Bad At Sports

This Week: Duncan and Amanda (from the Amanda Browder Show) talk to Rachel and Ed “Edmar” Marszewski about Proximity Magazine, fried chicken meals, sperm banks and much more. Max interrupts.  Also, Philip Vvon Zweck talks to Angee Lennard about Spudnik Press! Be sure to check out their website for info on classes. Sadly the excellent Cheryl Donegan exhibition at He Said-She Said has closed, but be sure to check out the space’s website at http://hesaid-shesaid.us. This episode is Mohan free. No Mohans were harmed in the making of this episode.    

Robert Rauschenberg passed away on May 12, 2008 at age 82. The Art Institute of Chicago's own Rauscheberg expert Lisa Wainwright joins us to discuss his life and legacy.

Who is the hell doesn’t know what Highlander is? For shame. All of you, add it to your netflix queue pronto! This week: Duncan, and a panel of superstar critical thinkers, Lori Waxman, Kathryn Hixson and James Yood discuss, Highlander, Artropolopolopolis, Robert Storr vs. the universe, and regionalism in an action packed, smack down of art critical smartness. To digress for a moment, in googling everyone’s name to minimize errors I was astonished to find that there once was a Chicago Art Critics Association. Sadly their website was last updated in 2006. It seems to have died of disinterest. I wonder if the meetings entailed “Beat-it” style knife fights, alas Bad at Sports missed the boat there.  Only Duncan will be amused by the opening song, as he knows there can be only one, and only Kaveh Soofi and Dominic Molon by the closing song. Joseph Mohan. There Duncan, I said it.        

WTF? this weeks show is as long as your arm and brimming with what you need to know about the art world around you...It's a three shows for the price of one deal!!! First Duncan takes on the Chicago Artist Coalition to find out, what they do and what business they have publishing a magazine. Next,Terri and Serena talk to David Adjaye and Cydney Payton at The Museum of Contemporary Art: Denver and figure out how you go about building a museum.  As if that was not enough, Mark Staff Brandl our European Chief checks in to remind ushow important it is to be a member of a community.The show closes with a tribute to the Birthday of Joseph Mohan.    

This week the West Coast Crew heads down to Ratio3 to talk to Ryan McGinley and gallerist Chris Perez. Ryan McGinley makes large-scale color photographs of nudes in abstracted natural landscapes. With his subjects as willing collaborators, he used photography to break down barriers between public and private lives. Drawn from skateboarding, music, graffiti and gay subcultures, his models perform for the camera and expose themselves with complete self-awareness. McGinley's more recent work signals a departure from the urban youth culture images for which he is well known – over the past few summers he has been working almost exclusively in natural settings in the American west. At 24, he was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has also had solo exhibitions at PS1 and in Spain at the MUSAC in Leon. In 2007 he was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity award by the International Center for Photography.

THIS WEEK IT'S THE AMANDA BROWDER SHOW!!! GUEST STARRING TONY MATELLI!!! Tony Matelli has always been interested in the underdog. He has become well known for his hyper-realistic sculptures often depicting characters and things just barely getting by; things nearly dead, hopelessly lost or otherwise totally unwanted. These sculptures serve as metaphors for our own social malaise and our general struggle for survival. They mimic inner states of desolation, panic, ambivalence and despair; frequent conditions associated with trying to locate ones self within our social world. Tony Matelli has exhibited extensively in the US and in Europe. His work was most recently seen in “5 Billion Years,? at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Into Me/Out of Me, at P.S. 1 MOMA New York, travelling to KW Berlin Institute of Contemporary Art. Upcoming projects include Evolution: Tony Matelli/Alexis Rockman, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Still Life, at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand, and Die Macht d

In 1994 Paul Morris, Matthew Marks, Pat Hearn and Colin De Land had a vision.  That vision was that New York City would have an art fair. What began as the Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair has become the the Armory fair, the jewel in the art fair empire the Merchandise Mart has amassed over the last 3 years; Art Chicago, The Armory, Art Toronto, Volta Basel, Next, and Volta NYC.This week, Paul "the 'marts Art Czar" Morris and Tony "Boss of Art Chicago" Karman break down why the Art Fair future is the future. Kathryn Born and Duncan MacKenzie listen with slack jaws and open minds.The weird thing that happened is that Duncan actually started to get behind Art Chicago and the 'marts future in the Art Business?  WTF?  Did he drink the Kool Aid? Was he bought off? Or is there reason to believe? Listen and find out...

The Bad at Sports Art Explosion rolls on. This week: Duncan and Britton Bertran talk to Kavi Gupta and Christian Viveros-Faune from Next Art Fair. Much fun is had by all.  

This week, the New York Art Fair explosion.John Waters v. Amanda Browder, Amanda and Tom get kicked out of Armory, Christopher Hudgens on mic. WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED!!!Amanda and Tom talk to just about everyone, well not really, but they do talk to loads of interesting collectors, gallerists, artists, Europeans, and other assorted folk as they barnstorm the fairs. And the return of Amanda's Mom wisecracks, no not really, but this show has an intro guaranteed to piss of Brian and Marc.

Spring break 2008 sweeps across Chicago with a vengeance. The freshly brewed warm weather brings Brian back to the midwest to help Duncan with hosting duties. This week Marc and Brian head down to Ampersand International Arts to check out "How Fast is your World Changing". They talk with curator/artist Lori Gordon as well as participating artists Hope Hilton and Markuz Wernli-Saito   about lying to curators and the strange effects of silence.Next week: Bad at sports takes on the Armory in NYC...

