“Art review: Cannon Hudson at Las Cienegas Projects - Los Angeles Times (blog)” plus 1 more |
| Art review: Cannon Hudson at Las Cienegas Projects - Los Angeles Times (blog) Posted: 13 May 2010 04:42 PM PDT "Brain Room" is a square, waist-high pedestal of black, polymer-coated steel that holds a gray step-pyramid aloft. Each of the five steps is crowned by a plexiglass vitrine; the art object protected by each step in this nesting structure is simply the next smallest, otherwise empty vitrine inside. A physical hall of three-dimensional mirrors, it gets you examining things like the light glinting off beveled plexiglass edges, fabrication gaps between the pedestal and the pyramid, streaks in the industrial-strength polymer coating and other such unexpected or seemingly imperfect qualities. Hudson twists Minimalism's famous notion of art as a "specific object," from which all fictions must be banished in order to establish a supposedly truthful reality, making room for illusionism and human flaws. The paintings accomplish something similar, while approaching from a different direction. Most show architectural interiors, typically painted a monochrome silver-gray or blue.
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| Growing Up With Dad, Distilled With Bite - New York Times Posted: 13 May 2010 01:51 PM PDT IN making an autobiographical film, the brothers Josh and Benny Safdie had the advantage of a well-documented childhood. On a recent afternoon in their office on lower Broadway, the Safdies sifted through boxes of videotapes and photographs preserved in scrapbooks, all of it emotional raw material for their new fiction feature "Daddy Longlegs." One photo was of a scene that they recreated in the film: a "paper tornado," as Josh put it, a sheaf of paper blown several stories high by the wind, as a woman and two boys reach for the scattering sheets. "It makes perfect sense that our dad was taking the photo, and our mom was helping with the paper," Benny said. New York natives and children of divorce, Josh was 2 and Benny 6 months old when their parents separated. They eventually ended up with their mother but lived first with their father, Albert, a compulsive videographer who recorded more than 300 hours' worth of home movies. "There were a lot of times we were angry with him for filming all the time," Josh said of their father. "But he planted in us this seed of reflection, and for that we're really grateful." The brothers' mixed feelings are at the heart of "Daddy Longlegs," which had its premiere in Cannes last year (under the title "Go Get Some Rosemary") and is now playing at the IFC Center in Manhattan and on cable through video on demand. The film unfolds during the two weeks of the year that Lenny, a perpetually frazzled film projectionist who lives in a cramped Midtown apartment, has custody of his two young boys. More playmate than parent, Lenny endeavors to keep the kids entertained while trying to prevent his already chaotic existence from falling apart. The movie walks a fine line between censure and compassion, expressing fondness, resentment and amused horror at a father who may have the best intentions but whose actions sometimes warrant the intervention of social services. "We condensed our childhood into those two weeks," Benny said, and there was some exaggeration for dramatic effect. At one point in "Daddy Longlegs," Lenny, in need of a sitter, improvises a pharmacological solution. That pivotal scene, Benny said, "was about putting every bad feeling we experienced with our father into this terrible decision." In reimagining their childhood, Josh said, "I think we were able to understand what was at play in those years and what was in our dad's head." The Safdie brothers are now 26 and 24; their father was in his mid-20s when they were born. "We were kids," Josh said, "and to him we were this extension of his youth," not a reminder of adult responsibility. To embody the agitated goofball Lenny, the Safdies cast not a professional actor but a fellow filmmaker, Ronald Bronstein, the director of "Frownland," a simultaneously tender and squirm-inducing portrait of a social maladroit. Josh met Mr. Bronstein at the South by Southwest Festival in 2007, and recalled being struck both by Mr. Bronstein's appearance ("He looked like a silent-movie actor") and by their mutual interests in documentarylike fictions and in filmmaking as a behavioral experiment. If the film was personal to the Safdies for obvious reasons, it also held a private resonance for Mr. Bronstein, who described himself as having long been "stuck in a state of abject self-doubt." "For me the goal of acting, and maybe the goal of life too, is to eliminate that debilitating time lag between impulse and action," he said. "It was a gift for me to be put into a position where I received so much stimuli that I'm able to disappear entirely, and I'm invisible to myself." The Safdies spent long days holed up in a diner with Mr. Bronstein, going over the story scene by scene. In the process Lenny became a full-fledged character, not just a stand-in for the Safdies' father. They made Lenny a projectionist, like Mr. Bronstein, whose own jaundiced worldview seeped in. "There was never a territorial battle," Mr. Bronstein said, "but I would say it's an angrier film as a result of their casting decision." Summing up his character, Mr. Bronstein said: "The two traits in his personality are selfishness and a kind of overcompensatory guilt for that selfishness. He puts an incredible amount of attention into making sure the kids are having fun, but he's not having fun, so there's something joyless and anxiety fueled about it." Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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