Brent Birnbaum’s ICE ICE MAYBE in store appearance at Ted Reiderer’s NEVER RECORDS went extremely well. Brent channeled Vanilla Ice with such gusto that not only did he autograph and sell hundreds (well at least well over one hundred) of Sanford/Birnbaum prints, but he also signed almost as many body parts. Yes he signed boobs!

We still have a few prints left which we are selling off over the internet to people who weren’t able to be at the performance, they are moving at a pretty good clip, so if you want one ACT NOW! If you are interested you can send Brent an email with you address and the name you want the print to be autographed to. They still only cost $5 but we are adding an additional $5 on internet sales to cover the added costs, such as shipping, packing and paypal fees for a total of $10. Brent will send your limited addition print out asap once ordered and bill you via paypal. Email Brent at pearbomb@gmail.com

Here are some photos of the event, but if you want more check out VANILLA twICE – Brent’s offical ICE ICE MAYBE site. He is available for parties and bar mitzvahs….

 

No Longer Empty is putting on a show called Never Can Say Goodbye at the (now defunct) flagship location of Tower Records at East 4th street and Broadway in money makin’ Manhattan. I am excited to be collaborating with Brent Birnbaum in the show, as part of Ted Reiderer’s NEVER RECORDS installation.

Ted will be realizing a grand, multi-artist installation in which he will create a simulation of a long forgotten relic of the 20th Century: the record store. Ted’s project, called NEVER RECORDS, will include work and merch from a whole bunch of artists:

Richard Hambleton | Ted Riederer | Josh Shaddock | Stephanie Syjuko | Brent Birnbaum | Shane Caffrey | Nicholas Brooks | Ryan Sullivan | Doug McQueen | Allison Hester | James Rubio | Richard Barnes | Ted O’Sullivan/Rebecca Potts | Michelle Matson | Brendan Carney | Arturo Vega | Tom Sanford | Johnny T. Yerington | Chris Yerington | Jay Ivcevich

Where I come in is in collaboration with Brent Birnbaum. During the opening reception for the show, Brent will appear dressed as Vanilla Ice (c. 1990 of course) and do a performance which he calls ICE ICE MAYBE. The performance will resemble an “in store appearance,” where Brent will assume the character of Rob Van Winkle’s 1990’s cross-over hip hop villain/scapegoat Vanilla Ice, and he will autograph some ICE ICE MAYBE merchandise, which I had a hand in creating. I am not exactly sure whether or not he will spit some white-boy flava, but I guess there is a chance, depending on how “full of 8-ball” he is. Either way, I know for a fact that Brent has a full array of V.I.P. Posse dance moves.

For my part, I have made a couple of my poster paintings in support of Brent’s vanilla vision. One of the posters is to publicize the performance (pictured above) the other will be reproduced in 8X10 form and autographed for fans willing to wait in line and thus “participate” in Brent’s Rob Van Winkle re-awakening. Those who do cue up to meet ICE will not only have the opertunity to have a brief chat with with the pseudo-star, but will get the chance to purchase his autograph on a LIMITED EDITION ARCHIVABLE* BRENT BIRNBAUM/TOM SANFORD PRINT FOR ONLY 5 DOLLARS!

Brent and I have produced a very limited edition print of one of the posters that i painted for his performance. The print will be signed by both of us artists and numbered one of two hundred and fifty. In addition ICE ICE MAYBE will autograph every print bought to the lucky fan on the spot and personalize it with an ice cool vanilla message. If you bring a camera you will even be allowed to take one photo with ICE ICE MAYBE with each print purchased. So get to the opening early so not to miss your chance to get you print and photo op.

* These prints are archivable in that one can archive them. We make no claim that the paper is in any way archival, in fact it was selected to approximate the quality of the pages of the Tiger Beat magazines that inspired Brent’s performance. Anyway they look great and judging by Brent’s collection of Tiger Beat magazines they should hold up for at least 20 years with absolutely no quality issues.