Local up and coming Chicago Art starlet Melanie Schiff is quizzed about what it is like to be curated into the 2008 Whitney Biennial, her work and WTF is up with contemporary Photography.  Oak Park correspondent/Chicago Art Star Tony Tasset co-hosts.

This week Caleb Lyons, one of the directors at Chicago curious space "Old Gold," drops in to interview John Phillips and Tony Wight about the current changes at Bodybuilder and Sportsman/Tony Wight Gallery, John and Caleb's exhibitions, contemporary abstract painting, and we once again tackle the topic of what is a hipster?. Where is Richard?

Sorry. We were a little slow due to power outages and the mediocre AT&T.Episode: Art Critic Greg Cook (The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix) joins Matt Nash, James Nadeau and Christian Holland of Big RED & Shiny to discuss the 2008 AICA New England Awards. Using the list of winners as a starting point, they discuss the state of the arts in New England and what they thought was great, mediocre and terrible. Disappointment in the new Institute of Contemporary Art is expressed; AICA is scrutinized; and conclusions are elusive.And the magic of Mike Benedetto. Links: bigredandshiny.com gregcookland.com/journal aicausa.org

This week the show is Co-hosted by Lori Waxman, recorded live in coffee shop on a Saturday night during dinner.  She and Duncan check out what is going on in the Chicago Alternative spaces. San Francisco beats down Eli Broad/LACMA and it turns out Marc LeBlanc is part of the oppressive white male hegemony. Ah, Bad at Sports is "sweet as pie."  Let the hate mail flow freely.

This week, Amanda and Tom Sanford talk to Shaun O’Dell and Emily Prince about Shaun’s show “We Remember the Sun? at the Susan Inglett Gallery. Shaun O’Dell makes drawings, videos, music and sometimes sculpture. His work explores the intertwining realities of the human and natural orders. O’Dell has exhibited his work at many venues, including the Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Whitebox in New York, and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum and the Berkeley Art Museum. O’Dell received his MFA from Stanford University. He is the recipient of the 2006 Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship from the San Francisco Art Institute, 2005 Artadia Award, 2004 SECA Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a 2002 Fleishhacker Foundation A

This week Duncan and the always delightful Jeff Ward talk to Stephanie Smith, the Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum in Chicago about the current exhibition Adaptation: Video Installations by Ben-Ner, Herrera, Sullivan, and Sussman & The Rufus Corporation. Holy guacamole am I sick this week, yuck. One of the joys of having a child in daycare.Bad at Sports is officially panhandling for a used PC laptop as a donation, or a reasonably priced sale, to us. The IBM T-42 that has handled the last 130+ shows is fatally ill and needs replacement pronto. Please e-mail us at badatsports@gmail.com if you have something fairly recent laying about you would like to get off of your hands! Thanks.

This week Brian, Marc, and Patrica sit down with Hou Hanru for a conversation over wine and olives. Currently the Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at SFAI, Hanru has curated a number of major international exhibitions including the Istanbul Biennale, Guangzhou Triennale, and 50th Venice Biennale. The interview spans from Hanru's education in china after the cultural revolution, globalism, principles of self organization, and what its like to curate both internationally and locally.

Ok, so you have listened to our BS for 127 episodes or so, so this week we introduce an exciting new program for BAS. We will from time to time invite guest curators on to put together an episode of Bad at Sports. This week, Artist, Curator, Musician, Gallerist, Radio Host and recipient of the 2007 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation grant, Philip von Zweck does a show focused on the area from whence he came, New Orleans.Philip von Zweck grew up in Slidell Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans that was also devastated by Katrina.  In January he made his first trip back since the storm and took along a recorder for Bad at Sports to find out what’s going on in New Orleans Art and what’s up with Prospect.1, the first New Orleans Biennial coming this fall. Along the way he spoke with Chris Deris, a high school friend (BFA, Atlanta College of Art; MFA, RISD) who now teaches Sculpture at Loyola University; New Orleans artist Blake Boyd; Odgen Museum of Southern Art Curator David Houston; and Cynthia Scott, an MFA student a

Amanda interviews artist and master of "celebutard portraiture" Tom Sanford. (our apologies to the mis-spelling of Tom's name on the MP3, BAS's shit-togetherness shines through).Duncan bitches a bit more about the Art Institute.And can we have a moment of silence for Mort Garson, please.

The Central European Bureau, “EuroShark? Mark Staff Brandl and his new partner Lamis El Farra interview Alex Meszmer of the art team Meszmer/Müller. Meszmer discusses the exhibition they curated at Projektraum Exex titled “Deconstructing Eden – Fragments of a Perfect Life,? their transitory museum-in-progress called Zeitgarten, the Swiss professional artists’ organization Visarte, and the new group of highly active “alternative? art spaces in Switzerland united under the rubric “Off-Off.? Terri and Joanna give their book review of Eeee Eee Eeeee by Tao Lin . The "shitty drawing of novels." Duncan rages about how F-ing angry he is at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in order to make up for it, rumor has it that he intends to increase his donation to them. If you work in development, please make a note of Duncan’s generosity and contact me at badatsports@gmail.com and I’ll pass along his phone number. He really wants to talk to you ASAP.