Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s “Residential Erection” @ Postmasters Gallery April 5-May 10, 2008 ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments



This is an interesting solo show of Kenneth Tin-kin Hung’s work. His resume is amazing and you might remember him from his website:

http://www.1111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111.com
Visit his sites:
http://www.tinkin.com
http://www.gaszappers.com
















April 5 – May 10, 2008

KENNETH TIN-KIN HUNG
“Residential Erection”

Postmasters Gallery is pleased to announce “Residential Erection” – an exhibition of new works by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung opening on April 5 and remaining on view until May 10, 2008. The reception is scheduled for Saturday, April 5 between 6 and 8 pm. This will be the artist’s first solo show with the gallery.

Born in Hong Kong and now living in New York Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung creates explosive political spectacles in a form of dense, psychedelically flavored video animations, sculptures and digital collages.
Today’s headlines are tomorrow’s history. The raw materials for Hung’s work are everyday news of wars, religious conflicts, natural disasters, dirty politics, climate change, and global and local economy.
Postmasters’ exhibition is devoted to 2008 US Presidential Election and its unprecedented place at the intersection of politics, popular culture and media manipulation of the political process.
At the center of “Residential Erection” is short, action-packed video animation retelling and contextualizing the election and two monumental pop-up book structures depicting the fields of Democratic and Republican candidates. The precisely researched video hits hard at the hypocrisy of political rhetoric of recent years, and the troubled State of the Union. As hilarious as it is scary, it merges internet-scavenged imagery and original animation with pop graphics to create factual or semi-fictional relationships between the familiar political figures, corporations, and mass media iconography.
At risk of giving away the ending:

FINAL SCENE-MEDIA, PATRIOT ACT AND WASHINGTON MONUMENT A man is masturbating (with a ballot box covering his genital areas) on a couch while watching the Diebold TV. His head is wrapped with an American flag (resembling John Heartfield’s photomontage “Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf: Away with These Stultifying Bandages!”), his right hand is holding a TV remote control in a shape of a handgun. There’s a sign saying “Patriot Act” in the room. Outside the room in the White House. On the lower left corner a “Not News” logo is based FOX news. When the man reaches his climax the screen turns into the Washington Monument exploding red, white and blue colors from its tip. THE END.

“Gas Zappers”, a video in which Tin-Kin Hung takes on the subject of climate change and the politics of global warming, will be shown in the second gallery. Both “Gas Zappers” and an earlier work “Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People” starring George W. Bush, his cabinet, and an international cast of world leaders and pop stars, have been shown at Sundance Film Festival in Park City this January. “Washington/Hollywood” was recently on view at The New Museum as a part of “Unmonumental” exhibition (until March 29). In her New York Times’ review Roberta Smith wrote that Hung’s video is “like the cover of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album or the credits of the Monty Python television show, with jet fuel.” (July 20,2007)

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s work is not about “lessness”.

Postmasters Gallery, located in Chelsea 459 West 19th Street (corner of 10th Avenue), is open Tuesday through Saturday to 11 – 6 pm.

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Lots of Things Like This, organized by Dave Eggers, April 2 – May 10, 2008 ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

‘ April 2 – May 10, 2008
Opening reception: Wed, April 2, 6-8PM
Apexart
291 Church Street
(between Walker and White)
New York, NY 10013 USA‘

Directions: Several MTA trains stop at the Canal Street Station (6, A, C, E, J, M, Z, N, R, Q, W). We are located at 291 Church Street – between Walker and White Streets, just two blocks south of Canal Street. The 1 train stops at Franklin Station and we’re two blocks east.

There were three main people who worked on the show on our end, Jesse Nathan, Jordan Bass, and myself, and we all took a shot at writing essays about the work we’d found and included in this show. The first drafts of these essays were a little formal and maybe even pretentious. We re-wrote them and they still didn’t seem right. So finally we settled on the text below, all of it mercifully brief and plain.

