June 6th 2011
Performance at Figment Art Festival this weekend on Govenor's Island.
This Sunday, June 12th, I will be presenting a new interactive sound piece at the Figment 2011 Art Festival on Governor's Island in New York. Figment is a unique volunteer-based arts weekend run by local and visiting curators and artists. My piece - The Sounds of Tomorrow - will be a further exploration of The Tomorrow Archive, this time presenting an archive of sound effects from popular cinema describing the future. Appropriated into a DJ format, the sound effects will be available for performance and general play. I will be performing sets of music arranged with said sound effects and encouraging others to try their hands at it while discussing the representation of the future.
This will also serve as a public launch of the new RAF website and recently published Manifesto.
My piece will be on Sunday only, from approximately 2-5pm.
See here for info on how to get there.
UPDATE: I will by just south of what appears to be called the Bazaar Stage, on the east side of the island, off of Barry road.
April 25 2011
Here is some proper new work. My latest work with the Rebellion for Autonomous Future, the RAF Census 2010 collects the results of a performative survey conducted last year by RAF volunteers. The documents of this initiative have been put together as pseudo-paintings by yours-truly, and are made available here online.
On a related note the RAF are putting together a new home online, where projects like mine will appear alongside documented guerilla actions, writing and new excerpts from the Tomorrow Archive.
April 20 2011
February 14 2011
The SW!PE show was a great success! Check out some photos from the event and order a copy of the magazine here. The people who run things over at the mag put a lot of care into presenting all of our work and need your business to keep on publishing.
New work coming soon, stay tuned!
January 13 2011
So, here are three related things to check out:
1. A new essay on handmade objects, Apple and creativity
2. A new exhibition of work in Manhattan!
3. A magazine featuring both of the above!
I am pleased to announce my involvement with SW!PE MAGAZINE, which if you don't know is the collective of artists and writers who are also guards at the Met (such as yours truly). The group's members are interesting because of their unique postion in the art world: outsiders who work every day in the very heart of the system.This is the second volume of the magazine with an accompanying exhibtion (see The New York Times on the first), and demonstrates the unique work of those people who are steeped both in art history and art tourism. Click here for more information.
Exhibition Dates: February 10 – 13, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday February 10, 2011
September 13 2010
Images from the opening yesterday at SICA. Click for more.
Good show, lots of young talent from around the country. Seen here, my contribution to the 2010 Juried Exhibition. Be sure to go back and read a bit about the piece here. So, go check it out! It's just a few blocks from the NJ transit (and the beach!).
August 28 2010
Update: Show info here. Now open! More follows.
Today, I'm happy to announce that I have a piece in The Shore Institute for Contemporary Art's annual juried group show. The show runs September 4th through November 14th, with an opening reception on September 12th from 3-6pm. Just down the shore from Manhattan, SICA is easily accessible from NJ transit (here is a map). More to come!
And don't forget to check out my drawing at the always awesome Prospect Park Zoo, about which, see previous post.
June 23 2010
Double news today! First, I finally got around to uploading some botanical drawings and other natural illustration type things - nothing serious, but a grand tradition to play with. So head on over to the sketches and see them here.
The drawings are a selection from a Scientific Illustration class I took at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and one of my drawings is currently on display - along with a slew of other Pratt kids' - at the Prospect Park Zoo! It's a small show, and the work isn't really capital "A" Art, but they're some impressive drawings nonetheless. I'm guessing it fits into the Zoo's Wild Arts Weekend.
Directions to the Prospect Park Zoo.
I haven't actually been over to see the show, but I believe it's up through the Fall, so go see it and let me know how it looks (incidentally I don't actually have a photo of my piece in the show, but it's of a group of baboons, so there).
June 8 2010
Big new work in Only Map Left! I'm not sure I like the precedent of adding to specific bodies of work once they're posted, but in this case I think it's the right choice. Titled The Clarke-Asimov Treaty, the big new painting (6'x4') was made after my show in January, but still dealt with the same content. I'll try to upload some sketches, because this was a sort of crazy piece, it's a mock history painting, depicting a fictional account of a historical event, in which historical figures determine history by discussing fiction (whew!). Purposefully confusing reality and Sci Fi as much as possible, the tableau features from left to right: an astronaut, Frank Herbert, Virginia Heinlein, Robert A. Heinlein, a robot, Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Stanley Kubrick, and Ray Bradbury.
