Lili Dujourie

Sonate: 63 x 79 x 37 cm, 2007

Douglas Huebler

Variable Piece #70 (in process) Global, Crocodile Tears "Woody Wright", 1981
photostat xerox paper collage, text, oil on canvas
paper: 19 7/8" x 32 1/4"
framed: 21" x 33

Swivelling Layers of Condescension

I was born into this world hale and hearty
It was decided early on I was a smarty
And was written off to write the J E E
though elsewhere lay the interests of yours truly

With heart set to break tradition
I went into film and action
a hundred people had a hundred things to say
and made my family's view on me sway

this field became unworthy of my family's attention
they had to take care of their lofty reputation
My family withheld it's supple support and
I was left to find my own life transport

A few hardships for me and pity in my family stirred
All I had to do was shake my head and nod
I could become half my family business' head
and Prove to the world I was still of sterling breed

I did indeed , after a lengthy monologue , shake my head
A strong no it was and doors were forever shut
I was left alone , amidst confused love and tension
sinking , in the swivelling layers of condescension



The title and inspiration was a podcast I heard , by Suresh ......tamilians , do check out his podcasts...they are amazing .

P.S. This poem is not some self-reflecting poem or anything . I chose to write the JEE of my own stupidity .

Hans Haacke: Condensation cube 1963�65

Lynn Hershman Leeson

Found Objects
April 26 - May 31, 2008
bitforms gallery nyc
Opening April 25th

Lynn Hershman Leeson returns to bitforms gallery in NY with the first showing of a new series, Found Objects, April 26 - May 31.

Including the premiere of the sex doll installation, "Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman," a provocative and updated version of Edouard Manet's notorious painting, "Olympia".

February 2008, New York, NY - San Francisco-based artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson returns to bitforms gallery in New York for a new solo exhibition, Found Objects, running April 26-May 31. With a body of work that spans over 35 years and ranges from early conceptual and performance pieces to artificial intelligence robotic works and films, Hershman Leeson is one of the most influential artists working in new media today. Updating the notion of "readymade" introduced by Marcel Duchamp, Found Objects is a new series that features assembly-line produced female sex dolls to examine issues of projected fantasies and the mythology of artificial women. With the installation, "Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman," Hershman Leeson restages Edouard Manet's "Olympia," projecting images of the painting on a doll to offer a provocative, updated version of the notorious artwork. Also on display are several digital prints in which the dolls appear to be emotionally involved in their predestined situations.

In 1865, Edouard Manet's painting, "Olympia," shocked the art world by depicting a naked woman who, it turned out, was a prostitute. She lay down, unabashed about what she wanted, looking at the viewer, part invitation, part dare. Incorporating the scandalous history associated with Manet's painting, "Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman" exposes both the cultural practice of representing women as object (lost or found), and an art historical predilection to create objects of displaced desires. Hershman carefully selected the doll's various body parts so that it would closely resemble Manet's painting - a process that took 7 months. The installation consists of the sex doll reclining on a longue chaise, exactly as in "Olympia," while images of the painting are continuously projected on her body. The use of a traditional slide projector displaces and updates Manet's "Olympia," thereby creating today's readymade in a Real Doll version.

The Found Objects series continues the investigation of artificial women Hershman Leeson began with the "Roberta Breitmore" project in the 70's. As for her preceding fictitious and virtual personas - which included dolls such as "CybeRoberta" (1970-1998) and "Tillie" (1995-98) - Olympia's true reality surfaces through her artifices. The exhibition will also feature a series of original digital prints that explore the elements of fear and horror, contained in Olympia and brought forth through the photographic medium. These include "No Body," "Warning," and "Olympia Rising," among others.

In conjunction with bitforms gallery's solo exhibition, 17 pieces from Hershman's Roberta Breitmore series will be on display at PS1 Contemporary Art Center (NY) as part of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution - the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art (February 17-May 12, 2008). Her exhibition No Body Special is currently on view at the de Young Museum, San Francisco.

About Lynn Hershman Leeson
Over the last three decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941) has been internationally acclaimed for her pioneering use of new technologies and her investigations of issues that are now recognized as key to the working of our society: identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds.


(Thanks Sarah for the email)

CITATIONS, Yinka Shonibare, MBE: Prospero's Monsters at James Cohan Gallery

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Epilogue of THE TEMPEST

Haim Steinbach

One Minute Managers V.2 1990
2 plastic laminated wooden shelfs, aluminum alloy stock pots, leather medicine balls
72.5 x 445 x 355 cm
Murderme Ltd, London
� 2006 Haim Steinbach