 2010. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M and by appointment.

For further information or reproductions please contact Javier Peres or Richard Lidinsky at tel. + 1 310 559 6100 or via email at Javier@peresprojects.com or Richard@peresprojects.com.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Physical Anxiety

So I made a song called Physical Anxiety today. The song is about 'doing it. Take a listen, if your feeling a little, um, kinky.

Physical Anxiety

Art Opening ()()()()()

NTER CHNG

Opening reception: Second Friday, January 8th from 6-9pm at Arts Incubator

115 W 18th St
Kansas City, MO 64108

On view: through January 29th

NTER CHNG (text speak for interchange) is an interactive text messaging experience by Kansas City based artists Drew Bolton, Jamie Burkart and Garrett Fuselier opening Second Friday, January 8 from 6 - 9 at the Arts Incubator’s Cocoon Gallery.

Equal parts software application and architectural installation, NTER CHNG encourages visitors to turn on their cell phones and communicate in real-time through both faces of a digital wall constructed in the gallery. Over the course of the exhibition, messages from participants combine to form a virtual dialog that demonstrates the character of the TXT phenomenon.

NTER CHNG inverts the social practice short messaging. The privacy of a silent exchange is made public. The one-to-one becomes many-to-many. The pragmatic, ephemeral and every-day nature of text messaging is suddenly transformed into a physically immersive aesthetic experience in which visitors can speak and misspeak together as a group.

Bulton, Burkart and Fuselier combine their backgrounds in scenic design, computer programming, motion graphics, and experiential production to craft a social information space that explores the pervasiveness of TXT culture and challenges its insularity. “We hope to make new connections for the gallery visitor. Texting can be a very interior experience. We are asking them to reach outside their address books and step beyond the buddy list,” says Burkart.

“[Opening night] will be our biggest night with the widest range of communication. We feel that because the gallery is conducive to the open exchange of ideas we are allowing people to write anything and communicate in the most comfortable way possible,” says Fuselier.

NTER CHNG is the collective product of a Bolton, Burkart and Fuselier collaboration produced exclusively for the 2010 Cocoon Gallery exhibition.

About the Artists

Drew Bolton was chief editor of the 2009 Grand Arts Film, SSION’s BOY. A 2006 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, he lives and works in Kansas City.

Jamie Burkart has exhibited interactive video works with the Bushwick Art Project in New York and the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco. His recent installation with the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project addressed the Missouri River in Kansas City as a Social Network. Burkart studied Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Garrett Fuselier is a 2008 graduate of Kansas City Art Institute. He designs interactive projection based experiences with TakeTwo, a cross-media design firm of Kansas City.

ANOTHER ART OPENING

Manifesto Rock Posters

1819 Central

Featuring bands and such.

MUSIC

Saturday January 9th

Cool Memories (chicago)
Wrong Crowd
Lazy K
Benjamin

at Newsroom

Shannon and Leon are performing as the Lesbian Five? tonight at the Brick