If you're interested.... The Clarke-Asimov Treaty was a joke agreement between its titular authors that determined the long standing question of who the world's greated Science Fiction author was. They agreed that the greatest Sci fi writer was in fact Clarke, while Asimov settled with being the world's best Science writer.
May 24 2010
New work up! Go check out Remote Humanism, a free-form meditation on exoticism and authenticity. As shown already, I'm deeply concerned with the technological future; but what else is there? Can the natural world really supply a more accurate realm of human experience? The work here touches on marxist theory, modern stereotypes, and cyborg jungle beasts. Plus I can finally reveal what that Jonny Quest teaser was all about:
May 21 2010
Well the Pratt BFA show went well, and a lot of people showed up for the Open Studio event. I posted some pictures of the show curated by Alexi Worth, so check 'em out here.
May 6 2010
Pratt BFA Open Studios!
*Update: I've got a piece in the group show*
On Sunday May 16th, come on down to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, for an open studio event with all the graduating drawing and painting students. There will be some sort of reception and a gallery show of work selected by Alexi Worth. My studio is in East Hall on the second floor, but there will be tons of cool spaces to explore. Always fun seeing how artists work...
April 27 2010
I want to mention some new updates to the site without distracting too much from the mysterious announcement below... so I'll keep it brief. NEW MUSIC! Five new tracks in the player and click through to Soundcloud where you can download them. Also added an official sidebar link to my blog Manifest Future. Originally started as a web element for the fictional RAF of The Tomorrow Archive, the blog lives on (it basically documents the modeling of our world after the future portrayed in Sci-Fi).
April 1 2010
March 25 2010
New sketches! Giant shark flower! Click below to check 'em out.
March 1 2010
Any attentive visitors may have noticed a new page on the menu bar, if not check out the STORE! Yes, I am fully engaged in the struggle against consumerism, but an artist has got to eat somehow. Not a new dilemma, and I encourage anyone interested in creative exchanges to read Lewis Hyde's The Gift, from which this quote becomes a sort of preface to my new economic venture:
"The artist who wishes neither to lose his gift nor starve his belly reserves a protected gift-sphere in which the work is created, but once the work is made he allows himself some contact with the market. And then - the necessary second phase - if he is successful in the marketplace, he converts market wealth into gift wealth: he contributes his earnings to the support of his art."
February 22 2010
I had a couple pieces at Shindig NY's party last weekend at The Living Theater on the Lower East Side. Some artists from Pratt, Cooper Union and NYU alongside a great deal of neo-bohemian revelry. For actual images of the work, check out Only Map Left.
February 11 2010
As mentioned preveously, here is my piece from What is Sustainability? Pratt Students Respond. The show is up at the Schafler Gallery at Pratt in Brooklyn, and its pretty cool. A lot of awesome work by undergrads and graduate students alike. Highlights include etched pool balls and a mechanically rotating rainstick that completes a circuit as it turns. My piece documents a fictional outcome of the war against climate change. Turns out people did pay attention to those scientists in 1988... at least in this version of history. Click here for the new piece. Uncovered Documents from 1988 recieved an honorable mention from the show's jury.
February 2 2010
Forgot to mention, I'll have a piece in the upcoming show at Pratt Institute's Schafler Gallery: What is Sustainability? Pratt Students Respond. My submission is a good continuation of the obsessive documentation that The Tomorrow Archive was built upon.
February 10 - March 10, opening February 9th 4-6pm.
February 1 2010
Two new pages of work. Check 'em out below:
As mentioned previously, I had a group show at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn last week with Heather Lang, Mike Stone and Matthew J Ramada. All of whom killed it with their own sorts of subversive artwork. I showed two bodies of work: The Tomorrow Archive and Only Map Left. The former in conjunction with the infamous Rebellion for Autonomous Future. Long live RAF!
January 13 2010
New show at Pratt Institute on January 25! I'm lucky enough to represent Brooklyn for the Rebellion for Autonomous Future's annual stewardship. The RAF is a sort of underground movement that works against the flow of an expected future. I'll have more on their doctrine when I get up the post for the show. For now this means that they'll bring some artifacts from The Tomorrow Archive to display at the show. The above flyer is just for the RAF and myself, but the weeklong show will also feature work by Heather Lang, Michael Livingstone and Matthew Ramada. Opening reception January 25 at 5pm.
Also be sure to check out Manifest Future an RAF blog dedicated to tracking the progress of reality's emulation of the future depicted in mass media:
Preview of my work, and an even newer sneak peak:
All images on this site are licensed by Benjamin Andrew under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.