Bad At Sports

This week: Richard talks to Terry Scrogum, Executive Director of the Illinois Arts Council about the state of the budget, their programs and more! Next, Kathryn Born talks to Theaster Gates. Theaster Gates is a Chicago artist and University of Chicago faculty member who works with everything from executing ideas in urban planning, to Japanese sculpture, to performance art. He recently did "Temple Exercises" in the 12 X 12 space at the MCA, and among his upcoming projects is the possibility of buying an entire block on the south side. This project may someday include, among other things, a Soul Food-Japanese fusion restaurant which serves honey dipped, crunchy fried mac-and-cheese unagi rolls and Saki Kool-aid.

This week: Continental European Bureau Czar Mark Staff Brandl roams the Basel Art Fair 2009 with guest co-host Peter Noser, gallerist, curator and artist. They comment primarily on the "main fair," but also cursorily on Scope, Volta, the Solos Show, die Liste (and look forward to a Bridge addition next year). Additional walk-on voices include Maya LaLive d'Epinay, Martin Kraft, Alex Meszmer, many others, and a few seconds of Olga Stefan. Mark managed to wipe-out some excellent comments, or record them so poorly that they were unusable. Ce la technologie. A quick but comprehensive look at the "real" Basel, the most important international art fair, the Queen yet also Great Whore of Babylon. I made some multiples especially for the fair including pins and my T-shirt. They all bore the Latin phrase "Abite in Malam crucem, artis nundinae!", signed Marcus Scipio Incendiolus. Or, roughly in English, "Screw Art Fairs!" In German, as appropriate for Basel, that's "Zum Teufel mit Kunstmessen!"

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This week (the) Amanda Browder and Tom talk with curator Manon Slome about the "No Longer Empty" series of exhibitions. Manon is one of the curators of this year long series of shows, each of which inhabits an abandoned New York City store front for one month. Along the way the three talk about the dismal state of affairs in Ol' New York and how we can make lemonade out of these lemons.Manon Slome (PhD) is an independent curator working in New York City. From 2002 to June 2008 she was the Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York since its inception in 2002. During that time, she has curated and overseen a program of some forty exhibitions, symposia and museum publications as well as monographs and scholarly essays. Ms. Slome became highly involved with the Israeli art scene during her research for the exhibition, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on”, (2005) and has followed and researched the Israeli scene for the last 3 years. Prior to the CAM, Ms. Slome worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum f

This week, Duncan and Richard talk to Deb Sokolow! We talk about Deb's work, drug lords, Rocky, the merits of Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone's painting, Oliver North, how many people on the Bad at Sports staff have actually smoked crack, serial killers, meth labs, Jerry Saltz, Gary Busey, art school, and more, more, more! This is a great interview. As a special bonus Geoffrey Todd Smith preps panels with a roller (that is the odd sound you hear in the background) and chimes in occasionally off mic!Shamelessly lifted blurb: Deb Sokolow has been steadily inking her way into the hearts and minds of Chicago's art world. Since graduating from the School of the Art Institute in 2004, she has shown at 40000, Gallery 400 and Polvo, and had a solo show in the MCA's 12 x 12 series. Her whimsical drawings analyze pop-culture phenomena, such as the movie Rocky, office culture and Americans' fear of terrorism, and mix the aesthetics of children's books, diary writing, New Yorker-style cartoons and personal sketching.

This week Bad at Sports celebrates its 200-th episode by getting back to the known- Review-o-rama. We welcome guest reviewers Tony Tasset and Lori Waxman to take the pulse of Chicago's west loop.

This week Duncan and Richard go to Gallery 400 and talk to Director Lorelei Stewart and Assistant Director Anthony Elms about the current exhibition Our Literal Speed the end of the At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago series, and the new approach they are taking to commission and exhibit the work of emerging and mid-career artists. Gallery 400, a not-for-profit arts exhibition space at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was founded in 1983 to exhibit and support art, design and architecture. Over its 26 year history Gallery 400 has grown into a nationally recognized gallery that presents consistently acclaimed exhibitions, lectures, and artist commissions. The exhibitions and programs present a broad range of recent developments and aesthetic concerns and have included more than 1,000 artists to date.

This week Mark Staff Brandl interviews ex-pat artist Leonard Bullock. Here is some text crassly cut and pasted from somewhere else: Leonard Bullock originally from North Carolina and New York City, has lived in Europe for the last 15 years, frequently exhibiting in Switzerland and Germany. ... Bullock is a painters' painter, his direct facture influencing many better-known contemporaries such as the young Swiss artist Lori Hersberger. While Bullock often paints on surprising surfaces such as fiberglass or silk, the most arresting aspect of his work has been his mark-making, which is somewhat reminiscent of de Kooning in that it aspires to an indexical demonstration of sensation. Bullock does not copy his inspirational sources but rather updates them. He aligns a wide variety of strokes into tilted vectors, forming abstract totem poles that appear to swerve through space. His sense of touch reveals a painter more concerned with Titian and with questions of disparateness than with expressionism.

This week Duncan and Christian Kuras talk to YBA artist Mark Francis, all the way from London. Duncan is not afraid to commit to go the distance to get an interview.

This week: Duncan talks to Britton Bertran and Allison Peters Quinn about Artists Run Chicago which is currently up at the Hyde Park Art Center. Artists Run Chicago is an exhibition showcasing the energy and audacity of some of the most noteworthy artist-run spaces that have influenced the Chicago contemporary art scene over the past decade. Chicago has long been known for cultivating a strong entrepreneurial/Do-It-Yourself spirit in business and the arts. The participating artist-run venues have transformed storefronts, sheds, apartments, lofts, industrial warehouses, garages and roving spaces into contemporary art galleries testing the notion of “exhibition” while complicating the definition of art. Coinciding with the Hyde Park Art Center’s 70th anniversary, Artists Run Chicago reconnects the Art Center to its beginnings as an artist-run space by showcasing spaces that continue the legacy.

