Filed under: Anagnorisis Picks, Announcement, interview, photography | Tags: calma, Christina Brown, conjurer, david hochbaum, jewelry, jl schnabel, Molly Crabapple, new asceticism, occupy wall street, paul romano, stephan doitschinoff
Take a look at the latest posts that Samantha Levin has published up on the Creep Machine blog in the past few weeks.
Or, to satiate those of you with a lower attention span, please visit Samantha’s sublime Tumblr blog.
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Creep Machine: Miz Molly Crabapple is a fancy burlesque delight, but is also politically active as fuck. Living near Wall Street in NYC gave her 24 hour access to Occupy Wall Street. To lend support, she did what she does best: draw. As a continuation of The Creep’s initial post on OWS, I published some of what Molly did to support the uprising. |
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Creep Machine: Brazilian artist Stephan Doitschenoff (aka Calma) recently installed his newest collection of artworks at Jonathan Levine gallery. Just a quick peek here about this extremely worldly artist…more to come in the future! |
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Creep Machine: Hi Fructose journalist JL Schnabel collaborated with Paul Romano and photographer Christina Brown to put together a look book for her jewelry line, Blood Milk. Entitled, The Conjurer, it is an impressive work of art on its own. |
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Creep Machine: New York artist David Hochbaum is selling precious limited edition book sets of his multi-media works and photographs. These three books, signed by the artist, come in a hand-made box with a one-of-a-kind silkscreened print. This is a great opportunity to collect this artist’s work for an affordable price. Pics on the post! |
Filed under: Announcement, interview, photography | Tags: Android Lust, Dan Ouellette, Dreams from a Petrified Head, fetish, film, Kickstarter, medusa, The Birthday Massacre
Multifaceted artist, Dan Ouellette, is an explorer. His creative work delves into the psyche exposing truths and ideas, uncomfortable to some, about commonly held perceptions. Viewing his work renders you a voyeur staring into the private lives of deviants, who dare you to confront uncomfortable truths about yourself. His creatures, often mutated, hermaphroditic or impossible, explore ideas of sexuality, reality, and the control we believe we have over such things. Possibly contrary to this is that his primary interest is beauty; and it is this beauty, and the familiarity of it, that draws us in.
Having directed music videos for Android Lust and The Birthday Massacre, as well as working with Floria Sigismundi on David Bowie’s Dead Man Walking video, Dan has amassed a dedicated team of people who are more than excited to work for him to realize his projects. He is currently in pre-production for his film, Dreams From a Petrified Head and, while he has a good amount of dough with which to get started, his producer has initiated a Kickstarter campaign to help with post-production costs.
Dan and I chatted about his work, past and present:
Samantha Levin You self-describe your artwork as being psychosexual in nature. That term, psychosexual, most familiar in psychoanalytical circles, fits the conceptual side of your work quite well. When you’re creating your work, how much does concept drive you over form and beauty; or are they completely intertwined?
Dan Ouellette That’s a tough question.
I’d have to say I often start with the desire to make something very beautiful, which leads me into exploring forms I’ve studied extensively over the years. I sometimes feel like the prototypical “mad scientist” attempting to manufacture some new idealized object, which might be used for pleasurable, but ultimately self-destructive purposes. So the search for subject matter from which to extract some hidden previously unknown beauty is clearly a regular starting point. But very often, as I delve into the hidden forms of beauty, I enter into an even more complex psychological playground.
And then along the way I run into pre-established aesthetic modes, social mores, sexual preconceptions and political flash points. These suggestions are powerful and cannot be ignored. If an idea has a relationship or a likeness to visual material that automatically engenders viewer reaction, this needs to be addressed. It brings to mind Dali’s clocks or Warhol’s soup can; so my work can easily slip into the conceptual arena. It is quite amazing how prevalent the psychosexual is embedded within all manner of shapes and forms in our collective mind’s eyes throughout human history.
So whenever I start my conceptual research for something I am drawn to the process of recognition. This often bleeds over into my film scripts. I began to realize so much of art hovers around that threshold of recognition. As a viewer we recognize in ourselves, or some part of ourselves, some emotional well, some forgotten experience, played out before our eyes. The effect is uncanny and draws us in almost against our will.
SL Speaking of your films, I am very excited about your script Dreams From a Petrified Head. You have received a good amount of funding to direct this script – Congratulations! What inspired you to write this intelligent, mind-bending scifi story?