Never Can Say Goodbye will open on January 15th from 6-8PM, and be open for at least a month. No firm end date has been established as of now. The show will be in the old Tower Records location on the northeast corner of East 4th street & Broadway.

In addition to the artists participating in NEVER RECORDS, the following other artists are also contributing to Never Can Say Goodbye:

Ryan Brennan | Joe Diebes | Luke Duboi | Richard Garet | Nir Hod | Josh Jordan | Kaz Oshiro | Ted Reiderer | Naama Tsabar | Meredyth Sparks | Seibren Versteeg | Paul Vilinski | Invader | Bob Gruen | Dario Robleto | Jason Farrell | Brandi Merolla |Arturo Vega/DeeDee Ramone | Exene Cervenka | Olaf Bruening | Jake Berthot | Jeff Beebe | Marylin Minter | Jason Losh | Evan Gruzis | Damon Locks |Steven Bindernagel | Ethan Minsker | Mike Egan | Mathew Bradley | James Woodward

Curated by Manon Slome, NLE; Steven Evans, Dia Art Foundation; and Asher Remy-Toledo, NLE.

ARTISTS:

justin craun / gina magid / aaron spangler
nellie bridge / mamie holst / brad kalhamer
jim lee / holly coulis / adrian meraz
anke weyer / alisha kerlin

IN PROGRESS!

A Poster for Brent Birnbaum’s May 2009 Exhibition at BUIA Gallery in NYC. The painting is pretty much done. The show will be in May 2009.

UPDATE:SHOW CANCELLED Unfortunately BUIA Gallery is the latest victim of the current financial meltdown and has been forced to close. So I regret to report Brent’s show is on hold for now. I am sure this will only be a temporary setback for Greenpoint’s best dressed urban folk artist. However, this unfortunate and unanticipated hick up must mean that the project protocols will be amended to determine what happens to a poster if it is produced, but the show never happens…

During July of 2008 I made the second poster in the project for William Powhida’s September 2008 exhibition at Platform Gallery in Seattle, Washington. The premise of the exhibition was that Powhida had become disillusioned with art and had reinvented himself as a dionysian, but extremely self-aware, rock star. Naturally William and I agreed the poster should reference rock concert tour posters. Below is a photograph of the reproduced poster in installation somewhere in Seattle:

Powhida is a really facinating artist who i met through Jens-Peter Brask several years ago. In New York you can find his work at Schroeder Romero Gallery. Along with making a poster for his exhibition I convinced him to let Amanda Browder and I interview him for Bad at Sports. From William’s website:

William Powhida (b. 1976, New York) is a GENIUS artist and BRILLIANT critic living and working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  He studied painting at Syracuse University where he easily received his B.F.A with honors and received his M.F.A. from the famed (cheap) Hunter College program in New York City. Getting a honors there was even easier.

Powhida has become an international art sello…SENSATION exhibiting in New York, Seattle, Miami, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, and Belgium. His new show, A Study For Sofia Coppola’s Film ‘Powhida’ will be on view at Haines Gallery in San Francisco November 14th through December 22nd. You should check it out. He has exclusive West Coast representation with Platform Gallery in Seattle, and is looking for an international dealer. His amazing work has been exhibited at Pulse, Aqua Art, Scope (sorry), and Year_06. After years of toiling away in Brooklyn the artist has finally stepped into the market ready to be commodified and assimilated. He wants it to happen as quickly as possible so he can be chewed up and spit out into retirement with a pile of money.

His work involves drawing projects based on memory and socially transformative narrative such as his large scale drawing of everyone the artist has ever met and “letters” to collectors, artists, and dealers requesting the impossible.  His art also edges into performance and video including his entry “Critical Confessional” for the International Art Market 5 at Parker’s Box. His artistic projects have transcended the material to absord the artist himself. Also, he has hexed Zach Feuer and it appears to be working.
Powhida was a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail for over three years and has contributed to Artnet.com, Circa, and Permission magazines.  Some of the artists he has reviewed include Tim Hawkinson, Bjorn Melhus, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Guy Richards Smit, Jim Torok, Julianne Swartz, Kevin and Jennifer McCoy and his enemy, Jules DeBalincourt.