This week: Duncan and guest host Randall Szott talk to the fine folks from InCubate. After that interesting interview we flush the whole effing thing down the toilet by reviewing Harry Potter the Exhibition, where porno and Matthew Barney are discussed. About InCUBATE (from their website): In ways that have only become possible in the past few years, artist collectives and experimental institutions have begun to actively re-imagine alternate art worlds and alternative forms of curatorial practice in an attempt to disengage from the more traditional strategies governing today’s art market. InCUBATE is a research institute dedicated to challenging current infrastructures, specifically how they affect artistic production. As art historians and arts administrators, our goal is to explore the possibility of developing financial models that could be relevant to contemporary art institutions, as well as collective or individual artist projects working outside an institution. Particularly, we are exploring fi

This week: Duncan talks to Paul Morris the Art Czar of a number of art fairs who really goes by the title of  Vice President of Art Shows & Events for Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. to discuss Artropolis, his history as an innovator and gallery owner, and where the art world is headed. BE SURE TO CHECK OUT:   A night you won't forget...if you live to remember!!! Friday, May 29th, You Oughta be in Fangs, written & directed by Death by Design Decadent 1920s party-goers in search of hot-jazz and free-flowing booze, head to a secret speakeasy run by the conjoined Whisper Sisters. Assisted by a team of waxen virgins and undead goons, the Sisters entice their guests with vampish performers, seductive strains and intoxicating elixirs. But watch your step – lest you should shimmy straight into the arms of their Vampire suitors, who slip incognito through the euphoric crowd, adding to their brood. Join us for our first artist-directed fundraiser, You Oughta Be in Fangs by Death by Design. Fea

This week: Duncan and Richard get a sneak preview of the Contemporary Galleries in the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lisa Dorin the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art is our guide. Duncan draws some wacky parallel between Kerry James Marshall's paintings and the Matrix. Richard refers to the juxtaposition of Nauman's Clown Torture and Robert Ryman's Charter Series as "If the CSO had a G.G. Allin/ J.S. Bach double bill". Lisa answers the question: was it a complete pain in the ass to install Richard Serra's ten thousand pound work Weights and Measures?

This week: Duncan talks with Rochelle Feinstein. Rochelle Feinstein, Painter and printmaker Webpage: www.rochellefeinsteinstudio.com Ms. Feinstein received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in 1975 and an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1978. She lives and works in New York City. Her work is exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe, and is included in numerous public and private collections. Among recent awards and grants she has received are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, and a Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts grant. She was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1994 and is currently professor of painting/printmaking.

This week: Duncan talks with James Elkins about his forthcoming round table at Art Chicago, and the art Phd. Like you didn't have enough student loan debt.BAS Boston's Matthew Nash talks to comic artist Liz Prince about her work, and her excellent book "Will you still love me if I wet the bed?" Go, right now, buy it.

First, Duncan and Richard present a horribly off-track intro which consists largely of talk of herpes and sleeping around. Eventually they get around to discussing what is really important, this week’s show!   Steve Litsios, an artist from La Chaux-de-Fonds in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, is interviewed this week by Mark Staff Brandl. Litsios is known for his vast paper installations, wall objects, smaller sculpture, and web-work, all of which are elegant, restrained, and yet puckish in their surprising flirtation with elements of garishness. His work has recently begun to incorporate political content into his formerly abstract approach. The artist also plays in several roots blues and skiffle bands.   Then, in the closing, Duncan calls out Joseph Mohan. Other wackiness ensues.  

With the financial market squeezing donors, collectors and the backers of the art market, the word recession has been a new mantra that has plagued the New York art scene. This week Amanda Browder (host of the Amanda Browder Show) and Tom Sanford (BAS reporter and artiste) talk with Craig Houser (curator), Les Rogers (artist) and John Lee (dealer/gallery owner) about the current financial recession in New York and how it compares to the most recent recession in the 80's. Watch out Elizabeth Peyton, your neck is first.Next: Mike Benedetto (jackass, BAS film critic) reviews The Watchmen.IMPORTANT: be sure to stick around after the credits for a very special and heart rending public service announcement from Mike, that, much to his surprise, I actually did run in the show.

First: This week Duncan checks in from Roots and Culture and interviews Oli Watt and Jamisen Ogg about the show they put together with Lauren Anderson.  Lauren could not make the taping session and Eric May (The Director of Roots and Culture) steps in to make sure the world know what great work she does. Next: From NYC! The Amanda Browder Show features three conversations from the Volta Art Fair - NY 2009. Amanda talks with Noah Singer of Imperfect Articles (Chicago), Tracy Candido and Tara Strickstein of Sweet Tooth of the Tiger (NYC) and Joshua Callaghan (LA). All three discuss the hardships of being stuck in a booth all weekend on what happened to be one of the sunniest days all winter.

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It's all Duncan all the time this week. This week's show is a three for the price of one deal!In preparation for the biggest printmaking event of the year, the Southern Graphics Council meeting for 2009 hosted by Chicago's Columbia College, Duncan interrogates Mark Pascale (Curator of Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago), Debora Wood (Senior Curator, Northwestern University's Mary and Leigh Block Museum) and Christine Tarkowski (Associate Professor, Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago) about the current state of Printmaking as an autonomous art form and its position in the academy. We had better see all of you in Wicker Park this Friday for a kick ass set of openings at the Green Lantern, Roots and Culture, Llyod Dobbler, and Heaven! See you then. http://www2.colum.edu/sgc/