DO Two strong inspirations for me are J.G. Ballard and Harold Pinter. I like how Pinter’s plays are all about distraction, with none of the characters admitting, or wanting to admit, what is really happening. It is all polite social facade masking a rather lurid aggressive underbelly. And then as the masks slip, the narrative moves into a surrealism, but uncannily familiar.
With Ballard I am so taken by the comfort of his language that yields a strange torpor within his scenarios. These aren’t stories with a racing urgency, as we so commonly see in the sci-fi genre, but a kind of languid mélange of unreal settings and characters with odd ambiguous yearnings.
Knowing that there are always budget limitations, the script became a kind of personal challenge. Could I write a sufficiently sci-fi-esque story in one set with a depth of meaning?
Synopsis: “Dreams From a Petrified Head is the story of a man, Jeremy, whose job is to re-write the seditious media of a woman, Amanda Sage. She is a dissident whose anti-government speeches remain accessible to the public well after her death. Working to comprehend her lectures and alter them effectively, he decides to dump her stored memory into a robot made in her likeness. This brings him dangerously close to her and her message.”
SL You have a strong team of professionals working with you, essentially for free, to whom you’ve entrusted the entire script. Doesn’t that worry you? A certain science fiction movie on which you had a large influence has hit the big theaters without giving you proper credit. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen more times than I can count. What are your feelings about this sort of loss?
DO The process of collaboration is a necessity in many kinds of filmmaking. And while I have thought long and hard about escaping that collaborative process in favor of a Brothers Quay type of DIY filmmaking, I must admit I enjoy the collaborative process. I’ve had many many successful collaborative experiences, a few not so successful and a few litigious ones.
I made a film in college called Alexandra’s Closet, which was beautifully written by my sister. The actresses agreed to be in the movie to a large extent because of the script. I somehow also managed to assemble a very enthusiastic crew, all of them still close friends now. I had, for the first time, the very odd realization in the editing room that I had not made the film. The film suddenly was bigger and better than anything I could have made myself and I had to admit it was because everyone involved had actually made it. This was important because it helped me realize what a true creative collaboration can feel like when it works. Part of the mixed emotion was a sadness, because, truth be told, as an artist I think one is prone to concept of sole authorship.
SL I think this respect for your team is the reason why you make very high-quality films with very little money. How do your ideas behind your films and your other artworks influence each other?
DO They’re all woven together in terms of my creative process. And they are all progressing simultaneously in my life.
Admittedly I am addressing other aims when working on a film than I would be working on a drawing or a mask design. Each of the different forms work on the audience in unique ways, so I need to adjust how I use my tools accordingly. I’m primarily a visual artist but of course filmmaking is more than just visual. Films have that wonderful power whereby all the elements can come together and form a kind of symphony. This effect, when it is done well, can be overwhelming. Whereas the drawings are a fixed image and so I must work very hard to create a doorway, which perhaps awakens something in the viewer far more complex than the immediate image.
SL Tell me a little bit about your obsession with masks.
DO Well, here is a good example of how woven together the different forms are for me. The mask work really began as a prop for a video called Queen & Drones: The Hospital Footage (see inset). Around the same time Matthew Barney was exhibiting the props from his short films at the Guggenheim.
But before this I had become fascinated with the human tendency to see a face in something. Watch the Muppets for two minutes and you’ll see what I mean. They say that this works because of the eyes; their full creative attention is devoted to this aspect because it is the primary way we see a face. But I noticed that we can very easily read something as a face without any eyes and I wanted to figure out where that threshold was… where we still see a face where there is none.
There is the added quality in these masks that has to do with surface qualities. We have a reaction, a relationship to glassy smooth surfaces, for instance, that is quite different to say, vinyl or fabric. These surface qualities in themselves evoke their own tangible sense of recognition in us. I’ve been working towards what I call a “manufactured” surface that has a very forbidding tone to it.
This led to a bunch of sketches and design plans for a series of masks. Unfortunately this also demanded a whole new creative process of sculpting and casting which is unbelievably complex and challenging to learn.
**
Dan’s mask sculpture, Sex Mask for Religious People, as well as some of his drawings are available for purchase through Anagnorisis. If you are interested in helping with Dreams From a Petrified Head in any way, please visit the Kickstarter page or contact Dan’s film producer, Jason Goldman at Pharmacy Films.