Currently, the artist is suffering a malaise brought on by bouts of crushing doubt about the ability of the market to cope with his rash of provocations and insinuations. When it goes south, so will he. Most likely, you’ll be able to find him somewhere in South America selling paintings of the ocean to tourists.

For Sell Out: The Bastard Tour Powhida recorded an album and played an ill fated concert at the gallery in Seattle. The exhibition also included the stage where Powhida and his backing band performed, a group of paintings that reflected cynically on his rock’n'roll fantasy, various versions of the album cover art, set list, song titles and other rock detritus.

Above are a few installation shots. The exhibition is reviewed here. Below is the painting that William gave to me in return – it is fantastic.

The first poster I did was for the dynamic and versitile Amanda Browder. Amanda’s work ranges from 2D work, to sculptor and installation and also performance. Who knows, maybe she has done video as well? She has also done projects and residencies all over the place with her collaborator Stewart Keeler. She is also famous for bringing personality to the Bad at Sports podcast and her extremely fashionable eye wear.

The poster painting that I made was for Amanda’s May/June 2008 exhibition at the Green Lantern Gallery in Chicago. Above is a picture of a reproduction of my poster painting installed somewhere on the streets of Chicago. I am not quite sure how many posters actually got put up as while Amanda sent me quite a few photographs of street shots of the posters, upon close inspection it seems they may have all been the same poster from different angles. I choose to believe that the windy city was plastered in Amanda Browder Cyclone posters.

Above is the Green Lantern from the outside and you can see Amanda’s crazy-massive-stuffed-cyclone through the window. This is a great sculpture, not only because it is such a cool and fun object, but also because it reminds me so much of Miss. Browder herself – she is a whirlwind of energy and excitment, but without all the unfortunate devastation of a natural disaster. Amanda is the cartoon cyclone. I love this view of the piece – it is like you are a voyeur looking into a cartoon world.
Below is another one of the sculptures from the exhibition. Amanda and I have not concluded this phase of the project as we have not managed to find time to make the trade yet. I have been secretly hoping that she will offer this wonderful stuffer baboon – it is far to significant a piece for my poster, but some day when I have children I think they would really go nuts for this one.

The poster was printed and wheat pasted all over the west side of Manhattan for a few weeks leading up to the exhibition. If it was to function properly as an advertisement for my exhibition, I probably should have included more information, such as my name, on the poster. But I intended the poster as a piece of art unto itself, and so I wanted it to be enigmatic – a street poster that didn’t quite manage to serve its purpose as an advertisement for my exhibition. Besides, I thought that the poster looked so clean and beautiful with limited information, the function had to be sacrificed for the formal concerns of the art object.

Later when I had a chance to reflect on this first iteration of the poster project, I decided that the most interesting aspect of this project had been the desemination of the art work. In fact I would be interested in creating works that were functional, and required reproduction and distribution in order to be completed.

Having been a fan of Martin Kippenberger since my school days, I was aware that he had commissioned colleagues to create some of his exhibition posters. Artist such as Christopher Wool, Jeff Koons, Laurence Weiner, Mike Kelly, A.R. Penck and many others participated in the project. I always liked this idea, and decided that I could reverse engineer the project. I would ask my own colleagues to allow me to make exhibition posters for their shows in exchange for artwork. The poster painting that I would produce would have to be reproduced as a poster or flyer for the exhibition, and be used by the gallery as promotional material for the exhibition. The trade would be for anything that the artist decides to give me, provided it is included in the exhibition as a work of art.

I hope to produce poster paintings for a number of artist over the course of a decade or so. The final stage of the project will be to organize an exhibition of all the posters that I have made to be displayed along with the art pieces with which they were exchanged.

This blog is intended to track the progress of the Poster Project.