This show, titled Lots of Things Like This, came about when apexart asked for an idea for a show. The first thought that occurred to us was an exhibit that would highlight work that included these three elements:

1. An image
2. Some words (usually referring to the image)
3. A sense of humor

The show never got much more complicated than that. We started with the artists we knew we had to include: Raymond Pettibon, Tucker Nichols, Maira Kalman and David Shrigley. All four of them had found a place in the fine art world, even though in many cases their work was both narrative and funny, a combination that’s historically been rare in galleries and museums. For the most part, artists who use text in their work don’t write punchlines – the text is usually abstract or oblique, open to interpretation. But the rise of comics-based art, and of Pettibon in particular, had opened the doors to new hybrids of words and images, thank god.

So we started looking for work by our starting four artists, and many others, that satisfied the criteria. We figured we would bring in some artists who generally go by the label cartoonists (because, generally speaking, image + text + humor= cartoons), and we did, but we also found some great examples of the form from long-dead painters (Goya, Magritte), more recently dead genre-straddlers (Steinberg, Warhol), and a wonderfully diverse group of artists from all kinds of disciplines: writers, poets, musicians and playwrights. Actually just one playwright, David Mamet. But he’s one of the best.

In some cases, this sort of work is central to what an artist does. Solakov and Perjovschi, for example, are well known for their brilliant and witty combinations of text and image. In other cases, as with Silverstein, this kind of captioned art is at the outer edge of the artist’s oeuvre. But we can say that just about every artist that we investigated, or had a hunch about, did indeed have work like this tucked away somewhere. Long after we had filled the show, we were finding fascinating examples of the form, and of course there are a number of obvious omissions in this show, from Lichtenstein to Picasso.

In any case, being loathe to draw conclusions about the artists’ motivations or methods, because, again, so many of these people are dead, we’re instead going to list some questions that occurred to us and might occur to you and might help the show blow your mind completely:

Why is it that so many of these artists aren’t so great at spelling? And why is it that when they screw up one of their words, instead of starting over, they just cross the word out and write it again? Many people would choose to start over.

Why is it important to many of the artists that the drawings appear casual, even rushed? Is the loose draftsmanship part of its appeal, in that it seems more intimate and disarming? Is absurdity more appealing when it comes across as humble?

What is the line between a doodle, a cartoon, a gag, a work of fine art, and will there ever be a time when someone doesn’t insist on writing a similar kind of silly and rhetorical sentence in an art catalog?

In some cases does it seem that the artist is defacing his or her own work by adding the text? That’s partly why we included the Duchamp / Mona Lisa experiment and the Goya – in both cases the words are a lighthearted comment on a finished or abandoned image. Sorry, that’s not really a question. Moving on…

Does this excerpt from an essay by Michael Bracewell, writing about David Shrigley, help us understand what some of these artists are up to? Here’s the relevant part: “Shrigley’s unlocked studio, situated near a struggling job club, was often raided by vandals who amused themselves by making additions to his drawings. Acknowledging the comedy within the discrepancy between the miscreants’ anti-art attitude and the claims of fine art to instruct or enlighten, [Shrigley] began to develop a graphic style in which the banal or the absurd could be used…”

Couldn’t it be said that these artists are doing lots of not-encouraged-in-art-school things at once, given they’re making work that’s narrative, often informal, un-self-serious and usually featuring punchlines? And given its crossing of these many boundaries, doesn’t it make sense that its practitioners would come from so many other disciplines?

Does the subject matter – in many cases private and withdrawn – fit the form of these drawings? That is, is there something shy and retiring about this work, as if you’re looking at something very private, something not meant for public viewing?

Is it instructive that a good percentage of the art we chose to put in the show was hard to find? More often than not, we would find something in a book or online that we wanted to include, and when we got in touch with the artist, his or her gallery or estate, they would have no idea where the original was. No one would know. It was refreshing, in a way, and seemed appropriate for the form. Again, it doesn’t take itself so seriously.