Filed under: Announcement, Art Shows, Charity, Gallery, photography | Tags: afterparty, alex beaschesne, amber gray, auction, beauty, caitlin mitchell, d tyler huff, danielle ezzo, distorted, edwin ho, exhibition, fashion, indira cesarine, jordan fox, pixelspace, retouching, sergio kurhajec, tribeca grand, wendy hope
We hope you can swing by THIS THURSDAY! The event is free and open to the public. Please pass the good word along.
Filed under: Alternative Art Space, Announcement, Art Shows, Charity, photography | Tags: beauty, charity event, fashion photographers, jordan fox, photography exhibit, pixelspace, retouching, sex workers project, station digital, tanteo tequila, urban justice center
Normally, we try to focus our attentions toward the world of fine art; grotesque, whimsical, or otherwise undeniably eye catching. Over the past year, our exhibitions and entries have reflected this interest. This April we’re doing something a little different! Our very own, Danielle Ezzo, had the opportunity to create a unique exhibition that attempts to bridge often disconnected realms of art fine and commercial worlds – art and fashion. Anagnorisis Fine Arts, Pixelspace, and Station Digital are pleased to announce the exhibition and silent auction, Distorted Beauty, a collaboration between artist and retoucher D Tyler Huff and a select group of cutting edge commercial fashion and beauty photographers, proceeds of which will benefit the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.
Distorted Beauty refers to the connection between the fashion and beauty industry’s long-seated practice of transforming the photographic image by means of excessive retouching, ultimately creating a frame for what constitutes conventional beauty. While the current backlash against touching up of celebrities has taken center stage, similar techniques are employed on nearly all beauty and fashion images. This group exhibition attempts to examine this state of hidden digital manipulation, and generate conversation about the nature of this controversy, by exposing the degree to which body image is distorted beyond what is “true” or “real”.
Show Highlights: Established photographers Edwin Ho, Indira Cesarine, and Amber Gray will punctuate the show with their highly developed signature styles. Edwin Ho, known for his stunning images of Michael Jackson for ICON Magazine, and Indira the fashion editor for Lush Magazine and the recently launched XXXX Magazine. Amber, whose image graces the flyer for the show, has an innately whimsical aesthetic that spans the gap between art and fashion, humor and horror. Emerging photographer, Caitlin Mitchell’s work (image below), feature nightlife personality Jordan Fox.
Participating artists: Michael David Adams, Alex Beauchesne, Jonathan Bookallil, Indiria Cesarine, Amber Gray, Edwin Ho, Wendy Hope, D. Tyler Huff (image excerpt below), Peter Koval, Sergio Kurhajec, and Caitlin Mitchell.
Located in the heart of Soho, Pixelspace is a boutique shop focusing on beauty and fashion retouching. In an industry increasingly driven by the bottom line, Pixelspace is proud of their personalized, creative approach toward every project, from single retouched images to larger commercial projects.
Station Digital is a boutique that offers a full range of highly personalized digital imaging services. Shazi Hussain, Station Digital’s founder, has worked on some beautiful coffee table books such as, Women by Annie Leibovitz and Blood Sweat and Tears by Bruce Weber among others.
In December 2001 the Urban Justice Center created the Sex Workers Project, the first program in New York City and in the country to focus on the provision of legal services, legal training, documentation, and policy advocacy for sex workers. The SWP works in the following areas: criminal justice reform; trafficking in persons; and human rights documentation.
Please join on for the opening reception April 8th, 2010 from 7-10p at Station Digital – 73 Franklin Street, New York, NY.
Distorted Beauty runs from April 8th – May6th, 2010.
This event is sponsored by Tanteo Tequila, who will be graciously providing specialty cocktails.
Filed under: interview, photography | Tags: alternative process, bea nettles, book binding, photography

I want to see the exhibition at the Morgan Museum in NYC of the unbound pages of The Hours of Catherine of Cleves. http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=25 There are over 100 illuminated images in this book which is currently being rebound. This is an opportunity to see them all. Once the book is rebound, only a very few people will ever see these images in the original again. It is a once in a millenium opportunity.

BN- I wish I knew more artists who could survive on their artwork. My peers have been artists who also teach, mostly at the college level. This allows us studio time, especially in the summer months. I have taught many times at Penland School in North Carolina. Here I have met studio artiists who are able to live simply and make a modest living through the sales of their ceramics, blown glass or blacksmithing for example. I never felt that I would be able to sell the quantity of work needed to live in that manner.