But it does bring pleasure. This was really the guiding motivation behind the researching and hanging of this show: to put an enjoyable exhibit together, to cover the walls with strange and funny things. In that pursuit, we were lucky to assemble a fascinating group of artists, and we hope you like it.

P.S. The ostensible curator, Dave Eggers, would like to emphasize just how hard Jesse Nathan, a very young man who stepped up to help out, worked on this show. A good deal of the most interesting “finds” in the show came via his hard work, ingenuity and creative digging. Jordan Bass at McSweeney’s was a tremendous help, and of course Kerri Schlottman and everyone at apexart were exceptionally professional, good-natured, quick and efficient, and helpful in every way.

Dave Eggers

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Black People are Beating White People in EVERYTHING! Cont’d! ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Above: “Family film my ass, fuck you cracka assed cracka.”

Above: Seriously, do black people even like swimming? I’ve never heard of it.

The new movie “Pride’ reminds us that black people are better than white people in sports. This time it’s swimming and like its predecessors (Bring it On, Cool Running, Glory Road, etc.) it reminds us of the struggle that black people have against racial inequality in America.

Above: Yay!

It’s weird that there are so many movies like this. I don’t claim to know what drives Hollywood to make these movies, but I’ll make my guess. I think there are definitely a lot of black people going to the movie theaters but not enough to warrant this continuous flow of films that revolve around this black versus white topic. White people must be buying tickets and watching these films.

Take Pride for instance – I don’t know what it’s about at all – but looking at the trailer I get the sense that it’s PG or PG-13 rated, a family film, and the underdog, the black swim team, will probably win in the end. Maybe white people are still subliminally guilty or cause Bernie Mac is funny with his funny way of speaking. Regardless, white people are going to these movies. Why? Maybe after watching the movie, the white family’s parents are thinking in their heads, “oh, what nice negroes, I’m glad they won out in the end cause it certainly was unfair back when there was slavery” (possibly not in those terms, OR possibly IN those terms).

FAMOUS “BLACK vs. WHITE’ FILMS

Bring It On – Cheerleading

Cool Runnings – Bobsledding

Glory Road – Basketball

Tiger Wood’s Career – Golf (It’s not even a movie, I know)

Star Wars – Lightsabering

You Got Served – Dancing

Whte Men Can’t Jump – Basketball again, I guess

Lets not even look at the whole black versus white thing for a second. Maybe white people go watch this movie because of the storyline, which I assume is that there’s a black swim team and they don’t do very well in the beginning but later, up against something racial they amp up their efforts and bam win something or other (THE ULTIMATE SUPREME GRAND SWIM CHAMPIONSHIP FINALS). Hey, I like underdog movies, I thought ALI or ROCKY were both pretty good.

Actually, maybe I’m wrong altogether. There are probably a lot of black people giving their money to Hollywood and I just don’t know about it cause I really don’t do any research regarding these blog entries. Otherwise how can you justify Queen Latifah’s career or movies like Friday, Next Friday, Friday After Next or the whole Barbershop series (how many were there? 2? 3?). Finally another possibility pops up in my head and it’s just that black culture is so popular and there are a lot of white people who like it and go watch it. Again though, I feel like black culture is so popular less so because of the content of black culture but ultimately because white people are just still feeling kind of guilty. Eh, who cares? Was this entry racist? It’s okay, I have black friends. eh… go fuck yourself.

by the way…

Here are the results to the Yahoo Answers Question that I posted:

Question:

Can you think of a movie where black people are better than white people in some sort of activity? sports etc.

Other than: the new movie PRIDE (swimming), You’ve got Served (dancing), Bring it On (Cheerleading) or just in general, being Tiger Woods.

Answers:

(just the funny ones – Yahoo Answers Members are pretty hilarious!)

1.) “Why? so you can steal more ideas from us like you have in the whole entire history of the world.”

2.) “no title having to deal with a life or a real time relationship”

3.) “The ” Boys in the Hood “. illustrates that blacks excel in stupidity. “

By the way, DON’T GO SEE “I Think I Love My Wife“

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How we bootleg DVDs and don’t give a crap. ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Above: “Hey, what the fuck are you looking at? You mudda-fucka”

Look at this scumbag or as I’d like to call him, man of commerce. You know, I read this article a while back on Slate.com (I’ve been looking at the site quite often lately) about how people, well, I don’t know if you know, but people in China operate these illegal carts/shops everywhere in the major cities, everywhere like they’re McDonalds in Manhattan, anyway, people will watch movies that they generally won’t pay to rent and definitely not watch in the the theaters but if it’s cheap (bootlegged) they’ll give it a try.

Above: 5RMB to 8RMB ($1) a DVD and you get a discount if you buy a bunch, seriously.

Well FUCK THAT SHIT. Are you fucking kidding me. Now you’re telling that you’re going to sit through Norbit just because it cost you a few dollars less? No, that’s bullshit, because NORBIT IS A PIECE OF SHIT – I don’t need to see it to know. The article goes on talking about how movie industries should consider this, consider how they’re not actually losing as much money as they think they are because people who buy bootlegs may not necessarily buy the original or watch it in the theaters but will buy this bootleg cause it’s cheaper. Now this may be true to a certain degree but it’s not accounting for the fact that because I now know and am so accustomed to watching crap on bootleg, because it’s cheaper and I’m all about the content, that I’m not going to watch movies at the theater or buy it when it comes on official DVD and instead just wait for the bootleg.

Above: Mistakes 1.) Letting reporters know that he slept with a tranny 2.) Norbit

TORRENTS – Now it’s pretty mainstream right? I mean, you probably have either heard of it or download movies on the internet (illegally) yourself. There are websites full of links to torrents that let me download new movies on the internet, bootleg-video-camera’d versions or dvd quality, that are cutting into BOTH Hollywood and that black guy on the street in Chinatown. I have not been to the theaters in months. However, the fact that I’ve been to the theater at all was because the movie I wanted to watch (The Departed) just needed to be seen on a big scale. Now that’s the bullshit thinking they should be marketing more. There is NO way to eliminate piracy. Piracy is like a virus, fat lazy people who don’t work because what they ultimately want to do is just watch movies and eat fried pork grinds, skip the get-a-job-pay-for-ticket part, and just download shit while sitting in their parent’s basements and jerk-off afterwards.

Above: Mr. Master Bator says, “I have mosaic eyes.”

Movie theaters are never going to disappear, The New Yorker had an article about how it’s such a social experience – even if you go alone – that it will never disappear, BUT! Hollywood isn’t making their margins solely on tickets, they’re LOSING money on DVDs. My suggestion is, make DVDs so much better and SO full of crap that the bootleg pales by comparison. A special edition box is not going to work. A double dvd set? Eh, better. “The Departed’ in a special edition box double dvd set with extra nude scenes featuring Vera Farmiga (the broad who played the psychiatrist) that’s lengthy and can’t fit on those bootleg 4.2 gig bootleg dvds? I’m sold, where can I buy? – the extra porno could probably be bootlegged and I’d just wait in my parent’s basement for THAT too.

Above: “Sure Mr. Scorsese, I’ll take off whatever you want. (wink)”

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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter @ 31 Grand on January 10th, 2008 ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Go to this art show. Reception is tomorrow. Free booze, probably.

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
Artists: Shauna Born, Fanny Bostrom, Paul Brainard, Maureen Cavanuagh, Orly Cogan, Jan Dunning, Juno Doran, Brad Kahlhamer, Carol “Riot” Kane, Kris Knight, Kate Kretz, Jason Cole Mager, Ryan McClennan, Sean McDevitt, Emily Roz, and Jeff Wyckoff

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January 10 – February 9, 2008
Reception for the Artists: Thursday, January 10, 7-9pm

31GRAND is pleased to announce “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” a group exhibition on the condition of being human. Bringing together a diverse group of artists and mediums, the show is filled with human revelations from our struggle with isolation and loss, to love, wonderment, desire and desperation.