BN- When I am working, either in the studio, or out in the world photographing, I am able to immerse myself in what I am doing. When things are going well, I find it incredibly exciting. There is a great book that discusses this phenomenon called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It feels wonderful to dip into that part of my brain, to draw upon my experience, to use my hands, to think and be alone. At other times it is very difficult and challenging to keep working. When that happens, I take a break and go work in the garden…which, for me is another form of creativity.
BN- I’m not sure who focuses on that work in NYC at this current time. In Chicago, you can see examples at two galleries: Catherine Edelman and Martha Schneider.
Visit The Little Deaths online gallery by clicking here

Flyer artwork by Dan Estabrook
Anagnorisis Fine Arts and Shadow’s Space are pleased to announce an exhibition featuring works that explore the visceral and intellectual foundations behind the well-known French term, “La Petit Mort” or “The Little Death”. Dramatically referring to orgasmic fainting spells or spiritual release, the term evokes the darker, and perhaps more realistic aspects of lust and love. One could possibly say that, through its association with death, it could also hint at the adverse emotions associated with intimacy.
Exploring various interpretations of The Little Deaths are artworks created by a wide range of outstanding artists, from some who are just beginning to show their work to those whose names are recognized internationally. The collection is eclectic, yet the artists, many of whom have created new works exclusively for the exhibit, were carefully chosen for the sensual elements inherent in their artistic styles.
All works are viewable on our online gallery: artanagnorisis/Gallery_TheLittleDeaths.html
Show Highlights:
Seasoned artists such as Roger Ballen, Christopher Conte, Christian Rex van Minnen and Carrie Ann Baade will punctuate the show with their highly developed signature styles. Ballen’s uncomfortable and real compositions, Baade’s wonderfully allegorical oil paintings, Conte’s bio-mechanical sculpture and van Minnen’s lush and visceral oil paintings have captured the attention of many collectors around the world. The sensual works of the relatively unknown artists, Alex Passapera and Caitlin Hackett, explore themes of animal instinct in human nature. Both artists are very new to exhibiting their work, yet show strong potential for success. Passapera’s detailed ink or pigmented figures are often humans depicted with or mutating into animal forms in sweeping lines and grotesque forms. Hackett’s grotesque animals drawn with ball-point pen and other mediums are exquisitely detailed and delicate, reminiscent of age-old Japanese prints.
Participating artists: Christian Rex van Minnen, Anastasia Alexandrin, Carrie Ann Baade, Roger Ballen, Eduardo Benedetto, Molly Bosley, Dana Bunker, Christopher Conte, Clayton Cubitt, Jonathan Davies, Cam de Leon, Dan Estabrook, Danielle Ezzo, Lori Field, Heather Gargon, Chambliss Giobbi, Celicia Granata, Caitlin Hackett, Scott Holloway, Tina Imel, John Kolbek, Craig LaRotonda, Samantha Levin, Julie Anne Mann, Nia Mora, Dan Ouellette, Alex Passapera, Jeanette Rodrigez, Erin Colleen Williams
“The Little Deaths” runs from December 4th, 2009 through January 29th, 2010, at Shadow’s Space located at 1248 N Front St (@ Thompson St., Girard stop on the Market Frankford Line) Philadelphia, PA. The opening reception, on Friday December 4th from 6 to 9 pm, is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Anagnorisis at 646.712.2820 or art@artanagnorisis.com – or Shadow’s Space through email (contact@shadowsspace.com) or by telephone at 215.425.1275.
A small sampling of the exhibit:

ROGER BALLEN
Boarding House
Silver gelatin print, 31.5 x 31.5″, Ed. of 10
Anagnorisis is very excited to announce that a new exhibition of the work of one of our favorite artists will be taking place at Gagosian Gallery this month. Roger Ballen’s enigmatic photography is starkly eerie. The elements within his photographs are very familiar and simply arranged, yet his compositions are like to a waking dream. Please join us for the opening reception tomorrow night at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue location (details below). Mr. Ballen will be present (visiting from South Africa, no less) and will be signing his new book.
We would also like to humbly point out (with blushing cheeks) that he will have work in our upcoming show, The Little Deaths, taking place at Shadow’s Space in Philadelphia this coming December.
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
Thursday, November 5th, 6-8pm
Boarding House will be on view at the Gagosian Gallery from Nov 5 – Dec 23, 2009.