Subway Directions

Hi Jimmy,

Subway, let’s see… So best bet is the 2nd Ave. F train. Get out at the 1st Ave. and Houston exit. Walk south on Houston till you hit Ludlow St. (corner where Katz deli is). At Ludlow take a right (toward downtown) and you’ll hit us at 143 Ludlow between Stanton St. and Rivington St. Hope you can make it.

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No World Records at 2008 Olympics? I don’t think so! ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

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A while back, I read an article on Slate.com about Beijing’s pollution problem. The city is terrible. The government regulates with extremely low standards so cars and factories emit double the amount of volatile gases that would be allowed in the US. The government has even planned to shoot these giant weather bullets into the clouds during the coming Olympics in order to reduce the number of cloudy days, which sounds more magical than realistic.

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Slate.com’s Michelle Tsai predicts that the number of world records breaking would be far less than those of Olympics-past. That’s probably true. Most likely that’s what’ll happen. But imagine rather than interfering with the Olympians, it actually helps them!? Yeah, sure, my medical background consists of some health classes in high school, those Pepto-Bismol commercials

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and a Nobel Prize in the study of gastroenterology, but! it would be wild if these Olympians get pumped from all this pollution, albeit at the cost of longevity, and just break non-stop records. I mean, when the Hulk was exposed, he just grew stronger, right? okay, ridiculous.

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Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Internet Hussies, People Whose Names I Can’t Remember and Black People ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

‘

First of all, Merry Christmas! (yesterday) and Happy New Year! (soon) for all 6+/- people who read my blog. Anyway, with all that said, I don’t know if anyone out there do this thing, it’s kind of creepy, definitely lecherous, but what I’ll occasionally do is just go on the internet and look at myspace sites or blogs created by hussies. Now you’re thinking, What!? Hussies!? What the…!? How do you determi… well, simple, if they’ve got a picture of themselves dolled up like a 2 dollar hooker w/ their boobies (tee hee, tee hee) or you see their ass hanging out on their profile, they’re (you’re?) a hussy. It’s great, try it. What’s interesting is that one hussy will have links to other hussies, creating a hussy network.

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Actually, it was difficult to find this one. You know, you can’t just type “slutty” and “myspace” and hope for results. Nobody writes that in their myspace, even if they are. Instead, you gotta type the complete opposite shit, like “angel” – AH HA HA HA HA HA

There are so many people out there. I can’t remember everyone’s names. I don’t know how people remember MY name. When they do, I’m shocked and I’m caught in the headlights like, “HEY…uhmm… you… I know you… my friend” which is pretty funny, for me. I don’t know how people feel about that. I assume they feel the same way I feel when I remember their name and they look awkwardly at me trying to remember mine, OUTRAGED! no no no, I’m kidding, I’m indifferent, I really don’t give a shit if people don’t remember my name because really now… they were just lucky that I remembered theirs. I used to work for this guy who took pictures of everyone. People thought he was some happy-go-lucky guy who loved taking pictures but it turned out he just needed to match names with faces in case they ever emailed him or if he ever forgot their names. That’s a pretty good idea but I would just end up with a bunch of ugly pictures. ooooh…BOOYAH!

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Get it? Remember that movie? 50 first dates, where what’s her name keeps forgetting Mr. Happy Gilmore

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Have you ever read my entry about black people being better than white people at doing stuff? Well, there’s this new movie where black people are better debaters (AH HA HA HA HA, because it’s so obscure, not because I’m racist) than white people. WHAT IS GOING ON? Is there a list of things that Hollywood is going through one-by-one? It’s like a giant list of activities they run by Denzel Washington to see if he can do it. It’s like, “uhmmm… hey Denzel, are you good at tennis!? No? No? okay okay… well what about croquet? Cause you know… those WHITE PEOPLE, they’re monopolizing croquet” Okay, this entry is ridiculous. Good-bye.

Oh, on a final note, do people see potential for this website? Because it seems like it’s pretty much total bullshit. Sometimes I’ll look at other websites and be like, wow, why doesn’t that person do THIS with their site or do THAT with their site but I think people don’t realize how blogging is just a small, tiny tiny, part of my life. I can’t go out to things on a daily basis and take pictures and meet people. Actually, I can.

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Becoming Famous, Katt Williams and Vintage NYC Buses ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

I was sitting there on the bus this morning and really, I don’t remember what I was thinking about that led me to this conclusion, and I don’t think it’s anything new either, but if you do “whatever” long enough, you become famous, or atleast you become “that guy” who is known for “that.” Do you know what I mean? Like the other day, a friend was telling me about going to Grad school for poetry. In my mind I was all, WHAT!? really!? but I mean, there’s a possibility if he loves it and he keeps at it that he’ll one day become the next Maya Angelou. I mean, he won’t be the next Donald Trump if MONEY is your yardstick for success. I have never heard of a billionaire poet, but then of course you’ve got that Harry Potter lady, whose name is not coming to me at the moment, I mean, she’s loaded, not Trump loaded but loaded enough to spend the rest of her life being happy. Money can buy happiness, let’s not lie and say it doesn’t.

Katt Williams, what the fuck!? I was standing there this morning waiting for the bus and I saw this ad, on the side of the bus, for this new movie that’s coming out with Ice Cube and Tracy Morgon. I have seen Katt Williams’ stand-up and I don’t think he’s funny at all. Seriously. He’s like those white comedians that make jokes about being hill-billies but for black people. You know how there’s those white hickory-dickory-doo comedians that’s always making jokes about Macaroni and Cheese, trailers and Wal-mart? (Ha, look, now I’m doing it, I’m one of those comedians) well, Katt Williams is like that except his subjects are like rims and getting “yo hair done” and I don’t know, other “ghetto” black stuff, or I’ll just say rims again cause, well… cause this is my blog and I don’t give a shit. Anyway, he’s a douchebag, let’s just conclude that cause he wears a wig and screams unfunny black generalities at the audience. Not funny.

Okay, so from December 10th though December whenever, there will be some sort of NYC vintage bus program. I was thinking about going out and riding one of those but then I was thinking “Why the fuck would I do that?” like “Why the fuck would I do that? That’s ridiculous, why should I care? How does this benefit me?” and then I started to get stressed a little like, “Why am I thinking about this so much?” and “Maybe this is why I’m not successful in life, cause I even ENTERTAIN the idea of taking one of those dumb buses” and then “I should blog about this” and here we are.

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Forget everything you THINK you know about eBay. Here comes the eBay king! ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

What you need to do right now is to clear your mind. Yeah, do it. Because you’re probably thinking, oh, what is this guy going to tell me about eBay I don’t already know? Well stfu because YOU DO NOT KNOW how to eBay, you bitch.

I used to be just like you, “yeah,” I thought, “I have a great thing that everyone wants, I have great feedback, my eBay auction looks so pretty and clean and my description is nice and clear. I’ll make a killing.” Well that’s bullshit.

Fuck that. This is what you gotta do. You gotta start a blog, get a bunch of readers and then 8 months and 20,000 page visits later, you start eBaying your shit and linking your blog to your eBay auctions. Make sure you make the eBay auction as gaudy as possible. If you’re eBaying art like the way I’m doing in this post, just make statements like, yeah, this is the greatest whatever whatever you’re about to bid on.

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Kim Kardashian video FINALLY OUT! (lots of info here) ” ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Published on April 7, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

So the Kim Kardashian video after much deliberation is now OUT! available ON the internet. Of course I am the first person to say “Nay’ to celebrity worship and NSFW content such as those now available for download via the links below (shaking my head in disgust, yuck!):

http://www.zshare.net/video/full-kimk-ray-j_sex-tape-www-worldstarhiphop-com-wmv.html

From world star hip hop

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